So when faced with a fighter who has come from a less than ideal situation and is trying to make their way in an unforgiving sport, Montoya isn’t just the one saying, “Do as I say.” He’s been down those same roads in one way, shape or form. And as he found his way out, he now has the knowledge to give to those looking to follow in those footsteps in more than just fighting.
“A lot of the younger fighters, they don’t know what they don’t know,” said Montoya. “So my thought process was, well, if you don’t know what you don’t know, then you better start learning because you can’t wait until you’re my age. I’m almost 47 years old, and you can’t wait until 47. MMA will be way done for you to learn all those lessons. So how do we sharpen the mind? We’re doing all this work to sharpen the body, so how do we sharpen the mind? And one of the ways that I found personally, through business, through fighting, through life, is to read. My wife, Jarah, is a big reader – she’s read more books than I could probably even fathom. But the point is that she consistently has read, and we’ve been together for 23 years and I watched her read a ton.
„Early on, I was like, there’s gotta be something in that. I went to college, I studied, I got a degree in journalism, and I do have an education, but I also come from the hood. I was born and raised in the inner city and I come from teenage parents that were on welfare, and my grandmother helped raise me, so I understand the whole struggle. But I was fortunate enough to work my way out of all that and move past it and change the trajectory of my family’s life. When I look at all that, education in MMA is important, but education in life is even more important. I always tell these guys and gals, my first job is to help you become a world champion outside of the mat, in life. And my second job is to help you become world champions in the cage. But they have to be one in the same.”
The plan was simple enough: find books that could educate and entertain, one per month, and see where it would take Montoya and the 40 pro and amateur fighters in his gym.
“We want ripples in life, and not peaks and valleys, and so education is one of the ways to do it,” he said. “We gotta work on the mind as much as we’re working on the body. That’s been my path to saying, okay, what are some fun books that I like that aren’t just gonna be like going to a class that you hated in school, but you went because you had to. I picked some books that I thought were fun and took a gamble. Okay guys, let’s go read some of this.”
