Tulsa, Oklahoma | August 2026
Multiple interior murals | Aerosol and acrylic

On August 29, 2026, we officially opened the doors to Combat Warriors Martial Arts.

This project is different from almost everything else in my portfolio because I did not simply come in as the artist.

This is our gym.

I joined my friend and instructor Jose Loera on this next chapter as a co-owner, and over time the space has become almost like a second home to me.

How It Started

My connection with Jose goes back years.

At the time, I had been trying to decide what martial art I wanted to learn. Boxing, Muay Thai, grappling, I really did not know which direction I wanted to go.

Eventually, I tried a gym inside the old Promenade Mall called ThunderKick, where I started training Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and MMA.

That is where I first met Jose.

He came in one day as a walk in to train. At the time, I did not personally know many Hispanic people practicing Jiu Jitsu, especially instructors, so I remembered him.

Unfortunately, my own training did not last very long during that period. I had a longboarding accident and broke my wrist.

But I kept up with Jose.

Years later, I found out that he had opened his own gym.

I reached out and initially started by helping with social media. Over time I became involved with more and more of what he was building.

I initially worked with Jose because I believed in what he was trying to do.

He was humble, hardworking, experienced, and had a dream. More importantly, I felt like he was someone our community needed.

Jose's own journey is pretty unique. He came from Aguascalientes, Mexico, trained extensively in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, became an instructor, and eventually competed professionally in MMA. A 2018 VICE profile tells part of that story, including his journey from the seminary in Mexico to martial arts in the United States.

Knowing Tulsa and knowing the community, I felt strongly that the gym belonged on the east side.

There was really no question about it.

So we started looking.

It took us more than a year to make the transition happen. During that period, we moved around and looked at a lot of possible locations, but nothing really felt right.

Then we found this place.

Tucked away in the back, hidden from the main road, was an old body shop.

It was gritty.

It needed work.

And it was perfect.

We were not looking for something fancy. We were working with a budget and needed enough space to build what we had in mind.

More importantly, this location gave us freedom.

Other places came with restrictions on what we could change or how we could use the building. Here, we had much more flexibility to truly make the space our own.

That is where the artwork came in.

EL Quinto SoL

One of the first major murals I painted was inspired by the Mexica Sun Stone, sometimes commonly referred to as the Aztec Calendar.

I painted it close to its monumental proportions, slightly enlarging it to fit the space.

The original stone is an incredibly complex representation of Mexica ideas surrounding time, cosmology, sacrifice, and cycles of creation.

At its center is the Fifth Sun, known as Four Movement, or Nahui Ollin. Surrounding it are four sections representing previous eras associated with jaguar, wind, fiery rain, and water. Beyond those are the twenty day signs used within the Mexica calendar system, along with additional symbols and layers of meaning.

There is much more contained within the original stone than I could ever explain in one mural description.

That research is worth doing on its own.

For me, incorporating it into Combat Warriors connected the space back to Mexican and Indigenous history, movement, strength, cycles, and culture.

The process was another story.

There were areas toward the top where getting into the corners became difficult, and recreating all of those repeating patterns seemed like it would never end.

Every time I thought I was making progress, there was another ring of details.

But that repetition is also part of what gives the final mural its presence.

Once everything came together, it immediately became one of the defining pieces inside the gym.

The Jaguar

Another mural inside the gym features a jaguar with its mouth open, giving the wall a more aggressive and powerful presence.

I wanted something that felt fierce.

The jaguar has a strong place in Mesoamerican culture and was associated with power, strength, warfare, and status. Mexica warriors looked to the jaguar as a symbol of ferocity and courage, which is part of why jaguar imagery became so closely connected to elite warrior traditions.

That meaning made the animal feel like a natural fit for Combat Warriors.

The mural itself is not meant to depict a warrior. It is the jaguar on its own, with that same intensity and presence carried into the space.

The wall also had a few water fountains in the way, so part of the challenge was designing and painting around the existing fixtures without letting them break the composition.

Rather than treating them as a problem, I worked around them and made the layout fit the space as it was.

That is part of mural work too.

You do not always get a perfect blank wall. Sometimes there are outlets, doors, vents, pipes, fountains, or other obstacles already there, and you have to find a way to make the artwork still feel intentional.

In the end, the jaguar brought exactly the kind of energy I wanted into the gym.

Fierce, powerful, and rooted in culture.

Creation of a Fighter

For another wall, I took inspiration from the familiar composition of two hands reaching toward one another.

Instead of recreating it traditionally, I wanted to reinterpret it through martial arts.

One hand is wrapped the way a fighter might prepare for boxing, kickboxing, or another striking discipline.

The other has fingers taped in the way you often see in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.

Between and behind them, different Jiu Jitsu belt colors flow throughout the composition, representing progression through the art.

I also sprayed a chain link fence pattern into the background to complement the actual cage inside the gym and give the mural a grittier atmosphere.

Behind everything sits COMBAT WARRIORS in large beveled Old English lettering.

It is intentionally pushed into the background and partially covered by the other elements.

I wanted it present without needing to dominate the entire wall.

That lettering also gives the piece some of that East Tulsa character I wanted throughout the gym.

It feels raw.

It feels local.

And it feels like us.

The Fighters

Another major mural brought together fighters and martial artists from different eras, countries, and disciplines.

Choosing who to include was difficult because there are so many people who have contributed to combat sports.

Eventually, I painted Justin Gaethje, Julio César Chávez, Alex Pereira, Mike Tyson, Alexa Grasso, Khabib Nurmagomedov, and Hélio Gracie.

Each one brought something different to the wall.

Julio César Chávez represents one of the legendary names in Mexican boxing.

Alexa Grasso represents Mexico at the highest levels of MMA.

Justin Gaethje has built a reputation through his toughness, exciting fights, and the way he carries himself outside the cage.

Alex Pereira brings his own presence and striking history.

Mike Tyson is one of the most recognizable figures boxing has ever produced.

Khabib Nurmagomedov represents dominance inside the cage but also discipline, humility, family, and character outside of competition.

And then there is Hélio Gracie.

Hélio became one of the central figures in the development of Gracie Jiu Jitsu. After learning the Japanese influenced Jiu Jitsu taught within his family, he adapted techniques around leverage, efficiency, and the ability to defend against larger opponents, helping shape the system that became deeply influential in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and modern combat sports.

Putting all of these figures together created a wall representing different kinds of warriors.

Different countries.

Different generations.

Different martial arts.

Different stories.

There are plenty of other fighters I would have loved to include.

Maybe there is still room for more.

Exterior Logo and Signage

Another important piece of the gym’s identity is the large Combat Warriors logo I spray painted on the front gate.

Because our gym is tucked away and not immediately visible from the main road, that logo has become one of the main things that helps people recognize where we are from a distance.

The logo itself was designed by my friend Clayton Dahm, who has become a big part of the Combat Warriors rebrand.

Clayton has helped us tremendously.

He is a great student, a great friend, and someone who has continued to level up alongside the gym. He has put a lot into helping us shape the way Combat Warriors looks and feels as a brand.

He has even learned how to speak Spanish, which says a lot about the effort he has put into connecting with the people around him and the community here.

I wanted to make sure his design had a strong presence on the building, so I took the logo and translated it onto the front gate at a much larger scale using aerosol.

On each side of the gate are two red doors, where I also added vinyl graphics as part of the exterior branding.

Those details may be smaller compared to the murals inside, but together they help the building feel like Combat Warriors before you even walk through the door.

The logo on the gate became especially important because it is one of the clearest visual markers of where we are.

A lot of the work we have done with this gym has been about taking a hidden, gritty space and turning it into something that feels intentional, recognizable, and ours.

Clayton’s logo became a big part of that identity, and I was glad I got to bring it onto the building itself.

Building Combat Warriors

The murals were only one part of getting ready for our grand opening.

There was still plenty of work to do when we opened on August 29, and honestly, there is still more I want to add.

But this was a strong beginning.

For years, most of my artwork existed inside someone else's restaurant, business, public space, or building.

This time I was creating the visual identity of a place I actually helped build.

That feels different.

I never really pictured myself becoming part owner of a martial arts gym.

I have always enjoyed sports, staying active, training, and taking care of myself, but this was never some lifelong business plan I had mapped out.

It happened through relationships, timing, believing in somebody else's dream, and eventually realizing I had become part of that dream too.

These days I still train whenever I can, although being an owner means I spend a lot more time doing administrative work than I probably expected.

But when I walk through the gym and see the murals, the cage, people training, kids learning, coaches teaching, and families coming through the doors, I remember why we did it.

We wanted to create something for East Tulsa.

Something rooted in culture but open to everybody.

A place where people could train seriously without the ego.

A place where someone walking through the door for the first time could eventually find a second home.

Somehow, that is what this place became for me too.