A visually impaired 20-year-old from Beebe is sharing how he’s defying odds in MMA after other gyms previously rejected him.<\/p>\n
BEEBE, Ark. \u2014 Christian Stutts may be unlike any MMA fighter you\u2019ve ever seen or heard of.<\/p>\n
The Beebe native began going to \u201cThese Hands MMA\u201d in February of 2025, when the gym first opened in town. Early on, he had his sights set high.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to be very good at grappling and striking. I want to be good at it all. I want to be a really good MMA fighter,\u201d Stutts said confidently.<\/p>\n
In order for Stutts to be really good at everything, he has an uphill challenge. The 20-year-old is visually impaired.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been visually impaired my whole life,\u201d Stutts said. \u201cThe good thing about it is that when it\u2019s something you have your whole life, you learn how to deal with it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stutts clearly has found a unique way of \u201cdealing with it\u201d through wrestling as a high schooler at Beebe High School and now entering into the world of Mixed Martial Arts, or MMA.<\/p>\n
Johnny Peeks, the co-owner of the new MMA gym in Beebe that Stutts attends, met Stutts in February and quickly formed a close relationship.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe got dropped off and just walked in and asked if we would train him and work with him, and I was like, yeah,\u201d Peeks said. \u201cHe said he went to two previous gyms and they denied him because of his visibility.\u201d<\/p>\n
After meeting him and working with him, Peeks was impressed.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe plan was, we noticed that he had previous wrestling experience from school, so we thought we’d get him in some grappling tournaments and stuff like that. Well, he started wanting to spar and everything else, and we didn’t hold him back,\u201d Peeks said.<\/p>\n
Just a few months after starting at the gym, Stutts entered his first competition.<\/p>\n
\u201cAgainst some people’s decision, we went ahead and let him do a kickboxing match,\u201d Peeks said. \u201cAnd [he won in a] first-round TKO \u2013 it doesn\u2019t get much better than that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stutts shocked the room, winning the match over a non-visually impaired fighter and getting a medal to show for it as well.<\/p>\n
When asked to describe what he sees, Stutts gave this answer.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I\u2019m fighting\u2026 as long as I\u2019m close and as long as I have my hands out and I can parry, I can have a good sense of where you are and I\u2019ll just try to hit you, that\u2019s it, that\u2019s the goal,\u201d Stutts said.<\/p>\n
He also admitted it\u2019s a hard thing to explain and that learning how to fight and wrestle took him a very long time, much longer than the average person.<\/p>\n
Despite the challenge, it\u2019s clear that Stutts\u2019 work ethic stood out.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe use him as a role model to how everybody else should be, you know, as far as their work ethic and everything, and he’s kind of setting a standard of what to be here,\u201d Peeks described.<\/p>\n
Stutts has a bright future ahead of him, be it in MMA or not. And to others in his position someday, he says:<\/p>\n
\u201cYou guys have to want it. You have to be in here. You have to grind every day. You have to push yourself. You just have to keep going. You can do anything that you want to do, you just got to keep going,\u201d Stutts said.<\/p>\n
By the looks of it, Stutts isn\u2019t close to stopping or slowing down.<\/p>\n
For his story, that\u2019s not always something you have to see to believe.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A visually impaired 20-year-old from Beebe is sharing how he’s defying odds in MMA after other gyms previously…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17992,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,785,85],"class_list":["post-17991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-mma","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17991"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17991\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}