- When you walked out, I was like, "what the f***?"
You looked like an action figure.
(music)
- Hey there, I'm Aria
and for four months this year, I trained in MMA
before actually stepping in a cage and fighting someone.
What a fun time that was.
If you haven't seen that video,
I would encourage that you check it out
because the rest of this video
will probably have a lot of spoilers.
Spoiler alert.
Today, I wanna break down how things actually happened
over the course of the seventeen weeks
talking about my training, my diet,
the fight itself, as well as answering a few questions
that you guys had in the comments.
So originally, I was only gonna train for three months
but then that got postponed to four months
because of a scheduling change
with the promotion I was fighting for.
But either way, three or four months was always gonna be
a tight timeframe to try and get this done,
so I had to make sure my training
was just as good as it could be.
And luckily, I put together a great team to work with.
I had Steve Zim of A Tighter U Fitness Studio
working on my strength and conditioning
and then I also had Chris Reilly, who is a former
Muay Thai and kickboxing champion as my head coach,
as well ad Daniel Gutierrez over at Defiant Gym
as my striking coach.
So with Steve, Chris, and Daniel I had
a crack team working with me to make sure I was at least
gonna be as fight-ready as possible
within three to four months.
The diet was also very, very key
because I was aiming to fight at featherweight, which means
I had to weigh in on fight day at 145 pounds.
- We are at 154 and a half.
- And so that came down to my work with Trifecta Nutrition.
I worked with Emmie and Mario over there,
they're two of the team,
and the priority of the diet was clean eating,
no processed sugar, and making sure I just hit my macros
while staying under 19 hundred calories.
And within that window, my macro breakdown was
70 grams of fat,
150 grams of protein,
and 215 grams of carbs.
By the end of my training period, though
my caloric limit and my macros had changed
and so I was at
2,300 calories maximum,
75 grams of fat,
150 grams of protein,
and 250 grams of carbohydrates.
I was so strict with my diet,
I would log everything I had on my Trifecta app,
I had a food scale at home and at work
that I would take to restaurants with me
to make sure I was weighing my food properly.
Some may say that was a little overkill,
but I just wanted to make sure I was doing it right.
(music)
So one of the first things we did was
that we went to go get my body fat scan together.
We are at BodySpec
to get a DXA scan.
This is the most accurate way to get a body fat reading
because you're getting a direct reading from head to toe
which is why the number is significantly higher.
And apparently my total body fat is 28.4%.
A lot higher than Jack and I thought.
Before we even began the entire filming process,
you actually took me on a two mile run
uh, to see where I was at cardio-wise.
- Yeah, we did the run and I was pretty surprised
with how bad your running was.
How you feeling, man?
- Not good.
So with Steve Zim, we worked not just on strength training,
but making sure that my cardio was on-point.
We would would work on machines like Jacob's Ladder.
- This is the hardest cardio ever, because not only
are you using your legs, but you're using your arms.
Your arms are going up above your heart.
So when your arms are up here,
your heart rate goes up even higher.
- [Aria] Jack basically did train with me three days a week
in the mornings with Steve.
- Steve is an incredible trainer.
- This isn't just a transformation for
what we're doing here,
you're going to be able to take this
to other parts of your life.
- [Aria] He showed us things that
I've never seen before, and never done.
- I came up with this years and years ago.
What we do is we put a bungee cord on a Smith machine.
So normally, when you bench-press,
when you're at the bottom, it's the hardest
and when you get to the top, it's the easiest.
But when you're in a sport where you're punching,
you want that extension to be the most explosive.
So, we make the bottom the easiest, and the top the hardest.
- [Jack] It was like, a lot of weight lifting,
but very technical.
- He would also isolate things.
You'd be doing leg crawls with one leg.
- [Jack] He would have you hold one of the handles here
and one of the handles here
and do those punches, like I've never seen that before.
- [Aria] Yeah.
- We built it up, and we built it up
and every time I added more and more to him,
he could do it.
He was shocking me every time, because I thought,
"Okay, he's not gonna be able to bench this."
He does it.
"He's not gonna be able to shoulder press this."
He does it.
"He can't hold this position for thirty seconds."
He does it.
And so that lets me keep pushing, and pushing, and pushing.
- [Aria] Keep in mind, I actually just
got this test done today
and so this is after a couple weeks of eating,
but I dropped 10% at least of body fat
in these four months of training.
- [Jack] That's great.
- [Steve] I did not know exactly how cut
I was going to be able to get him, but he looks amazing.
- I am very humbled to have the experience to learn
Muay Thai from a champion fighter like Chris Reilly.
- I can do this, and sure, like, you know,
a big strong guy can probably create some power, right?
But watch this.
- Oh, well, yeah.
We did a crash course in Muay Thai.
Chris had to throw so many fundamentals at me
that it was hard to sort of juggle all of them at once.
There's so much coordination required, you know,
my body's just not used moving
in the ways that are expected of me.
- Turn your body, bang, bang,
and now come up, bang.
- I was trying to absorb so much
in such a limited amount of time that it was tough at first.
When Daniel of Defiant Gym let Chris and I train
at his gym, however, that was a huge plus
because essentially, I was training with Chris,
but then I was also able to train
during classes at Defiant as well,
to further hone my skills.
And at that point, it was more a matter of just, repetition.
- One two.
One kick.
Beautiful.
Your high kicks have gotten a lot better.
- A question we did receive a lot was about
how much grappling I actually did.
So I did take some jiu-jitsu classes at Defiant Gym,
and Chris actually had some jiu-jitsu training himself,
so he was able to coach me,
but we definitely didn't do as much grappling
or groundwork as I would've liked.
Because obviously, grappling is such a huge part of MMA,
but there was only so much I could learn
in such a short amount of time.
So if I do fight again,
I would definitely add a lot more grappling training
into my work, so if there are any wrestling or
Brazilian jiu-jitsu coaches out there
that wanna train me, slide into my DMs.
(music)
There were a lot of doubts.
Like after getting beat up, I would wonder
"Why am I doing this to myself?"
You know, am I actually cut out for this?
And so these doubts plagued me a lot.
And I think in every single sparring session,
I was always the guy with the least amount of experience
so I was just getting my ass handed to me each time.
- Didn't a guy knee you?
When you were in a wall, he kneed you right in the stomach
and you were like...
But then you got back up and kept sparring with him
so that was very cool.
- I think mentally, Aria is very strong.
Physically, I don't know.
- He's probably one of the softest people I know.
- I like to say I'm a really optimistic person,
but I'm also a realist, and if I'm being real, I'm scared.
- We care about you so much.
I don't think what everyone said came from a place of like,
them trying to doubt you, it was just
from a place of protection and defense
and they were scared.
- I just wanna hold him.
And keep any harm from coming to him.
- I never want to see him in a situation
where someone would hurt him.
- Everyone envisions themselves in you, and kind of like,
gets scared, because they're like
"I would never do that"
because they're afraid to fail.
Everyone's afraid to fail, and you're not.
And that's very rare.
- You came to the fight, and we only recently got close.
- True.
- But you, for some reason,
were one of the very few people that believe in me.
- Go figure.
I was watching you train
in like, the week that we had started chatting
and you were measuring out your food,
which was bizarre.
And you were like, not making meetings
because you were going to go train,
and I could just kind of gather that
you were taking this very, very, very seriously.
So I had no doubt that you were
gonna be as prepared as you possibly could.
- In the beginning, I was like,
there's no way that he sticks
with this diet and exercise schedule,
but he's really done it.
- He's been so diligent.
Like it's almost scary.
- It is scary.
- Biggest low point for you, I feel like,
was when you found out the fight was pushed.
- I got a call from the promotion,
and they're pushing back the fight date.
I was concerned,
because I already put my body through something
it had never done before,
so the idea of another month of hard training,
of dieting, it was a struggle.
- Yeah, I feel bad that the fight got extended,
because he's been working really hard
and I can tell he's at the breaking point.
- I think with this added time, it's just left the door open
for more doubt to just get in my head.
I think what helped me overcome everything was
just talking to my coaches.
Never once in the journey
did they ever really seem to doubt me.
And I knew I owed it to them
and to myself to just power through.
- We're packing up the car right now because
today is fight day!
- I appreciate you coming so early.
Weigh-ins in the morning was my first time ever
seeing Kasen and meeting him face-to-face.
- [Male voice] And shake hands.
- And the rest of the day was kind of just spent
getting myself mentally ready.
- You're doing something that a lot of men these days
don't have the balls to do.
So no matter what, when you walk out of there,
you better walk out of there with your head up high.
But no matter what, you better walk in there and
destroy this mother******.
You look ready to go.
You know, now it's just about doing it.
It's just about doing it, you know.
- Originally, you were not coming to the fight.
- I will not be seeing it.
I don't wanna see it.
I don't wanna see the fight.
- But you came to the fight in the end.
- Aria, we love you so much and you are so inspiring
because you really put yourself into your work for a reason,
for a cause, and for love,
and I hope that you fight tonight for love!
I think I was like,
"Yeah, he's got this, Aria's got this!"
Until I saw one of the guys get his shoulder dislocated
and they tried to like, pop it back in, oh
and I know you guys knew backstage but you didn't tell him.
- You guys knew?
- I have never been more out of my element, I don't think,
than when I walked into that arena.
But I got to a point before your fight where I was like,
"Why am I here, I don't know this guy that well,
like I really, this is the last thing
I want to be doing right now.
I'm watching a man scream in pain."
- But look at us now.
- These are all distrations, man.
Like, all of it.
You, go in the back.
Everyone else too, like don't,
you have to focus, like stay really focused, bro.
- The most nerves I had was
that moment before I made my walk out.
- The moment my name was announced,
it all just went away,
and I just knew it was time.
- Oh my God.
When you walked out, I was like, "What the f***?"
You looked like an action figure,
you were like, angry, no smile.
Chiseled.
Pissed. I was like, "Did he contour?"
because your cheekbones were like, popping off,
and you marched down, and I seriously thought
you were gonna kill someone.
I was like, "Aria's brought us all here today
to possibly murder this man."
- [Announcer] Inthavong!
(crowd cheering)
- [Aria] I felt good when the fight began.
- [Merle] You looked good,
you looked like you were doing something right.
- [Maya] You were in it, you were fighting,
I could see you were like, calculated and everything.
- But then I think, honestly,
it was just a lack of experience.
Kasen put me into a guillotine.
- And then I was like,
"Hmm, he is going to get out of this!"
And then it was like, a couple seconds later, I'm like,
"Huh, okay, he's sill fighting through it,
yeah, punch him, punch him!"
- I remember Kasen squeezing his arms,
I remember feeling my neck getting crushed.
But I do also remember thinking to myself,
"Whatever you do, don't tap out.
I'm not gonna tap out to this guy."
- And then when your arm dropped,
your body dropped like that, like a ragdoll, I was like,
"F***. Is he- is he dead?"
"Is he okay?"
- The mood dropped.
It felt like everybody froze and nobody made eye contact.
And everybody was like, craning to try to look at you.
- I think I,
I like kinda blacked out,
like I don't even know if my footage was
usable or anything from the ring,
'cause I was just so like, "What just happened?"
- Yeah but then you were right back up again.
And we're like, "Oh, okay."
- It's a prank!
- Yeah, surprise!
- I feel like you were almost in as much of a daze as I was.
That's why I felt bad, with the loss,
its because I didn't want to let you down.
- Don't feel bad.
You did an incredible job, and
like, you did so much and you accomplished things
that most people couldn't do.
- You did good.
- I trained for four months, for one minute.
But that's fighting, right?
That's the game, that's the sport.
And I have and ill feelings about that.
That's what I signed up for.
Someone has to win, someone has to lose.
- Good stuff, man.
No one can do that,
I mean 1% of the population didn't tap out.
- Would it have been great for the fight
to go all three rounds? Yeah.
Would it have been great for me to win? Yeah.
And do I think I could've won?
Yeah, I think I actually felt good in there.
But, that's fighting.
Hey man, I just want to say
thank you again for the opportunity.
- It takes balls to get in there,
I see people training twice as long as me,
and they don't even go in.
- One of the biggest questions I have received
is if I actually will fight again.
And if I'm being completely honest,
yeah, I would love to fight again.
The question is when I would fight again.
The sport takes so much time, so much dedication,
that if I were to do it again, I would want to do it right.
I wouldn't want to half-ass it.
Are you surprised
when I say that I would want to fight again?
- No. I want you to do it.
- I want you to fight again.
I- the only reason I would go back
into another casino like that
is if you fight again.
Just don't get choked out again, please.
- Regardless of whether or not I fight again, this has
truly been probably the greatest experience of my life.
So much of the fight game and life is,
it's all in our heads.
You know, it's our fears, it's our doubts.
But it's us trying to control those fears and doubts
and allowing them to motivate us instead of hinder us,
that's where success can be found.
I'm very grateful to everyone
that's been a part of this journey,
including all of you, that took the time to watch.
I hope that all of us can take away from my experience
the endless possibilities that are within each of us.
(music)