FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT WWW.QNS.COM MARСH 5, 2020 • THE QUEENS COURIER 53
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Charalampos Grigoriou (r.) with sparring partner and pro fi ghter Justin Montalvo (l.). Grigoriou in the process of doing a takedown on his sparring partner.
Astoria MMA fi ghter making strides toward his UFC dream
BY JESSICA MILITELLO
editorial@qns.com
@QNS
On Saturday, March 21, professional
mixed martial arts fi ghter Charalampos
Grigoriou will be fi ghting in the Cage
Fury Fighting Championship on UFC
Fight Pass at the Hard Rock Hotel and
Casino in Atlantic City.
Grigoriou’s focus and hard work since
he fi rst moved to Astoria from Cyprus,
Greece, three years ago has been gradually
Photos by Dean Moses
Professional MMA fi ghter
Charalampos
Grigoriou in the
octagon for sparring
practice.
paying off as he pursues his dream of
getting signed to the UFC, something the
lifelong martial artist has been training
for since he was 6 years old.
“My dream is the UFC, that’s
why I came to the U.S,” said
Grigoriou. “It was also very
diffi cult to fi nd opponents
in Cyprus because no
one wanted to fi ght me,
so I was like, let’s go to
the jungle.”
While growing up
in Cyprus, Grigoriou
fi rst started playing
soccer, but oft en times
fi ghts would break out
on the playing fi eld
and Grigoriou was
frequently involved
in the scuffl es. His
father signed him up
for karate, but he initially
didn’t like it and
he wanted to try out a
diff erent style like Muay
Th ai.
Grigoriou continued to
get into fi ghts on the playing
fi eld and at school, so
his father gave him an ultimatum;
stop fi ghting or he won’t let him
practice any other martial arts.
“I told my father if I start Muay Th ai,
then I’ll stop getting into fi ghts,” said
Grigoriou. “And so I started Muay Th ai
and then kickboxing and I never fought
in a street fi ght again.”
Grigoriou went on to become a black belt
in karate and won the Panhellenic
Karate Championship twice,
as well as representing
Cyprus in the black belt
division at the European
Karate Championship in
Poland. In Kickboxing,
Muay Th ai, and
MMA, his
t a l e n t
and hard
work continued
to
speak for itself as he competed and continued
to win distinctions such as the
Cyprus MMA Champion’s title, and the
World Kickboxing Network Organization
belt.
As Grigoriou’s reputation for his
high-level fi ghting skills continued to
spread, he felt it was time to take a chance
in expanding his career by moving to
the U.S. Th e life-changing move was
certainly met with some resistance
by his family when he made the
announcement.
“I went to the embassy, got my visa,
and I booked my ticket to the U.S., but it
was a war at home especially with my
father,” said Grigoriou. “I booked the ticket
beforehand because I knew they were
going to try to pull me back. It was hard,
but I came here because I always wanted
to do my hobby as a job.”
When Grigoriou fi rst arrived in the
U.S., he settled in Astoria and started
training in gyms in the neighborhood
but felt like he wanted more challenging
partners to train and spar with. His
main gym that he trains out of is Law
MMA in Garden City, owned by UFC
fi ghter Chris Weidman and head
coach Ray Longo, who knew
of Grigoriou even before he
began training with him.
“Grigoriou was
training with a buddy
of mine and fought
on shows I was promoting,”
said Longo.
“We knew his standup
was very good,
we just had to get his
ground game better,
so we recognized that
he was very talented.”
With a strong performance
in Grigoriou’s
March 21 fi ght, Longo
explained the next step
would be to get him on
the UFC’s Contender
series.
“We’ll see if he can get him
on the Contender series and
then from there, if he has a good
fi ght, we’ll see if Dana White, the
President of the UFC would take
him and that’s probably the best way
of getting in at this point,” said Longo.
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