Roger Huerta – Saving Nothing for The Swim Back

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By Thomas Gerbasi

As jurors in Brooklyn Federal Court began deliberating the fate of Ronell Wilson earlier this week, they were told by defense attorneys of the convicted cop killer’s troubled childhood, one reportedly filled with neglect, abuse, and family members mired in drug addiction.

For some, this upbringing is the type of crutch that would explain how someone would gun down undercover detective Rodney Andrews in 2003, and then do the same to Andrews’ partner James Nemorin as he pleaded for his life.

On Tuesday, jurors returned a sentence of death to Wilson.

Maybe they heard the story of Roger Huerta, whose past certainly didn’t dictate his future.

From the time of his birth in Los Angeles on May 20, 1983, Huerta was seemingly marked to be a casualty of one form or another. Whether he was going to get shot in the streets, get addicted to the drugs that destroyed his father’s chance at a better life, or put in jail for running with a gang, there was no light at the end of the tunnel for him. It was just a matter of when his environment would catch up with him.

Was it going to be in Mexico, where he was forced to sell rosaries and gum on the street to survive? Would it be in El Salvador, where he lived briefly with family during the country’s Civil War? Or would it be in Texas, where he saw his father descend into a downward spiral of drugs that left Huerta homeless, in a gang and on his own before he even hit his teenage years?

Take any of the above situations, and the result will almost always be the same. But as bizarre as it sounds, Huerta had hope that eventually things would get better. Yet even hoping drained him.

“I always had hope, but there were times when I was tired,” he admitted. “It’s never been easy for me. Everything has been work, work, work, and I’ve been tired. Sometimes I say, yeah, I’m 23 years old, but I feel like I’m 35, almost 40 years old. I feel like I’ve seen it all. People say I haven’t, but I’m like, no I have seen it all. The only thing I haven’t experienced is having a baby or doing drugs. But seeing my own dad doing drugs in front of me, seeing him going down, and when I lived in that gang house, it was a drug house basically, it was filthy, and man…”

His voice trails off. He’s far removed from those days, but when his past is a lightning rod for reporters and other members of the media, everything comes rushing back.

“Sometimes, when they start going into details it does get tough,” said Huerta, almost with a resigned chuckle. “I start remembering those times and how it sucked.”

He pauses, then continues.

“If God would have said, ‘Roger, it’s your time,’ I would have gladly said, ‘okay, that’s fine.’”

It was a half-hearted plea from Huerta, who persevered because even at that age, he had a feeling there was something better out there, something to take him away from the streets. At 15, he would meet Bryan Ashford, a wrestling coach at Austin, Texas’ Crockett High School, and Jo Ramirez, an English teacher at the school, and he had finally found his ticket out.

Ashford taught Huerta wrestling and the youngster was a quick study. Ramirez taught him the unconditional love that is shared between a child and a parent, and became, as he describes her, “his guardian angel.” She would adopt him after he graduated high school, just before he would enroll in Minnesota’s Augsburg College, where he received a scholarship to wrestle.

He made it.

And though he obviously had a gift for wrestling, it wasn’t anything that came easy. Like everything, he succeeded because he wanted it more and was willing to work harder than everyone else. Huerta refers to the 1997 science-fiction film Gattaca, and a scene where Ethan Hawke’s character Vincent beats his brother Anton in a swimming race despite being genetically inferior. Anton (played by Loren Dean) is incredulous and wonders how his brother was able to beat him. Vincent responds, “You want to know how I did it? This is how I did it, Anton -- I never saved anything for the swim back.”

Huerta smiles.

“I basically go by that.”

If you fade to black and roll the credits now, with Huerta just two credits short of his degree in Business Management, you can call this the happiest of endings. But Huerta isn’t finished yet; not by a longshot.

Exposed to mixed martial arts by an Augsburg teammate, Huerta got hooked on the sport and began fighting as an amateur in 2003. By later that year, he joined up with former UFC middleweight champion Dave Menne, and then entered the pro ranks with a first round TKO of Shane Lafavor. A new journey had begun for him.

Over the next three years, Huerta tore through the Midwest scene, losing only once (to Ryan Schultz in 2004), with one draw (with UFC vet Joe Jordan), one no contest (against current UFC star Melvin Guillard), and wins over quality foes like Naoyuki Kotani and Matt Wiman. He also established a reputation as a talented, exciting, and well-rounded fighter with cardio for days.

“I just usually try to set the pace for every fight,” said Huerta. “I always try to fight my fight, and usually the fighters that I do fight end up doing that. It’s always a good, fast pace, and the guys have to have good endurance or else the fight’s over. Honestly, it takes a lot of heart. You’ve got to be real determined, and honestly, my childhood, my past history, everything I’ve done and anything I do is with a lot of heart. I never quit, and I’m always giving it whatever I’ve got at that time. I think I’m one of the few fighters that will fight until…whenever.”

With that attitude and his success, the call soon came from the UFC and on September 23, 2006, he was scheduled to make his Octagon debut against Jason Dent. His dream was finally becoming a reality, but with the jump to the big leagues also came added attention, especially from a Southern California media that longed for a Hispanic UFC fighter who actually spoke Spanish. Huerta, who hadn’t made a big deal – or any deal at all for that matter – about his past, decided it was time to tell his story.

“I always wanted to blend in and I never wanted special attention,” said Huerta. “I graduated high school, which was a huge accomplishment for me; getting into college was another big accomplishment, and now that I’m about to graduate from school, and having done all the fighting, I said I should not be ashamed of where I came from. I am the person I am today because of that, and basically I wasn’t ashamed about it anymore.”

The fans and the media loved him for it. Now, he wasn’t just a fighter; he was a beacon of hope for kids in similar situations who may have felt that there was no way out.

“This is how I live my life,” said Huerta. “I’m no better than anybody else. I’m no better than anybody who ever worked at McDonald’s, I’ve been there, I’ve done that – I used to sell gum and rosaries in Mexico. The only thing that’s changed is that my job is different now – I train and fight.”

And though he readily accepts the mantle as a role model, he makes it clear that he isn’t Saint Roger, scepter in hand as he blesses those who fall at his feet. He’s human, he has the same struggles everyone else does, and he doesn’t want to be put on a pedestal.

“I have a lot of faith in God,” he explains. “I put myself in the situation that I’m here, and this is nothing compared to people that are in Africa or our troops in Iraq. Those people have it worse, so this is nothing if those guys can go through that. Even through the life that I had, I tell myself that I’ve had it easier compared to others. I’ve had opportunities that I can’t explain. I believe that God puts things out there for us to overcome and grasp. The life I have right now is luxury compared to what other people, like those in the Holocaust, went through.”

The best part of this story? This kid is for real - in the Octagon and outside of it - and the sport couldn’t have a better spokesman as it continues to break through to the mainstream. Sure, he admits, he still has girl problems, but who at 23 doesn’t? Where it counts, Huerta has survived a harrowing past, and made it here virtually unscathed. And unlike others, he won’t use his past as a crutch for future bad behavior.

“I have faith in God and faith that this world can be a good place,” he said. “I see myself in the future having a family, raising my kids, and adopting. The things that I went through hurt me a lot. I was hurt physically and emotionally. Why would I want to give that pain to someone else? For me, I went through a lot, and I know a lot of people go through hard times, and there was a long time when I wouldn’t talk about any of this. All I wanted to do was blend in.”

But when you fight in front of more than 17,000 fans in your UFC debut at the Arrowhead Pond, blending in isn’t an option anymore. Roger Huerta, who returns to the Octagon this Saturday against John Halverson, realizes that now.

“Nothing hit me until I walked through those curtains,” said Huerta. “I looked at Dave (Menne)’s eyes and (manager) Monte (Cox)’s eyes and I was like ‘wow, I finally made it.’ Then it hit me that I’m not fighting for me anymore. I’m fighting for everyone. For anyone that wants hope, that’s who I’m fighting for.”

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