Munoz establishes career in UFC from ground up

SAN DIEGO -- The first time Mark Munoz stepped into the UFC octagon, his night ended with him flat on his back, staring up at the lights and having a brace placed around his neck.

It might have been the start of something special.

"That loss taught me a lot. I would say it was probably the best thing that happened to me thus far in my career," Munoz said after a Friday afternoon workout. "I learned a lot from that. To come back the way I did says much more about a person than anything else could.

"Champions aren't measured by how many wins they have, but how many times they pick themselves up after a loss or failure. That's what I believe in strongly."

He will seek his fourth consecutive win since that night when he meets Yushin Okami on Sunday evening in a pivotal middleweight battle on an Ultimate Fighting Championship card at the San Diego Sports Arena.

Munoz hasn't had to bounce back from failure often in his career.

He won a high school national wrestling championship as a senior in Vallejo, Calif., and went on to a successful wrestling career at Oklahoma State, where he won a national title in 2001.

Munoz spent time coaching wrestling after college, first at his alma mater for three years and then at UC Davis.

There, he met Urijah Faber. Munoz saw that the fellow college wrestler was earning money fighting and still had a flexible schedule.

Struggling to make ends meet and with Faber extolling the virtues of mixed martial arts, Munoz decided to pursue the sport and made his professional debut at age 29 in 2007.

The married father of four quickly showed promise.

After three fights, Munoz was signed to World Extreme Cagefighting. He won two fights, both by first-round knockout, before the organization decided to eliminate its upper weight classes.

Munoz, fighting at light heavyweight at the time, was one of the few fighters brought over from WEC to the UFC. His impressive wrestling credentials, combined with his 5-0 record, had quite a buzz building around him.

Then came his UFC debut and the Matt Hamill headkick that put a temporary stop to Munoz's rise.

"I knew if I won that fight it was a huge step, but everything happens for a reason," he said. "I've taken a lot of what I learned on to my other fights."

He also made the important decision to drop to the middleweight division. Munoz has run through three consecutive opponents since moving to 185 pounds, including a second-round knockout of Kendall Grove in April after Grove had Munoz in all kinds of trouble early on.

Munoz said moving down was the right decision for his career.

"The guys at 205 were just bigger, and I was putting myself at a distinct disadvantage when I stepped into the octagon with the reach and the size," he said. "All these guys are amazing as far as technique and ability. You don't want to put yourself at any disadvantage."

Munoz has opened a gym in Southern California that houses several top-level fighters, but he has also been training at Black House in Los Angeles with a group that includes Anderson Silva, Lyoto Machida and the Nogueira brothers, among others.

The winning streak, combined with the talent around him, has Munoz's confidence level soaring.

"It's pretty high," he said with a smile. "I train real hard, and I feel like I train with the world's best training partners, so I'm really, really excited for this fight. I can't wait until Sunday."

He has a chance to further solidify his spot among the elite in the middleweight division with a win over Okami, a veteran fighter who has 24 career wins and an 8-2 record in 10 UFC appearances.

Okami is a consensus top-10 middleweight, a group that Munoz appears on the verge of cracking.

"I want his spot on the ladder," Munoz said.

The card, which features a main event between light heavyweights Jon Jones and Vladimir Matyushenko, will air live on Versus (Cable 38) at 6 p.m.

Contact reporter Adam Hill at ahill@reviewjournal.com or 702-224-5509.