Doyel: Local MMA fighter one tough guy, one sweet dad

Men are sweating on that mat. Punching each other in the face. Kicking each other in the ribs. These are fighters, some of them professional fighters, and that’s a Happy Meal toy rolling toward them.

Now 2-year-old Mickey Holbrook is chasing the cheap plastic toy across the mat, toward the punching, the kicking, the fighting. A puppy running into highway traffic wouldn’t be harder to watch than this. One of the fighters sees Mickey coming, stops punching his opponent in the face and traps the toy with his bare foot. Then it happens:

The fighter, a heavily tattooed welterweight, looks down and smiles.

Mickey doesn’t look up. He grabs the toy and heads off the mat. Kids, you know?

And so it goes at Indy Boxing and Grappling, where some of the best fighters in town meet in a sweatbox off East Washington Street to punch, kick and grapple. And to do it without punching, kicking or landing on the two little kids – Mickey and his 3-year-old sister, Savannah – in their midst.

When it’s not the most stressful thing on earth to watch, it’s the most beautiful thing. It’s a reminder of the naivete of children and the strength of parents. It’s an examination of gender roles and true masculinity and a toughness you can’t measure in wins and losses.

It’s a guy with nail polish on his fingernails. His name is Andrew Holbrook. He’s Mickey and Savannah’s father.

And he makes his UFC debut in one week.

* * *

“It’s pretty hard to embarrass me,” Andrew Holbrook is telling me, and we’ll just file that under: Some things go without saying.

He’s a strong man, Andrew Holbrook, and I’m not talking about the 180 pounds of muscle he squeezes into a 5-11 frame that will somehow fight in the UFC’s 155-pound lightweight division against UFC veteran Ramsey Nijem on July 25 in Chicago. His strength is the way he shrugs off the traditional image of man – family breadwinner, macho tough guy – an image that is evolving but still holds firm in some arenas.

The fight arena, for one.

Macho? You should see these guys. And I love these guys, understand them, train with them whenever possible. But fighters are not always the most, shall we say, enlightened species. Masculinity is their currency, and they set it on the table like four kings. Here are my muscles, my tattoos, my battered face, my Mohawk. Top that.

Here’s what Andrew Holbrook, UFC fighter, sets on the table: Ten fingernails, each painted a different color. That’s the work of Savannah. She decided one day to paint Daddy’s nails, and Daddy said OK. Back then Holbrook was working security for Kilroy’s downtown, and people were making fun of him, and he was caring not even a little bit.

He says, “You’re going to make fun of a guy who lets his daughter paint his nails?”

Not if they knew who they’re dealing with. Holbrook is one of the best young MMA fighters in Indiana and beyond. The UFC doesn’t give out contracts to just anybody, only the best of the best, and it gave one to Holbrook last month. He’s 10-0, has never been taken the distance. Only one of his 10 opponents survived Round 1, and that glutton for punishment — Gino DiGiulio of Chicago — quit in Round 2 after Holbrook took him to the ground, trapped his arms and still had a hand free to pound DiGiulio’s face.

This is a tough guy, I’m telling you.

With sparkly nail polish and a girlfriend who pays the bills.

* * *

Her name is Gina Schulz, she and Holbrook have been together since they were high school seniors in Adrian, Mich., and she works so her boyfriend — a UFC fighter — can be a stay-at-home dad.

“It works for us,” Gina says, and it always has. Holbrook has followed Schulz for almost 10 years, from Adrian to Fort Wayne — where she went to college while he worked in a plastic factory — to Indianapolis, where Schulz works as a recreational therapist with the Easter Seals Crossroads Rehabilitation Center.

Those are not traditional gender roles, the woman working while the man changes diapers. Now in the UFC, Holbrook is about to make the first decent money of his fighting career, but fighting is a shark tank of testosterone and machismo. How, I ask this MMA fighter, has the Daddy stuff played out in the gym?

“I get made fun of some, but it is what it is. We do what we do,” Holbrook says. “It’s pretty hard to embarrass me.”

At Indy Boxing and Grappling, they’ve gone from tolerating the kids to embracing them. On the far corner of the gym’s wall-to-wall mat, which has a dozen or more wrestling circles, Mickey is told to stay in his circle. Sometimes he does. When he doesn’t, Andrew attaches a bungee cord to his waist so he can’t get too far. Mickey has a thick shock of red hair and cheeks that beg for a pinching.

And Savannah? She’s the submission specialist.

So, this happened:

While her dad is sparring 20 feet away, Savannah climbs her mom’s back and hangs from her neck. Gina calls out “choke hold” and says “I’m tapping” and gently taps Savannah’s wrist. Savannah lets go.

I ask Gina, “That was really a choke hold?”

Gina says: “Yeah, but her favorite move is the arm bar.”

What.

“Come here,” I prod Savannah. “Arm bar me.”

And she does, latching onto an arm and spinning around and holding me down with her legs and torqueing my arm the wrong direction. I tap out. Against a 3-year-old. Who hops up and jumps into my lap and gives me a hug.

Twenty feet away, Andrew Holbrook kicks his sparring partner in the head.

* * *

He wasn’t going to be a fighter, but his buddy in Fort Wayne kept asking. It was 2009 and there were amateur fights in Angola, and Holbrook had been an elite high school wrestler.

Holbrook went, fought and won. Then again. And again. He started training, turned pro in 2012 and used Brazilian jiujitsu to submit seven of 10 foes. He punched out the other three.

Holbrook fought several times in Indianapolis promoter Eddie Mirabella’s Midwest Fight Series, and as his record climbed Mirabella was calling UFC matchmaker Joe Silva to say Holbrook deserved a shot.

Then, the break. UFC veteran Erik Koch withdrew with an injury last month from his July 25 fight with Nijem – on the “UFC on Fox 16” card at the United Center – and Silva called Mirabella. Could Holbrook fight Nijem (9-5, 5-4 in the UFC) in less than four weeks? Mirabella called Holbrook’s coach at Indy Boxing and Grappling, Pat McPherson.

“We didn’t have to find out who I was fighting,” Holbrook says. “The answer is yes.”

Says Mirabella: “A guy like Andrew with a coach like Pat McPherson, I don’t have to tell them to stay ready.”

Andrew and Gina leave in a few days for Chicago. They’ll take Savannah and Mickey to her parents in Adrian, which means the United Center will miss what I saw at Indy Boxing and Grappling, when Savannah found her daddy’s hand wraps and tried to wrap her own fists, mummifying her arm while Mickey was wandering over to the ground-and-pound bag. The heavy bag is shaped crudely like a person, with arms and legs and a head, and it stays on the mat.

Mickey jumps on the heavy bag and starts pounding it, then walks across the torso, onto a limb. He bounces on the arm like a diving board and swan dives onto the mat. Savannah jumps on Mickey for an arm bar.

And now sparring has stopped. Professional fighters are watching, and they are smiling. These are some of the toughest guys in town, but they are no match for two giggling little kids, with red hair and cheeks that must be pinched.

Find Star columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar or at www.facebook.com/gregg.doyel