hether he’s battling stains in
his drycleaning plant or battling warriors in a cage, Rich Moss always
gives his best effort. It takes a great deal of determination and
discipline to be successful at either ambition, but fortunately for
Rich, he’s rich in both qualities.
During his “day job,” he owns and
operates Mastel Cleaners in Scottsdale, an impressive cleaning business
that requires 66 employees to complete its weekly workload, which
includes service accounts with some of Arizona’s finest resorts.
In his “spare” time, however, he
pursues a completely different career. Currently, he is ranked number
two in the standings of Ultimate Fighting — a.k.a. Mixed Martial
Arts — a sport sanctioned by the Arizona Boxing Commission that
has grown considerably in popularity over the past few years.
With an impressive record of nine wins and only
one loss, Rich expects a title bout for the U.S. middleweight
championship in September.
“I’m really kind of a humble guy. I
like to treat people how I want to be treated,” Rich said.
“When I get in the cage, that’s a different person. Though
I’m built pretty well, most people look at me and they
can’t believe I go in there and actually do it. I just explain it
this way: It’s not as bad as you think it is.”
Like drycleaning, cage fighting has its share of
public misconceptions. “It’s an awesome sport. Nobody has
ever been killed in it,” Rich said, also noting that every
fighter must follow a set of rules.
“There are no head butts, no biting, no low
blows,” he said. “In Arizona, you can’t kick a guy
when he’s down on the ground. Imagine if I knocked you down on
the ground and it’s bare fighting. I could come down and start
punching you and really hurting you. Once you’re down and I get
on top of you where you can’t defend yourself, it’s over.
They stop it.”
Ultimate Fighting often follows a format
containing three rounds of three minutes each, or two to three rounds
that last five minutes a piece.
“Nine or ten minutes of fighting is brutal
because you’re not only watching for punches, you’re
watching for kicks,” Rich said. “You have to make sure that
the other guy isn’t going to shoot in and kick you down to the
ground. That’s a lot to train for.”
Training probably means more to Rich than it does
to most cage fighters. The typical mixed martial artist is in his low-
to mid-twenties. Rich, on the other hand, turns 40 on September 1. He
is fully aware his stamina isn’t naturally as high as that of his
opponents, so he offsets the disadvantage by working twice as hard.
“I train two to three times a day now to
stay in shape for the fighting,” he said. “My fighting
styles are judo, wrestling and kickboxing. I hired a man who is a
master in kickboxing. I train with him in the mornings at 7 a.m., just
one-on-one stuff. Then I go in the afternoons at 6 o’clock and
spar.”
Rich also makes sure he lifts weights at noon
almost every day. If that weren’t enough, he also runs up and
down the steps at ASU’s Sun Devil Stadium with his wife,
Michella, a respiratory therapist.
“You have to have leg strength because your
legs will kind of get weak on you,” he said. “So, she runs
900 steps and I run 1,200 steps. We just do different types of
workouts.”
Rich tries to find a little time to teach Michella
a few fighting techniques, as well.
“I’ve been teaching her how to
do some kickboxing so she can defend herself. We met at one of the cage
fights two years ago. She was going to the fights and I was injured. I
was just there watching.”
Rich, who has two children from a previous
marriage — David, 12, and Matt, 16 — makes sure both sons
attend each of his fights so they can see firsthand what happens in the
cage.
“My oldest boy talks about doing it,”
he noted. “I’m not going to push him. If they want to do
it, I’ll give them the right training.”
For Rich, it’s been a long lifetime of the
right training. When he was only five years old and growing up in San
Mateo, California, life moved just a little too slow to keep up with
him. He needed an outlet.
“I was kind of a rambunctious kid, you know,
always just moving and going with lots of energy,” he laughed.
“The neighbor down the street was a police officer and he was a
judo instructor at the recreation center. He told my parents that
I’d probably be pretty good at it.”
It turned out to be very good advice. Rich entered
in his first judo tournament a few months later and was awarded first
place.
Next up, Rich trained with Willy Cahill, founder
of Cahill’s Judo Academy in San Bruno. Eventually, he became an
eight-time national judo champion and a three-time wrestling champion,
travelling all over the world in order to take part in matches.
Following high school, Rich turned down wrestling
scholarships in order to sign up with the military.
“Colonel Maruyama — the Olympic Judo
Coach — convinced me to enlist in the Air Force and I would do
nothing but sports for them,” he said. “For four years, all
I did was judo and wrestling for the military. That was my
job.”
In 1987, Rich competed at the World Championships.
He lost the bronze medal match in judo, but still earned the ranking of
number four in the world. Just prior to the competition, Rich had
endured two shoulder surgeries.
“I had one in 1986 and the other right
before the World Championships in 1987,” he recalled. “The
doctors told me it would take me over a year to be able to compete and
I wouldn’t make it back in time, but I did. I almost won the
bronze medal then. I never got back to that competitive level, though.
They put a screw in my shoulder so I lost some mobility on my right
side.”
“Next, I went to the 1988 trials for the
Olympic Judo Team, and I didn’t win that, of course,” Rich
added. “But, I was favored to go to the Olympics in
1992.”
At that time, however, fate intervened. Rich
discovered he would be a father soon. He chose to live up to his
responsibilities and start making money to support his family instead
of chasing an Olympic dream.
Figuring out what to do next was fairly simple for
Rich since he was a third generation member of the laundry business.
His grandfather, Vern, was a founding father of Mission Linen in Santa
Barbara. He also had invented bag rack stands and hanger stands for the
industry.
Vern passed down the tradition to Rich’s
father, Richard, who worked for many years as the general manager of
Peninou French Laundry, a cleaners in San Francisco.
“My dad began working there when I was in
8th or 9th grade. I would go down there and help them remodel the
plant, move equipment around, thread pipe and run routes for
them,” Rich recalled.
Those skills came in handy later in 1988 when Rich
worked as a route driver for Mission Industries. Over a year later, he
was recruited by Maryatt Industries to be a route supervisor. He
accepted the position and moved to Phoenix. It wasn’t long,
though, before he found a curve in the road.
“I was out driving, seeing customers and
there was a car wreck,” he explained. “I made a short cut
around it and saw this big drycleaning business. I pulled in and went
up to the front counter and asked if the owner was in.”
The owner met Rich and informed him he was ready
to sell. By January 1 of 1991, Rich became the owner of Mastel. In only
seven years, the staff has nearly doubled in size to the point that
Rich realized it was too big to run by himself. So, his parents moved
over from California to assist him. Then, he recruited his sister and
her husband.
With his family in place to watch over the
business, Rich now had the time to take up Ultimate Fighting. The idea
came to him when he realized he already knew a lot of the fighters.
“Some guys who I had trained with at the
Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs did some of the Ultimate
Fighting,” he said. “I thought, ‘You know, I used to
beat those guys. I could do that’.”
Returning to a 25-hour a week training regimen was
old hat for a man who has practiced judo for 35 years, earning a 4th
Degree Black Belt.
So far, his hard efforts have paid off. Though he
can knock out an opponent quickly (he once did with a two-punch combo
ten seconds into the first round), he still has had to win a few fights
by going the distance.
“It’s a long time of fighting,”
he said. “When I train, I do ten three-minute rounds and I try to
train like I fight, but your adrenaline is much higher when
you’re going into that cage. You’re burning a lot more
energy.”
He plans to pursue cage fighting for another year
or two, depending on how his health holds out. Not so long ago, his
fighting future looked much more grim.
“Through all of the years of fighting, I
hurt my right shoulder again,” he said. “It kept wanting to
snap out but it couldn’t because I had the screw in it to hold
it. So, I had reconstructive surgery on January 4 and the doctors told
me that it would be a year and a half of rehab and I shouldn’t
fight again — or I wouldn’t be able to.”
Naturally, Rich wanted to prove them wrong —
and he did. He rehabilitated the shoulder to 100% mobility in less than
six months.
“Right now, I’m fighting the best
I’ve ever fought. My hand speed is so much better and the
confidence on my shoulder not separating is there. I guess I’m
just lucky that everything has turned out the way it has.”
