You May Know Anthony Pettis for the “Kick,” but You May Not Know How a Tragedy Steered Him to MMA
It’s safe to say the world knows Anthony Pettis. Or rather, that the world knows Anthony Pettis’ feet.
After the off-the-cage acrobatics that flattened Benson Henderson at the final WEC event was dubbed the “Showtime Kick,” the acrobatic move became a staple on sports shows and a viral breakout video on the Web. But the world doesn’t really know Anthony Pettis … and the UFC lightweight aims to change that in 2012.
THIS AIN’T FARMVILLE
Mention Wisconsin to somebody outside the Midwest, and cheese might be the first thing to come to mind. Mention the state to a football fan, and the Green Bay Packers come to mind. Disgruntled basketball fans know about the Milwaukee Bucks. Anthony Pettis calls Wisconsin home. Milwaukee to be exact. The first thing he’ll tell you about the city he represents is that growing up was no walk in the park.
“Everybody thinks Wisconsin is a farm state like there’s nothing bad,” he quipped about the perceptions of outsiders. “I had friends and cousins in gangs.”
In 2009, the murder rate in Milwaukee was two and a half times that of New York City, according to the Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel. Pettis describes his two-parent upbringing with pride and says his mother did her best to shield the family from some of the harsher aspects of life.
“We lived in a middle-class lifestyle,” he says. “We didn’t have everything, but we had enough. My mom was a real smart lady. She wanted us to go to school and make something of ourselves. [Still], I had all the temptations of joining gangs, doing drugs and being stupid, which is what my friends were doing.”
The temptations of street life almost led Pettis astray—until the cruel reality of the life hit close to home. On Nov. 12, 2003, when Pettis was just 15, the police informed the family that his father had been killed in a house robbery. Losing the family patriarch was the tragic and radical life-altering event that brought Pettis to the world of MMA.
“The year after [his death] was a blur,” says Pettis. “I was doing dumb things. But seeing my mom cry and seeing how sad she was, I never wanted her to go through that again. I decided I wanted to do something big with my life.”
So he did.
SEEING THINGS THROUGH It might be hard to believe, but Anthony Pettis didn’t always take to the martial arts. The family matriarch worked and went to school in the evening. To keep her sons out of trouble, she …
READ the whole story in our March issue.
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