{"id":29171,"date":"2014-11-28T14:11:07","date_gmt":"2014-11-28T20:11:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/?p=29171"},"modified":"2014-11-16T15:11:44","modified_gmt":"2014-11-16T21:11:44","slug":"one-legged-fighter-matt-betzold-thing-insurmountable-obstacle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/w29171\/one-legged-fighter-matt-betzold-thing-insurmountable-obstacle\/","title":{"rendered":"For one-legged fighter Matt Betzold, no such thing as an insurmountable obstacle"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Matt<\/a><\/p>\n

Matt Betzold has developed his own method for dealing with fellow flyweights who don\u2019t want to fight him just because he happens to have only one leg.<\/p>\n

\u201cBasically, I just talk s\u2013t,\u201d Betzold told MMAjunkie. \u201cI call them out on their bulls\u2013t, and I don\u2019t let them get away with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a strategy that comes naturally to Betzold. He\u2019s been doing it since he was a child, when he refused to let other kids treat him differently just because of his prosthetic leg. Back then, fighting served a purpose. Some kid would call him names, make fun of his walk or his missing limb, and then suddenly it was go time. Ding, ding, ding. Round 1, Betzold against the world. It was a bout with seemingly no beginning and no end.<\/p>\n

Well, maybe a beginning.<\/p>\n

When Betzold was 6, he ate poisoned candy, resulting in a blood clot that would ultimately cost him his leg. The candy was poisoned on purpose, by a man who thought he was committing an act of vengeance against Betzold\u2019s father, who, it must be said, had become involved with some \u201cbad people,\u201d according to Betzold. His family was known to open its home to people off the streets in need of a place to stay, which provided all the opportunity this one particular person needed.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy dad was basically wrapped up in something, accused of something, and whether he did it or not I don\u2019t know,\u201d Betzold said. \u201cAll I know is he was accused of something by some bad people, and this guy was friends with those people. He purposely came and stayed with us and did that to me as, I guess, revenge.\u201d<\/p>\n

The candy nearly killed Betzold, then left him in a coma with unclear prospects for recovery. By the time he emerged, it was into a radically different life that would never be the same again. His left leg had become gangrenous and had to be removed.<\/p>\n

When he went back to school, he did so with a prosthetic that he did his best to never take off in front of other kids. That, in turn, kept him from participating in sports like wrestling, which he felt naturally drawn to, and it also seemed to serve as a dog whistle for a certain type of mean-spirited kid looking for someone to pick on. What they found in Betzold, however, was a kid who was more than ready to fight back.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think a lot of it came from having the support of everyone at home, my family, and they\u2019d never treat me different,\u201d Betzold said. \u201cSo then when people did treat me different, I would act out and stand up against that. I wasn\u2019t treated different at home, so I didn\u2019t see why I should be treated different at school. Because of that, I fought a lot. I wouldn\u2019t let people pick on me or treat me different than anyone else, and I still live by that every day of my life.\u201d<\/p>\n

The incident with the poisoned candy left a lasting mark on his family. His father still blames himself, Betzold said, and these days the two of them don\u2019t talk much.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy pops still hasn\u2019t really recovered from it,\u201d Betzold said. \u201cBut I feel like, I got over it, and if I can get over it I think he should be able to. I don\u2019t dwell on it. I refuse to let people feel sorry for me or treat me different than they\u2019d treat anyone else.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is probably why, years later, when the Arizona Boxing and MMA Commission tried to tell Betzold that he couldn\u2019t be an MMA fighter with just one leg, he never even considered letting the matter drop. That just wasn\u2019t in him. He knew he was going to fight. The only thing he didn\u2019t know yet was how.<\/p>\n

For Betzold, the seed was planted when he went to see a live MMA event as a teenager in his home state of Arizona. He was mesmerized by the sport, he said, and soon after that he signed up for Brazilian jiu-jitsu classes.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was just winning right off the bat,\u201d he said. \u201cFor some reason I just really took to it, and I was tapping people out who had a lot more experience. I realized I had a talent for the ground game, and the better I did in competition, the more I wanted to fight.\u201d<\/p>\n

When the commission told him it wouldn\u2019t license him, a fighter who would begin each bout as a downed opponent, since it believed he couldn\u2019t adequately defend himself, Betzold set out to prove the commissioners wrong.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe way I tried to prove it to them was by doing as many grappling events as I could,\u201d Betzold said. \u201cEvery time there was a grappling tournament that had open entry, I would pay the fee and compete. I got to the point where I had over 100 matches, with about a 90 percent win rate, and I was beating guys that were fighting professionally.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2006, he did an \u201cunderground\u201d MMA fight, and then showed the video to the commission. Finally, he said, he was allowed to fight as an amateur, where he racked up a 4-1 record. But the commission still didn\u2019t want to let him turn pro \u2013 not until he got a lawyer involved to threaten a discrimination suit.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was a qualified fighter asking for a license, and they were denying it,\u201d Betzold said. \u201cIt was pretty clear discrimination.\u201d<\/p>\n

But once he got his license to fight as a professional, Betzold faced a different problem. In a reversal from his childhood experience, suddenly nobody wanted to be the one to pick on the guy with one leg. Opponents were hard to come by.<\/p>\n

This is when he began his campaign of public ridicule to get other flyweights into the cage, which is how he met his current manager, Donald Royer of US Elite Combat Management.<\/p>\n

matt-betzold-2\u201cI remember Matt was calling out one of my fighters,\u201d said Royer. \u201cThe guy told me, \u2018Don, I\u2019m not going to fight him, because there\u2019s nothing for me to gain by fighting him.\u2019 I kind of told Matt that. What I tried to explain to him was, the way most fighters look at it, if Matt beats them, they think their careers are over. But if they beat Matt, it\u2019s not a big deal because they just beat a guy with one leg.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Royer thought he could help, if only he could get Betzold to refine his approach a little, and he offered to take him on as a client. It proved to be a relationship that benefited both parties.<\/p>\n

Now training in Sacramento, Calif., at Team Alpha Male alongside UFC luminaries such as Urijah Faber, T.J. Dillashaw, Chad Mendes and Joseph Benavidez, Betzold recently inked a deal with World Series of Fighting, though a date for his debut still isn\u2019t set. He also just returned from Budapest, where he grappled his way to a gold medal for the U.S. team at the FILA Pankration World Championships.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe competed against able-bodied opponents, guys with two legs, and he beat everybody,\u201d Royer said. \u201cPeople think that just because he has one leg, he can\u2019t be that good. That\u2019s obviously just not the case.\u201d<\/p>\n

In many ways, Betzold said, the missing leg is an advantage. For one thing, it\u2019s helped him develop a style that \u201cyou can\u2019t really train for.\u201d But it also played a vital role in forging an important aspect of his character and his mental toughness.<\/p>\n

\u201cHaving one leg made me fight a lot more,\u201d Betzold said, \u201cbut it also forced me to try a lot harder than everyone else in everything I did.\u201d<\/p>\n

Maybe this is another concern for potential opponents. When faced with a fighter who wouldn\u2019t quit when he was dealt an uncommonly bad hand as a kid, and who wouldn\u2019t take no for an answer when the state athletic commission didn\u2019t want him to go pro, with what could you hope to break his spirit?<\/p>\n

And as for those fighters who don\u2019t think it\u2019s a smart career move to get in the cage with a one-legged man?<\/p>\n

\u201cThey can\u2019t dodge me forever,\u201d Betzold said. \u201cI\u2019m coming for their heads.\u201d<\/p>\n

By Ben Fowlkes via MMAJunkie<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Matt Betzold has developed his own method for dealing with fellow flyweights who don\u2019t want to fight him just because he happens to have only one leg. \u201cBasically, I just talk s\u2013t,\u201d Betzold told MMAjunkie. \u201cI call them out on their bulls\u2013t, and I don\u2019t let them get away with it.\u201d It\u2019s a strategy that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":29172,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wrestling","category-mma"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":6}},"acf":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/matt-betzold.jpg?fit=640%2C427&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2B7Di-7Av","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29171\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}