Negative influences: Anthony Birchak recalls arrest, how wrestling saved his life

Anthony Birchak has already accomplished a lot in life, even at a relatively young age of 30-years-old. His list of accomplishments include signing to the UFC two years ago, and recently opening up his own training facility, 10th Planet Jiu-Jitsu Tucson, as well as mixed martial arts system TOROTech MMA.

Throughout his childhood, Birchak never had the guidance of his father. He reached his list of accomplishments without him, as he passed away when Anthony was only four-years-old. Growing up without a parent was understandably one of the toughest things Birchak has had to do in life, but he ultimately managed.

“It’s hard man, it’s super hard,” Birchak told BloodyElbow.com’s The MMA Circus. “My heart bleeds for every little boy that doesn’t have a strong male figure in their life. And I try to be that for a lot of the kids I coach on my wrestling team and definitely at my gym. I try to be somebody a little boy can look up to. I had a lot of good coaches, and I had my uncle there. But at the end of the day, the number one face I wanted to see when I stepped off the wrestling mat was my dad.

“Only till I was about 25 was when I really had peace with it. Because I noticed for a long time any kind of movie with a dad-son dynamic, I would get really teared up and kind of well-up and get that choking feeling when you want to cry. And I noticed once I had my second son, Jett, everything just stopped. I was at peace because I had what I needed in my life now in a son. Although I didn’t have a father to show me how to be a man and be a dad, there were a lot of people that stepped up and helped out to mold me into the gentleman that I am today. I want to thank those guys. There’s a lot of good coaches, my uncle, Art Gonzalez, Rene Matus. And the only reason I said Art Gonzalez, first was because he’s my wrestling coach. But my uncle, Rene Matus, was with my dad all the time, so he probably knew me the best. My dad taught him a lot of lessons that he then passed on to me. My uncle, Victor Gonzalez, my brother, Victor Jr.

“So, it was painful, but now, more than anything, being a dad is my number one job. I’m not a UFC fighter, I’m a dad. And then I’m a husband, and then I’m a UFC fighter. I’m at peace now, it’s come full circle. I’m now a father and I’m definitely trying to give my sons an image of what to accomplish, even in the face of adversity.”

Birchak was surrounded by negative influences during his teenage years. Many of his high school friends unfortunately took the path of drugs and trouble, but he avoided that path as much as possible. He was an aspiring athlete — to be precise, wrestler, at the time — and knew if he wanted to go far in life, not just athletics, he couldn’t go down that path.

“It was (an) easy (decision) because I grew up in a town south of Tucson, and Tucson is pretty high crime,” he said. “For a lot of people that don’t know about Tucson, the Mexican mafia has a huge presence in it. That trickles down to the street kids and stuff like that. And even though I was in a small farm-town, we were a big drug hub from Nogales, Arizona to Tucson, because you had to stop in Sahuarita before you got to Tucson. So a lot of the kids were doing cocaine and smoking weed all the time, and of course just high school kids drinking underage and sh-t. I couldn’t do that, because I had weigh-ins, or I had a meet on Tuesday and a meet on Thursday and a tournament on …

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