Community sports: Ex-Bobcat's adventure leads to IFL championship belt

By JIM CNOCKAERT Chronicle Sports Writer

Alex Schoenauer might best describe his life as a never-ending search for the next big adrenalin rush.

He's always been able to find one, whether it was playing football at Montana State, skippering a 96-foot yacht up and down the Pacific Coast or hunting rattlesnakes around Ennis (which he still does any time he's back in Montana).

These days, he gets that rush training for and competing in the International Fight League, a professional mixed martial arts league based in 12 cities, including New York, Toronto, Chicago and Tokyo. Schoenauer, who lives and trains in Las Vegas, is the light heavyweight for the Los Angeles Anacondas.

Ranked second at his weight class, he will fight for the league's light heavyweight title Saturday during the IFL Grand Prix semifinals at the Sears Centre in Chicago. His opponent is unbeaten and top-ranked Vladimir Matyushenko, a Belarus native who competes for the Tokyo Sabres.

The championship bout in this weight class is being contested at this event because three fighters were forced to withdraw because of injuries. The Grand Prix championship in the other weight classes is scheduled in late December.

Mixed martial arts is a sport that combines such disciplines as wrestling, boxing, kick boxing, jiu jitsu, karate, judo and muay thai. IFL bouts are contested in a boxing ring, and a fighter can win by submission, knockout, TKO or decision.

Bryan Deats, who owns USA Bozeman/Montana Mixed Martial Arts, worked out with and helped to train Schoenauer when the two were MSU students, and the two remain best friends. Deats said Schoenauer, who knew little about mixed martial arts when he earned a spot on the inaugural season of The Ultimate Fighter in 2004, said his friend has climbed quickly in the sport because he has worked hard to become well-rounded.

Because Deats' background is in kick boxing and Thai boxing, Schoenauer relied heavily on those skills at first, and he won his early bouts by knockout. He has since trained in jiu jitsu, among other disciplines, and that's enabled him to win half his bouts by submission and the other half by knockouts.

“It's been of huge benefit to him to train in all styles,” Deats said. “Even with our guys here. We expose them to everything.”

In a sport where just about anything short of eye-gouging, hair-pulling and groin-kicking goes, Schoenauer said having a variety of skills enables him to attack an opponent's weakness.

“If a guy doesn't know jiu jitsu, I'm going to try to take him down and go for a submission,” he said. “If I'm fighting a guy who doesn't have great boxing skills, then I'm going to try to keep him on his feet to box.”

Schoenauer, 29, admits he has an adventurous side, to which mixed martial arts and the IFL appeal, and he is always looking for ways to satisfy it. As far as he's concerned, the more risk, the better he likes it.

He was 15 when he left his native Argentina to go to school in the United States, so he could learn to read and write in English. He moved to Idaho, where his grandfather worked on a dude ranch. He worked there for a time, too, before the ranch's owner, Bill Shields, invited him to move in with his family in Yakima, Wash., and go to school there. He earned straight A's in his classes.

He tried as many sports as he could in Yakima, but he liked football best because he enjoyed the contact.

“I didn't know anything about the sport when I first tried it, but I created a big chaos any time I would go into the game,” he said.

Schoenauer enrolled at Montana State to study engineering, but he liked the many outdoor activities the surrounding area offered, including hunting, fishing and snowboarding. He played on MSU's rugby club team when he first got to Bozeman, then walked on to the football team for two seasons. He spanned the transition from head coaches Cliff Hysell to Mike Kramer, and he played a little as a linebacker and a defensive end.

Armed with a degree in industrial engineering, Schoenauer worked briefly for a manufacturing firm in Idaho before his adventurous side kicked in again. He had grown up around boats in Argentina, and for a time in high school he had worked a summer job as a fishing guide in Alaska. So, when Shields purchased a 96-foot yacht, he asked Schoenauer if he wanted a job as its skipper. Schoenauer trained at the United States Coast Guard Captains School to earn a license to pilot 100-ton craft in international waters, and he took the boat from Seattle to Alaska, then down to Mexico and back.

He eventually returned to Bozeman to train in mixed martial arts, and Deats helped him put together an audition tape for The Ultimate Fighter show. The two decided to go for laughs to catch the attention of program directors, so tape showed Schoenauer being beaten up by a baby. Though he had little mixed martial arts experience, he made the show.

The experience convinced Schoenauer to devote himself full-time to mixed martial arts, and he moved to Las Vegas to train. He decided to approach his training in six-month increments: If things were going well, he'd stick with it; if not, he'd move on to something else. He's been at it since 2004, and his Las Vegas connections helped to land him an IFL roster spot.

“I guess you could say it's kind of niche,” Schoenauer said. “I'm always looking for things I can do that will challenge me and where I will be happy. I'm enjoying what I'm doing, so I'm sticking with it.”

Not long after Schoenauer moved to Washington, some friends asked him to accompany them on a rattlesnake hunt. The thought of it scared the heck out of him, but his adventurous side again kicked in. The first time he went, he brought along a gun to shoot the snakes. With experience, he learned how to capture them.

After he moved to Montana, he was the one inviting friends to join him. Some said no, but those who agreed to come out once got hooked, just as he did. He goes snake hunting any time he gets back to Montana.

“It's one of those things that gets the adrenalin going,” he said. “It's dangerous, but it's fun at the same time.”

In a recent article about his ascendance in the world of mixed martial arts, Schoenauer likened rattlesnake hunting to fighting. That similarity, he said, keeps him coming back to both.

“The adrenalin, the action, the unknown about what is going to happen ...,” he said. “You have to put it all out there and see. To me, that's incredible.”

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