How 'A Fighter's Chance' Nonprofit Helps People Get Their Lives Back On Track

A Tulsa man who has trained champion fighters is now teaching those who have overcome addiction or spent time in prison, as a way to get their lives back on track and have a better future. Craig Blacklock founded a nonprofit called "A Fighter's Chance."

He said it's more than learning to throw punches. It's all about discipline, changing character, responsibility and accountability.

He said growing up he had a lot of pent-up anger and found learning martial arts became a health outlet for him.

Losing his cousin Breanna was like a punch to the gut to Ruben Castillo who was fighting his own battles at the time.

"Craig took her in and gave her a scholarship and helped her out with whatever she needed... rides to the gym, food, whatever it may be, and she was doing good. She was coming and she slipped back into that old life for a while. She slipped back into the life of addiction and prostituting and while she was out prostituting one day two men, they gagged her and killed her," said Ruben Castillo, AFC. "I’m always left thinking that what if you know, what if I had been in the foundation at the time and what if I had been who I am today. I could have prevented that. I could have reached out to her. She wouldn’t have had to do that for money. I could’ve been a light to her. But I was still in the dark myself."

Castillo was a drug addict and went to prison the day his daughter was born. “I made the choice that I made, and I paid the price that I paid," said Castillo.

He spent six sobering years in prison where he read and prayed a lot.

“Anytime I read the Bible it’s all about giving,” said Castillo. “Every kind of book I could get my hands on. The Bible was probably my most inspirational book in change.”

Castillo's wife stuck by his side, and he was there for his son's birth. “I felt blessed that I was able to make at least one good decision on finding a good woman," said Castillo.

Now he's a business owner and on the board for A Fighter's Chance.

“We can always make more money. We can always buy more clothes. But what we can’t do is build more relationships cause once people are gone, they’re gone and so I find wealth in relationships… so when I give something to somebody that’s my ultimate end goal, is that we build a relationship. Is that I show you Christ through me because so many preach and preach and preach and their God, but they never want to show him,” said Castillo. “When I look at my example who is Jesus, that’s all he did was give. You know? And you talk about the ultimate sacrifice. The ultimate gift is to lay down your life for somebody."

A Fighter's Chance also requires participants to volunteer 12 hours a month for other nonprofits or donors to keep their scholarship.

“If we feed the hungry, which is a great thing, it’s even scriptural, but we’ve got to feed them again tomorrow, and feed them again tomorrow. But if we took everyone that wanted to eat and we had a space and we showed them how to garden and cultivate and do those things and they started feeding themselves and other people, it’s kind of like the old saying, I could give you fish today but if I teach you to fish today you’ll feed yourself and others, and that’s what the nonprofits doing," said Craig Blacklock, WCF Training Facility & AFC Foundation Founder.

“I definitely can relate to people that have made bad choices and are going down the wrong path and I know how discouraging it can feel to have put yourself in a hole and have to dig yourself out of that and to want to give up and want to turn back to that lifestyle, or that way of thinking when that’s not lifestyle at all," said Cody McCloud, Fighter/Scholarship Recipient. “I grew up without a dad, so I want to be a better role model to my kids... my boys. I want my boys to be good men and not have to learn the things that I had to learn."

McCloud said bad choices put him behind bars, but having good people in his corner changed his life. He said the program is therapeutic and empowering.

"I wasn’t as good and then you start to learn, and you get better and then you know that’s exciting you know. Then I get that great feeling that I’m bettering myself and I’m able to go out and compete you know and that feeling you get a win. You know, all that work you put in... it was all worth it,” said McCloud. "If they see me and see my story they could relate and see that it is possible to overcome.”

“There is nothing more worth fighting for than somebody’s life,” said Castillo.

A Fighter's Chance is having a fundraiser Thursday night at the WCF Training Facility in Tulsa's Promenade Mall at 7:30.

Click here for more information on A Fighter's Chance.