MMA debut part bucket list, part teaching tool for Lupo
The year was 1995, and Lewiston, Maine, was still a fight town.
Thirty years had elapsed since Muhammad Ali had knocked out Sonny Liston in the first round of their rematch for the world heavyweight boxing title at what then was known as the Central Maine Youth Center.
The sport remained popular in the area thanks to native son Joey Gamache, a super featherweight and lightweight world champion during the early 1990’s.
That year, 1995, marked the last time Stacy Lupo stepped into a ring.
Lupo, then a 27-year-old amateur boxer and kickboxer and owner of Lupo’s Mid-Maine Karate in Pittsfield, won a unanimous decision over Vermont Golden Gloves silver medalist Don Labbe during an April 21, 1995, show in the same Lewiston building where Ali fought, which by then was renamed the Multi-Purpose Center.
But by that time boxing had begun relinquishing some of its popularity to a new sport, mixed martial arts, through the advent of the Ultimate Fighting Championship. Kickboxing opportunities were even fewer — leading Lupo to a major decision.
“I beat [Labbe] and I thought, ‘This is a good time for me to walk away,’” said Lupo. “I’ve got a family to raise and bills to pay, so I walked away from it. I shut down my school because at that time the UFC was just taking off but it wasn’t anything that was taking off up here. There just wasn’t a call for it like there is now.”
Lupo, a former wrestler at Nokomis Regional High School in Newport who owns black belts in Taekwondo and Shotokan karate, has heard such calls more often in recent times.
He now teaches kickboxing classes at Angelo Rizzitello’s The Outlet/Shatterproof Combat Club in Dexter, and on Saturday night he’ll enter the same facility where he last fought 21 years earlier — now called the Androscoggin Bank Colisee — to make his mixed martial arts debut on the Maine-based New England Fights’ latest boxing-MMA card.
“When I walked away the idea was to stay away because I get the itch all the time and I had to separate myself from it,” said Lupo, now a 48-year-old grandfather who lives in Corinna and works as a millwright welder at Sappi’s paper mill in Skowhegan.
“But I had friends who fight up at [former UFC contender] Marcus Davis’ gym [Team Irish MMA Fitness Academy in Brewer], so I’d go there on Saturdays and train with them. I’d spar with their pros and with their amateurs just to keep my feet in it.”
Then Lupo attended an NEF show in Lewiston, and the urge to compete grew too great to resist.
“I said, ‘I can compete at this level right here,’” said Lupo. “I might not be able to compete at a higher level but I just wanted to get back in there. It’s kind of on my bucket list, and I’m getting pretty damned old. I’ve competed in boxing and kickboxing, I want an MMA fight or two.”
Lupo will fight an opponent just two years his junior in Steven Bang Sr., a bariatric surgeon and triathlete from Auburn who split his first two amateur bouts.
“I’ve been in the ring with world champion kickboxers, pro boxers and right down through, and I can’t say for certain that I’m not going to go down to this NEF contest and not have a fair amount of ring nerves,” said Lupo. “It’s been a long time since I’ve competed like that, but I’m looking forward to it.”
Lupo’s training has dropped his weight from 188 to 165 a week out from fight night — the three-round bout will be contested in the lightweight (155-pound) division — and his regimen also has included visits to the Team Irish gym to work out with regional talents Jon Lemke and Ricky Dexter.
“I feel better than I have in a long time,” said Lupo, who also participated in a public sparring session in Dexter on April 1. “I have aches and pains, oh God yes, but I just want to get in there and try it.”
One common denominator for Lupo and Bang beyond middle age is their motivation.
“I’ve trained to stay in shape my whole life, and after a while you run out of sports and things to do to stay in shape,” said Lupo. “You have something to train for and challenge yourself, and I think Steve said it best when he said [MMA] gives you a goal to go toward, and that’s what it is about for me.
“I’ll jump in the ring with anybody and it doesn’t bother me, not because I think I can beat anybody but because I’ve been in there and done it and don’t get all that worried about it. I don’t have that ego that’s going to be crushed if I take a loss.”
Yet there is some pressure for Lupo to perform at least up to his own expectations, as 70 of his friends and co-workers are expected to be supporting him from the stands.
“For me it’s showing my level of skill that I’ve never gotten to show in front of a crowd before, and to show that I’ve maintained it and still have it,” he said. “I’m 48 and I don’t have any kind of grand picture in my head of becoming a world champion. I know who I am and what I am.
“Honestly I just want to represent myself well and I don’t want to get caught with something stupid. You see it happen all the time with the younger guys and I think I’m at the age now where I’m not going to walk into something.”
Sharing that perspective with the younger fighters, particularly those he trains at The Outlet, also is important to Lupo.
“I want to represent for my gym, too,” he said. “My fighters seem to all think this is going to be a 45-second street fight, and I just want to show them you don’t have to go in there and go nuts the first 45 seconds. You see that a lot with amateurs, they just go in there and go to war and punch each other in the face until somebody goes down.
“Your better fighters are more calculating, they’re smarter fighters. That’s what I’m trying to show my guys.”
Lupo acknowledges he was a better fighter at 21 than he will be upon his return to Lewiston at 48, but says Father Time hasn’t diminished his competitive instincts.
“Do I think I have as much as I used to? No,” he said. “But I think I can surprise some people.”
Photo courtesy of Josh O’Donnell
RETURNING TO THE RING — Stacy Lupo, left, pictured sparring with Josh Harvey during an April exhibition show in Dexter, will be making his mixed martial arts debut on Saturday at a New England Fights’ card at the Androscoggin Bank Colisee in Lewiston. The 48-year-old Lupo, who lives in Corinna and is an instructor at The Outlet/Shatterproof Combat Club in Dexter, won a boxing match by unanimous decision in what is now known as the Androscoggin Bank Colisee in 1995 during his last competitive bout.