Here's a cool article from the Orange County Register on 27-year-old local Nam Phan, the son of Vietnamese refugees, who is a competitor -- and kicking butt -- on the current season of Spike TV's mixed martial arts reality television show The Ultimate Fighter: The nerdy, nice MMA star fights in O.C..
On The Ultimate Fighter, 28 unknown MMA hopefuls are whittled down to two finalists by season's end. They'll fight December 4 in Las Vegas for a six-figure, multi-fight contract with the Ultimate Fighting Championship.
His dad studied martial arts.
His older brothers studied martial arts.
So naturally Phan, 27, studied martial arts. In fact, when asked what he wanted to be at age 8, he wrote one word on his construction paper: fighter.
Like Bruce Lee, Jet Li, Jackie Chan – the only Asians he saw on TV.
He grew up in Westminster, the son of refugee parents who escaped Vietnam by boat in 1978.
"In this town, there were a lot of gangsters," Phan says. "People close to me were shot. In the chest. In the face. They were in the wrong place at the wrong time."
Not Phan. He was too busy practicing the Vietnamese martial art of Quyen Dao – up to four hours a day. And wrestling on the high school team.
By his junior year at Rancho Alamitos High School, he had his black belt. And his first professional MMA fight.
I haven't actually watched the show, but I'm told that Nam has made it to the semi-finals and is one of the favorites to win. He sounds like a cool guy, and I love the fact that he's following his dream and has specifically said that he wants to be a positive role model for Asian Americans. for more on Nam Phan, go to The Ultimate Fighter website here.