A visually impaired 20-year-old from Beebe is sharing how he’s defying odds in MMA after other gyms previously rejected him.

BEEBE, Ark. — Christian Stutts may be unlike any MMA fighter you’ve ever seen or heard of.

The Beebe native began going to “These Hands MMA” in February of 2025, when the gym first opened in town. Early on, he had his sights set high.

“I 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,” Stutts said confidently.

In order for Stutts to be really good at everything, he has an uphill challenge. The 20-year-old is visually impaired.

“I’ve been visually impaired my whole life,” Stutts said. “The good thing about it is that when it’s something you have your whole life, you learn how to deal with it.”

Stutts clearly has found a unique way of “dealing with it” through wrestling as a high schooler at Beebe High School and now entering into the world of Mixed Martial Arts, or MMA.

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.

“He got dropped off and just walked in and asked if we would train him and work with him, and I was like, yeah,” Peeks said. “He said he went to two previous gyms and they denied him because of his visibility.”

After meeting him and working with him, Peeks was impressed.

“The 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,” Peeks said.

Just a few months after starting at the gym, Stutts entered his first competition.

“Against some people’s decision, we went ahead and let him do a kickboxing match,” Peeks said. “And [he won in a] first-round TKO – it doesn’t get much better than that.”

Stutts shocked the room, winning the match over a non-visually impaired fighter and getting a medal to show for it as well.

When asked to describe what he sees, Stutts gave this answer.

“When I’m fighting… as long as I’m 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’ll just try to hit you, that’s it, that’s the goal,” Stutts said.

He also admitted it’s 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.

Despite the challenge, it’s clear that Stutts’ work ethic stood out.

“We 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,” Peeks described.

Stutts has a bright future ahead of him, be it in MMA or not. And to others in his position someday, he says:

“You 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,” Stutts said.

By the looks of it, Stutts isn’t close to stopping or slowing down.

For his story, that’s not always something you have to see to believe.