Thirty-two-year-old Randy Willard always carries a pair of boxing gloves with him — or rather, on his abdominals.
Draped around his neck, two miniature boxing gloves hang at belly-button height, one inscribed with Willard’s nickname “Top Notch.”
The tattoo speaks to Willard’s identity as a boxer and fighter, and now one might add, father. The gloves are about the size that would fit over Willard’s 11-month-old baby’s hands. Mia Willard does not yet own a pair of boxing gloves of her own, but from time to time, she’ll slip on 8-ounce candy pink boxing gloves and punch a small donut-shaped leather target held by her dad.
”She knows how to slip the glove on — she doesn’t know how to strap them on — but she knows how to put her hands in and I teach her how to pat the gloves,” said Willard with a wide grin during a recent interview. “And then she goes, boom, boom, boom [pretends to box]. 11-months-old man, it’s crazy.”
A doting father is a role Willard never thought he would play. He was largely absent from his first daughter’s childhood and was an alcoholic for the bulk of his 20s. Everything changed for Willard in 2012 when he rediscovered his love of combat sports.
“The most important thing that motivates me is my family, my wife and my two girls, and then obviously my parents,” Willard said.
Willard now manages Counterstrike MMA, a team of fighters he trains for competition, and spends every free moment with his family.
Raising Randy
Willard was born on Feb. 23, 1985, in Haines, Alaska. One of six brothers and six sisters, Willard’s family moved to Juneau when he was two.
Willard and his family were not rich. He remembers growing up on Top Ramen and bologna sandwiches. Verbal fights between his parents sometimes turned physical; they separated when Willard was six.
Lacking a strong male role model in his life while in elementary school, Willard butted heads with authority figures. He didn’t respond well to correction and ignored teachers. He was kicked out of school for the first time in third grade. As a prank, Willard had put an explicit rap tape into the school library stereo, knowing it would be played to assist in gathering the class when it was time to leave the library.
“They played it and it was a bunch cuss words,” Willard said. “I started laughing and they kicked me out of school. My mom picked me up and I had to go home for the day.”
Willard would move back and forth from Haines and Juneau several more times before high school. But his troublesome behaviors followed him wherever he went. By the time Willard reached his teens, his deviant side took on more incendiary forms. At 13, he was caught stealing bikes in Juneau and was put on juvenile probation.
Willard was 16 and fresh off a 30-day stint in Cornerstone, Juneau Youth Services’ homeless youth shelter, before hearing news that would rock his world.
His older brother, Mark Willard, died when his car rolled off the side of Thane Road. He was drinking and driving and died after being ejected from the car. Willard, his four brothers and two others were the pallbearers at the funeral. The grief brought on by his brother’s passing compounded his problems at school.
“I could get good grades but I just didn’t have the motivation,” Willard said. “I didn’t want to listen to anybody; I didn’t want to be there.”
After entering high school in 1999, he bounced between Juneau-Douglas High School, the JDHS Choice Program and Yaakoosgé Daakahídi. For parts of his sophomore and junior years, he lived at Miller House, a JYS residential treatment center. Willard made his way back to Yaakoosgé by his senior year, but was expelled just two and a half months before graduation. Miraculously, he made up all his school work in the final two weeks and graduated on time.
Willard’s graduation from high school in 2003 appeared to be a turning point for him, for four years anyway.
The criminal years
At 22, Willard was thrown in jail for several months after he tried evading a police officer who caught him speeding.
It was the beginning of an approximately seven-year period of drunkenness, deceitfulness and destitution. Drinking was a constant. Everything else was a revolving door. Willard went to jail around 10 times in his 20s, racking up larceny and domestic violence charges. He wasn’t able to keep a job for any sustained amount of time.
“I would hustle up 15, 20 bucks to go get a fifth of vodka, the cheapest (stuff) you can find,” Willard said. “I would just get drunk every night. I would get drunk enough to pass out.”
His mom, girlfriend and girlfriend’s parents were some of the only ones who still put up with him. Willard still had a soft spot in his heart for his mom, who never gave up hope on her son. She would remind him that she loved him and the good things he brought into the world.
“It’s not easy to be in that situation. You feel like nobody cares about you. Nobody wants anything good for you,” Willard said. “So I would come to my mom’s house and we would just sit here and talk for an hour, a couple hours. She would just basically tell me that people still care about you, you’ll figure it out.”
Willard resorted to sleeping on a boat for two months. Without a space heater, he used seven blankets at night to stay warm.
Then in 2012, Willard spent six months in jail for domestic violence and drunken driving.
The fighter life
The same year after Willard got out of jail, his then girlfriend and now wife, Helen Flood, invited him to a Muay Thai class with her. Willard originally enrolled in the class just to lose weight. He weighed 230 pounds. He had experience in boxing and judo, but something about this new martial art clicked for him.
“They were throwing elbows and knees and kicks and I was like, ‘Man this is pretty fun,’” Willard said. “So I ended up sticking with it.”
Complete Warrior Academy, the martial arts academy that put on the class, later moved to a new gym space. The high monthly dues of the martial arts academy prompted Willard to train on his own. He started learning about MMA, which combines the fist, knee and elbow strikes taught in Muay Thai with other martial arts.
He invited others to join him, and Counterstrike MMA — a ragtag team of fighters wanting to take their craft to the next level — was born. They met in a recreation hall on the grounds of the Gruening Park Apartments in Lemon Creek. They have since trained in various garages, Goals Gym (now “The Gym”) and both Alaska Club locations.
Willard has single-handedly kept the team afloat since establishing it. Some of the early disciples of Willard’s team had no gear, no gym memberships and no personal transportation. To remedy that, Willard began soliciting business sponsors.
He had found his tribe, his people. The young men that would walk through the gym doors carried with them the same problems he’s dealt with — alcoholism, broken households and lack of direction.
Willard has said many of those in the MMA community — whether in Alaska or not — come from similar backgrounds. The athletes lacked discipline growing up. They struggled with addiction or homelessness. But by applying themselves to a combat sport like MMA, they found a healthy way of venting their pain.
On a recent training session at the Alaska Club in the Mendenhall Valley, Willard ran through two-man boxing drills with a handful of fighters. Each fighter takes turns squaring up with Willard as he calls out punches (jab, right cross, etc.) using prescribed numbers.
Marc Reina, 18, is one of those training with Willard. Like Willard, Reina had his share of bumps in high school. He’s working toward his General Equivalency Diploma (GED).
“He got me up off my ass to come to the gym to get in shape,” Reina said of Willard. “When I’m with him, I want to excel, I want to keep going, I want to push my hardest.”
Kyle Delarosa, an up-and-coming MMA fighter in Juneau associated with Complete Warrior Academy, looms nearby. Delarosa trains across the hall from Willard’s crew in the Complete Warrior Academy gym. The two have even trained together, sacrificing team loyalties for Willard to become a better coach and Delarosa a better fighter.
“I have a white belt mentality, I’ll train with anyone,” Delarosa said. “We used to be seen as rivals, but I never saw it like that. I saw him as a coach. I see everyone better than me as a coach.”
‘One-way train’
Willard has not had a drink for nearly 20 months. Even moderate drinking was getting in the way of his training. About two weeks after making the decision in late April of 2016, he found out his wife was pregnant with Mia. Willard called it “a sign” and has maintained his resolve to stay sober. To the delight of Flood, staying clean has allowed Willard to maintain a strong presence in Mia’s life.
“He’s been a really big support, encouraging me all the time to grab opportunities,” Flood said of him since starting a family together.
Flood and Willard have been together since 2007. Through the good times and bad, Flood always believed in her husband, and willingly takes care of Mia on her own when Willard is out of town.
In the last two years, Willard has made repeated trips to South Florida to volunteer his time with the Blackzillions, a professional team of MMA fighters. Blackzillions is home to dozens of fighters in the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), a multi-billion dollar fighting company that has turned Conor McGregor and Ronda Rousey into household names.
Blackzillion MMA fighters Desmond Green, Abel Trujillo and Anthony Johnson have all paid visits to Juneau to work out with Willard.
This summer, Willard was given four weeks of lodging, food and pay to “hold mitts” for UFC fighter Pat Cummings. In late July, the 37-year-old Pennsylvania native defeated Gian Villante by split decision.
But what matters most to Willard is not making it big in the UFC, he said. It’s to become the best father, husband and community member he possibly can in the time he has.
“I’m on a one-way train, there’s no turning back. I know what it’s like to be where I was at, I know what I put my wife through, I know what I put my family through,” Willard said. “I was selfish, and now it’s my time to give back.”
• Contact sports reporter Nolin Ainsworth at 523-2272 or nolin.ainsworth@juneauempire.com.
Referee Russ Stevens holds up the hands of Randy Willard, left, and Tyler Eells at the AK Beat Down at Elizabeth Peratrovich Hall on Friday, Oct. 20, 2017. Their match was called a draw. (Michael Penn | Juneau Empire File)
