FULL ARTICLE here on MMA.tv
"Taking me on brings street cred, it's a win-win situation to them. Imagine you're a criminal and two cops arrive to arrest you. One cop is normal size; the other is me, 6'5", 280-pounds. The bad guy beats up a small cop its street cred, but if he loses its not. He loses to a smaller cop he looks bad. He beats up cop my size, that's double street cred for him, a win-win."
That's how I meet "Big Mountain". I look across at him, a giant of a man, 40-years-old, greying hair, and piercing grey eyes. If you can look past those eyes the guy seems like a big teddy bear. Happy, well spoken, charismatic, but you know what they say about the eyes, windows to the soul.
I write now, but I was in the military for a long time. I've seen the real deal, and Eric "Big Mountain" Eads is just that, a real warrior, a modern day Samurai. His liege lord is his community and his dojo is Indianapolis Jiu Jitsu, ran by Master Marcello Monteiro, the BJJ coach.
Eads began practicing Brazilian Jiu Jitsu nearly a decade ago.
"When I got on the police department I was always worried about somebody grabbing me, wrestling me or something, you know? I was always big enough to defend myself a little bit, but I am a father of two young girls, I'm a husband, I wanted to make it home to my family.
After being a police officer for about four years, always thinking, working on the streets as a patrol officer, thinking what if someone attacks me or something. I had seen some of the UFC and stuff. I call my friend from beach Grove police; he was a blue belt in BJJ, that's where I started. I think late 2002."
And like starting out any new combative sport, the early bumps were the hardest to take.
"When I first started I'd go home after working out and I couldn't swallow because they had choked me so bad. I would just poor water down my throat to swallow. My wife thought I was crazy, everybody I knew thought I was crazy. But I had to go back, I was so competitive and I couldn't stand the fact that these little guys were killing me.
"Bob Mercury from Beach Grove was 170 pounds; I had over 100 pounds on him. They were just so good with their hips and so aggressive, I didn't know what I was doing. It was like wrestling with a leach."
But Eads wasn't a beginner forever. And he would soon receive a new nickname and a new outlook on the sport after meeting Marcello Monteiro.
"I heard a rumor there was a guy coming from Brazil, Marcello Monteiro," remembered Big Mountain. "He had a contact here who was married to a girl from Brazil; lucky for us he had a contact here. This tan guy comes running in yelling something, I didn't know at the time, he was speaking Portuguese. He pulls a Gi out and starts teaching. My game shot thru the roof.
The first night he looks at me, he says Grande Montanha, Grande Montanha. He named me Big Mountain, most people only know me as Big Mountain."
Over the past nine years the mountain has shaken, but he never fell. In 2007 he slipped a disk in his neck at a tournament. Although he could still train he had to take several years off competition. He credits the family environment promoted at the gym and Monteiro's support in getting him back on the competition mat.
In 2010, "Big Mountain" again stepped on the mat to compete. He won two of three in the C3 tournament in Indiana. He then competed in a tournament in Kentucky. He fought a purple and brown belt, beating one by points and the other by submission. He was a brown belt.
In 2011 the Mountain competed at the Arnolds. He fought against two purple belts, two brown belts and one black belt, he beat them all. Upon returning from that tournament Monteiro promoted Eads to Black Belt.
One could tell, seeing these two together, that a close bond had developed, "Big Mountain" and Monteiro seemed like father and son. As I went around the gym I began to notice that Monteiro had a similar relationship with all of his students. He seemed to be a coach, teacher, mentor and friend.
Visiting Monteiro's gym was like visiting a theme park with a group of your closest friends. The classes were fun, fast paced, so friendly that the phrase free of ego didn't need to be said, it was felt.
To learn more about Marcello Monteiro BJJ go to http://www.indianapolisbjjcoach.com/
For those who get on the mat at Indianapolis Jiu Jitsu, you probably will never see what I saw behind Big Mountain's eyes, but I bet the bad guys do. I for one am happy to have an officer like this work in the same community I do. There's a big mountain that guards Indianapolis, and his name is Eric Eads.