Tom Archdeacon: Local MMA fighter returns to the ring of fire

You could say it was the day the music stopped.

A few mornings ago Warren Roberds was in the ring at Drake’s Downtown Gym going through his 27th straight minute of sparring without a break.

His two sparring partners had been taking turns against him and now he was trading blows with Jake Norman, a well-muscled, heavily-tattooed behemoth who once was a Miamisburg High School athlete and later a champion power lifter and a bouncer at local clubs like Hammerjaxs, Wallaby’s and Cheeks.

Norman had some seven inches and 65 pounds on Roberds and as he was trying to use his long reach to his advantage, you noticed the inked script inside one forearm that read:

“I walk the line.”

“My wife has ‘Because you’re mine,’ ” he would explain. ”It’s from Johnny Cash.”

But now, deep into this marathon fisticuff session, the tiring Norman — who these days works as a tool and die maker and also goes to school — suddenly found himself in another Cash song.

After a couple of set-up punches from Roberds, he then bit on a feint, raised his right hand to protect his jaw from a punch that never came and suddenly found himself in a ring of fire.

With his right side briefly exposed, Norman was caught by a left hook that crashed into the bottom of his rib cage.

No more walking the line.

No more walking anywhere.

His breath knocked from him, he melted to the canvas, first onto his hands and knees and then onto his back. He lay there wincing a few seconds and finally rolled beneath the bottom rope, out of the ring and onto his haunches on the gym floor.

“You ever been hit by a ball bat?” he would explain later.

A few feet away, Ryan “Rhino” Wright, the other sparring mate, understood perfectly:

“My side still hurts from a shot Warren gave me two weeks ago,” said Wright, a compact southpaw who is a Germantown policeman and a former Fairmont High School athlete.

As he prepares for his first MMA fight in five years — a July 29 bout in Akron with Josh Fremd, a middleweight from Connellsville, Pennsylvania — Roberds has had sparring sessions in the downtown fight club that have drawn some exclamation marks.

“We had three guys in here one time and he did 15 straight two- or three-minute rounds without a break,” Wright said. “We just kept cycling guys in. We were all like dying in the corner and he stood out there in the ring and just went, ‘OK, ready to go.’”

John Drake, who runs the gym, has a story, too:

“Warren has also sparred with three of our younger guys and he’s put all of them down at one time or another. One of them got his ribs broken and he hasn’t been back.”

But before painting the thick-shouldered, 29-year-old Enon fighter as some unrelenting force, you need to hear about the time he got cuddled.

That’s when his girlfriend Jan “Cuddles” Finney delivered her own “because you’re mine” line.

It came not with love, but laceration.

They were sparring and as Warren explained it: “She tricked me. She faked me out and then kicked me in the face and cut my eye. She’s the only one who’s ever given me stitches.”

Then again she’s not your typical girlfriend. That nickname is somebody’s idea of a joke.

A former Kenton Ridge High School and Urbana University softball player, the 37-year-old Finney is, as Roberds put it, “one of the pioneers of women’s MMA.”

Her 11-12 record is deceptive, he said, because “she’s taken on the toughest names in the world. She’s fought three world champs (Holly Holm, Mieshsa Tate and Chistiane “Cyborg” Justino) and may have fought a fourth if Valentina Shevchenko (a former kick boxing champ) had fought for the title this month (before champ Amanda Nunes pulled out of the bout).

“Jan is one of the best in the world,” Roberds said.

And come July 29, he hopes to renew his quest to be the same.

‘Dream come true’

In 2009, Roberds read that Wanderlei Silva — the MMA legend who holds the records for most victories, knockouts and title defenses in the PRIDE Fighting Championships — was holding tryouts at his Las Vegas gym to put together the Wand Fighting Team.

“Wanderlei has been my favorite fighter since high school, so I wanted to try out,” Roberds said.

Although he had trained in taekwondo from the time he was 5 right up through his Greenon High School days and had had eight amateur bouts with Ohio Xtreme Fighting at the Montgomery County Fairgrounds, he had made his money working at his dad’s pizza and sandwich shop in Enon — Pizza and Company.

“So it was a big shock finally getting off the plane in Vegas,” Roberds laughed. “But I did the tryout and ended up getting to spar with Wanderlei.”

He called it “a dream come true” although it sounds more like a nightmare.

“He crackled my jaw pretty hard,” Roberds grinned. “I couldn’t close the left side of my jaw for about two months. And I was limping for a couple of weeks from the leg kicks he got me with. But I made the team.”

He took part in a reality show tournament that was filmed there and then had an exhibition bout.

He returned to Ohio, but soon decided to move back to Las Vegas permanently and further his MMA training. To fund himself, he got a job as the lead instructor at Exotics Racing, where people come to drive fast and fancy cars on routes through the Vegas area and desert.

But for Roberds, roaring around in a McLaren, a Lamborghini or an Aston Martin didn’t pump him up the way fighting did:

“Every fight is different. I like the challenge of seeing what I’m made of. What I can take and keep going. And when you win, it’s amazing.”

Over the years he’s gone 9-1 as an amateur in MMA and had one pro fight in California — a TKO over Kyle Griffin — but then found himself derailed by numerous injuries.

Back in the Miami Valley, he worked in restaurants — Abuelos, Smoky Bones — and continued to train and dream.

“Here’s a funny story,” Drake said. “Last summer I was over at the Winds in Yellow Springs getting ready to have dinner. I’m sitting at the bar and this guy comes in and sits a couple of stools away … it’s Dave Chappelle. He’s been to my gym and he goes, ‘Dude, how you been?’

“In the meantime this woman had sat down next to me and it turns out to be Warren’s stepmom (Tonya Roberds) and she starts telling how her son is an MMA fighter. And Chappelle goes, ‘I’ve heard of him. He fought out in Vegas.’ And the three of us ended up having a great conversation.

“So after that Warren and his dad (John) come into the gym and we talk about him training here and well, he’s been coming in three days a week for the past six months.”

Roberds also works out regularly on his kicking and grappling skills at Ohio Fitness and Martial Arts in Bellfountaine, but had had trouble finding a fight until the Akron fight materialized out of the blue.

Odds are stacked

“I was at a Metallica concert in Colorado and my girlfriend sent me a text and said, ‘Hey, you want to fight July 29?’” Roberds said. “The promoter had gotten ahold of her and said the guy’s opponent had gotten injured and they needed someone to fill in.”

Roberds said he checked Fremd out first:

“This will be his first pro fight, but as an amateur he was the middleweight champ of the IT (Iron Tiger) Fight Series. So it will be a tough fight.”

Roberds does have some odds stacked against him.

Fremd is younger (23) and at 6-foot-4 is five inches taller and has the reach advantage. He’s also naturally heavier. Roberds is going up a weight class — from welterweight to middleweight — to fight him.

While Roberds is coming off a long layoff, Fremd fought just four months ago.

And Fremd is the promoter’s fighter, meaning Roberds is being brought in as an opponent, not someone to steal the show.

But he remembers times like one amateur bought in Chicago where he was brought in as a last-minute replacement against a 10-0 fighter and “I knocked him out in six seconds.”

He said that’s the approach he must take now as he tries to make up for lost time:

“I’ve got to take tough fights now. I’ve got to get my name out there and show everyone I’m finally back, fightin’ like I should now.”

You could say Warren Roberds is now walking the line.

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