Courtesy of Reshat Mati

ORLANDO, Fla. — Reshat Mati is in one of three rings in the ballroom of a DoubleTree hotel on this July day, trying to win his seventh International Kickboxing Federation World Classic.

Every year since he was 10, he's taken home a tacky championship belt ("they cost more than $100 apiece," a tournament organizer tells me with pride). At 17, this will be his final chance to compete as a junior, the culmination of a journey he's been on his whole life.

And nobody cares.

They don't care about the 17-plus million views on a 2012 YouTube video that proclaimed him an "amazing 13-year-old prodigy" as he showed off his wide range of skills in boxing and mixed martial arts and talked about his already long list of championships.

They also don't care about the media blitz that viral video inspired, which included star turns in the Los Angeles Times, New York magazine and Grantland, where Charles P. Pierce called him "Bryce Harper. He's RG3. He's Jabari Parker."

Certainly nobody at the DoubleTree cares about his opening bout in the 142-pound class with poor, hopelessly overmatched Brennan McKissick from Hot Springs, Arkansas.

Fame, in the age of the meme, is more fleeting than ever. Millions of people watched Mati's viral video. Of course, they watch cute cat videos too, but that doesn't mean the cats are instantly recognizable, either.

Mati was a product, he was consumed and then forgotten. Not that this bothers him. While the video brought sponsors such as HeadRush, it also brought a lot of attention on social media, most of it negative. He's happy here, he says, among his people, one more martial artist on his journey. After all, if he's fighting with fame in mind, he's in the wrong place.

"A lot of people watch boxing. A lot of people watch MMA," Mati tells me with a shrug. "Nobody watches kickboxing except fanatics."

There are a smattering of such fanatics in the hard-back chairs that dot the space around the rings, some absorbed in the three fights happening simultaneously and others hopelessly attached to their phones.

But, if we're being honest, most chairs are occupied by the tournament's 350-plus fighters and their various coaches, each decked out in the regional kickboxing uniform of choice—tight pants for the women and tight shirts for the men. Tattoos know no gender boundaries.

No one gives Mati a second glance as he enters the ring. If those in attendance know they are in the presence of combat sports royalty, a young prince once seemingly destined for success, they give no sign. Of course, even if they'd seen the video a dozen times, they would be hard-pressed to reconcile this Mati from the one on YouTube.

Adam Hunger / AP Images for Bleacher Report

To anyone watching ring three carefully, however, Mati has found a way to stand out. While other fights are either carefully, excruciatingly technical or bordering on bar-fight territory, Mati's aggressive, scientific approach is revelatory.

If it looks like he was born fighting, that's because he was. Nicknamed the "Punching Baby," he graduated to the "Mad Dog" before finally settling on the "Albanian Bear."

It's not especially fitting, at least if considered literally.

Mati appears not to have a single hair on his lean body, save a few wisps of a mustache that's thinking about making an appearance. His lean 138 pounds and abs of steel don't appear especially bear-like.

Instead, he looks and sounds a bit like a lost cast member of Jersey Shore—if anyone on that show referred to every adult as "Sir" or "Ma'am" and spoke so softly you sometimes had to lean in to hear him.

Perhaps his nickname, like his fighting, is a work in progress.

According to the official record, Mati is a gaudy 38-4 in amateur kickboxing bouts. According to his father, Adrian—a man who looks like he could beat you to death with his bare hands and would know the perfect place to dispose of the body—he's actually 40-3.

Either tally puts McKissick's modest 1-0 record to shame. But that doesn't stop Mati's nerves from collapsing on him, whether the pressure is self-imposed or not.

He used to shake before a fight. Now he bounces around frantically for hours until his name is called, energy spent wearing a path around the hotel lobby, buying a $5 spit bucket to replace one left in his room, pounding the pads, but mostly sitting, lost in thought.

Hours have passed since kickboxing legend Don "The Dragon" Wilson opened the festivities with perhaps the shortest speech on record: "Good luck to all the fighters. Have a nice day."

Nods followed all around, most agreeing they were good words, simple and to the point. But that was a lifetime ago, barely a memory as the minutes turned to hours.

The regional kickboxing scene, Mati tells me as his fierce Uzbek kickboxing coach Akmal Zakirov wraps his hands in a holding area backstage, is mostly about waiting. The room is temporarily dark after a power outage, and Mati's small team is far from alone. There are close to 100 fighters here in various stages of dress and preparation, the glow of dozens of cellphones their only protection from the artificial night.

"Three years ago, I fought the first bout of the entire tournament and then waited," Mati recalls, his tendency toward reminiscence at odds with both his baby face and recent high school graduation. "My second fight was the last bout of the day. The waiting was the worst. My shins actually started swelling up. My hands swelled up. It wasn't a good feeling."

More than 60 bouts precede Mati's on this day. Dozens more will follow later in the day. The wait leaves plenty of time to work yourself into a tizzy if you are so inclined.

"They come straight forward here. They aren't scared. You can try to avoid it, but eventually you're going to get hit."

— Reshat Mati

Mati worries about his three teammates from Bars Boxing, though all would walk away with championship gold. They've come down I-95 from Staten Island, where Mati lives at home with his parents and two older sisters, for a working vacation.

He worries too about McKissick's two-and-a-half-inch height advantage. He worries about his foe's cardio and thudding punches—both defying his relative lack of experience. That scouting report had come the day before from McKissick's coach, who hadn't realized he was talking to the other side.

Most of all, Mati worries about the inevitable.

"These guys throw hard," he said. "Especially as you go up in weight. Last year these guys kicked me, and it felt like they broke my leg. I blocked one, and it felt like it broke my arm. It's not like boxing where people move around a lot. They come straight forward here. They aren't scared. You can try to avoid it, but eventually you're going to get hit."