Kyven "Showtime" Gadson wrestled for Iowa State and Team USA, and spent a decade calling combat sports for UFC Fight Pass, ESPN+ and NCAA wrestling. He told his college teammates nobody could pay him enough to step in a cage. He's now a professional MMA fighter.

In episode one, Kyven explains why he changed his mind — and it isn't the answer you'd expect. He co-owns Myriad MMA Academy in Ames, Iowa with Jake Bauer, and found he couldn't honestly coach fighters through something he'd never done. Wrestling practice teaches you to scrap when you see red. It doesn't teach you what it's like to choose a fight ten weeks out and walk toward a cage.

He talks about the translation problem every wrestler hits — "details, details, details" — and about the junior-college national champion who came in certain he was ready, ignored the game plan, and lost by TKO in under a minute. He describes the first time someone put a straight cross on his nose, and the first time he felt what a world champion feels like from the other side of it. He's honest about his rivalry with Kyle Snyder: 3-6 on the record, spread across six days, and he'll explain why he counts it differently.

And he makes the case for the regional scene better than most: these are your neighbors, solving problems in real time, often fighting for ticket sales rather than money. "These are just people that are warriors. They'd be on the battlefield."

Kyven talks about being surrounded by truth-tellers instead of yes-men, about a young fighter named Craig Omozeje finding his way, and about what he thinks he's actually for. He believes he's meant to be a star in this space — and that the point of the stardom is what he does with it.

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