Fight Path: UFC's Josh Barnett helped boost Victor Henry's confidence

When Victor Henry‘s fighting team broke apart several years ago, he got an unexpected phone call.

On the other end was Josh Barnett, the longtime heavyweight who had met Henry while hosting a seminar at his previous gym. Barnett heard Henry was now free, so he invited him to train. It was a validation moment for the Californian who felt like he was on unsteady footing.

And it allowed him to keep up his penchant for taking chances.

“I looked at it like he saw something in me, because he didn’t call everybody when the team fell apart, he called me,” Henry told MMAjunkie.com. “It was exactly what I needed.”

He has made the most of it. A win last month moved the bantamweight’s record to 6-0 with three victories in quick succession. Now Henry is looking for his next opportunity, which he hopes can move him further along in the MMA world that he joined in part to keep him from stumbling down a rough path in a rough neighborhood.

For a man who once wore a cowboy outfit and worked the rides at California’s Knott’s Berry Farm amusement park, MMA has been an extension of the Tae Kwon Do training he started as a teenager. Along the way, he has learned that any chance can be a good one, no matter whether he feels it’s exactly the right fight, and that nothing is certain, no matter how overmatched or undermatched a fighter seems to be.

In the meantime, he’s trying to use the momentum of three victories in the past four months to boost him into a bigger chance to display his skills.

“You just never know what’s gonna happen,” he said. “Once you take the chance to fight, anything can happen.”

Training, not gangs

Henry grew up in the South Gate, Calif., part of Los Angeles County. As a half-white, half-Mexican member of a mostly black community, Henry stood out from the start, so he’s used to having plenty of eyes on him.

His mother stressed that she wanted him to stay out of trouble, so she guided him to school commitments and to athletics. He tried baseball, but it bored him, so he sometimes danced in the outfield during games. For soccer, his skinny legs often failed him so he would find himself on the turf.

Then one day his mother spotted a newspaper article about a gym offering Tae Kwon Do nearby. One of Henry’s uncles had once studied martial arts, so she encouraged him to try as well.

It was a way to keep him from a wandering mind, he said.

“For a while, I looked up to the guys who were in the gangs and doing all that, because they were the older guys,” he said. “Then my mom knocked some sense into me. I already knew I was different because of how I looked and how I was treated, so I was concentrating on sports and concentrating on school.”

He grew to earn his black belt before moving on to new challenges, including jiu-jitsu. He hoped to go to college and become a personal trainer or medical trainer for professional sports teams. But as he expanded his martial arts training, he moved into the MMA world and wanted to stay committed.

He met trainer Jimmie Romero, who encouraged him to build his all-around skills and start fighting. He started to sense he could indeed be a fighter.

“I was training just to train for a while, then I believed I could do it,” he said. “Once I got a taste, I went full-bore into it.”

Stepping up

It was through Romero that Henry met his future mentor and supporter, Barnett.

Romero held a seminar at his gym, and Barnett arrived to display some wrestling techniques. Henry was weak in wrestling at the time, using mostly jiu-jitsu on the ground, so he was particularly interested.

It was exactly what he needed, and Barnett took an interest.

“I don’t get star struck, but I met him and I knew I had to be on point,” he said. “That was a big thing for me.”

At the end of his amateur career, he met an undefeated opponent and lost. That dimmed his optimism a bit, because he thought about how he would fare against professional fighters if these other amateur fighters were better than he was.

Around that time, Henry’s fight team broke apart, and he got a call from Barnett.

“They accepted me with open arms,” he said. “That got me to my first professional fight.”

He made his pro debut in August 2010 and started 3-0. Then, in May, he matched up with fellow undefeated Bronson Casarez at a Fight Club OC show. He was carrying the expectations of fighting so far without a loss, and Casarez started in immediately with significant strikes to the face.

The two battled for three rounds, and Henry earned the decision victory. He said it was a turning point for him because it showed him that he could match up with another strong fighter for the full three rounds and win.

That’s why he wants to keep challenging himself, he said, because he doesn’t want to fight only opponents he knows he can beat.

“These guys who pick fights and wait for opponents they can beat, how is that different than being a bully?” he said. “I always respect guys who take on all challenges, so I want to be that guy. I’m just waiting for that next challenge.”

Award-winning newspaper reporter Kyle Nagel pens “Fight Path” each week. The column focuses on the circumstances that led fighters to a profession in MMA. Know a fighter with an interesting story? Email us at news [at] mmajunkie.com.