ENDGAME SENDING 5 MEMBERS TO RENO
Muay Thai fighters raring to go to kickboxing tournament after COVID downtime
Imagine the frustration of a kickboxer during shelter-inplace with there being no one to kick. With that having been said, five kickboxers from the Endgame Training Center in Vacaville are now very happy they will get to participate in a Point Kickboxing tournament on Sunday.
They will have to travel to Reno, Nev., where coronavirus restrictions are looser than in California, to do it. But the car ride there and back will be well worth it to adult kickboxers Jonathan Mack and Alex Solis and the Mirador sisters — Malika, 15, Jannah, 14, and Daniyah, 12.
All five have been approved to fight by their Muay Thai kickboxing coach Dino Pagtakhan, a
professional mixed martial arts fighter.
Endgame, located at 1130 E. Monte Vista Avenue, was founded about 20 months ago by Michael and Helen Dudics along with Darnell and Luana Mirador, parents of the three
girl fighters. Malika and Jannah serve as youth Muay Thai coaches at the center. All three girls are enrolled in Muay Thai and boxing at Endgame. Daniyah also participates in Brazilian jiujitsu. The center offers MMA and hula dancing as well.
After shutting down the center due to COVID in March, Endgame offered virtual classes. But the five who are headed to Reno kept in shape.
“Most of them do training outside by themselves, so they’re running, they’re hiking, doing whatever they can outdoors,” said Helen Dudics. “And then when we were able to open back up outdoors, they were some of the first ones in there. Now that we’re in the red zone, we’ve been able to reopen and give them specific times to go into the gym by themselves and get some work and exercises in.”
That has included a limited amount of sparring.
Solis, 28, who lives in Fairfield, spars with MMA fighter Jonathan Sparks as well as with the Mirador girls.
“They’re actually really good,” he said of the sisters. “They’re small, they don’t hit as hard, but they definitely will hit you to make it hurt.”
He first took Muay Thai lessons four years ago at a gym where Pagtakhan worked, but the gym closed shortly thereafter. About 13 months ago, Solis discovered that the coach was working at Endgame. Solis has been there ever since.
“I feed that feeling of purpose,” he said. “Every day I’m motivated to go to the gym and get better and it also works as a stress reliever. You had a long day and then you go to training and you just let it out and then that’s always a nice drive home, like you accomplished something good.”
He also is in the boxing and jiujitsu classes and trains five days a week, usually an hour and a half to two hours each session. This will be his first competition.
“I didn’t start Muay Thai in the mind that I was planning on competing or anything,” he said. “It kind of just happens. You train hard and then you enjoy it and then you want to challenge yourself and put all the training to the test. And then you learn from your fights what you did wrong, what you did right.”
Mack, 27, was born and raised in Vacaville, and he and his family are longtime friends of the Dudics. He, his father and brother are general contractors and helped get the Endgames facility ready to open.
“He actually helped build our gym,” said Helen. “The fruits of his labor are coming to fruition. He’s been there just about every single day (since the center opened).”
Mack had no previous martial arts training.
“Muay Thai is the most widely used discipline for kickboxing, so I figured I would choose the best discipline,” he said. “Kickboxing is just like boxing but you are able to kick and knee and elbow but there is no grappling.”
Mack also takes jiujitsu and boxing at the center. He hasn’t participated in a tournament since an MMA event in Napa in February, so he is looking forward to Reno.
Mack said what he enjoys most about the martial arts is “the peace that it gives me. What I try to obtain in life is a better version of myself today than I was yesterday. I think martial arts helps me keep that track and not lose sight of this personal journey that I’ve embarked on over the last couple of years.”
T he Mirador sisters started Muay Thai lessons at a local gym about three years ago.
“We left that place around 2018 in the summer and I started to take my kids to other places to train,” said Darnell Mirador. “I drove them to Sacramento, Concord, Stockton to get some Muay Thai training. And then they started doing boxing, some Taekwondo and then eventually jiujitsu. We went from there to opening our own gym. We consolidated all the coaching that my kids ever had.”
Malika is a junior at Buckingham Charter and Jannah is a sophomore there. Both are straight-A students. Daniyah attends Heritage Peak Charter.
The two older girls are in the same age group and weight class for competitive matches. But they never fight each other.
“I will never ever put my girls against each other,” said their dad. “It did hap
pen in a Taekwondo roundrobin tournament with four people. Two of the four were my girls. They beat their opponents and had to face each other. So they did rockpaper-scissors to decide the winner.”
There will be no rockpaper- scissors in Reno in the brutal sport of Muay Thai kickboxing. Known as the art of eight limbs because competitors use their hands, feet, knees and elbows, two of those limbs — the elbows — cannot be used in the youth version of the competitions. But everything else goes.
“Everything is fair game when you’re attacking or defending,” said Darnell. “You’re talking about shin kicks to the ribs, to the head, boxing, combinations.”
In the last couple of years, all three girls have competed in more than 15 Muay Thai bouts and 7- 8 in taekwondo. Malika and Jannah are also training to be Golden Gloves boxers.
“What is special about them ( his three girls) is that they mix all of that together,” said Darnell. “A lot
of their success is flurrying and blitzing their opponent… What sets them apart from other Muay Thai fighters is that constant bombardment of attack, combinations, techniques that have been honed in on the bag and with other people. You’re talking about hours and hours of training and sparring at the gym.”
Their sparring partners include Muy Thai champions Emma Lopez of Vacaville, Ramona Telmo and Jill Guido.
The Reno tournament will draw fighters from all over the nation for a total of 70 bouts. Due to COVID, there will be just two mats. Only immediate and extended family can spectate and only for the matches of their family member. The younger competitors will have just one bout in each weight class, while the adult division will be contested in brackets. There are three rounds, two minutes each.
To learn more about Endgame, visit www.endgametrainingcenter.com.
“...You train hard and then you enjoy it and then you want to challenge yourself and put all the training to the test. And then you learn from your fights what you did wrong, what you did right.”
— Alex Solis, kickboxer