Joshua Stanley
Henderson, Kentucky, United States
Mixed Martial Arts
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My name is Joshua Stanley, but inside the cage, I am known as "The Spartan!" I earned this name early in my MMA career by regularly being the first one in the gym and the last one off the mats, and for having the tendency to refuse to surrender well after I was bloody and battered. This was back in the good ol’ college days when I didn’t have any true coaches, I didn’t have any real knowledge or skill, but we had an eclectic group of athletes and a mat room…and all the time in the world! We would frequently (and I mean almost every day, sometimes twice a day) meet up at the mat room on campus and grapple, spar, beat on each other, and sometimes just flat out fight!
It’s a bit bizarre how my MMA dreams came to be, considering when I first discovered the sport, my first statement were something to the effect of, “Why would anyone sign up to get punched in the head for fun…?” One random day in college, though, after my floor mates and I watched Never Back Down (a semi-decent B-movie about fighting), we decided that there was no better way to occupy ourselves on campus than to go beat one another senseless! The next thing you know, we have a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu guy, a high school wrestler, a backyard boxer, and an assortment of other ragtag athletes (and some non-athletes) from a wide array of backgrounds. We just kept going, kept sharing, kept learning from mistakes, and kept improving as “fighters.”
After a couple years of our non-traditional training, I decided it was time for me to give this mixed martial arts thing a go for real. I got with a gym from back home, the gym I still call home today, and got signed up for my first fight! After several fights, several more years of training, and several hard lessons learned…I have finally grown into a pro-caliber athlete with some real potential!
Overall, I would say that my discipline and work ethic are my strongest assets. These traits have followed me from my first training session to the present day, and they extend to everything from my training regimen to my dietary practices. When it is time for training camp...I eat, sleep, and breathe the fight! The bottom line is…when talent lets you down, hard work picks up the slack!
So, as I continue to work hard, as I continue to push my boundaries, as I continue to learn, grow, and develop, and as I continue to attempt to live up to my Spartan name…there is only one thing left to do! Embrace the grind! Every hard day of training, every day of sacrificing time and effort, and every day of depriving myself of relaxation and dietary freedom is just part of the daily grind that is necessary to succeed!! I embrace it, I welcome it, and I love it! Bring on the grind. Bring on the discomfort. Bring on the pain.
#EmbraceTheGrind
#SPARTAN