Te Aitanga-a-Māhaki and Ngai Tūhoe fighter Carlos Hihi will make a return to the No Gi Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Arena this weekend in a bid for the NZ top spot.
The 10-year-old fighter from Gisborne is no stranger to training in the living room.
His motivation is based on the motto: train hard and fight easy.
“That means like train my butt off, train hard, sweat, sweating all the time and then come to the fight that’s the easy part. Fighting is the easy part, training is the hard part.”
A champion in a variety of mixed martial art styles, he's packed his bag.
His father Duane says, “To life schooling, his education has changed, his discipline, martial arts has teach him to be humbled and respectful to everybody.”
While dad focuses on preparing his son for battle.
Carlos says,"I have heaps of favourite fighters, Mark Hunt, Cain Velasquez, Jon Jones, Anderson Silva."
The young gun enjoys watching UFC and keeping focused. Duane says martial arts and Māori weaponry at his marae in Waihīrere has taught Carlos to be humble.
“We just started off with boxing then kick-boxing but he also liked UFC so he wanted to have a blast in that so we started researching other martial arts that he needed to go into the cage."
Nicknamed by friends as 'Loss' after former All Black great Carlos Spencer, he also has a close connection to former All Black Hosea Gear. Carlos is Gear's namesake, and carries his middle name Emiliano.