May 8, 2017

Meet Darren McCall of McCall Mixed Martial Arts in Humble

Local Stories

Today we’d like to introduce you to Darren McCall.

Darren, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I started martial arts in 1993 with Karate. In 1994, I saw an ad about Judo and I joined after taking an introductory class. I got my black belt in 1999. I started training Submission Wrestling in 1995-1996 and also got into Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu in 1997 when a black belt moved to Houston. I stopped training BJJ when the instructor moved back to Brazil in 1998. I continued to train in submission wrestling and judo. In 2000, I resumed my BJJ training and got my black belt in 2007. Later that year, I started teaching a few students out of our garage. In 2008, my wife and I opened a school out of a warehouse with seven students and began growing our business. In 2012, we moved to a bigger location in a strip center in Atascocita and now, we have over 100 students (kids thru adults) teaching them Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and Muay Thai Kickboxing.

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
It has not been a smooth road. When we started, we only had seven students and I had to take on some additional jobs working a lot more hours to pay the bills of running a new business. It was difficult to start the kids’ class because we only had one student which was our nine year old son and nobody wanted to be the first one to enroll their child. Finally, we got a student to enroll and began growing from there. Along with opening the school in May 2008, we had twins in June 2008 and to join our other four children making a total of six in all. We had to balance our family life as well as run the business.

Please tell us about McCall Mixed Martial Arts.
We teach Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and Muay Thai Kickboxing to the Humble residents and the surrounding Houston, Texas areas. It is our mission to provide students with a safe, clean, positive, and professional environment where they can get quality instruction as they develop their techniques and personal skills that will have a life changing influence. Our hope is that you will develop a lifelong love of the sport! Additionally, our school aims to train and teach techniques that will help individuals excel in self defense, Martial Arts competition, and life. We are most proud as a company to be able to help others achieve their goals with skills that will last them a lifetime. What sets us apart from others is our family atmosphere.

If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
Nothing, the struggles were worth it.

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