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Staff Sgt. Damien Stelly has twice turned down the chance to join the Ultimate Fighting Championship, choosing instead to serve in Afghanistan with his fellow Army Rangers.

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Video: 2006 All-Army Combatives Tournament

Stelly, 24, with 3rd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment, is not alone in his commitment to the Army. Staff Sgt. Tim Kennedy, 27, with 7th Special Forces Group, also chose combat over the chance to fight on the mixed martial arts world’s premier circuit.

But Matt Larsen, director of the Modern Army Combatives Program at Fort Benning, Ga., predicts the Army won’t be without a top UFC fighter for long.

“We will have soldiers who are UFC champions. It’s as simple as that,” said Larsen, a retired sergeant first class. “We’ve got more people involved in this program than the rest of the mixed martial arts world has students, and we have some of the best people and we have warriors. So it’s only a matter of time before a soldier’s a UFC champion.”

Both Stelly and Kennedy have the skills to fight in the UFC, Larsen said, but glory in the mixed martial arts world isn’t a priority for Larsen and his crew of hand-to-hand instructors.

“The reason we compete in all of those things is because we want to train soldiers as best as we can, and our focus is the real fight, which is going on in Iraq and Afghanistan and the rest of the world,” he said. “It’s a great sport and method of training, and we love it.

“On top of that, there’s no sort of training that comes as close to the reality of the battlefield as fighting, and I mean that in the emotional, cognitive kind of sense,” he continued. “Every time we go to war, we’re surprised at who’s brave and who’s afraid. Peacetime training is not scary. The key is to train a soldier to execute what he’s been trained to do while he’s scared out of his mind or afraid of dying.”

Combatives, the Army’s new hand-to-hand fighting system, became service doctrine in 2002. As part of a two-year plan that began last October, every soldier will receive formal training in the system.

“The idea is that you’ll learn this stuff naturally as a part of being a soldier just like you learn the other soldier tasks,” Larsen said.

Training with the experts

The Army’s combatives program is a young fighting system, but Larsen and his instructors have a long history of training with mixed martial arts giants — the list reads like a UFC who’s who.

Soldiers have trained with fighters such as Rory Singer, who will compete in the UFC in January; Alex Karalexis, who was on the first season of “The Ultimate Fighter” TV show; UFC champion Royce Gracie; Romero Cavalcanti, a Brazilian jujitsu expert; and Manu Ntoh, a Muay Thai champion.

Other UFC fighters who have trained with soldiers include Forrest Griffin, Georges St. Pierre, Randy “The Natural” Couture, Matt “The Law” Lindland, Shonie “Mr. International” Carter, Marcus “The Irish Hand Grenade” Davis, and Melvin “The Young Assassin” Guillard. (Davis and Carter will square off Dec. 13 in a “UFC Fight Night” event at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar in San Diego.)

“Those guys, they’re big supporters of the military,” Larsen said. “It’s a small world. Anybody you can think of in the UFC, there’s some connection someplace.”

Couture has a military connection his own. He’s a former Army sergeant who spent six years on active duty in the 1980s, earning an armed forces wrestling championship and a win at the 1988 World Military Games.

Seven of Larsen’s instructors fight outside of the Army, including three — Stelly and Staff Sgts. Nate Ford, 30, and Keith Bach, 31 — who are on the professional circuit, which means they get paid to fight.

Stelly, who is transferring to the combatives school, has deployed three times to Afghanistan. He was a wrestler in high school, but he didn’t start fighting until he was in the Army.

His first exposure to combatives came during the Ranger indoctrination program.

“They showed us the basic stuff, and that’s the first I’d ever seen of it and I was hooked,” he said. “I think it’s really just because I enjoy it so much, whoever’s trying to teach me I give them my full attention and I get really absorbed in it.”

Stelly starting practicing boxing and Muay Thai — a boxing-style sport in which competitors use their hands, shins, elbows and knees to strike — about four years ago. He later expanded to mixed martial arts, which incorporates elements of a variety of martial arts.

After racking up a 4-1 amateur record, Stelly is 3-1 on the pro circuit and hopes to enter another pro fight soon.

“I’m still trying to get my ground game back to where it was before I started deploying,” he said.

To keep his skills sharp, Stelly usually trains about five hours a day, five times a week.

His workouts include conditioning or weights, cardio, jujitsu and boxing.

Fighting has helped him be a better soldier, Stelly said.

“Not only do I feel I can fight better if it came down to that, I’ve become a lot calmer when I’m against something where I might get hurt,” he said. “It has made me feel a little calmer, like maybe when you’re getting shot at, I don’t get as nervous.”

Stelly has no regrets about turning down offers to fight in the UFC in favor of deploying to Afghanistan.

“I thought about the guys who were counting on me,” he said. “At the time, I was a team leader, so ... the whole time we were training together and they were used to me being with them. It just would’ve really messed things up a little bit if I wouldn’t have gone.”

He also believes he’s now more prepared to fight with the best in the ring.

“I feel like I’m a little bit more mature now and I can handle doing well,” he said. “I don’t think I could’ve done that back then.”