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Cage fighter turns trainer for upcoming boxing match

  • Published
  • By Senior Airman Mindy Bloem
  • 506th Air Expeditionary Group Public Affairs
KIRKUK REGIONAL AIR BASE, Iraq --  The din of the crowd, the nervous excitement in the pit of his stomach, the adrenaline that washes over him when the cage door slams shut - these are the things one CE member here admits to loving about getting in the ring.

Staff Sgt. Vincent Carll, deployed from Homestead Air Reserve Base, Fla., works as a heavy equipment operator for the 506th Expeditionary Civil Engineer Squadron. He is using his experience as a mixed martial arts cage fighter to train a fellow servicemember to fight in the upcoming Smoker 3 boxing tournament May 8 at Kirkuk Regional Air Base.

"I love being in the ring and staring at the guy across from you," Sergeant Carll said. "You realize there's going to be one winner and one loser. It's a fight, and you don't know what's going to happen. You can't get that feeling anywhere else."

It wasn't long before word of his hobby spread, and people were asking for his help.

Staff Sgt. Sandra Mihovich, 506th Security Forces Squadron military working dog trainer, e-mailed Sergeant Carll about training her.

"He's been training me for about three weeks now," she said. "I saw the fights going on here, and since I like to fight and I heard he could help me, I asked him to train me."

Sergeant Carll said he informs people that it's a mental game as well as a physical game.

"I just think about every possible scenario that could happen in the ring," he said. "I put myself in the worst possible position and think about how I would get out of it."

Sergeant Carll said cage fighting helped him get rid of his anger.

"If you have pent up aggression, there's no better way to get it out; and now, I don't really get angry," he said. "I don't even get angry when I'm in the ring because when you're angry, you're not thinking straight. You have to think strategically. It's like chess."

Sergeant Mihovich agrees there's more to it than merely sparring.

"It's not just trying to beat someone up," she said. "You are testing yourself against someone else. It's not out of anger. You're not trying to hurt someone. Plus, it's a really good workout and it alleviates a lot of your frustrations."

The female boxing novice admits to feeling some anxiety about the upcoming bout.

"I feel pretty good and excited," Sergeant Mihovich said. "I'm nervous, but it's a good nervous, not a bad nervous - an excited nervous, a ready to fight nervous. I think I'm going to win because I'm training really hard for it, and I have the guts to want to win."

Sergeant Carll's training involves passing on the philosophy that it's all about how much you want it and are willing to give to get it.

"People are not aware of how far their bodies can go," he said. "I like it because there's no limit to what you can do. There's no end to how far you can push yourself. You can push yourself to the point where you can't do anything else one day, and the next day you can go past that."

Both Sergeants Carll and Mihovich said they plan to continue ring-style fighting when they return from deployment.