Photo by Neidy Gutierrez / SOC Images
With passion, money is just a number.
Local kickboxer Alex Flores and his coach Matis Marrero have the odds against them when competing against other schools. They don’t have a large school, lots of funds or a facility to train more than two days a week, but the one thing that they do have is a passion for the sport.
Flores is competing in the Flex Fight Series 37 on Aug. 2 in Queens, NY, which will be his fifth official fight.
The former West New York resident is fighting for the lightweight championship amateur kickboxing title and is looking to clench onto it for as long as possible.
“I don’t want anyone to take my belt,” Flores told Slice of Culture.
“For the past year, and the other years I’ve been training, it’s been brutal. Suffering through the cuts, suffering through the training..suffering through so many things so the fact that I’m going to have that belt with me is going to mean a lot to me. So I don’t want anyone to take it.”
Flores trains twice a week at CrossFit ECF in WNY, with roughly 18 other students. In his own time, he has worked on building on his physique, endurance and strength. At the gym with his coach and team, he has perfected his technique and worked on cutting.
Cutting is usually done before a weigh-in, where the athlete cuts out carbs, sodium and is on a calorie deficit to make sure they reach the proper weight to qualify for the correct weight class. Flores and his team hit the sauna for hours to help cut out any water weight that can help him reach the 155 lb weight he needs.
The process of cutting is not easy on the body and on the mind.
The athlete becomes very dehydrated, but Marrero ensures that they always remain cautious when cutting and luckily for Flores, he has a team that endures the process with him to make sure he feels supported.
“We make sure that he doesn’t quit you know because that’s probably the hardest part of this whole fighter thing – the cut,” explained Marrero. “If we are together as a team and we keep pushing each other that’s everything to me and to him as a fighter.”
The Beginning
Marrero first met Flores when he was training in taekwondo. Flores had been in taekwondo since he was five and all the way up to 12-years-old where he earned a second-degree black belt. Marrero was teaching at the taekwondo studio at the time and that’s when he began to teach Flores about MMA.
Marrero quickly became impressed by Flores but knew he needed guidance because, as a young fighter, he would sometimes get into fights outside of the studio.
“I remember him getting so upset and me getting upset as well as a coach that he would keep getting disqualified and all this talent was just kept in this martial art .. I kinda feel like this stopped him from getting out his full potential,” Marrero told Slice of Culture.
Throughout the years, Marrero has expanded into different martial arts like boxing, jiu jitsu, taekwondo and muay thai. Growing up wanting to do martial arts, Marrero couldn’t afford many classes so when the opportunity presented itself to teach martial arts in return for free classes, he took it not knowing that soon enough he would fall in love with being a teacher.
Now he wants to provide affordable classes to others.
“My classes are super affordable they are probably the cheapest around the area and I feel like the knowledge that I pass on is good enough to make champions with only two times a week that we train, we are fighting against schools that train six times a week,” he said.
“In the future God willing if I can open a school that’s as big as theirs that I can be teaching seven days a week, six days a week and that’s all I’m doing always, I’m gonna be making a million champions. I can make every division take over, you know, that’s the goal, that’s the goal for sure.”
For Flores, the goal is to support Marrero in his goal of opening up a school, which is why winning every fight means more than just for personal accomplishment.
“This fight basically is going to represent a lot for our team especially the fact that look at the way our gym [is] .. it does not look special at all compare to the other gyms over there,” explained Flores.
“Bringing this belt home will really make our team look good for us so what we are planning on doing is basically… try to open up a school and find a way to get more students in so that we can grow the team.”
Flores also explained that winning the belt would mean that all the sacrifices and struggles over the years was worth it.
It would open doors for him to move up in weight classes and provide reassurance that he can go pro, which is what he dreams of to accomplish.
The FlexFight Series will take place from 4 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. on Friday.
