Hong Kong MMA coach Sean Stolarczyk teaches the finer arts amid expansion of the fight game

The 41-year-old teacher, who has a background in a number of martial arts, says the goal in MMA is to find a way to incorporate the disciplines together

With the rise of the UFC comes a new breed of fighters who also focus on things like diet, nutrition and strength and conditioning to round out their games

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Hong Kong coach Sean Stolarczyk said there is a fine art to coaching and teaching mixed martial arts. Photo: Jonathan Wong

Patrick Blennerhassett

Published: 8:00am, 27 Apr 2021Updated: 8:10am, 27 Apr 2021

Sean Stolarczyk’s mixed martial arts journey started at the age of five in Iwakuni, Japan.

The American was stationed overseas with his father, who was in the military, and the rest of his family. Since then, he has accumulated an impressive resume when it comes to martial arts. He competed in karate for both the junior and national team, and represented the US at the 2004 Pan American Games.

He’s branched out over the years and competed in a number of disciplines: wrestling, judo, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, kick-boxing and mixed martial arts.

Now a coach in Hong Kong at both Versus and Hybrid Gyms in Central, Stolarczyk said there is definitely a fine art to coaching MMA. His approach is to train each skill set and then find a way to bring all the different assets together.

“It’s impossible to say I just want to do the MMA training,” said the 41-year-old who also trained with the China national judo team while living in Nanjing. “Some people want to do that, I feel like you have to take each discipline separately. And then when it’s time to get ready for a fight, or train actual MMA, that’s when we work on things like how you use the wrestling during striking, and so on.”