Marine Graham Nelson, a former Lane student, will be making his MMA debut in Salem on Oct. 15 (Photo by Alan K. Fox / The Torch)
By Alan K. Fox/The Torch
alankfox@lcctorch.com
As you walk in the entrance what was once a garage, you are greeted with a small art gallery with a desk directly in front of you, but that fails to tell the true story of the building.
There seems to be a smell that reminds you of your high school gym class and locker rooms, but why does the gallery have such an aroma?
In the background you hear the sound of thumping and what sounds like banging and grunting, so you continue to walk towards the back of the room and to the right there is a door that leads you to the aroma.
As you turn into the entryway there is a mixed martial arts gym and he stands in the middle dripping in sweat with a look of determination. The look that one would have when they are driven towards a goal and will not let anything get in their way.
Graham Nelson has that drive.
Growing up in the Eugene area — in the home his parents Nolan and Randi still live in — he says he was never afraid to stand-up to bullies and they really pissed him off.
“My first interaction with a bully came in the fifth grade — he was like five and a half feet tall he started to mess with my friend and started choking him, so I started hitting him as hard as I could in the back and the side of the kidneys, ” he said. “After it was broken up by a school person we were sent to the principal, then he asked me what I would have done different and I said I would have hit him harder.”
While attending Sheldon High School he was never really into sports, other than Ultimate Frisbee, a sport quickly gaining ground here in the Northwest.
After high school he decided to join the U.S. Marine Corps to discover himself. The move proved to be an eye-opener for Graham and made him grow up and decide what was going to mold him.
While most Marines were being stationed all over the world, Nelson was stationed at the White House Communications Agency in D.C.
“I felt it was challenging mentally with the shock of growing up in separation — living in Eugene, Oregon, to all of the sudden I am standing post in the middle of Washington, D.C. and being stuck inside of a little bulletproof box strapped with a gun,” he said.
With a smile lit from cheek-to-cheek he goes into detail about how it changed his life and how it could have gone either way — positive or negative.
“Guys here in the gym always ask me if the military is really worth it and I always tell them that it can be,” he said. “It’s one of those things that will accelerate your life. It will either accelerate it to a bad end or it will accelerate it to something good.”
For Nelson the Corps laid out a positive path and he credits having something to use as an outlet. He also says that during his four-year enlistment he felt that the Corps destroyed him and restored as a better man in ways.
His mother Randi says the same.
“I think it gave him a lot more confidence in what he could accomplish,” she said.
One of his outlets while doing his four-year commitment to the military was martial arts.
The Marines had a class taught by Royce Gracie, one of the best Brazilian Jiu Jitsu practitioners in the world, to help assist law enforcement. The class taught the attendees how to take a person down with the attributes of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, basic takedowns, chokes and armbars, and help contain them and securing handcuffs.
As members in his group were selected to attend the camps, they would return to base and instruct others on the transitions and moves that they had learned.
“I got hooked on that, and I turned into a sponge at every training instruction we had,” he said. “I started to pull the instructors on off-time and ask them to go to the gym and work out and learn some more stuff.”
While learning the moves, Nelson started to realize that he was a step ahead of everyone else. Eventually he was named an instructor and taught others everything he had learned.
As the end of his term with the military approached, he heard a rumor that he would be deployed. But a freak motorcycle accident while riding in the dunes led to his last seven months in the service sitting in a back brace.
The accident left him with a compression fracture, which crushed his T-12 vertebrate into a wedge.
The rehab took close to a year after getting out of the service, and the lack of exercise caused weight gain. Unsettled by falling out of shape, Nelson decided to make a change.
“I did a little weight lifting and the grappling when I was in the Corps, but it wasn’t until I was rehabbing myself from the accident that I started getting into fitness,” he said.
Once he was satisfied with his shape, he decided to attended Lane and enter the fitness education program. After a short time, Nelson decided not to participate in the program, due to different outlooks on what he believed was true fitness.
There was a big difference between the Marine training and the training that the college was teaching, which led to an internal conflict of interest for Nelson.
Without fitness classes to attend, Nelson looked into dance classes and other physical education courses to attend to continue his push for ultimate fitness. 
In January of 2010, Nelson began to realize that he was not hitting his goal of a high level of fitness and then he found Art of War Mixed Martial Arts — located in downtown Eugene — and head trainer Jason Georgianna.
Georgianna noticed a special attribute from Nelson the moment he stepped foot in the gym.
“What stood out the most even when he was taking the regular classes, was his tremendous work ethic,” Georgianna said. “He was a guy that would take the open initiative on the open-mat times and would put himself through crazy workouts.”
After close to two years of training, Nelson will be make his MMA fighting debut in Salem on Oct. 15 — an opportunity he is excited for because feels he has the perfect game plan entering the fight.
As his fight date nears his mother laughs as she thinks about what he is about to get himself into, but she knows it is a something that he really wants.
“He likes things that are different and he likes to push himself,” she said. “He’s always testing himself and I think it is a good way for him to do that. It keeps him both mentally and physically active.”
His coach, Georgianna, says he feels that it’s Nelson’s time to showcase his skill set and knows he will be ready to go on the big night.
“There is not a lot of individuals like him that will push themselves without the coach there, and of course he works hard when I’m there,” Georgianna said. “He just spontaneously works hard and a guy like that is always welcome on the fight team.”
