[upbeat music]
- Felipe: Can I come in too? - Princesa: Yeah.
- Angela: Princesa clearly relishes playtime
with her father, Felipe.
It's very different
from how she sees him playing at the gym.
[energetic music]
Felipe Martinez Donis is an undefeated
mixed martial arts fighter.
- Felipe: Six and O amateur.
I just found out today I'm the number one in Wisconsin.
- Angela: Those who know him wonder
how such a gentle soul does so well in a fighting sport.
- Felipe: A lot of people do ask me that.
They don't picture me being a different person
in the cage, you know. [audience cheering]
- Angela: The cage represents freedom for Felipe,
who fled desperate circumstances in Guatemala.
- Felipe: My flag up there, you know,
for everyone to look at it.
I am a citizen of this country now,
but like, looking at the Guatemalan flag,
it just reminds me of where I am from.
- Angela: His family had to escape the destruction
of a hurricane.
- It just left us with nothing.
And my dad took a great risk.
- Angela: Thousands were displaced by
the hurricane and flooding that struck Guatemala
five weeks after Katrina.
At Felipe's family farm, it destroyed the crops
that Felipe's father had gone into debt to plant.
- My dad had to borrow a lot of money.
He wasn't able to pay that back,
so they were, it was actually people looking for my dad.
- Angela: Fearing for his life, he crossed Mexico
by bus and by foot.
- Felipe: It took him about two to three months.
- Angela: At the border, he asked for refugee status.
- The judge granted him an asylum.
This is my dad.
- Angela: When Felipe was 15, his father sent for him.
- He is a great man.
I could never be able to pay him
everything that he's done for us.
- Angela: But it wasn't easy moving to Arcadia
in snowy Wisconsin.
- Felipe: We came in the middle of the winter around February.
February 12th, and it was just snowing like crazy.
No friends because anywhere you go,
you had to speak the language.
And my dad said, okay, you guys came here for a reason.
You guys came here to better yourselves.
- Angela: Which Felipe did by throwing himself
into all kinds of school activities,
especially wrestling.
- I didn't know a single thing about what the sport even was
and the coaches were very helpful.
- Angela: At the time, Felipe was also wrestling
with learning a new language.
- Go to the legs, how to go to the head.
And then, when he said go to the head,
I'd go to the legs.
As I was learning English, I was learning wrestling.
I had to get uncomfortable and get out of my zone.
I was always asking for help.
If you're afraid to ask for help,
then you're not gonna get anywhere.
And that's what I've learned.
- Angela: It's still that support from others
that drives Felipe to succeed.
- Oh, yeah.
- Felipe: I mean, teammates, my God.
But everyone that I work with here
is out to make me better every day that I come through.
Just to feel your hand being raised
after everything you've done, you've worked through.
All the work that you put in with your coaches
and your teammates, and to get that reward
of all that work that you put in.
It's cool to me.
[upbeat music]