STEADY HANDS
Local MMA fighter shows softer side ouside the cage
Dawond Pickney may have started his mixed martial arts career late in life, but the 39-year-old fighter has made a name for himself, going 15-10 in his professional career.
Pickney got involved in fighting as a child, learning to box from his father, Harold, who was a professional boxer.
“I really learned how to box a little bit when I was young,” Dawond said. “I really never got into it. I just knew how to do the basics.”
In 2008, Pickney decided to try his luck in a cage match at an amateur MMA competition held at the Hot Springs Convention Center.
“I just entered, and I won,” Pickney said. “I entered again; you just walk up and sign your name, and they put you in there. I just got in there and won two times, and I’ve been in it ever since.”
However, it still took Pickney some time to get serious about fighting.
“The first time I got in a cage was 2008, 10 years ago,” he said. “But I’ve been really dedicated since 2010. I dedicated to my training five days, six days a week in 2010.”
Although he has won more fights than he has lost, Pickney admits a lot goes through his mind as he prepares for his fights.
“There is so much stuff,” he said. “Fear. Fear of losing. You’ve trained so hard, and you’ve put in so many hours. … Every day, I’m going to train four to five hours. Who wants to put all that work in and then lose?
“You’ve got to have confidence in yourself at the same time. When the fear and doubt comes in your head, you’ve got to say, ‘Get out of my head. I’m going to whup this guy.’ If you don’t have confidence in yourself, you’re going down. I lie to myself every day. I say, ‘I’m going to punch this dude. I’m knocking him out. I’m taking him down.’ … Every day when I wake up, I tell myself that he’s going down. It’s all mental.”
Pickney trains four to five hours every day, although his routine changes a bit when he is preparing for a fight, like Shamrock 307, which will be held in St. Louis Saturday.
“When I’ve got a fight coming up, I train seven days a week,” he admitted. “I push my body to the limit, so I can get in there and break my opponent. I want to take his will to fight me. I don’t like to be a hard person, an evil person, but when I’m in there to fight, he’s in there to hurt me. I’m not in there to be nice.”
Pickney does more than just fight. He trains other fighters, from his own chil-
dren to other budding professional fighters, through Off the Chain MMA here in Hot Springs. About seven professional and eight amateur fighters currently train at the gym.
“I’ve got kids,” he said as to why he started training others. “Kids are where it’s at. I was in trouble coming up; my son had trouble coming up. My son, when he first got in it, he went to a boys school, not for stealing or anything, but for fighting. He would fight a lot at school; he used to fight two or three times a week.
“When he got out, I got him, got custody, and I put him in this. When I put him in this, he quit getting in trouble. He went from fighting in school to fighting in the ring and fighting in the cage, and I’m traveling with him, and he quit getting in trouble.” Pickney also trains his two daughters.
“We’ve got other little kids in here, and I like to work with them,” he said. “At one point in time, we had a program set up for kids that as long as your grades were good, you could come in here and train for free. You had to bring in your report card and show it, but then they quit showing up. We still work with kids. Since the (Boys & Girls Club of Hot Springs) closed, they’ve got no where else to go.”
Pickney said his children enjoy what he does, both as a fighter and as their coach.
“My kids love it,” he said. “They get down more than grown people. I have to bring my daughter in here sometimes so she can show people how to do stuff, and she’s only six. She’s real good, but she’s been doing it since she was a baby. When she was a baby, I put the teddy bear in there, and she (would fight it).
“I never forced it on her. She wants to train. If I had to force it, I wouldn’t do it. She’ll say, ‘I want to train; when are y’all training?’ If I had to force her, I’d say, ‘Don’t do it.’ She might want to do something else — dance, play violin — but she wants to fight.”
The training goes beyond what is done in the ring or cage. Pickney, along with Bobby Ray Edmonds, who helps sponsor the gym, wants the fighters to be better people.
“We want to give back,” Pickney said. “Us giving back gives everybody character. There are people out here that are less fortunate. It’s not like we’ve got a whole bunch. We went to this one lady; she had lost everything, her trailer and everything. Everything burned down. We went out there and had to redo it because she lost everything. The whole community got together, and you see her now, she’s back to living a normal life.”
Diana Hampo, a local sales executive, helps find projects for those who train at the gym.
“She’s always coming up with some type of project,” Pickney said. “One thing about her, she brings out the good in us. … She does the most important thing; we just go out there with the muscle. She’s got a good heart.”
Pickney said the projects are mandatory for the fighters. “It’s mandatory because one day it might be your family,” he explained. “Everybody is not fortunate to have good health, or something bad happens all of a sudden.”
Pickney will headline the 14-fight card on Saturday against Garrett Gross (11-6) at Ameristar Casino. The event will mark the 20th anniversary for the Shamrock FC promotion.