Avena following longtime dream into cage

The moving from place to place began when he was a child and his father continued to physically abuse his mother. Then there was the time they thought a permanent home was found with relatives in East Los Angeles, but someone stopped by one day and shot his uncle to death and brought ropes along just in case there were others that needed to be tied up and killed.

"It's a good thing," said Blas Avena, who was 8 at the time, "I went to school that day."

So he and his mother moved again.

For years, they searched across California and into Tijuana for a place to consider their own. Somewhere safe. Inviting. Stimulating. Go figure. The son is 24 now and has discovered all of it inside a cage.

Avena today will fight for the third time at The Joint inside the same Hard Rock Hotel he doubles as a security guard at when engaging Joe Benoit as 170-pound welterweights as part of a World Extreme Cagefighting card that begins at 3:30 p.m.

The show goes live on Versus at 6, but by then Avena will have either won for the second straight time or suffered the type of loss that tends to push relatively new and hopeful fighters further down the sport's ever-changing food chain. It can be a brutal business that way. You're always one submission from vanishing in the minds of those who control the sport's matchups.

Avena is the type of mixed martial arts fighter that fascinates me most. Chuck Liddell and those national magazine covers officially brought UFC into a mainstream arena this year. So, too, has the vision of an ageless Randy Couture.

Liddell and Couture built Hall of Fame resumes and are now paid handsomely to fight. It's not the same for most everyone else in the sport. It's not close for those in WEC to the point where (meager) purses aren't even publicly discussed.

I will never forget the words of David Heath about an hour after his face ran into a locomotive called Babalu on the recent undercard of UFC 74. Brutally bloodied, bruised, beaten to an unconscious state before the fight was stopped, Heath ended his post-massacre comments with this: "I really enjoyed it."

The bizarre part: He meant it with every last bit of torn flesh.

It's one of the baffling unknowns about MMA fighters who on a good night might earn enough money for that month's rent and a few extra meals: What innate feature drives them to do this when the chances of becoming even moderately comfortable financially are ravenously thin?

"Everyone has a dream," Avena said. "At first, my mother said being a doctor would be much better. But she knows being a cage fighter is all I have ever wanted since first watching UFC in 1993. It fits me. It's my calling. I knew I would put everything into living that dream."

For himself, his family, his people.

The Joint will hold 2,000 when full for WEC, and it won't be all that surprising if 90 percent attending today's card are there rooting for Avena. He has connected with the Mexican sports fan to the point they flock to watch him, flags in hand. His mother, Ofelia, apparently gave up on that doctor business. She's now his No. 1 supporter and has lived in Las Vegas for seven years.

It is all Avena has wanted since joining her here in 2004 and ultimately bugging UFC matchmaker Joe Silva time and again to give him a fight. Until then, he won countless jujitsu tournaments and even spent six months training to become a boxer in Los Angeles. But he always desired the cage.

He works all levels of security at the hotel -- from the main floor to The Joint to poolside -- and finally received his chance against UFC veteran Logan Clark in January. The fight was stopped with 37 seconds remaining in the third round and Avena on the bottom and beat.

"I was dead tired," he said. "I realized then what hard work it would take to really be good at this."

Last month, he fought another UFC veteran in Tiki Ghosn. It was over by submission a minute into the first round. Avena wasn't the one dead tired this time.

Maybe that win propels him to another today against Benoit. Maybe not. Maybe he builds his own Hall of Fame resume one day. Maybe he just keeps working security and picking up a fight here or there.

He doesn't seem that put off about any of it.

"For me, it's only about the moment," Avena said. "Live that moment with all eyes on you. Your friends. Your family. The Mexican people. That's what drives me."

Ed Graney's column is published Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday. He can be reached at 383-4618 or egraney@reviewjournal.com.