The martial artists fighting this Saturday night have gathered in the locker room in the basement of Northwest Portland's Roseland Theater. Like wary cats, they avoid each other as they huddle with trainers and coaches and burn off energy by shadow boxing.
A man can't buy his way into this room. He earns it two floors up when he steps into the cage. In this windowless room that smells of sweat and nerves, no one shakes hands because it's the polite thing to do.
The fighters ignore Jacob Beckmann. He's 19, a man by age, but he looks out of place. He stands alone. He has Down Syndrome and reads at the level of a second grader. He struggles to find the right words to express himself. When he does speak, it's often hard to understand what he's saying and why. So Beckmann keeps quiet, looking at the black gloves on his hands and patiently waiting to hear his name called.
In less than 30 minutes, Beckmann will be fighting two three-minute rounds against Nate Quarry, a seasoned professional fighter. A gentle soul who sees the best in people and who trusts what he's been told, Beckmann believes he and Quarry are competing for a title fight, the winner to get the gold belt that signifies champion in the mixed martial arts world.
"Let's go," someone yells down to the locker room. "Time to fight."
None of the other fighters pay attention to Beckmann as he makes his way up the stairs. He takes his time. He stands about 5 feet and weighs nearly 200 pounds.
In a darkened hallway behind a curtain, Quarry and Beckmann wait for the announcer to call their names.
Even at 43, Quarry is still a world-class athlete. He stands 6 feet, weighs 217 pounds and looks like a slab of granite. When it's his time to make his way to the cage, he jogs out, shaking his fists above his head and acknowledging the applause of more than 1,000 spectators.
Behind the curtain, Beckmann listens for his name. Whatever happens from this moment on doesn't matter.
He's here.
**
Beckmann was born with a disease that prevented him growing any body hair other than eyebrows and eyelashes. He nearly died as a baby, said his mother, Sherry Beckmann, adding that during his life has been admitted to the hospital 20 times. He developed slowly, she said, taking longer than usual to speak, crawl and then walk. He spent parts of his childhood in a wheelchair.
Today, Beckmann attends Newberg High School, where he's mainstreamed in a couple classes – choir and drama. He graduates this year and has told his mother that his dream is to be hired this summer as a door greeter at the Sherwood Wal-Mart.
Beckmann, who has two children, has been a single parent for the past seven years. Her experience with having a special-needs child led her to return to school and earn a doctorate in counseling and psychology, working with parents of special needs children in her private practice in Sherwood. Her goal, she said, has been to let her son lead the way as he explores the world in his own way.
Four years ago, after watching martial arts events on television, Beckmann asked his mother if he could take karate classes. She wasn't sure he could handle the physical challenge. But she found Walker's Martial Arts Academy in Newberg, explained her son's limitations and told instructor Greg Walker that she'd pay for private lessons because Jacob might be a difficult student to work with in a group class.
"He took to it," Walker said. "He never quits. I show him everything slowly, and then he practices and practices."
One day, Beckmann noticed some photographs on the school wall and realized that Walker and his brother had competed in mixed martial arts, a sport that combines various martial arts styles into free fighting, a kind of realistic brawl with rules. Beckmann told Walker he wanted to do that instead.
"So I started showing him the moves," Walker said. "He kept asking me when he could have a real MMA fight. I told him we better keep training, figuring he'd forget about it."
He didn't.
"Each day he'd say 'Mr. Walker, am I ready'?" Walker said. "By then he was doing well enough that I was having him hold the mitts for the little kids to hit. To a 6-year-old, he's a big dude, and he has the best spirit."
Walker created a fake fight poster showing teacher and student squaring off. As a gag, he helped Beckmann create a video in which the student pretended to call out other fighters, telling them he was ready for a match.
"I put it on Facebook for him," Walker said. "It went viral, and the MMA community saw it and someone started a fan page for Jacob. At one point, it had 4,000 likes."
One day, a friend suggested Crystal Garcia, a co-owner of the Southeast Portland gym Rose City FC, check out Beckmann's fan page. She was moved, she said, because her 11-year-old son has autism. Other children, she said, sometimes misunderstand her boy because he is different. And in Jacob, she saw her own son.
"He has dreams and desires," she said.
Meanwhile, Quarry, a retired pro who appeared on the reality show "The Ultimate Fighter," learned about what was happening.
"The MMA community is small," he said. "I learned about Jacob's limitations, and said I'd help out. I've feasted at the table for years. Why not help a young man?"
Quarry, who lives in Lake Oswego, traveled to Sherwood and Newberg to meet Walker, Beckmann and his mother. He sparred with Beckmann to get a sense of what he could do. Then he pulled Walker and Beckmann's mother aside to say he'd get in the cage with the young man. He'd give Beckmann the fight he wanted.
But what kind of fight?
He told Beckmann he could be an over-the-top tough guy, and call her son out in the cage if need be. Or he could tone it way down.
"I wanted his mother to know that her son wouldn't be hurt," Quarry said. "I had nothing to prove, no ego. I wanted to help her son, but I also wanted to thank her. I have a healthy 15-year-old daughter. I wanted to thank her for being such a loving and caring parent."
Beckmann said her son was "terrified" about facing Quarry, and was worried about being beat up by him.
"I told her that I'd make sure the outcome would never be in doubt," Quarry said. "I'd take it easy, but not so easy that I showed him no respect. He'd win, but I wanted Jacob to discover his own strength in that cage. He'd have to walk his own journey."
She agreed.
A MMA fight that was for something bigger than a gold belt | OregonLive.com
