Jim Hettes is a 22-year-old who looks like he's 16, a professional who starts his day with a bowl of Fruity Pebbles. A 140-pound man who doesn't even bother to tell anyone what he really does for a living.
He has learned a lot these last few years. One thing he has picked up is, it's not worth trying to get anyone to look past what seems obvious.
"I tell them I'm self-employed," Hettes said. "I don't tell them I'm an MMA fighter.
"Usually, when you tell them you're an MMA fighter, they look at you a little different. Some people understand it. Some people think you're just a thug or something. Half the people think I'm B.S.-ing them anyway."
Actually, far from it.
The Swoyersville native is unbeaten in seven pro fights, and he's on the card for Cage Fight 2, where he'll face central Pennsylvania's Justin Haas (5-1) on Friday, Nov. 27, at the Lackawanna College Student Union.
Hettes is the only local pro fighter on the card, and it's not like he is just scraping by as a pro. There are some who believe he may be the best fighter at his weight in Pennsylvania. Jeff Reese, founder of the Gracie NEPA Gym where Hettes puts in many of his nearly eight hours of workouts per day, said Hettes has all the tools and drive to become a "rock star" in mixed martial arts.
"He's built for this," said Tyler Calvey, a trainer at the Gracie gym and amateur fighter himself. "Some people are built to be doctors or lawyers. He was built to be a fighter.
"It's just the work he does. So much work. But I think it's God-given, too."
Everyone agrees he's different. Interestingly though, he came from just about the same place every other fighter on the Cage Fight 2 card came from.
He was a high school athlete, wrestling and lining up at wide receiver on Friday nights during his days at Wyoming Valley West High School. He started to learn jiu jitsu when he was 16, thinking it could be a fun hobby. But the further he got from his high school playing days, the more he missed the competition the guy across the mat or on the other side of the line of scrimmage provided.
The more he watched professional mixed martial artists fight on TV, the more he noticed the moves he had been working to perfect were the same ones the stars were using.
Plus, he was a self-professed "fight nerd." By his own estimation, he spent too many hours watching cheesy kung fu movies - he gives The Drunken Master with Jackie Chan critical acclaim - and playing the Street Fighter video game. But in those seemingly wasted hours, he developed a love for what he was seeing.
"Watching kung fu flicks, you'd see the little guy beating up 25 people," Hettes said. "After a little while, you start thinking, 'Yeah, I'd like to try that.'
"I look real young. I've always been real small. Martial arts always seemed like the right way to go."
What has made Hettes a prospect in MMA is that he has figured out what most professional athletes do: Ninety nine percent of his sport is not as exciting as most people think. That part of it is the work that goes into it. The hours on the mat. The repetition of the basics. The brutal grappling in the octagon when the lights and the cameras aren't on. The month he spent training at the Greg Jackson Camp in New Mexico, where he worked fist-to-fist with MMA stars like Donald "Cowboy" Cerrone and Leonard "Bad Boy" Garcia.
The one percent that is exciting, that people actually get to see, is what has made Hettes fights a must-see.
His only loss came last year as an amateur in the Dominican Republic, at a showcase for the best amateur talent.
It was the only loss of his career. And, he says, the greatest motivator he'll ever have.
"Losing was horrible. That's what motivated me to keep training," Hettes said. "When you win, it's the greatest feeling you'll ever have. When you lose, it's the (worst) feeling you'll ever have."
At first, Hettes' mother didn't like the idea of her son being a fighter. After watching footage of his first fight and noticing that he had been rolled onto his back on the mat, she walked out of the room, thinking he had lost.
"I had to get her back in there," he laughed, "to show her I actually won."
Typically, he does.
When he stands across from Haas on Black Friday, it will be just another step in Jim Hettes' career, another chance for a win, another opportunity to get wherever it is this life takes him.
It can lead him, perhaps, as far as he wants to go.
Contact the writer: dcollins@timesshamrock.com
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