Intro to a story in the Broward Palm Beach
New Times in Florida:
"I'm dangerous," 23-year-old Garrett Holeve (pictured with his father) warns as he bounces
around a bedroom in his parents' suburban, single-story house, throwing
punches and kicks. A pungent combination of protein-powered farts, dirty
laundry, and ball sweat permeates the air.
"I'll hurt a guy real bad," Garrett brags. "I'll be covered in too
much blood, and I'll keep hurting him. Kick him in the mouth so hard the
mouth guard flies out."
The words don't roll off his tongue. They bunch up in his throat and
pour out in a slurred manner that's difficult to understand. This is
just one of the ways Garrett's Down syndrome manifests itself.
"Oh, umm," he stammers frequently when looking for an answer.
"Finding a fight takes time. My friend Chris is going to get me a
fight."
He carries other telltale physical characteristics of the genetic
condition: small ears that look like half-hearts, almond-shaped eyes,
wide hands with short fingers, and a small, round mouth. Further
affecting his health is rheumatoid arthritis that afflicts his right
knee.
Garrett stands five feet tall and weighs 136 pounds. But he can drop
to 125 pounds in a few days to make weight for his beloved sport, mixed
martial arts. His black wifebeater reveals the tattoo of a black
Punisher skull engulfed in black flames near his left shoulder. His neck
and arms are solid muscle, large enough to make clear that his fists
could permanently alter the alignment of an opponent's nose.
Here, in a modest home in one of Cooper City's gated communities, the
floor is littered with kettlebells, a curl bar, a medicine ball,
dumbbells, and two towel-covered milk crates that serve as makeshift
pushup stands. Framed on the wall is the white tape in which MMA
megastar Tito Ortiz wrapped his wrists for a recent Las Vegas fight.
There's a poster of sharks, pictures of a half-dozen other professional
fighters, and some torn-out pages of a Hooter's calendar featuring
bikini-clad butts.
Playing on the flat-screen TV set is a DVD of Garrett's first
exhibition bout earlier this year against a guy named Antonio Martin at
Seminole Immokalee Casino. The crowd roars when Garrett throws a
spinning backfist, but back in his room, the young man isn't paying
attention. He's kneeing an imaginary opponent in the face before
dropping to his knees to pound the thin, smelly air into submission. He
then lifts his shirt and flexes his abs, a solid undefined wall of
muscle padded by pasty white flesh. "This is the new me," he says
enthusiastically.
For someone with Down syndrome, Garrett is extremely high
functioning. Still, his cognitive ability is roughly equivalent to that
of a 12-year-old's. His reading and math skills are at a third-grade
level. He can't tell if a cashier gives him correct change after he
buys a slice of pizza, his mom says, and it's unlikely he'll be able to
understand this entire article.
But Garrett has found salvation in MMA, a combative sport that John
McCain dubbed "human cockfighting." Though it was once banned in a dozen
states for its gruesome brutality, nowadays jujitsu black belts of the
umpteenth degree battle Olympics-grade wrestlers in refereed yet
still-violent face-offs. This more polished competition has been
masterminded by the Ultimate Fighting Championship, or UFC, the largest
and most profitable promotion company in the world.
The sport has allowed Garrett to reinvent himself — mind and body. At
the gym, he's not Garrett Holeve, the guy with Down syndrome. He's
G-Money, an up-and-coming fighter with big ambitions.
"I will go for a contract for the UFC, get the contract, sign it, and be on UFC," Garrett declares.
But there's a problem. Even though he has spent countless hours
training at American Top Team Weston, Garrett can't find a fair fight.
People who run the Special Olympics have given little indication they
will ever allow the sport, and it's unclear how many parents of
special-needs' people would even allow their children to pursue MMA. And
though he has fought two exhibitions against abled competitors, few
fighters want to be the one who knocks out a guy with Down syndrome or,
worse, gets knocked out by him.
Visualizing his first professional fight, Garrett snaps his foot into
the air and says, "That's the kick I do," demonstrating an impressive
combination of limberness, balance, and power. "Knockout."
