Shiner fighter hoping next trip to Vegas offers big break he’s spent months training for

Having gotten back just this past Friday from the bright lights and citified ways of Las Vegas, Zachary Reece says he still has a hard time wrapping his head around it all.

“It’s pretty surreal,” he said, having spent most of his time there in front of cameras, mostly, when he paid his first-ever visit to the UFC Apex Arena headquarters based in there in Nevada.

The folks at the UFC—that’s Ultimate Fighting Championship, to the uninitiated—were all about getting footage of him working out, throwing a few punches, and him telling them about where he came from and how he got there—what they like to call his back story.

It’s a mighty far cry from tugging on work boots, sliding on a hard hat and climbing onto a drilling rig each day, that’s for certain.

Yet that’s precisely how Zach came to be on his current path, in a roundabout way. The next time he heads to Vegas, a couple months hence, he’ll be climbing into steel cage in the big arena, hoping for a shot at the Big Time, and going toe to toe with another warrior, just like himself.

It’ll be a matter of who wants it most in the fight that's set for Tuesday, Aug. 22. Yet he’s not the least bit concerned about how that fight might go, Reece told us Monday. “I’m a lot more focused on the weeks between now and then,” he said. “What I do each day, what I eat. I’ll be doing some serious training work between now and then."

And rightly so, because if he pulls this off, he could be the next big thing we all tune in to see on only the premium-i-est cable networks. Who wouldn’t want to check it out? If for no other reason than just so you can point and say, “You see that fellow there? We’re both from Lavaca County.”

Roughneck Ways

Like many young men his age with a reasonably strong back, the oilfield can be a great way to earn a sizable bankroll in a relatively short period of time.

Just make sure you get out while you still have 10 fingers and 10 toes. While it may be a vastly safer industry today than it once was, being a derrick hand isn’t for daydreamers or the faint of heart. And trust me, it’ll provide you ample opportunities to come up short a few digits, if you fail to pay heed. Give it your full attention, however, and it can make for a nice gravy train.

For a while, at least. Because when it comes to the oil and gas industry, it’s always gluttony or starvation. There’s rarely a middle ground.

Plan for that, and it can make for some rather enjoyable work. Most old timers in the oilfield learn how to make the most of those peaks, so they can ride the gluts in a comfortable fashion, whenever they come along again.

Zach’s no old-timer, by any means, but he’s no fool, either. So, when that last oilfield boom began to ebb, Zach saw the writing on the wall and made plans for something a little off the beaten path. He’d always been the athletic sort, and unlike some of us who haven’t even thought about going to a gym in close 35 years now, Zach kept at it, working out regularly, building up his cardio, pushing the limits of his endurance, and bulking up like a beast.

Having studied martial arts growing up, he started to expand the skills quite a bit in that arena as well. And he made a pact with a close friend and trainer: The next slump we hit, I’m your man. I’ll give my all and see where it takes me.

For more than 10 years now, he’s been training in MMA-style fighting, the last couple of years with intense focus. Visiting with him earlier this spring, Zach said he spent much of the regular workweek on the road, training. The first three days of the week, he spent in Houston at a place called the WAR Training Center. On Thursdays, he’d hit the road for San Antonio to train with another master fighter at the Limitless MMA Academy in that town.

Week in and week out, that’s what he’s done, and he's steadily amassed a flawless professional fight record of five wins, no losses, and every fight so far was ended in the first round. All by knockout, no less.

Gearing Up

Not surprising, his incredible record has attracted a great lineup of sponsors as well: Preferred Plastics Inc., Brent Rohman of Rohmans Customs, BASK Ink, Cornfed Kennels, and as of just last month, Shiner Beers.

“I was super excited to have Shiner Beer as a sposor,” Zach said. “Being from Shiner is something I take tremendous pride in and am honored to be Shiner’s first sponsored professional fighter and plan to be Shiner Beers first UFC fighter. I hope to see y’all after the fight to share some ice-cold Shiner! Prosit!”

Zach and his bride, Meloni, live here in Shiner and have an adorable daughter they named River. Meloni, it so happens, works at Spoetzl as the Quality Assurance Assistant Manager.

If Zach lands his big UFC break like he hopes happens on Aug. 22, Zach becomes the very first professional fighter that the brewery has ever sponsored, and quite possibly a full-fledged UFC fighter. Be sure and tune in.

UFC is an American mixed martial arts (MMA) promotion company based in Las Vegas. It is owned and operated by Zuffa, a subsidiary of Endeavor Group Holdings. It is the largest MMA promotion in the world as of 2022. It produces events worldwide that showcase 12 weight divisions (eight men’s and four women’s) and abides by the Unified Rules of Mixed Martial Arts

As of 2022, it had held more than 600 events. Dana White has been its president since 2001. Under White’s stewardship, it has grown into a global multi-billion-dollar enterprise.The UFC was founded by businessman Art Davie and Brazilian martial artist Rorion Gracie, and the first event was held in 1993 at the McNichols Sports Arena in Denver, Colorado

The purpose of the early Ultimate Fighting Championship competitions was to identify the most effective martial art in a contest with minimal rules and no weight classes between competitors of different fighting disciplines. In subsequent events, more rigorous rules were created and fighters began adopting effective techniques from more than one discipline, which indirectly helped create a separate style of fighting known as present-day mixed martial arts.

UFC is currently under contract to be purchased by Vince McMahan of the WWE to form TKO Group Holdings, a new public company majority-owned by Endeavor, with Vince McMahon serving as an executive chairman of the new entity and White remaining as UFC president. The merger is expected to be completed in the second half of 2023.