Brass City, Brass Knuckles: Bellator’s 21-year-old Mike Kimbel is ready to bust out

MMAfighting.com

In just his second pro fight back in October, the prospect Mike Kimbel knocked out Alex Potts in six seconds to tie a Bellator record. It wasn’t a thing of beauty so much as a left, a right, and crumbling body — the kind of explosive KO that opened a few eyes as he gets set to face John Douma at Mohegan Sun on Friday night. Yet, anybody who knows Kimbel understands that that feat is the second most remarkable thing about the 21-year-old kid’s achievements.

The first?

It’s the fact that he made it to 21 years old at all.

Kimbel grew up quick and mean in Waterbury — a crime-ridden town in western Connecticut that carries an appropriate nickname of “The Brass City.” Kimbel calls it the “City of Lost Dreams,” because he’s seen so many promising young people — athletes, would-be academics, pretty girls — deteriorate before his eyes. He’s seen some that fell victim to drugs, others to crime. He’s seen people locked away, shot, and some killed.

He knows too well what it’s like to see the nose of a gun pointed at him, directly, and to see the flash.

“I’ve been in shootouts, and I didn’t know what to do — I’d run here to the gym,” he says, referring to Team Thunder MMA, a third-story warehouse gym in nearby Watertown that has Christmas lights strewn across the rafters. “I call him, and he always makes sure I stay level-headed.”

Kimbel is referring to his coach and mentor, Daniel Semeraro, the owner of Team Thunder, who has worked with him since he was a 13-year-old kid looking to channel all that aggression. Semeraro, a No Ka Oi guy who jokes that he looks like a heavy metal Jesus, was in Kimbel’s corner the first time he entered a ring as a 14-year-old, 4-foot-nothing, 69-pound fingerling. He smiles and shakes his head when Kimbel talks about his childhood, not because he doubts what he’s saying, but because he knows it’s all true.

“I got shot at on a Thursday, my fight’s four weeks out, and the next Thursday I got into an accident with an 18-wheeler, got caught between the trailer and tore up my hand,” Kimbel says, pointing to a scar on his hand. “The doctors were trying to get me to see somebody because I was so calm, and I was like, ‘you guys are buggin’, I’m happy to be alive!’ Then two weeks after that I went into a ring and fought with one hand.”

He lost that amateur fight against Zachary Searle out in Springfield, which — even given the circumstances — still sticks in his craw. He admits he shouldn’t have been in there, but he went anyway. He says he always shows up for fights. Back when he was attending West Side Middle School, he would keep every appointment. If somebody got in his face, his dukes came up. Sometimes weapons were introduced to the conversation. Sometimes other people stepped in, his guys against theirs. It was territorial, but it was also about respect. Earning the respect.

Keeping the respect.

“I wasn’t a gang member or anything like that, but we had our little cliques in school,” he says. “We’d get into fights. We’d fight for respect, the girls lean more towards the boys that had it, and it was like that. I was always small. I was in middle school and 4-foot-9, I had to make up for that with tenacity. That’s where the fighting comes from. We’d meet up at the parks against other cliques. If you wanted to survive, you had to fight.”“I either wanted to be the best Special Forces officer, or the best drug lord. I always wanted to be the best at something,” says Kimbel.

He laughs, remembering his mindset back then, even if it wasn’t all that long ago.

“I either wanted to be the best Special Forces officer, or the best drug lord,” he says. “I always wanted to be the best at something. Roughhousing with my cousins, it was fun, but fighting … school was kind of brutal. Where I’m at, there aren’t any role models. The role models are the guys doing all the wrong things. That would obviously fall on the younger kids. I had friends making $1,000 a week.”

As he entered his teenage years, Kimbel used to beg his mom to find him a boxing gym. Given how often he got in trouble for fighting, she didn’t particularly like the idea, fearing she’d only be weaponizing his hands and make matters worse. “She had a feeling, if I’m already fighting and then I know how to fight … that’s a problem,” he says.

“But I started because I kept getting into a lot of trouble — in the school, the street, I kept getting into altercations. Even on the Pop Warner football field, I’d get into it. Pop Warner is just like glorified gangsterness. I got arrested a few times. By about my fourth arrest my mom was like, that’s it.”

He was arrested for fighting, obviously, but also for what he calls being in the “wrong place at the wrong time.” He got pinged with an assault rap when he says a friend shoved him into a teacher that never particularly liked him. Next thing he knew, out came the cuffs. Even today he shakes his head at another arrest, the time a teacher tried to take his phone away and he responded, as breezy as you please, “suck my d*ck.”

“That mouth is the problem,” Semeraro says, as if he’s heard variations on just that kind of rebellious response for the last eight years. “That’s why he got his ass whooped when he came in here. He has a mouth on him.”

After trying out a grappling-based gym at 13, Kimbel was growing restless for a fight. He attended an event that Semeraro was hosting, and the coach described to his mom — “she’s a real interrogator,” Kimbel says — his brand of traditional martial arts, which derives from the Chuck Norris system. Kimbel was rapt. He showed up once, got worked over, then came back again. Pretty soon he was dropping in four days a week. Then he got himself a fight. He took on a kid who was 14-0, far more experienced and much older. Kimbel, who was given the nickname “The Savage” because he was a wild thing in a 70-pound frame, won the bout, and off they went.

Semeraro saw the drive and talent, but he says he never knew such a scrawny kid could have that kind of mouth, or that he could be such a mischief-maker. “Whenever I’d put my phone down, and I’d come back and look at pictures, there would be selfies of him all over my phone,” he says. “I’d tell him, stop touching my phone. Next time you touch my phone you’re getting your ass whooped. Well, he did it again.”“We thought, he’s got something, he just keeps coming back,” says Semerano. “Then I bonded with him, and now he’s like a son to me. I’ve pretty much been there his whole life.”

Semeraro sicced one of this bigger-bodied, far more experienced training partners on him during a drill on the mats. Kimbel remembers the chokehold — “they snuffed me,” he says — but even that didn’t teach him a lesson. He was the same stubborn kid, doing the same rebellious things. Semeraro would walk around with a ruler or a Kali stick, and when Kimbel wasn’t looking for it — thwap! — a smart lick to the knuckle.

“He’s busted my ass a few times,” Kimbel says, not without a devilish kind of pride.

These tactics continued well past his early teens. They went on until he was 17 and 18 years old, when he was living at the gym, sleeping on an old couch through the dark, cold New England winters, the same couch he is telling the stories from for this interview. After a falling out with his mom, Kimbel literally made the gym his home. He’d walk two hours to work from the gym, and two hours back, then train for four hours when he got back. That’s when he began to see the light. Slowly the kid who was all about earning respect on the streets found a way to show a little respect in the gym. It was around that time, too, that he began putting some distance between who he was and who he wanted to be.

“All the stories people hear, they’re true,” he says. “A lot of stories don’t even get told. It’s highly frowned upon to know what goes on in Waterbury. When I was 17, I wasn’t sure I’d make it to 18. When I was 18, I wasn’t sure I’d make it to 19.

“Not to glorify it, because I’d never do that — it’s horrible — but that life has motivated me into becoming the person I am now. The shootings, those are real. The stabbings, those are real. The things that happen to women, those are real. I keep that in me, because I know what it takes, and I know there was nobody to look up to. That’s why I go in there sharp.”

The transformation isn’t complete. As Semeraro points out, his young gun — the smart ass from the streets, who was always finding his way into trouble — is still very much a work-in-progress.

“When he first came here, we whooped his ass daily, and the kid just kept showing up,” he says. “We thought, he’s got something, he just keeps coming back. Then I bonded with him, and now he’s like a son to me. I’ve pretty much been there his whole life.”

Semeraro doesn’t say it outright, but another thing he picked up early on was that Kimbel could back it up. He could take as much as he dished, and he was only too happy to do so. He kept asking for more. If a kid like that has a dream, you do your best to drag him through hell and disillusion the fancy.

If he keeps showing up, you gladly go through hell yourself to make those dreams comes true.