Two men circle around each other in a steel cage. With sweat dripping down their chiseled bodies, they rear back and take swings at each other. Bobbing and weaving like a buoy in water, they evade each other until one takes an ill-fated kick and finds himself on the ground getting pummeled in the face with a flurry of fists. The bell sounds and the referee walks over with a shiny gold belt to give to the victor. Think this is the WWE? No. This is the real thing.

 

Mixed Martial Arts combines a 32-foot steel cage, wrestling, jiujitsu, boxing, judo, Muay Thai and countless other combat styles. It involves much technique and focus in order to prevent injury, 31-year-old fighter Brian Truleson said.

 

“The objective is to not get beaten to a pulp,” Truleson said. “I work extra hard and focus on the technique to prevent the punishment.”

Mixed Martial Arts has gained popularity through highly televised Ultimate Fighting Championship bouts and is spreading worldwide.

Now the sport has made its way to Central New York. Ryan Ciotoli ’02, a former three-time all-American wrestler at Ithaca College, is the founder of Team BombSquad, the largest professional MMA sports management and training company in the Northeast.

From the outside, the BombSquad Training Center in Cortland, N.Y., looks like it houses a family of four, but inside, three fighters take turns pounding each other in a cage while the other five wail on punching bags and boxing dummies during Saturday’s practice. The mats on the floor proudly claim their territory, reading, “Home of the BombSquad.” Posters on the walls reiterate the welcome.

When Ciotoli first started the team it was just four fighters training in a warehouse in his backyard.

“There was no money,” he said “We were fighting just to do it. It was fun to do, and I saw it for the sport it was. It’s a dynamic sport, it’s fun and exciting, and you rarely see a boring fight.”

Many of Ciotoli’s fighters gained interest in MMA from experience with wrestling or other forms of martial arts.

“A friend of mine was involved with it, and he took me to a tournament where you could fight more than once in a day,” Truleson said. “He went in there and fought in there four times that night for a total of five minutes and just walked through those guys. And after that I just said, ‘Man, I need to see how you did this, show me.’”

He now trains 35 fighters at the current location, which will be closing its doors because next year the BombSquad will be moving to a state-of-the-art gym on Ithaca’s South Hill. Included in the new facility will be a series of regulation cages, a retail store, pro shop and dormitories to house the fighters. The dormitories will allow Ciotoli to use a “scholarship”-like system, where his fighters will not incur any expenses as long as they train with Team BombSquad.

“We plan on running it like a college team where we are going to bring these fighters in, house them, take care of them, and they are going to train and live there full time,” he said. “We will provide everything for free, so we’re going to attract the best athletes, and it will help with our reputation and to bring in money.”

Junior Max Groswald, a BombSquad employee, said being located so close to a college with such a strong wrestling program will only help Team BombSquad become more popular.

“[Team BombSquad is] very excited for the move, especially since Ithaca has such a strong wrestling background,” he said. “There’s a good wrestling following here, especially for a Division III school, so we should definitely catch on with the Ithaca College community.”

Ciotoli served as an assistant coach for the college’s wrestling team for six years and said he learned important skills under Head Coach Marty Nichols, including loyalty, how to deal with individual athletes and how to maintain good chemistry within the team. Ciotoli has an ability to steer the careers of those under his tutelage, and several of his fighters have gone on to fight in the UFC or World Extreme Cagefighting, the two largest MMA organizations in the world.

Ciotoli takes a unique approach to the way he recruits fighters. Instead of trying to attract established talent that has already fought in the upper echelons of MMA, he targets young, fresh-faced fighters who recently finished school and have never competed professionally. By doing this, Ciotoli has created a tightly knit team that values loyalty.

“We have a lot of good things to offer, and our fighters keep improving with us,” Ciotoli said. “The younger guys see that, and they see a future in dealing with us. All of our guys have started from scratch with us. We’re making them better from day one.”

When the team makes the move to Ithaca, Ciotoli said the BombSquad will immediately get involved with the college. Internships will be offered to sport management students to get their foot in the door of the MMA world. Interns will be responsible for coming up with sponsorship packages for companies, lining up fights, preparing after-parties and helping build the team’s Web site.

“By the spring semester in 2010, we are looking to have a full-fledged internship program,” said, Jon Gregory, junior tri-captain of the college’s wrestling team and sponsorship agent for Team BombSquad. “We will look to take primarily Ithaca College students and allow them to work with the new facility and the athletes.”

Ciotoli has built his fighters into something more than a team — they are like family. While they may fight individually inside the octagon cage, they train together, eat meals together, joke together and soon will be living together. The team started in a backyard warehouse and now trains the UFC’s top prospect Jon Jones and John Franchi, who is in the middle of a five-fight deal with the WEC.

“I have a lot of guys from a small area like Cortland, so that says a lot about the people that work for our program,” he said “We’ve done some pretty special stuff in the short period of time we’ve been doing this.”