We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Nenad Shuput a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Nenad, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

I have been an athlete my whole life (I played basketball all throughout high school and college, then played in a basketball development league) and have always lived a very disciplined life of competition and workouts. After my basketball career ended I started looking into martial arts through a friend. I started with Muay Thai and later progressed to MMA. I have trained in many gyms in the US and Europe over the course of fifteen years and have met many people; gym owners, fighters, went to multiple seminars and also competed in cage fights and mat tournaments. I have learned the ins and outs of training myself and others through different views, philosophies, and drills. I have seen how gyms and the fight business is ran. I had an opportunity to teach in one of the Muay Thai and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu gyms in SLC for five years. After one of the gyms started to go under my wife who is my biggest supporter in this opened my eyes to the possibility of opening and running a gym myself since I have been involved in the world of martial arts for such a long time. I have always liked being my own boss but was very hesitant of starting a gym by myself. My wife being as great as she is, managed to instill the little bit of courage I needed to push through and take the first step to finding a suitable location for the gym, which was a very challenging task on its own. I came up with a design of the gym logo and name fairly easily as my mind became obsessed with this idea. After the location was found and I had the name of the gym and a great logo I just jumped into it wholeheartedly and decided to give it a run, for better or worse. My knowledge of different martial arts such as kickboxing and Muay Thai, being a black belt and a high BJJ color belt of brown, knowing which drills work for me and for others by collecting knowledge from all of the different places I have trained at I knew that I could not fail on that side of the business. The only scary side was the financial and marketing side. By seeing which parts other gyms didn’t do well and having had to improvise and come up with my own planning or training and strategizing the drills because they didn’t, I have understood ways I can improve those aspects to fit most other martial artists. One of those key aspects which is most important where other gyms came short was willingness to spend time in detailed explanations of different techniques and come up with elaborate drilling that would fit most students regardless of the skill level. While I wanted to be accessible to beginners I also intended to dedicate comprehensive fight camps to forge very skillful fighters out of those who are committed to training and understanding that obstacle is the way. That is not something that I have seen many other gyms and instructors spend their time on and believed it is what the Utah MMA fighters were mostly looking for when bouncing from one gym to another. They needed someone who wanted to tailor a fight camp specific to the fighter infront of them rather than charge them for classes and let them spare. What I take with most appreciation from owning and running the gym is being with great people that are like minded day in and day out, watching them succeed in their goals, whether big or small, skill level or winning fights and belts, knowing that I am a part of their success and growth is what makes me happy. I never feel like I am at work or counting the minutes until I can go home.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

After college, I was so used to organized training and practices (in high school and college) that I missed it.

Every time I spent time with my friend Viktor he would say “I have to go to training” and when I asked him what he does he said “Muay Thai”. I had no idea what that meant at the time. I decided to go check it out with him one day. I liked the discipline, the intensity of training, kicks and punches, and knees and elbows. I fell in love with it that day and never stopped. Haven’t missed a single day since that day 15 years ago. Shortly after Muay Thai, I started jiu-jitsu and MMA. I trained Muay Thai under Sakasam, “the Punisher” at the Muay Thai Institute and after a few years, he moved on and opened up his own gym.

A few years after that I followed him there and also started doing Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu under Gustavo Rodrigues. Six years from them I earned my purple belt. After earning a purple belt in BJJ one is allowed to teach. That was the beginning of my teaching and coaching. A couple of years after that, Sakasam moved on yet again, but I stayed at the gym teaching classes often for about five years. I also became a black belt in kickboxing recognized by ISKA; which is one of the major bodies regulating kickboxing and Muay Thai in the United States. At the end of those five years I decided to move on on my own as well, thanks to my wife Zivana who supported me and helped me open up our now one-year-old gym in the Salt Lake/West Valley area; called Gladiator Fight Academy. It has been an amazing journey, I do what I love and I love what I do, and I wouldn’t change it for anything. We are running youth classes, helping them with their confidence and overcoming the fear of bullies; working with kids ages 8 to 17. We also have many martial arts enthusiast adults who have been loyal and regular in their training every day.

That helps them in not only the aspects of fighting but in every other aspect of their lives building confidence in their work and relationships. As a child, living in a civil war-torn country, Yugoslavia, I had to move and find refugees in different areas, and kids can be very mean. They bully someone who is malnutrition and looks apart from the locals, so I always wanted to learn how to fight and defend myself. When I found Mixed Martial Arts it helped me overcome some of the trauma of my childhood. I lost my father in the war and unlike other children did not have that strong physical male presence in my life that other children had, so I was an easy target for bullies. My mother did her best to protect my brother and me, she is mentally stronger than most men I have known, and learning that from her has helped me in the mental aspect of MMA.

Now that I’m able to transfer my knowledge to others, especially kids, to build their confidence and skills to not be victims of bullying it’s worth that much more. I have worked hard to make my gym inclusive to anyone that steps through the door, unlike other gyms where you have to be part of the “MMA cliques”. Everyone is welcome here and as long as they have the will to learn and better themselves I do not care what they look like or how much they know about the sport.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

As far as this journey of owning and operating the gym my main struggle has been financial and not being able to afford the memberships to afford the adequate training I wanted. That is why at GFA we have multiple membership options and never lock anyone into an expensive contract. We want to provide accessibility to high quality training to anyone having interest. While I was able to push through and continue my training even when I could not afford it I believe others might easily give up and not pursue their passion.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

One of the things that helped build my reputation is the recognition of the quality of my classes and elaborate knowledge of Muay Thai and mixed martial arts.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.gladiatorfightacademy.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gladiator_fight_academy?igsh=c3djbTU3MGFuc283
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/gladiatorMMAUtah?mibextid=LQQJ4d
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@Nenad-ICXC-Shuput-GFAMMA