​Grain Valley grad finds his calling with mixed martial arts

by Michael Smith, Grain Valley News


At the time, Ralph Hernandez III felt like there was a void in his life.

He graduated from Grain Valley in 2017, and his 13-year wrestling career came to an end. When he was with the Grain Valley wrestling team, he qualified for the Missouri State High School Wrestling Championships as a junior and a senior and finished in sixth and second place, respectively, in his weight class.

He had been involved with wrestling for the majority of his life. After he graduated, he was pondering what he would do next.

“When he was done with wrestling, it left a void for a few months,” Hernandez said. “I was thinking, ‘What do I do now?’ My whole life, I was training for something. I didn’t have anything for a little while.’”

That’s when his cousin and former mixed-martial arts fighter Rudy Bears invited Hernandez to train in jiu-jitsu.  That eventually lead to Hernandez finding his place in the local MMA world as a professional fighter.

The 2017 Grain Valley grad will make his professional debut in the Shamrock Fighting Championship promotion, which is based in St. Louis, this Saturday at Ameristar Casino in Kansas City as he will take on Christian Camp in the lightweight division.

It was a long journey for Hernandez to get to this point. His father, Ralph Hernandez II, had him wrestle with the Grain Valley youth wrestling team when he was just five years old. He also trained in karate and boxing in his youth years.

Fighting was in his blood. Bears, his cousin, fought professional for multiple years and ended his career in the biggest MMA promotion in the world, the Ultimate Fight Championships. Ralph Hernandez II competed in local Toughman competitions in the 1990s.

Hernandez wanted to follow in their footsteps.

“He was a big influence,” Hernandez said of Bears. “He had an imprint on me as a kid when I watched him fight in elementary school.”

After taking a few months off following his high school graduation, Hernandez started training at Bears’ gym when he was 19. He eventually got his first amateur MMA fight on June 16, 2018 against Michael Hughes.

Hughes’ original opponent had to drop out due to an injury and needed an opponent with just three days left before the fight was scheduled. Hernandez decided to come in as the replacement and fight Hughes. At the time, Hernandez was 175 pounds and he had to cut 20 pounds in just three days to be able to compete in the lightweight weight class.

“I usually stick to the basics like saunas and Epsom salt baths,” Hernandez said of his method to lose a lot of weight in a short period of time. “At first, we thought I could go a kick boxing match or grappling match. We decided on mixed martial arts. We figured if we are going to do it at any time, it would be right now.

It worked out pretty well. It was three days notice. I didn’t really have time to be nervous. I only had enough time to make weight.”

He won the fight by unanimous decision after a trio of 3-minute rounds. Hernandez said he mainly depended on his skills as a wrestler during that bout.

“I was pretty confident in my skills,” Hernandez said. “It was a classic striker vs. wrestler matchup. It I got a lot better in that nine minutes. The first fight is always nerve wracking because amateur debut fights do not go the distance. Because everyone is so new and everything is so chaotic.

“My Grain Valley wrestling career almost solely won me that fight. I completely emptied the gas tank to win that fight. That was a feather in the cap knowing that I could push through.”

He did just that, but he was limping for weeks after, which is just part of being a fighter.

“He threw a lot of leg kicks,” Hernandez said. “He chewed my leg apart.”

The Grain Valley grad went on to have 10 amateur fights and he had a 7-3 record. His final amateur fight was a loss to David Macias by unanimous decision on Sept. 23, 2023.

“I am super happy with how my amateur career went,” Hernandez said. “My strategy was to take the hardest fight and taking fights that are pushing me and are giving me the most experience possible. We made sure I faced really good strikers and some better wrestlers than myself. We didn’t want to just take fights that we knew we could win.

“We wanted to do that, so when I went pro, it wouldn’t be a huge jump.”

Hernandez had a long break after his last amateur fight before he took his first professional boxing match.

He faced Dylan Reischman and won by unanimous decision. Hernandez used that boxing match to keep himself in shape as he was trying to find an opponent for his first professional fight.

“I was having a hard time finding a fight,” Hernandez said. “When I was ready to get a fight and make the leap, it was hard to get a fight for multiple reasons like people pulling out due to injuries or lame excuses. The boxing match was a good way to knock off the ring rust.”

Since then, Hernandez has been training for his professional debut 5-6 days per week for the past eight weeks. He said his training gets more intense the closer it gets to Saturday.

He hopes his fight against Camp will be the start of a long and successful MMA career. His goal is to make a living doing it and hopes to one day be a part of a large promotion like the UFC.

“Anything that is worth doing, it worth overdoing,” Hernandez said. “I never gone into anything in my life, without the goal of being the best. There are professional aspirations that I have, and I want to replace my income with fighting.

“I want to family one day and I want to be able to say I was able to provide through my craft of martial arts.

The goal is to make it to the biggest stage and win championships.”
 

Grain Valley graduate Ralph Hernandez, top, gets ready to land a punch on his opponent from the top position. Photos courtesy of Shamrock Fighting Championships

Ralph Hernandez flexes after a win in an amateur mixed martial arts fight. Photos courtesy of Shamrock Fighting Championships