From Jersey to Jupiter - Kurt Pellegrino’s Quest

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By Thomas Gerbasi

Kurt Pellegrino still has a place in his heart for Point Pleasant, New Jersey. It was where he grew up, where he made his bones as a high school wrestler, and where he acquired his love for fighting.

“Point Pleasant was probably the best place for a kid to grow up,” he recalls. “It was a wrestling town, 100%.”

To this day, Pellegrino can still go back to the old neighborhood and get recognized more than ten years after his exploits on the mat for Point Pleasant Boro High School, where he was a rock star in a singlet, a two-time State finalist in a state where that means a lot.

“I looked at the wall from the first day of walking into that school and I said I wanted to be a State champ, to be part of that tradition in that school. It wasn’t even really a big school. We were just a bunch of surfers that were actually pretty athletic and wrestled.”

Life was pretty simple then. Sure, Pellegrino was pushed hard by his father, who stressed that winning wasn’t everything, it was the only thing; but couple his success on the mat with the attention it garnered him outside of the gym, and the Jersey kid had few complaints. Of course, with such success in wrestling, Pellegrino was expected to carry on in college and keep his run going.

It didn’t work out that way though, and after a semester of college wrestling and little college studying, Pellegrino left school and got a ‘real’ job as a public works employee. Needless to say, this made him miserable, and after three years he began chasing his passion to compete again – not on the wrestling mat, but in the arena of mixed martial arts.

Pellegrino began studying Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu with Renzo Gracie Black Belt Ricardo Almeida and soon opened his own school in Jersey. Finally, he could make a living something he enjoyed, and fighting was the natural next step for him.

It wasn’t the next step expected by his family, who didn’t like the idea of Pellegrino getting punched in the face for a living.

“My mom and dad didn’t speak to me for two years when I started fighting,” he remembers. “My dad didn’t want me to do it because he knew I would take it serious and that I would quit my job. “My parents discouraged it and I wasn’t allowed to talk about it.”

He wasn’t about to stop though. Pellegrino made his debut in 2001 with a TKO win over Mac Danzig, and he felt like he was on his way to his ultimate dream of fighting in the UFC, even if his parents weren’t thrilled about it and would only show up at one of his fights in the area.

But while Pellegrino continued to train, continued to teach, and continued to win, by 2004, Almeida had had enough of professional fighting, and he retired at the top of his game following a win over Nate Marquardt for the King of Pancrase title and a decision victory over Ryo Chonan in PRIDE. And while the stories vary, the bottom line is that Pellegrino and Almeida split. And Pellegrino hit bottom.

“I was actually going to quit Jiu-Jitsu,” he remembered. “I just didn’t want to do it anymore. I had nowhere to go. I had a Jiu-Jitsu school, I loved Ricardo Almeida, I loved all them, and I was kicked off the team because I wanted to become a fighter. I was depressed, I completely quit, I almost bankrupted my school, but Rob Guarino from Team Rhino actually came one day and took over the payments and I signed the school over to him.”

Now Pellegrino had nothing. Or so he thought, as it was then that the only person who hadn’t abandoned him – his fiancée Melissa – stepped up.

“Why are you gonna quit on yourself?” she asked him. You’re so close. You’re a superstar in Point Pleasant and fighting in the Trump Taj. You’ve got three championship belts.”

“Finish your dream.”

“I have to move to ATT (American Top Team),” he responded. “To Florida.”

“I’ll go with you.”

“The moment she said that,” said Pellegrino of the woman who would become his wife, “I knew this was the girl for me.”

And just like that, in early 2005, they left New Jersey.

“We left in a car with no money,” he said. “I was getting paid $250, and for a month I wasn’t getting no money. My (future) wife was a financial analyst that was making good money, but she had to quit her job. Her mom and dad gave us money. No one supported me but Melissa, her family, and my cousin Ken.”

In Florida though, Pellegrino got a new lease on life and on his fighting career, which got a boost when he met a man he now calls his brother, Hermes Franca.

“I started training at ATT, met Hermes, and I found another brother,” said Pellegrino. “Hermes is probably one of the nicest guys I’ve ever met in my life, and I believe that Hermes is fighting just to show me that ‘look, I can still fight, and I’m gonna still help you.’ I believe that if they said the 155 pound weight class was gonna be gone after that fight (between Franca and Sean Sherk), Hermes would have stepped aside and let me fight. That’s the kind of stand-up guy Hermes is. He would have given his shot up, even if it was the last time ever for a 155-pound fight. That’s the type of person Hermes Franca is to me.”

When Franca left American Top Team, Pellegrino followed, and the two now represent Team Armory in Jupiter, Florida. Meanwhile, Pellegrino’s fight career continued to blossom, and by July of 2006, he had fought his way into a UFC fight against Drew Fickett at 170 pounds. And while Pellegrino fought well in the first two rounds, in the final frame Fickett turned the tables and submitted him with a rear naked choke.

Pellegrino rebounded in his next UFC bout two fights later, submitting Junior Assuncao with a rear naked choke at UFC 64, and repeated the feat with an Achilles lock submission over Nate Mohr in April that not only made the Spike TV broadcast, it earned Pellegrino submission of the night honors. It should be all roses for Pellegrino right now, with his marriage to Melissa, a new house in Jupiter, and the arrival of a baby girl, Priscilla. But not all his loose ends have been tied up.

“My older brother hasn’t spoken to me for three years, didn’t come to my wedding, didn’t come to my daughter’s christening,” said Pellegrino. “He said I would never make it, and that I was a fool. He wrote me a gigantic e-mail saying that even when I beat Junior Assuncao that you’ll never fight in the UFC until I see you on TV.”

Pellegrino never wrote back, not mourning the lost relationship of his biological brother, but celebrating the brother-like relationships he does have with his cousin Ken and Franca. So when Franca tested positive for the steroid drostanolone following his decision loss to Sherk (who tested positive for nandrolone) at UFC 73 in July, Pellegrino hurt for his teammate.

“Fighters live their own lives, and what Hermes did, he did because he thought it was what he had to do so he could fight,” said Pellegrino. “Hermes is definitely a brother in my eyes, and to be honest, he keeps me out of a lot of stuff. I didn’t even really know that that was going on. I didn’t even know it was going on on the internet until he called me up to go to his house, and we talked and he told me what was going on. He didn’t even want to tell me, but whatever reasons Hermes did it for, I support him and his honesty for why he did it.”

And he is also looking for payback by getting the UFC Lightweight Championship belt.

“If I was wrestling, I’d always want someone to avenge me,” he explains. “If I lost in fighting, I’d want Hermes to avenge me. Hermes gave me my Black Belt and there’s a certain moment in someone’s life when they get to do things right and I feel like my master got slain, and now I’m on a quest, and I’ve got to run through the jungle and fight some people like a Samurai, like a Vision Quest. I’m on my Vision Quest, my Samurai hunt, to avenge Hermes, who’s like an older brother to me, who gave me this thing I wanted most in this world – to be a Black Belt in Jiu-Jitsu. Now it’s my turn.”

First, Pellegrino has to get by his toughest and most accomplished foe to date, Joe Stevenson, at UFC 74 on August 25th. It’s a crossroads fight for both, with Stevenson perhaps a win away from a title shot, and Pellegrino trying to prove that he belongs in the upper reaches of one of the sport’s most competitive weight classes. It should definitely be a good one for the fans watching, but for the fighters, it means so much more.

“This is the fight of my life,” said Pellegrino. “He is the best fighter I have ever fought at 155 and he’s a part of my quest. But I believe that I’m Joe Stevenson’s warm-up for his title fight. Joe Stevenson’s next fight is for the title, but they gave a kid from Point Pleasant a shot to go against him. If I beat Joe Stevenson, I’m fighting for the title. Joe Stevenson’s the number one ranked guy in the UFC, and I believe he deserves a title shot, but he has to come through me. I know Joe is a great kid, a family guy, and so am I, and I wish him the best of luck, but no matter who wins this fight, the winner should be going for the championship belt, in my eyes. Who else is there that can beat Joe Stevenson? Who else is there that can beat me? I don’t believe there’s anyone in the weight class, so I’m looking forward to fighting Joe and seeing what I’m made out of.”

And on paper, this one could be hard to call, with Stevenson obviously holding the edge in experience, the wrestling and grappling games too close to call, and standup probably a stalemate due to the fact that we haven’t seen much from either fighter. Pellegrino agrees.

“I expect Joe to come at me the way he always does, maybe throw a new nut and bolt in here and there if it needs to be tightened, but I think the fight brings a lot of excitement because we’re both good wrestlers, both good jiu-jitsu guys, and nobody really knows if I’m good on my feet and no one really knows if Joe’s good on his feet,” he said. “This has the potential, in my eyes, to be a great fight, and who knows what he’s gonna come in there for. A lot of people are saying ‘take him down’, and I’m sure a lot of people are telling Joe to take me down as well. I think if either one of us gets on top of the other, I think it will be lights out for the other person, unless I’m more superior on my back, or he is.”

So in a fight like this, matching combatants with similar styles and plenty to lose, it usually will come down to whose mental game is stronger. Stevenson has shown he can perform under fire. Pellegrino is entering the Octagon on August 25th in a role he isn’t too comfortable with – as that of an underdog.

“I went around my whole life and told people who I was wrestling and they would laugh and say ‘you’re gonna pin him,’ or ‘you’re gonna win easily,’” he remembers. “I started fighting and I’d tell them who I’m fighting and they laughed. They even laughed when I said I was gonna fight Drew Fickett. But when I tell people that I’m fighting Joe Stevenson, they all look at me, grin, and say ‘oh my God, how do you think you’re gonna do?’ This is the first time in my life that I’m an underdog, and I don’t know how to deal with it. It’s actually driving me crazy because I’ve never been the underdog in anything I’ve ever done in my entire life. I was always supposed to win and people in my school would say I was cocky because I’d say I was gonna be a State champ, and I was never cocky, it was just that I believed in myself so much. Ask (wrestling legend) Dan Gable if he was gonna win a Gold medal – of course he’s gonna say yeah. You have to believe in yourself. But this is the first time I actually say to myself, I can’t believe that people think I’m gonna lose.”

Regardless of what happens on August 25th, it’s obvious that Pellegrino has already won in life. The 28-year old (who has been chronicling his life for a book) has achieved a sense of peace in a place he describes as “exactly like Point Pleasant but a little ritzier.” But even though he admits that his time in the UFC has “completely revamped my whole life,” complete with a house, a family, and two cars – that he can drive, not live in like he did in the lean times – there’s still that little voice inside that pushes him, that wants to prove the doubters wrong. And that’s what truly drives him

“Getting this belt means more to me than anything that I have going on, next to my wife and daughter,” he said. “I don’t care about anything. I wake up in the morning and I say ‘I have to win. I have to beat Joe Stevenson.’ I love Joe and I hope he doesn’t read this and go ‘I’m gonna punch Kurt in the face a little harder.’ Joe Stevenson is a great guy, he has a beautiful wife, beautiful children, and he’s an awesome person. This has nothing to do against Joe. But my back is against the wall. I was told I would never be here. I was thrown out of my school. I had nothing. If you ever meet me, the first thing I do is smile and shake your hand. And when I turn away I never call you a bad name. But at one time in my life, I hated everyone and didn’t speak to no one. And getting this belt will prove to everyone who said I can’t, that I could do it. I’m on a quest that isn’t gonna stop until I have that belt around my waist and I can tell everyone ‘I told you so.’”

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