Men's Wrestling | 12/28/2010 10:02:40 AM
WEST LIBERTY, W.Va. – You may be able to take the mixed martial arts fighter out of West Liberty but you'll never take the West Liberty out of one MMA veteran.
“When I bleed, I bleed black-and-gold,” said Branden Lee Hinkle '96, who has left more than a few drops of blood – his opponents along with his own – in MMA cages on several continents over the past decade.
An NAIA national champion as a junior on the 1995 West Liberty wrestling team and a national runner-up the following season, the 6-2, 225-pound Hinkle made one of his frequent pilgrimages back to the hilltop campus over the Christmas break.
“(West Liberty wrestling coach) Brian Davis and I were teammates here during the 1990s so I just came up to get in a little workout,” Hinkle said. “I love West Liberty and it's great to see Brian here carrying on the Hilltopper tradition with some very talented and dedicated guys.
“I came up here and worked out with them before my last bout and that really helped so it's been a 'win-win' situation all around.”
Winning is what Hinkle has been all about ever since he came to West Liberty as a member of Hall of Fame coach Dr. Vince Monseau's college wrestling powerhouse during the mid-1990s.
A three-time NAIA All-American, Hinkle set a school record with a 39-match winning streak that still stands. His career winning percentage (71-9, .888) is No. 2 all-time at West Liberty and he still holds the program's single-season record with 13 major decisions during the 1995-96 campaign.
After graduating, Hinkle moved to Columbus, Ohio to train for the U.S. Nationals in hopes of making the United States Olympic Wrestling Team. That turned out to be the first step down the road to his mixed martial arts career.
“While we were training, Mark Coleman got a call about an 8-man tournament in Brazil,” Hinkle said. “He told me they'd fly us down there, take care of all our expenses and pay us $1,000 on top of it. I had just got out of college and that money sounded pretty good so I said, 'Sign me up!' “
Coleman, who is now Hinkle's coach, is a UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) Hall of Famer and MMA legend. An NCAA Division I national wrestling champion at Ohio State, he was a member of the 1992 U.S. Olympic mat squad before becoming the UFC's first heavyweight champion.
Hinkle said his introduction to the ultimate fighting experience in South America was an eye-opening one, to say the least.
“The first guy I fought in Brazil was ranked No. 5 in the world,” he said. “The sport was much less structured then than it is now so our fight was one 30-minute round and head butts were legal. It was pretty much anything goes. I lost but I think I gave a pretty good account of myself. It ended up being a 22-minute war and the place was just going nuts. After that, I was hooked.”
Hinkle's career has taken him to just about every corner of the globe.
“I've fought in Brazil, I've fought several times in Japan in front of 50,000 people,” said Hinkle, who is known as “The Iron Lion” to MMA fans worldwide. “I won the Korean heavyweight championship. I've fought in Russia. I've even fought in a Mexican bullring.”
Hinkle is currently in the midst of a career renaissance after one of his more impressive wins. With Coleman cheering him on from the corner, the WLU alum needed just 2:30 to hammer out a first-round TKO of Kevin “The Shaman” Jordan at the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, N.J. just before Thanksgiving.
Next up for Hinkle is Alexey Oleinik, a 33-year-old Ukrainian submission machine who is 28-5 with a staggering 23 of those wins coming by submission.
That bout has been tentatively set for Feb. 26, 2011, but at age 37, Hinkle can hear the clock ticking down the minutes of his professional career as well as anyone.
“I love the sport and I thrive on the competition but I wouldn't still be chasing the dream if the money wasn't there,” he said. “Three years ago when I was losing matches and not training right, if you had told me I'd still be doing this, I'd probably have laughed at you.
“You never know what might happen tomorrow but the way I feel now, I think I'm capable of putting together a little run that would get me back in the top 10 and put me in line for a big-money fight.”
Coach Davis is grateful that his former teammate is willing to take the time to share his talents with the current members of the Hilltopper wrestling program.
“It's awesome to have somebody like Branden around our program,” Davis said. “So much of our sport at this level is about mental toughness and here's a 37-year-old guy who comes in here and just works everybody into the ground. What an inspiration.
“We give an award every week during our fall conditioning program to the wrestler we believe has worked the hardest. We call it the 'Iron Lion Award' because of the respect everybody has for Branden.”
The West Liberty wrestling team returns to action Jan. 8 when the No. 14-ranked Hilltoppers compete in the Mid-Atlantic Duals at Ashland (Ohio) University.
