Roscommon’s own MMA gym looking to conquer the world

Most sporting facilities that are in existence just over seven months are often seeking to find their feet.

The search for people who are interested to compete in that sport is often a challenge as are costs and of course finding bodies on the ground to help the running of said club.

Despite Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) gym 14th Street Roscommon, located on the Golf Links road, being in existence for that length of time, they are sending seven fighters over to compete at the Global Association of Mixed Martial Arts (GAMMA) World Championships, which run from December 6-14.

Gym founder Paul Havlin believes 14th Street Roscommon’s different approach has helped their members to flourish.

“We opened our doors on the ninth of April this year. We are very new. We have been around the martial arts world for a long time. We have taken a different approach to many clubs. We have decided to try and bring in specialists from different areas.

“You will find with a lot of martial arts clubs that there will be one person or two people max that will teach you their way. That is not necessarily saying it is right or wrong, but you find a lot of fighters mirror their trainer. I try and implement an almost private sector approach to it where we are bringing in a senior leadership group of different disciplines.

“What we have noticed by having a different approach, that when we are going to gyms, we are surprising ourselves because our guys have a lot of different skills that come out against other fighters. That is also a testament to their own work ethic too,” he noted.

Paul’s family are steeped in mixed martial arts. His wife Jacqui is an essential part of the gym’s fabric as the pair seek to ensure the gym provides their athletes with the tools to improve while maintaining a fun and relaxed environment for beginners.

Their sons Shay, Tadhg and Cuán will all be competing in Indonesia alongside Jakub Waliduda, Jonathas Borges, Jordan McCarthy and Max Doherty.

Paul states that the MMA community is larger than people would think in the west of Ireland and indeed across the country.

“You would be very surprised at the amount of gyms there are. Mixed martial arts in its own right has started to become its own discipline. It is bringing different elements of martial arts into this one hybrid discipline. MMA is starting to stand on its own two feet.

“There are a lot of different martial arts activity in the west of Ireland. MMA is quite small in comparison to some sports but the competition level is increasing. What you will find is the diversity of our group is just phenomenal. Our three largest communities at the minute are Polish, Brazilian and Irish. The Dagestani community are also very interested in MMA.

“We have people from Asia, girls from Brazil and we would be very diverse in our membership cohort. We are very neurodiverse also. We have a lot of children who can’t go swimming due to their additional needs for example and they can struggle in large groups when it comes to football or sports of that nature.

“There are quite a large group of neuro diverse families who have found a home with us. We have a full scale of groups and people are just falling in love with martial arts,” the gym founder stated.

When asked about his hopes for the gym in the future, Havlin doesn’t focus heavily the seven gym representatives who are competing in Indonesia.

For him they are all ahead of the curve and while he will be trying to help them achieve the best results possible in Indonesia, his primary focus is to continue the gym’s rapid growth while maintaining the community feel within the group.

“I am a principal social worker with the HSE, and I specialise in emotional wellness. I am really into physical health and wellbeing that being physical health, emotional health, nutritional health.

“When I see people just enjoying a different type of sport and fitness while they are becoming better versions of themselves, to be honest I feel I am achieving a lot. You can see it day to day.

“I like that smaller intimacy we have going on in the gym but in a couple of years I would want to triple the size of my gym and maintain that intimacy. I would love to make it one of the top places to come to in the west of Ireland while still knowing everybody’s name and seeing the improvements,” he stated.