By admin 
Anthony Hernandez toils in the brutish profession that is a mixed martial arts fighter, no wimps allowed.
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The aim in the cage is to knock the other guy’s block off, and then to pile on to the point of submission with a flurry of punches. This is a sport in which bodies get crunched, ears, noses and faces get peppered, and matches can be won by an anaconda choke or a guillotine choke.
The hardened 6-foot, 185-pound 32-year-old Woodland High School product has a catchy nickname that doesn’t entirely fit but is as interesting it is fun, and that’s a defining theme in the world of MMA. The middleweight is known as Anthony “Fluffy” Hernandez.
Fluffy? How can this be? Ferocious or Fierce didn’t apply?
Hernandez doesn’t have any fluff to his game, to his verbiage, or in his quest to someday stand as a world champion. Of more immediate concern, Hernandez expects to stand victorious in his next fight, on Aug. 22 at Golden 1 Center as a headliner at the UFC Fight Night Competition in a homecoming of sorts.
So, Fluffy, what’s up with the nickname?
“I was a fat kid,” Hernandez said with a laugh. “Then it was, ‘you’re not fat. You’re just fluffy’, so it stuck.”
Fluffy added, “I know this: No one wants to get their a– kicked by a guy named Fluffy.”
Inspired by his father, ‘my best friend’
Hernandez has done a lot of fanny kicking, starting with his youth. Growing up on a farm in Dunnigan in rural Yolo County, located 25 miles from the Sacramento International Airport off I-5, Hernandez was implored by his father, Hugo Hernandez, to keep busy. There were chickens, cows and goats to tend to, fences to mend, hay to haul. His father was a diesel mechanic.
But young Hernandez was wired to mix it up. If it wasn’t an uncle hanging him up by his skivvies on a hook and daring him to do something about it, it was a scrap with a neighborhood kid just for the sake of it.
“I got into a lot of fights as a kid – with friends, relatives, neighbors – and sometimes, I’d just kick a door down,” he said with more laughter before turning serious. “Fighting saved my life. I needed this. This is what I do best.”
Hernandez said the split of his parents tore at him. He unleashed those frustrations with fists, and he still does, only now with his legs, too, as MMA is all about versatility and violence. His father became his training partner, and then Hernandez lost him in 2019 to illness.
“He was my best friend,” Hernandez said. “I still miss him. Lung cancer. He was only 51. I lived with him after my parents split. He taught me how to be a man, how to work hard. I needed something because I didn’t want to become a diesel mechanic. I was never good in school, so that wasn’t an option, but fighting was.”
Hernandez at 17 was a rising prospect as an amateur in the MMA circles in Northern California. He was aggressive, driven. That same year, he took on a 36-year-old police officer. This was not an official match. It was an underground cage fight, and it required his father to sign a parental consent form to climb into the cage.
Fluffy won in under a minute. Several long years later, he was signed by the Ultimate Fighting Championships — better known now as UFC — after going 7-1 as an amateur. He is 15-3 as a professional.
In 2018, Hernandez got his big break. He competed in Dana White’s UFC Contender Series 10. His father was by his side for the rise, but his father never saw this fight happen, succumbing to his failing lungs. Hernandez won the fight in under a minute with a knockout. Hernandez honors his father with a neck tattoo.
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‘He’s the best in the world’
Hernandez on this day was seated in the Thomas Fallon Gym in Citrus Heights. Fallon is a former MMA competitor who still looks the part at 40. He is Hernandez’s trainer. They went from sparing partners to friends to this shared journey.
Fallon parks his 3-wheeler Harley right up onto the sidewalk outside his gym. He recalled how an 8-year-old once asked him when he was going to take the training wheel off. In this sport, you throw punches, and you roll with them.
“I think Anthony is the best in the world,” Fallon said. “No. I know he is. He can be great. It’s a hard way to make a living, but he and I are wired the same. I’d rather dig a hole through concrete than work at a desk. Anthony is the same way. He is meant to be a fighter. He’s doing what he loves and what he’s good at.”
Fallon added, “He has great mental determination. He’s rock solid there. The body will fail before his mind.”
Hernandez understands that this is “not a young man’s sport, so my opportunity is now, and I hate losing.”
Aches, bruises, broken bones
Hernandez could have laid out medical charts as thick as an old phone book in detailing the aches, pains, bruises and worse that he has endured. He has suffered torn muscles he did not know he had. He experienced torn ligaments in his toes. His nose has been cracked too many times to count. His fingers have been jammed, his head butted, his eyes gashed. He has suffered road rash of sorts from grazing up against the side of the cage.
“After a fight,” Hernandez said, “I can’t move or walk, and my bones are sore for weeks. But it’s what I do. My pride is everything. Everyone is an expert on MMA from their couch, but you don’t know until you’re in it, and it’s not for everyone.”
Hernandez and wife Kristie Hernandez have four young children. They have taught their children how to fight for self-defense purposes, but the parents do not want their kids to climb into a ring or octagon. Hernandez said one has to be “a little crazy to do what we do because someone is trying to kill you in there.”
He and Kristie don’t want their kids to do this sort of crazy. Go crazy in academics or safer sports instead, they said. The family has a two-acre farm in Zamora in Yolo County, “where we can just get way from everything and enjoy the peace,” Hernandez said.
Kristie is her husband’s co-manager who handles the merchandise store, aptly named “Team Fluffy MMA.” What’s in a name? How does champion sound? Hernandez said he is on his way to the top.
“It takes a village, and I’m so thankful for my family, my trainer, my friends, my sponsors,” Hernandez said. “I’m always motivated by pride.”
With that, Fluffy stood up, slipped on some gloves, and eyed his trainer with an expression that said: “Let’s work!”
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This story was originally published July 25, 2026 at 6:00 AM.