Jose Loera didn’t believe he needed to speak English to throw a few punches, but a former coach did.
When he first began training to become a professional fighter, his coach said he wasn’t ready.
“And I said ‘why?’ And he said, ‘because you don’t speak English’ — that stayed with me,” Loera said in Spanish.
He picked up the language and became a pro. But that coach’s comment motivated him to create a training space that welcomes everyone.
Loera opened Combat Warriors, a mixed martial arts gym in Tulsa, about three years ago. He says the gym is built on the pillars of community, culture and combat. Originally located at 21st Street and Sheridan Road, the gym recently reopened a new location in Plaza Santa Cecilia, 2160 S. Garnett Road, in east Tulsa.
“Sex or race doesn’t matter,” Loera said. “If they’re white, blue, red, pink, jiu-jitsu is for the whole world. It’s universal. Anyone can understand it.”
The move feels like a homecoming, says Jovany Avendaño, Loera’s business partner.
“I felt like we were outside of the community,” Avendaño said. “We needed to be here. There was a lot more opportunity here.”
The gym offers a range of classes for adults and children, including boxing, karate and jiu-jitsu. Combat Warriors also launched a free running club starting at 8 a.m. every Saturday and Sunday.
Instructor Ehrlich Belisario has 30 years of experience teaching karate and kickboxing. As professional fighters, Belisario and Loera want people to know they can also train to become pros.
“At the gym, we’re prepared to offer that too, and we’ll prepare them,” Belisario said in Spanish.
The gym’s opening was a community effort. The owners, instructors and clients spent five months assembling equipment and making mats and tables.
Clayton Dahm joined the gym three years ago as a New Year’s resolution and found a community.
“It’s become my third place, of sorts, as they call it, where not only does it scratch my exercise needs, but it keeps me around that community element that I was seeking in that period of my life,” Dahm said. “It’s a strong core group of people that we see sometimes more often than we see our own families.”
It’s rare to find consistent male friendships as an adult, Dahm said.
“Through the gym and through this shared self-betterment, this shared trust, you start to not only learn yourself, learn your body, but learn each other,” he said. “And it’s hard not to grow close with people and learn their struggles and what their particular reason for joining and their challenge as well as just over time learning them in life and slowly becoming like actual friends.”
Finding third places in Tulsa
This story is part of the Tulsa Flyer’s series on third places around the Tulsa metro — spaces and groups where people are creating community outside of home and work. Help us write more stories on the third places that already exist and where they should be by filling out the form below.
This article was produced as part of a partnership between the Tulsa Flyer and La Semana, a Tulsa-based bilingual Spanish-English newspaper serving Latino communities in Oklahoma.
News decisions at the Tulsa Flyer are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.
