Michael Pixley: From Fargo Champ To FPI Main Event
No Two Roads Are The Same But Michael Pixley’s Road To Fight Pass Invitational Headliner Is Unlike Any Other.
From WWE to army crawls to the Daisy Fresh crew to Fight Pass Invitational main event. Michael Pixley took the scenic route to submission grappling stardom.
Walking into his first wrestling practice at eight years old, Pixley was sold a bill of goods about the sport as a whole. Under the impression he was training to become the next star of the WWE, the Illinois-native was shocked to find himself in a world where pins and slams came with much more resistance than he and his uncle were used to seeing.
“My uncle got me into watching WWE and then I saw a flyer that said wrestling,” Pixley laughed. “I thought I was going to be doing RKOs and 619s and next thing I know I show up to practice and we’re doing Army crawls and duck walks and all that stuff and I was like, ‘man, this is not what I thought it was.’”
Feeling more confused than lied to about “real” wrestling, Pixley’s attention span price tag came pretty cheap because once his dad picked him up the next day with a new pair of Asics wrestling shoes, he was off to the races.
Pixley would all but forget about his WWE plans and go on to become one of the most head-turning high school wrestlers in the country, winning not one, but two, Fargo National titles.
While coaching wrestling after high school, he would find himself giving the gentle art another try after seeing a student looking like he’d met his match on the mat. This whole grappling thing didn’t appear to be the same as his effortless trip to Tyron Woodley’s gym only a couple years before.
“Two years after high school I was coaching a class and one of the kids in the class had a black eye and I was like, ‘hey, did you get in a fight?’ and he was like, ‘no, I’ve been going to Pedigo,” Pixley said. “It’s this gym full of world champions, you should go.’ He must’ve said it too close to my phone because I went home and all the Daisy Fresh videos popped up. I went the next day and pretty much got jumped in like a gang, but I started commuting like an hour-and-a-half every day. I was obsessed.”
Wrestler turned grappler, Michael Pixley not holding back ahead of his #fpi8 main event matchup with Nicky Rod! pic.twitter.com/sfOxo4kUzl
After making the commute for a couple months, Pixley was so drawn in that he dropped it all and moved to Mt. Vernon, Illinois, to be closer to the gym. In the first year of training, he would win a blue belt world championship.
Three years later, Pixley shot himself to superstardom by submitting Nicholas Meregali at the ADCC tournament.
Despite not taking home ADCC gold, Pixley put the whole world on notice with the same swagger as Nate Diaz. A lot of people may have been shocked, but nobody in Mt. Vernon, Illinois.
“I think it was a shock to everyone else who doesn’t know me and hasn’t trained with me,” Pixley said. “All my people knew I was capable of beating anybody in the world. Yeah, it was cool, all the publicity I’m getting and all the people following me and my following going up and all the big matches I’m getting offered, but I knew I was able to beat anybody in the world on any given day.”
Michael Pixley went from wanting to be the next Stone Cold Steve Austin to wanting to be the next John Smith to wanting to blaze his own trail, and the next step comes in the FIGHT PASS Invitational 8 main event against Nicky Rodriguez.
With similar styles clashing and a dog-like will to win in both competitors, FPI 8 is, without a doubt, cementing the next face of submission grappling.
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