Ryan Gilbert of Littleton wants to fight. Any or all of the top 30 fighters in the world will do. Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) champs, Olympic wrestlers, boxers.
Bring it on. Including you, Mike Tyson. Consider yourself called out.
But please, no biting. And no eye gouging, or throat strikes, and no kicking to the head if a fighter falls to the ground. Those are the only rules.
If an opponent wants to add some, that's negotiable. Gilbert is 5 feet 10 inches, 165 pounds, lean and small compared many top fighters. But there is no weight restriction.
Heavier or leaner, he will fight them. As with other events Gilbert undertakes, it's all to raise money and awareness of a slew of charities he supports. Last fall, he ran 300 miles to raise money and awareness to help victims of genocide in Sudan.
He ran 18 to 20 miles a day over two weeks, carrying an American flag. Gilbert, 22, is about to graduate as a business major at UMass Lowell, and is headed for grad school in the
His red Blazer has www.runforsudan.com on its rear window, along with "Food and water for all people.
" He'll gladly stretch himself prone between two lawn chairs to let his father, Tom, swing a sledge hammer to bust a concrete block on his belly. If it means publicity for the causes he supports, swing away. He doesn't want a dime of it.
His Web site, www.charityfighter.org, doesn't accept donations, but offers links to dozens of charity sites.
"I'm challenging the top 30 fighters to full-contact fighting," says Gilbert, who has studied the martial arts since he was 8. "The majority of them are UFC and Pride fighters and I'm challenging them to charity fights. "I'm not looking to become Rocky Balboa or anything," he says.
"I want to research Eastern medicine. But I will be doing martial arts on the side. I'll do what I can with this in my spare time.
" He's in the final stages of lining up his first charity fight in Revere on June 9, a steppingstone he hopes will eventually grab the attention of some big names. "It could take a year before anyone big notices," he says. "But if that's what it takes .
.." Lots of guys talk about working their way up the totem pole, paying dues, and that's fine," he says.
"I respect that. And I don't pretend to be Chuck Norris or Bruce Lee. But I'm doing this for charitable causes.
If I get knocked out doing it, fine." He teaches Jeet Kune Do, a martial arts system developed by Bruce Lee, in his Bridge Street apartment/studio in Lowell. He also works with Army of Saints, which teaches self-defense in battered women's shelters and works to promote awareness of drugs and gangs to kids.
He says he's aware there are kids suffering in the U.S, but he's alarmed by what he's heard about Sudan and Darfur. "My philosophy of life if that if a kid dies in Africa, it's no different than if it was my little brother or sister here.
I believe people in the West are here because of an accident of time and geography. That's why we're lucky enough to live in this wonderful country. .
.. But raising awareness of what's going on in Africa brings attention to a place that makes the worst cases here, in L.
A. or something, look like Disneyland. "I just feel like I have a general obligation to help.
" His need to help may, he says, have sprung from his two years volunteering at Children's Hospital in Boston. "I worked with chronically ill kids. Some of them, you know they're going to live out their lives in the hospital.
And a lot of kids just have no idea how good they have it." So he will fight. The bigger, the better.
And the bigger, the more media attention, the more his message gets out. "I want to spreading awareness of this in New England, keep it spreading up and down the east coast, and eventually to the west. And I'm just hoping if these fighters have someone in their family affected by AIDS or cancer, or have some experience with anyone of the causes, they'll think beyond their own ego and my ego.
"Because to some of them, a nobody like me beating them would be a terrible thing. But if it means a beating them, so be it. And I'm a nobody in the fighting world.
But in the grand scheme of things, who cares?
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