Phuket Prospect: Colton Kielbasa on Marine Corps, wrestling background & pro debut in Amsterdam

Summary

Colton Kielbasa is a Marine Corps wrestler turned mixed martial artist.

Transcript (youtube_captions)

download the allstar app make your picks for UFC fights challenge your friends level up and win prizes Link in description get it now hey what's going on guys col kilbas here uh coming from puket Thailand here at uh Southside MMA I'm from Chicago originally but now I live here fulltime um from like a blue coll neighborhood all police all firemen in my neighborhood Irish Catholic neighborhood I'm not Irish but Irish Catholic neighborhood uh grew up like drinking fighting throwing snowballs at cars having fun like going out with the boys hanging out I grew up wrestling and then wrestled in high school and then wrestled in the Marine Corps as well yeah so I I wrestled in sixth grade and then I started out and actually I I had some injuries starting out right I I broke my collar not my collar bone my shoulder blade like up here when I was young and that took me out for a season and then my eighth grade year before high school going into high school I broke a vertebrae in my back and then actually like was told like hey you can't wrestle you're not going to be wrestling for 6 8 months or something and I was like [ __ ] that like I want to wrestle so I pushed through like took maybe one or two months off came back at the end of the season and then started kept wrestling again trying trying to make State and then going into High School I played football as well going into high school and then football was like my first love like I love football especially like [ __ ] hard contact sport like I love just [ __ ] cracking dudes it I loved it and then obviously I'm not the tallest person so not the biggest so I was like all right I got to stick to wrestling cuz that's what my bread and butter and that's what I love to do um yeah so throughout High School um I was a decent wrestler I definitely wasn't the best but I worked man like I love I'm not afraid of hard work and so I worked my [ __ ] ass off in high school going into wrestling and then my senior year uh made State and everything like almost place in state in in Illinois from Chicago it's a very good uh very good state to wrestle in and then after that I was like okay I wanted to keep wrestling I knew if I went to college I would have just been a booze head I would have [ __ ] drank all the time and probably not wrestled so much right so I was like okay I wanted to keep wrestling but I didn't really know how and then one of my coaches on a wrestling team he wrestled in the Marine Corps as well and so he said like hey you know you could wrestle in the military and I was like [ __ ] like sick this done deal I'm going to the Marines and then once I made it to the Marines it was all right like you go through boot camp and then you go through like your training for your job and then you go to your initial like Duty station and then once I got to my duty station it was all like I got to figure out how do I get onto this wrestling team cuz at the time there was the uh there was the Marine Corps wrestling team now it's discontinued but they used to have the Marine Corps wrestling team and then yeah so it was all about figuring out how to get on there and then I went I drove from Virginia to North Carolina like 4-Hour drive to wrestle in a tournament and I won the tournament and then the team invited me to come join the team and then and you just got to get approval from your unit and then from there I joined the team for a short period and then I went back to my unit and that's when I started training MMA and Jiu-Jitsu types things like so being a wrestler [ __ ] boot Camp's easy that [ __ ] like it's it's a cakewalk if you're a wrestler especially from a good program good like good school good coaches like you're used to getting yelled at you're used to [ __ ] running upstairs for hours sprawling for an hour if you [ __ ] like you're used to that [ __ ] so Camp was very easy the Marine Corps was easy but I I really enjoyed it and you learn a lot like not just like some people say like oh you get out of the military you don't you don't have any skills but like if you apply yourself in the military you get out with a lot of skills that you can use in life and I use them now to coach like [ __ ] that I learned in the Marines I use for fighting to help me stay disciplined and and [ __ ] like that and as well as coaching right like in the Marine Corps you're you're taught how to teach teach and then I was taught how to teach and then I picked up roles and I had so then I was a leader and I was in charge so then I had to teach people how to teach right so that translates well to now if I help out with coaching or if I coach and stuff it it really helped translate to that aspect of my life now fighting coaching and living here in Thailand in Virginia is where I was station and in Virginia I went started going to an MMA gym there and I started training and most before I was on the Marine team I went there till I was like all right I want to figure out I wanted to stay in shape so I could keep wrestling and then when I came back from the wrestling team I went straight back to the MMA gym and I started training more Jiu-Jitsu and and a little bit very little striking and then I was like okay like I want to fight I I want to figure this out and try fighting I mean yeah having a wrest background is like huge you know like you see it all the time wrestlers transition to MMA and they're good at it right uh it was I don't want to say easy but like uh like being in shape for the sport MMA helped with the Marines and then vice versa being in shape for the Marines helped with training for MMA being in shape for MMA right like um when I was in Virginia right I had like a squad and I I was in charge of a bunch of guys and I led the pts right so basically the morning PT like 6:00 a.m. 5:30 some [ __ ] like that like I would be in charge of leading the pts and then I would delad it and it would basically almost be like an MMA session like I would teach these guys like wrestling and Jiu-Jitsu and and like [ __ ] like that and then so I would use that as well as what I know from uh like the MMA side and what you learn and you mix it you know you kind of go with what you got uh so like to rewind a little bit uh when I got out of high school I knew I was going into some rins but I kind of wanted to have my summer and like go out party I would visit like some friends in colleges and [ __ ] and like enjoy myself a little bit before I went to the Marines and then during that time I I coached as well so I started like helping out with one of the local high schools like coaching friends mostly friends that were years younger than me but I would help coaching there and uh yeah so that that like that coaching aspect definitely helped when you get to the Marines cuz if you can if you're in good shape if you know how to lead and like motivate people you're automatically like usually ahead of your peers in the Marines right and then like I said you you were taught how to teach how to coach in the Marines like they really focus on that and so I took that to coaching when I was at the MMA gym I helped coach the wrestling there and then when I came to Thailand like I was at Team Quest initially in Chang maai and then I was helped coach the wrestling there and then from there I went to Maro gym in Bangkok right and I was coaching there as well with like a lot of good Fighters and so you you get like coaching and fighting it it kind of goes hand in hand and some people are like I don't want to say afraid to coach and fight at the same time but like don't want to coach and fight at the same time because they kind of mixed and maybe one interrupts the other but I see it like differently you get like different perspectives when I was in Bangkok there was a time when for 6 months straight I was at a fight event every week for 6 months straight either I was coaching somebody I was in the corner or and or I was fighting or I was just going to watch a friend fight so like that makes it like easier to the more around you're around fight events the easier it is to when you go to fight and maybe those nerves aren't there have you seen like the backstage nerves from your good friend about to fight like that's [ __ ] to me that that I get more nervous when I watch my friend about to fight and I'm in their Corner versus when I fight the reason I got out of the military was because I wanted to be a full-time fighter right like I probably could have stayed in and did well in the Marines but I it was not impossible but very hard to fight while you're in the Marines one because of the time it takes to do your normal job and then also like technically we weren't allowed to fight like if we got injured fighting like we could get in trouble in the Marine Corps and then so I got out of the Marines and literally two weeks afterwards I was in Thailand like like straight away and those two weeks like I went home went back to my parents house and then I was training full-time so I immediately started training full-time like two three sessions a day uh yeah so I'm a wrestler right so wrestling in Jiu-Jitsu kind of I don't want to say come easy but like it's easier it's more natural for me to Grapple and stuff so Thailand was like the Striking Thailand's Muay right so the Striking aspect of fighting is in Thailand and uh some guy I followed like on Instagram and he came to my gym in Virginia Paul uh Paul bessich uh the reaper like he's been in Thailand a long time and I followed him on Instagram and I was like damn he's living in Thailand like he's a good Striker [ __ ] let's let's go to Thailand let's let's work on my striking uh Team Quest when I first yeah when I first came to Thailand I went straight to changai cuz Paul Paul was at CH at Team Quest Paul yeah he trained at Team Quest and that's who I followed on Instagram and so I was like [ __ ] go to Team Quest and I picked it there and then when I got there like met like really good people really good friends friends I still have to this day it's a good team too as well at the time and then yeah since I haven't looked back and I've been in Thailand since I was at Team Quest and then Co happened and then so Team Quest kind of shut down like no customers and everything so I was with uh me well actually Jack Jack was so it was me Jack uh Jack Ferguson and then Kristoff kers a be knuckle fighter we were kind of like the last three or four guys like at the gym you know and Jack went to Bangkok and went to marac and because he had will will wasen uh [ __ ] he from he's from Chile will was at another team Quest guy he was at marok right and so Jack went there with Will and then Jack was like Hey like they need a wrestling coach here and we need like good coaching like they have good T guys good team but they need a wrestling coach so I was like well [ __ ] this is a good opportunity so I went from Team Quest in changai and I moved to Bangkok and went to Maro and then shortly afterwards Chris came from Team Quest to marok right and then again me Jack and Chris were at Mar together it was I love marok like when it first came it was [ __ ] awesome it was uh me Jack Chris uh Peter was there Peter denzo uh we kind of brought him Peter along from Team Quest as well and then we had like the Filipinos right like Denise Jeremy Fritz Drex uh the Brazilians were there too we had Carlos uh Jonathan Pedro like we had a [ __ ] sick team and during Co we like there was a there's a gym and then next to the gym was like the fighter housing man it was [ __ ] awesome it was just like we called it the prison cuz there was like cages on the outside door and it it was a fun time like living right next to the gym in Bangkok during the middle of Co like all fighters at this house it was it was [ __ ] fun no fights were going on but we were training hard still but also enjoying Bangkok uh Mar was was awesome man like we had a we had a [ __ ] sick team like like I said like n Wonder Girl was there as well right and then uh we had pinong now the well what former world champion right he was like our kind of strength and conditioning coach head coach we had a sick boxing coach pory rokna uh DJ Jackson was there as well right so we had a very good team uh Dakota hope now he's in P right so like we had all these guys at this team and then it just didn't work out right like the people move along and life happens you know and so people move and then DJ DJ came here and then at that time so when DJ came here I was splitting my training between marok and MTA with like por rno the boxing coach cuz poro worked at and at MCA so I'll go to both and then it was like all right like I don't want to F we we didn't have too many guys on the team anymore you know so I was like I don't want to focus 100% on coaching I really want to focus on fighting and I was like well puket if you're an MMA fighter you got to be be in puket like the amount of bodies here the the level of MMA fighters in puket is probably the most concentrated level of high level MMA fighters in the world out outside of like Florida right like I would put Miami you got a lot of good teams here but puket I would put one or two like their neck and neck so that's what led me to come to puket like DJ moved here so and then n moved here as well and then yeah we kind of just went from there uh so when I went to when I initially went to marok I still hadn't made my Pro debut but I was coaching the wrestling and I was really like I was coaching there a lot and then and it was during Co so we were still working we're still like training hard every day and I worked a lot with my boxing coach porya and then I was like [ __ ] like I need to fight me and Chris we were like we need fights I I want to fight I want to make my Pro debut and I'm like all right how do how do we make that happen let's figure it out so Chris is German uh he went back to Germany for a little bit and then he's messaging me he's like yo bro like there's [ __ ] shows here there's you can get on shows here like come to Germany I'm like ah you know maybe not maybe So eventually I went to Germany and then we stayed we basically stayed in gyms for like a couple weeks and then we made our way to Denmark where we stayed on a junkyard in like almost the middle of winter and [ __ ] it was awesome it was like me and Chris training and then we were coaching as well at like a small local gym in Denmark me and Chris would train together and then we would work on the junkyard it was like a steel mill too so we worked on the steel mill and and then in between training we'd work and then train and then coach and then that's when I made my Pro debut on lfl in uh Amsterdam it was a flight that just popped up and I was like it was on like 2 weeks notice or like 10 days or some [ __ ] I'm like yeah let's go like I want to make my Pro debut like let's [ __ ] let's get it done and honestly it wasn't the best training like Chris is fights at uh 155 he and he's tall as [ __ ] right and I'm small and I fight at 125 and but we we made do and it was awesome like we went to lfl we went to Amsterdam I've never been there he's never been there and we [ __ ] we both fought on the show and he wasn't supposed to fight but then the main event pulled out and it was against uh Mero gron har who is like a Glory Kickboxing World Champ and Chris on like [ __ ] I don't know like two hours notice was like I'm fighting like [ __ ] it let's do it and so me and Chris fought on the show it was awesome Noel was there too no Noel fought on the same show as well yeah it was is a [ __ ] blast like living in a in a junkyard in Denmark with a very good friend traveling around fighting Europe in Europe punching people in the face for money it's [ __ ] it's fun man yeah so like being active that that's my short-term goal is this next fight and I worry about that and then I'll worry about everything else after that right like I like taking I don't want to like you kind of got to plan ahead right like you got to plan ahead to a certain extent but also you're only as good as your you're last fight right like I just fought in Bali 2 weeks ago and I won but 3 weeks before that I fought here in in uh sby at M2 MMA and I lost and I was like [ __ ] that I had a sour taste in my mouth so I wanted to get it right back and so I fought in Bali and then when I got back from Bali probably like the next day we're like hey we got this offer on Eternal you want it and I'm like ah step on the scale yeah [ __ ] it I'm not too heavy let's go let's take it uh yeah any body who supports me like especially like here Sammy Cassidy like really [ __ ] helps me out a lot like Eric Tas Tas striking really [ __ ] helps me out like like working with Campbell like all these guys really help me out like all my coaches and even friends back home like my my manager Vince is somebody I've known since I was [ __ ] 10 years old and now he's a manager and like so it's it's good to have people that you've trusted work with you now later on in your career right so just thank you everybody who [ __ ] supports me it's I love it [Music]