EVERETT — Matt Kovacs uses his hands to compete in mixed martial arts, a sport that includes, various disciplines of one-on-one combat, among them boxing, wrestling, and jujutsu.
Those same hands once bought him big problems for fighting of a different sort.
The irony is that his sport has become the metaphor for his life. He is like the fighter who, after being knocked to the mat, struggles back to his feet and withstands additional blows, all in pursuit of eventual victory.
A grueling and sometimes violent regimen of training and competition “has given me the hope to be successful again,” said the 26-year-old Kovacs.
His story begins with a childhood that was often in the balance. Back then, he was an athlete and a troublemaker, and he was pretty good at both. The younger Kovacs was a big kid with an attitude and a temper, and those traits turned combustible when he took to using drugs and alcohol.
On a summer afternoon in 1998, Kovacs was at Lake Goodwin, north of Everett, with some friends. They encountered another group of boys. Taunting words were exchanged, then angry words. After that, he remembers, “it got ugly real quick.”
Kovacs, who had been an amateur boxer, took a swing at one of the other boys. It was a vicious blow, powerful and well-placed, and it broke the young man’s jaw and eye socket, giving him lasting damage.
What followed was a period of misery for the victim and for Kovacs. The latter was charged with felony assault and would later serve a 19-day sentence in the Denny Youth Center. He was also sued by the other boy’s family.
Kovacs was 17 at the time.
He missed part of his senior year at Cascade High School to serve his sentence and did not graduate with his classmates in June. Instead, he had to attend Everett Community College over the summer to earn his general equivalency diploma.
His football ambitions, though, took the biggest hit. Kovacs, a promising fullback and linebacker, had been getting recruiting interest from schools in Washington and in the Boston area, where his father lived, but his legal trouble “pretty much put a fork in my football career. (College coaches) took one look at that and it was over.”
Looking back, Kovacs calls the assault “the worst decision I ever made in my life, by far. That single decision affected so much in my life. It was humiliating. I was ashamed.
“But I really didn’t hit rock bottom because of that,” he said. “My first couple of years out of high school I really didn’t do anything with my life. I was able to finish school, but then I fell apart. And alcohol was a big part of that.
“I was real angry, real bitter, and I didn’t take responsibility for my actions. I kind of blamed everybody else. … Honestly, I think I was on a path to self-destruct.”
Standing on the verge of oblivion, Kovacs somehow found the resolve to turn away. He got help to overcome his reliance on drugs and alcohol. He got involved in an Everett church. He started a career in real estate. And he became acquainted with a man named Mike Westford, who became a mentor for Kovacs in both his life issues and his career.
About the same time, he began channeling the aggression that had sometimes taken him along wayward paths into the sport of mixed martial arts.
Training and competing, he said, “has given me structure. It’s given me discipline.”
As for his old ways, “I’ve kind of left that lifestyle alone,” said Kovacs, who has been sober for about three years. “Sometimes it’s hard being a 26-year-old male and everybody you know is out doing stuff. But then I remember where I’ve been, and I know it’s really not worth going back to.”
Besides, he added, “my body is almost like my job now. Putting that stuff in my body is just hurting me and it’s hurting my future.”
Kovacs decided to try mixed martial arts after seeing the sport on television. It didn’t take him long to get hooked.
“I love the competition and the camaraderie of the team — you have a group of guys you train with — and the sport is a rush,” he said. “It’s just you and one other person, and it’s exciting. And I’m a physical person, so I don’t mind the contact. I like that part of it.
“This was an opportunity that made itself available to me and I’ve just fallen in love with it.”
The 6-foot, 250-pound Kovacs has been competing for about two years and has a 4-2 record, which is actually a pretty good mark. In mixed martial arts, few competitors rack up lopsided win-loss records. Even Randy Couture, the Lynnwood native who has multiple world titles, has lost roughly one match for every two he wins.
Kovacs works out five days a week, twice a day, upwards of 20 hours a week. He does weight training in the morning, and then travels to the Arlington Kickboxing Academy in the evening to practice with his teammates and coach Landon Showalter, himself a professional mixed martial artist.
“Matt has a good boxing background, so he’s already got a lot of talent there,” Showalter said. “Now he just needs to work on his ground game because he has less experience on the mat. But he’s really athletic for a big guy. He moves really, really well. Most guys his weight don’t move with hardly half his speed, and they’re not as smooth as he is.
“He’s got a good look,” Showalter added. “He has a fun fighting style and he’s real exciting to watch. He has the perfect personality for the sport. We just need to develop him a little bit, and then I think he can go far.”
Kovacs would like to get in a few more amateur fights and then turn professional, perhaps around the first of the year.
“I think I’ve shown that I have a good future in this and that I’m going to have a successful professional career,” he said. “And I want to take this as far as I can.”
The goal, he said, is “to be a world champion. That’s where I want to take it. I want to be the best. And through focusing and keeping my nose to the grindstone, I think I can do that. With the coaches I have now, I believe the sky’s the limit.”
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