A fighter turned believer

Professional martial arts competitor, father, entrepreneur found an answer to his life’s chaos: the Catholic faith

By Patrick Downes
Hawaii Catholic Herald

Quirino B. “Reno” Remigio Jr. is a fighter. Literally. He is a professional mixed martial arts competitor. He is also a father, an entrepreneur and, since May 4, a Catholic in full communion with the church. Each identity has been as challenging as his chosen extreme sport.

Remigio’s rocky path into the Catholic Church was hardly typical. The route was fraught with heartaches, knockdowns, missteps and dead ends. But he got there just the same. By the grace of God.

He shared his journey with the Hawaii Catholic Herald Aug. 1 in the compact fitness gym he owns in Honolulu’s Nimitz Highway industrial area. A long row of kettlebells line one wall. A well-worn punching bag hangs from the ceiling. There are weights, workout machines and a mirrored wall.

Remigio, 33, is one inch shy of six feet, and solid muscle. His smile and thick-framed glasses make him look less daunting. He talks in enthusiastic thoughtful spurts, broken up by reflective pauses.

He is frank, painfully honest, upfront.

“I’m at peace with my mom and my dad, and there is a part of me that always has love for them, but I grew up in an environment where we didn’t necessarily get proper love and attention,” said Remigio, the third of five children. “There was a lot of verbal and psychological abuse. There was also substance abuse.”

Remigio’s solution was “to run away from all that negativity and have a good time.”

“I found myself hanging around kids who had similar upbringings, experimenting with marijuana, alcohol, cigarettes,” he said. “I lived that lifestyle throughout my pre-teens and into early adulthood.”

In high school he had a girlfriend who was two years older. After 12 years and two kids together, they got married, only to get a divorce the following year.

“We did everything backwards,” he said.

He got interested in martial arts admiring Bruce Lee, the late Chinese martial arts superstar.

“I always looked up to Bruce Lee. He was like my hero and still is. Who doesn’t love Bruce Lee?”

Remigio wanted to learn the Bruce Lee style of kung fu, primarily to defend himself from high school gangs.

“All the guys I hung around with were like skateboarders and surfers and weed smokers. They weren’t the most athletic type. And so we would get picked on a lot.”

Killer right hand

He found a martial arts school and was good at it, but didn’t stick with it. One of the instructors asked if he ever thought about competing. “You have a killer right hand,” he told him. Remigio just wanted to stop being hassled at school.

But about a year after high school, a year before his first child was born, he joined a gym. Kickboxing and mixed martial arts fighting were hot draws at the Blaisdell Arena at the time.

Mixed martial arts is the extreme combat sport where contestants use wrestling and boxing techniques and also those of martial arts such as kickboxing, judo, and karate.

Remigio began to compete as an amateur. In 2008 he won his first fight. He remained undefeated for six fights. Then he turned pro.

“I got kind of arrogant and started partying and stuff, not being truthful to my then-girlfriend. I cruised around with different fighters and friends who were bad influences. My old self caught up with me.”

Nevertheless, he prevailed in his first paid professional fight, winning a 155-pound lightweight belt.

“I let that get to my head,” he said, and lost his second fight.

“It devastated me,” he said, “because I knew I helped do that to myself.”

It was the same story. Bad friends. Bad influences. But then life gave him another chance.

He was introduced to a personal fitness trainer who took him under his wing. They became partners in a fitness gym, a small second floor place on McCully Street.

“I learned how to basically run the business,” at least on the front end, training the clients. “The crazy thing is I barely knew what I was doing.”

But as business boomed, his relationship with his partner soured. He was abruptly fired.

His third pro fight had been a triumph, an “amazing” three-round performance that earned him a six-fight contract. But his fourth was another disastrous defeat.

His life again started to crash around him.

“It really just took me in a bad direction. I was broke, in debt and fell into a depression.”

Making matters worse, around that time he also lost his marriage.

“It was an ugly separation,” he said.

Remigio returned to his training skills to crawl out of the hole he had dug for himself. He still had a handful of clients, but no gym.

“I was training people in parks. I was training people in their condo gyms,” he said.

Slowly, with the help of friends and former clients, he got back on his feet and made a big step. He opened R Fit Hawaii, his own gym.

“I thank God that some of those people believed in me even though I was a misfit,” he said.

That was four years ago. There was still trouble ahead.

Newly single, with a growing business, “I was mingling around with other females in a very non-Christian way,” he said.

He became involved with another woman, a foreigner.

“That was when my life went to a legitimate living hell,” Remigio said.

“We started engaging in a mutual relationship and a committed relationship and then, slowly and surely, things start unraveling,” he said. She got pregnant.

“I didn’t support or believe in abortion,” Remigio said. “I really wanted to make this work.”

But her story started to unfold. “I found out she wasn’t who she said she was,” Remigio said. “I decided to separate from her.”

That’s when he was served with a warrant for his arrest. She was hitting back, accusing him of assaulting their infant child.

Prayer of desperation

At the lowest point in his life, he turned to prayer. It was a prayer of desperation.

“I prayed to God. I basically asked him to kill me. I don’t know how to better say it. I told him I was tired of living this way. I was tired of all this drama and stuff. I said give me a chance. I asked if this is how it’s going to be for the rest of my life, if it is just going to be this pain and hardship, I don’t want to live anymore. And I said if there is a chance for me to change my life. And if you could help me, help me to wake up tomorrow. And I cried myself to sleep.”

“I really truly wanted to die that day. It was just so painful to have your whole world turned upside down, being accused of something you didn’t do.”

But God answered that prayer by sending positive influences his way.

He ran into Brandon Elefante with whom he had gone to school years before. They weren’t especially close back then. “He was always in the classroom staying out of trouble and I was out of the classroom getting in trouble,” Remigio said.

The new contact was casual. Remigio did not talk about his troubles.

“We just got together, just talked about how life was going,” said Elefante.

Elefante was intrigued by Remigio’s fitness business, and Remigio was awed by Elefante’s rise in prominence as a member of the Honolulu City Council.

“We ended up connecting here and there and kept following up,” said Remigio.

Elefante said his only intent was to connect with an old childhood acquaintance. “I never imagined that he would become a best friend.”

Remigio also acquired a new girlfriend who was Catholic and, like Elefante, a member of St. Elizabeth Parish in Aiea. She invited him to go with her to Mass.

Elefante also began to “share with him about the faith and support him.”

Thanks to these relationships, a Catholic grip slowly began to take hold of the martial arts fighter.

Remigio, who had poked his head inside a few Protestant churches searching for spiritual comfort, decided to explore Catholicism. He signed up for RCIA at St. Elizabeth.

“My life has radically transformed and changed. A lot has to do with that moment I prayed that horrible prayer.”

“I just asked God to save me from myself. And Brandon came into my life and my girlfriend came into my life and slowly but surely more people from the Catholic faith came into my life.”

Frustrated by an existence cluttered with half-hearted attempts, Remigio wanted to push this desire to the end. “If there’s one thing I wanted to pursue it’s my relationship with God. I wanted to dive deeper.”

He had already been baptized at a Protestant church, so to become a Catholic he needed the other two sacraments of initiation — confirmation and holy Eucharist.

Loved the structure

“As I started to learn about Catholicism, about the Catholic faith, I recognized that it’s the heart of Christianity,” he said.

“When I started going to a Catholic church, I really loved the structure. I really loved the organization. I loved the history. It has a rich history.”

“And during that process, I just felt so aligned with what the Catholic Church was teaching. It was just so beautiful coming from chaos to this place of order. And I just loved it. I loved it.”

“I’m still working through a lot of things that I grew up with and around,” Remigio said. “I still struggle. I’m drug free. But I still struggle with the temptations of the flesh. But living my life as a Catholic has drastically transformed and changed my life.”

Helping Remigio through his conversion was Jesuit Father Jerry Overbeck, a professor, chaplain and pastoral counselor at Loyola University Chicago who visits the Cathedral Basilica of Our Lady of Peace for an extended period each summer.

Elefante made the introduction. They “clicked,” he said.

That was a little over a year ago.

“It has been an incredible grace to be welcomed into his journey of faith the way he has welcomed me,” Father Overbeck said. “I could just tell we were soulmates. I don’t know why.”

“And the initiative that young man took to contact me, both through phone and email, was amazing,” the priest said, “just sharing his faith journey, the ups and the downs, the best and the worst of it.”

“We come here as sinners to be saints,” said Father Overbeck, “and Reno’s been forthright about that.”

He said he helped Remigio “look at his experiences through the lens of faith.”

“It’s bigger than you. It’s bigger than me. God is at work in your heart and because you are open to the activity of the spirit of God, you are, in fact finding your life transformed,” Father Overbeck said.

“So he is now surrounding himself with a community of faith and living out what he celebrated after Easter,” he said, “that he’s on board, that God has welcomed him to be a full Catholic. He is embracing that with mucho gusto. He is just proud of his Catholic faith.

“He’s been through a lot. We’ve all made mistakes and that is why sinners get called,” he said.

Remigio proceeds with no illusions. “I’m still learning how to take it in,” he said. “I’m still very grateful. And as Brandon said, the true test is now. And he was not joking.”

“I’m still, I would say, an infant as a Catholic.”

Pieces of a prior life

In the meantime, pieces of his prior life are resolving themselves. He has joint custody of his two children from his former marriage who now live with their mother on the mainland.

The abuse charge was dismissed. The foreign former girlfriend moved back to her home country.

He won his fifth comeback fight, and lost his sixth, in the welterweight division. But that defeat, coming a few days before his confirmation, did not affect him the way his old losses did. “I learned so much from that experience. I took it like a man.”

His confirmation and first Communion on May 4 at St. Elizabeth Church “was a very momentous occasion,” he said. “It touched my heart. My hope is to break the chains of the past, and to constantly grow in the faith as a confirmed Catholic man of God.”

“It’s a serious commitment. And I really love that. I really appreciate it. I love who I’m becoming through this. Catholicism has really given me direction in life. It really helps me aim high.”

“I’ve got to say I’ve been living my best life,” Remigio said. “It hasn’t been easy at all. And the tests have been coming. But knowing that, I have good people, I have a better and stronger relationship with God, and I’m better taking care of myself.”