GILROY — After 10 weeks of training, the moment was finally here.
Anthony ‘Antdawg’ Figueroa stepped into the cage at the Gold Country Casino in Oroville on Nov. 30 and stared into the eyes of his opponent Josh Paiva with a single thought crossing his mind: “Finish the fight.”
The fighters went toe-to-toe in the King of the Cage Junior Flyweight World Title match for five rounds and each was more grueling than the last. Figueroa broke his hand in the second round, but he didn’t need it as he threw jabs, elbows and knees at Paiva to knock him to the ground.
In the end, the broken-handed Gilroy mixed martial artist was victorious by unanimous decision.
“I didn’t want to have any regrets coming back out of that cage. With that kind of thought process, everything else that I knew would just fall into place,” Figueroa said. “I got the belt and it was like ‘Oh wow, I won the belt.’ For me it was more about the fight, winning the battle and the fight.”
Winning King of the Cage gave Figueroa his third belt and restores his winning record at 9-7. It also gave him redemption for losing at the Cage Fury Fighting Championships in Febuary — a fight he accepted with just two weeks notice.
But this time Figueroa had 10 weeks to prepare. He trained twice a day, six days a week and went jogging on Sundays as his “rest day”. He sparred three times a week, wrestled twice and practiced Jui-Jitsu all week long in addition to watching his nutrition. On top of all that, he still ran his gym — Antdawg’s MMA in Gilroy.
“I don’t know how I do it, honestly I don’t know,” Figueroa said. “I get up very early and I go to bed very late. I sleep in on Sundays…. I have family, I have support and that’s how I do it really. We open the gym, we teach together. We open the gym, we close together. They’re all here with me, it’s great.”
But the success doesn’t stop with Figueroa. His niece, Brianna Van Buren, won at the World Jiu-Jitsu Tournament in September, sparring against opponents from around the World. She continues to win title after title, but with success comes adversity.
“It’s cool, but I feel like there’s a target on me,” Van Buren said. “It’s like ‘That’s the girl. That’s the girl, she’s the one.’ Overall winning Worlds and coming home as the NOKI World Champion, it’s still unreal to me.”
Right now, Figueroa has made the transition from fighter to coach to help prepare his Van Buren and gym member Benji Amzequita for their fights on Jan. 18.
“I make sure these guys are prepared,” Figueroa said. “We want them to win. We want to give them the best chance to win.”
