Justyn Martinez

Justyn Martinez wrestled in Kansas, served in the Army, and got into bare knuckle because a ranked fighter called him out.

Cason Banyas, his father and his younger brother flew from Atlanta to Albuquerque and watched a man they could not yet name walk out in bright pink shorts and go straight at his opponent from the bell. Cason's father said on the spot that he had to be on the show. The first attempt at recording the episode went to Brad and died in technical problems, so Martinez came back a second time and sat down with Cason for Salty's Fight Talk with a week to go before Hollywood.

He grew up wrestling. His family moved from Florida to Kansas in the middle of seventh grade and he wrestled for Goddard High School, which has been near the top of the country for years. Bare knuckle is five rounds of two minutes with no gloves, and he describes it as a firefight where somebody is going to sleep. He trains at 316, Dave Rickels' gym, where his coach Cody Bitler makes him take a full week off after a fight so his nervous system can reset. Even with his hands iced he is running or in the weight room. Storm has since hired him on as a manager, and he had a fighter in Colorado Springs making a pro bare knuckle debut on July 26.

The fighting stopped for a couple of years after his divorce. He had gone deep into powerlifting and was getting ready to chase state records when Chancey Wilson, ranked fifth at the time, called him out while Martinez was hanging around the gym. He had five amateur MMA fights and some high school wrestling behind him. He started blowing up phones at the promotion anyway, opening with the fact that nobody there knew who he was, and the contract came. The cut he made for that first fight came off a powerlifter's body. Beating Rambo Russo in Hollywood would put him at three and three, which says as much about the losses as the wins. He ices his hands between camps and goes back in.

His daughter sets the terms. She watches bare knuckle on television all day and comes to the face offs, and he will not let her near a live one. When she told him her mother had a new boyfriend she did not like, he looked into the man himself, which is most of why he says he puts on a show every time he fights. If she ever tells him she is tired of seeing him stitched up, they hang it up. He closed the episode offering tickets to any veterans around Hollywood.