- Can I come in too?
- Yeah.
- Princesa clearly relishes playtime with her father Felipe.
It's very different from how she sees him playing at the gym.
[whack]
[fast rock music]
[whack, whack]
[whack]
Felipe Martinez Donis is an undefeated, mixed martial arts fighter.
[whack, whack, whack]
- 6 and 0, amateur.
I just found out today.
I'm the number one in Wisconsin.
- Those who know him wonder how such a gentle soul
does so well in a fighting sport.
- A lot of people do ask me that.
They don't picture me
being a different person in the cage, you know.
[cheering]
- The cage represents freedom for Felipe,
who fled desperate circumstances in Guatemala.
- My flag up there, you know, for everyone to look at.
I am a citizen of this country now,
but looking at the Guatemalan flag,
it just reminds me of where I am from.
- His family had to escape the destruction of a hurricane.
- It just left us with nothing.
And my dad took a great risk.
- Thousands were displaced by the hurricane and flooding
that struck Guatemala five weeks after Katrina.
At Felipe's family's 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.
There were actually people looking for my dad.
- Fearing for his life,
he crossed Mexico by bus and by foot.
- It took him about two to three months.
- At the border, he asked for refugee status.
- The judge granted him an asylum.
This is my dad.
- When Felipe was fifteen, his father sent for him.
- He's a great man.
I could never be able to pay him,
everything that he's done for us.
- But it wasn't easy
moving to Arcadia in snowy Wisconsin.
- 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.
My dad said,
"Ok, you guys came here for a reason.
You guys came here to better yourselves."
- 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.
[chuckles]
And the coaches were very helpful.
- At the time,
Felipe was also wrestling with learning a new language.
- Go to the legs, I'd go to the head.
[chuckles]
And then when he said,
"Go to the head, I'd go to the legs."
As I was learning English, I was learning wrestling.
[whacks]
I had to get uncomfortable.
Get out of my zone.
I was always asking for help.
[chatter]
If you're afraid to ask for help,
then you're not going to get anywhere.
And that's what I learned.
- It's still that support from others
that drives Felipe to succeed.
- I mean, teammates, my God.
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've put in
with your coaches and your teammates.
To get that reward from all the work that you've put in.
It's cool to me.
? ?