By Pete Vasquez
Pvasquez@cherryroad.com
Controlled Chaos is a local gym and physical fitness center where Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, Wrestling, MMA and Boxing take center stage.
Both adults and children sign up for classes and possible competitions for medals or monetary winnings.
Co-Owners Jason Benavides and Jennifer Gonzalez oversee operations. Benavides says there’s kids from 4 years old to 12 and adults from 13 to over 50 that hit the mats for personal fitness or to compete.
“There’s men and women in their fifties, sixties and seventies that want to stay fit, and some want to compete as well. We have divisions where at big tournaments you actually will go against individuals your age, your weight and your skill level,” he said.
For example, coming up this weekend are some super fights where three locals from the gym will get their chance to showcase their skills.
“So, what it is, they call them super fights. It’s one match of ten minutes against one person for adults and one match of five minutes against another for children,” said Benavides. “And usually what they do is that whoever wins, they’ll win a little bit of money,” he added.
The Sunday, Feb. 2, super fights in Houston’s ULH Event Center will have three competitors from Controlled Chaos competing at the Elevate Submission Series.
“Our very own CEO and Co-Owner Jen Gonzalez will be debuting in her ten-minute match against Naomi Villa in a 200-pound Black Belt GI Match. Zabdiel Charles will be making his fourth appearance in the super fights taking on Josh Ramirez in the 80-pound minute Grey Belt GI Match and Ryan Gonzalez squares off against Karter Short in a 115-pound Orange Belt NO-GI Match. The latter two matches are five minutes each,” said Benavides.
In a society where bullying has become routine, Benavides spoke about what skills make a child a good fit for this type of training and competing.
“A lot of it is children that want to learn and that are open to it. We’ll show them the discipline and we’ll work with them to get them to where they understand. We see a lot of children that want to protect themselves, they’re being bullied, there’s issues at their school with someone else so they come to learn how to protect themselves,” he said.
Benavides recommends to start training a child for jiu-jitsu or wrestling at the age of 4 or 5 years old. He says children should be around 6 or 7 years old when they start training for boxing. With MMA, he says a good age to start them would be around 7 or 8.
“It’s more about the maturity of the child. If we see children that are very mature that do what we ask them with no tantrums, they listen, behave, they understand the concepts that were trying to show them, then we can be able to adjust and move them,” he said.
Child safety is one of the reasons why Jason and Jennifer started the Controlled Chaos Gym and Physical Fitness Center in Alice.
“When we decided to open, it was more for that. Our goal was just to help protect the children and to make them safe. Now a days with society you never know what’s happening, what’s going on. Not just with the schools but people with bad intentions and our goal was just to try to help these children be able to survive out there. Our six coaches that work here are SafeSport certified, background checked and have over 15 years of experience teaching children and adults,” Benavides said.
