Capt. Jason Norwood is in a perpetual state of readiness. Readiness to fight, to win and to show that Army combatives training works.
The 200-pound fighter is a little on edge as he has to cut 15 pounds of weight to defend his middleweight title in a mixed martial arts competition Saturday at Firelake Casino in Shawnee, Okla., but he doesn't seem to mind.
"I think combatives is the highest form of mixing martial arts because it does it with the idea of survival, not of winning a fight."
Norwood has been deployed to Iraq for the past year and with no interim title holder in freestyle cage fighting, it's as if the weight class is welcoming him home. He returned a little over two months ago and has already stepped in the ring once since returning to U.S. soil.
"In combatives the saying is you either learn by repetition or blunt force trauma. It teaches you how to live. It's basically unarmed combat," said Norwood.
He's back at the fight house at Fort Sill where he trained in the past but now teaches Soldiers levels one and two of combatives. In the training, Norwood describes a scenario in which he's clearing a room and his weapon has malfunctioned or has been taken away from him. After that the next move is up to him.
"From there, how do I survive long enough for my buddy to come up and help me out with this guy' So whether that is me breaking his arm, choking him unconscious, whatever I have to do to survive, that's what I do."
With that mentality in tact Norwood currently holds an MMA record of 10 wins and 1 loss. He looks to add another victory this weekend by beating former NFL player Whisper "The Gorilla" Goodman. He has already developed a strategy against Goodman with the help of his wife, Angela, who attends every training session to make sure his fighting is on point.
"My wife is probably one of the better jujitsu instructors and she is not even a teacher, or she will never say that she is. She's very good and very technical and she picks apart fighters left and right."
Norwood has spent most of his 26 years as a wrestler but started his mixed martial arts career in 2007 after not being able to compete in the All Army Wrestling Championship at Fort Carson, Colo. He channeled that competitiveness into combatives and won his first tournament at Fort Sill.
"I went into the Army for wrestling. I blame my wife in part for getting into this because the minute I got called back to my unit and there was a combatives tournament and I said I can do this it's a lot like wrestling, or at least that's what I thought at the time. She was like cool, it's like UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship). So, she encouraged me to do it. She encouraged me to train up for it and I won," said Norwood.
His Army career has been like a mixed martial art fight with a lot of unexpected moves, but he reacted accordingly and ultimately to his advantage. Going from working with Paladins to radars and now working in the fight house he sets the stage in his mind before he enters the ring as if he is deployed, clearing buildings, with his life on the line.
"This is how I imagine it. I'm walking through the streets. This is my eighth house of the day. I've got 60 pounds of body armor on, an assault pack with 270 rounds, I'm tired. I'm dead to the world. Then I crack open the fourth door and there's three guys in there and they're all ticked off. That's my fight scenario. That's what I always have mentally as the worst case scenario. Can I survive that'"
Norwood maintains that to do so he has to keep pushing himself past the limit, every time. An example of his tenacity was at Fort Riley, Kan., where he brought the fight to a combatives tournament after competing an impressive seven times in two days. The second night he weighed in for a professional fight which he fought and won the following day.
"If I can't win that fight, if I can't win you know the sixth house, fourth room I'm dead to the world we crack open this door and afterwards we're done and that's the one that goes bad; if I can't win that fight then I'm not really being an honest to God promoter of combatives because we teach them that even in worst case scenario you can still win. So I've got to constantly put myself in the worst case scenario and I have to constantly train for that."
For him, it's not so much about winning a title or keeping one, it's always having the upper hand to get out of a fight scenario whether it's in a ring or in the desert. To him losing means not being able to go home and see his daughter. And he does whatever it takes to make sure that doesn't happen.
The only nerves he has about his upcoming fight is the thought of letting down the people he has trained with. He wants them to know every drop of sweat they have shared has not been in vein.
"Every fighter gets nervous. You know I'm nervous because I don't want to disappoint all the guys that I've trained with that have pushed me really hard. All those guys that I work with at the combatives center are excellent and they've taken time out of their day to make me better. That and I have to show every single Soldier out there that what we're teaching in combatives is valid. And that it works and that it can save your life. And you can go home, if you trust in your training. Besides that there's nothing to be nervous about," said Norwood.
When asked what he does to relax he simply said, "I fight." Of course, the response was accompanied with a gleam in his eye that can only be described as the look shared by all those who truly live to fight.
Social Sharing