The Story of Inferno MMA

Mutual friends brought Marco Island Boxing Club and Inferno MMA together. “Jeff (Knorr, Marco Island Boxing Coach) knew some guys that I had known for a long time,” said Crafton “Blaze” Wallace, Inferno MMA owner. “They would get together and do sparring. That’s how we met. We stayed in touch, and when he told me they were looking for a place and I was like, for sure, let’s go.”

“He’s been really gracious to us,” said Richie Stoltenborg, Marco Island Boxing Club founder. “When the building got sold, Jeff went around looking at different places. And Blaze said whatever you can fit in here, come over. So, we got on over here.”

Inferno MMA is a Muay Thai Kickboxing and Mixed Martial Arts facility. Wallacea is a former UFC fighter. “Since 2002, I was renting spaces around and using them to get ready for competition. Then I started to teach, and it just kind of snowballed, getting bigger spaces, nicer spaces and getting more students. I was really teaching to help me get where I was trying to go - the UFC.” It took about four years for Wallace to get there. He debuted in 2006 against Martin Kampmann and went up against Strikeforce welterweight champion Nate Marquardt at Ortiz vs. Shamrock: The Final Chapter that same year.

“We had worked with some boxing teams before, but Jeff’s team was just a little more organized, and I knew it would be a good fit,” said Wallace. “They’re all really focused on what they’re doing. No egos getting in the way.”

“He’s been a very big deal to us, so we always want to reciprocate that back to him,” said Dyclan Felix, recent silver medal winner in the Junior Olympic Nationals.

Wallace and Dyclan talk about the synergy between the two sports. “It’s capable bodies,” said Wallace. “They’ve got really good skill sets that’s so different than our style of boxing. Boxing is not the same. We like to kick a lot, and we use the punches almost as if they were an afterthought. We use the punches to get to the other weapons. But when you train with a guy who just boxes, you get better at that one specific skill set. Even visually. We might not be training together, but we’ll be watching. 

“Ideas. You bring different ideas,” Dyclan said. “When you do something like Muay Thai, when you do something like wrestling, you can pull a move and put it into your sport. Like if a boxer were to maybe wrestle a little bit, they learn more about how to be comfortable with body manipulation and body control. 

Another discipline at Inferno MMA is Brazilian jiu jitsu with multiple world champion Marcelo Pereira in the house. Periera has been doing jiu-jitsu for over 35 years and met Wallace back in 2002 when both were teaching in the same karate dojo. Periera stopped competing in 2016 but is now training his 13-year-old daughter Kyla at Inferno. “I had a gym in Ft. Myers, but I wanted her to train, and it was hard to take her to Ft. Myers and bring her back. So, I opened here and created another team,” Pereira said. Kyla will be one of 3,000 kids competing in the upcoming Pan Kids International Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Federation Championship in Orlando at the end of July.

“The camaraderie of having top-level pro fighters here, having top-level MMA fighters here, having pro Jiu Jitsu fighters here, champions here…good people together. It pulls up the younger guys,” said Knorr. “Pedigree breeds pedigree. And that's one of the things that's happening here. People are motivated. Each group is doing their own thing here. They’re training their own guys. We’ve got boxing, we’ve got jiu-jitsu, we’ve got MMA. Everyone’s trying to be better.”