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When Isabel Velásquez saw the massive 6-foot-3, 264-pound Brock Lesnar—the man her son Caín was moments from challenging for the Ultimate Fighting Championship heavyweight title—she prayed.

“‘Oh my god, he’s a big man,’” Isabel said, hoping from cageside that her son would pummel then-champion Lesnar.

Lesnar was confidant prior to that October 2010 championship bout in Southern California.

“When I get done whooping your ass, I’m gonna go drink a Corona and eat a burrito just for your Hispanic heritage, alright? How about that?” Lesnar boasted.

The bout was a mismatch and over in a little more than four minutes, with Caín—the smaller fighter at 6-foot-1 and 244 pounds—smashing a bloody Lesnar into the canvas. Caín made history that night, becoming the first Mexican-American heavyweight champion in any contact sport.

“That will teach you to talk about my son that way,” Isabel boasted back.

On June 13, from the home in Yuma, Arizona, which Caín bought for her, Isabel and her husband Efrain will watch their son defend his title in Mexico City against the 6-foot-4 Brazilian challenger Fabrício Werdum. It will also be Caín’s first fight after suffering a torn meniscus and sprained MCL, which has kept him out of the cage for more than a year and a half.

“It was devastating to him, but not in the way he expressed it,” said Javier Mendez, a Mexican-born mixed-martial arts (MMA) trainer and founder of American Kickboxing Academy in San Jose, who first met Velásquez in 2006. “He didn’t come out and say, ‘Goddamn it, I didn’t get to fight,’ but I know he felt it. It’s something he carries inside.”

Mendez saw the fighting potential in the collegiate wrestling All-American from Arizona State University the day he met him. “He’s one of a kind. I’ve never seen anybody with that.”

Humble beginnings
Born to migrant farm-working parents who picked lettuce in the vast fields in Salinas, California, the 32-year-old Caín was four when his family moved to Yuma, Arizona.

His Fresno-born mother Isabel worked picking seasonal crops as a child and well into adulthood, and his father Efrain had decided to leave his desolate hometown of Sonoyta, Mexico for a better life in the United States. With a jug of water and a bundle of food, the 18-year-old Efrain walked three days through Sonoran desert, making the trip seven times. Each of those times, when his water ran out, he drank from pools where cows had bathed and defecated, straining the water with a rag. Many migrants had gotten lost in the desert. Efrain was fortunate he didn’t.

Once the Velásquez family settled in Yuma, Efrain would drive nine hours to his job in Salinas, where he would pick, load and stack boxes of lettuce onto pallets and flatbed trucks.

Caín’s older brother Efrain Jr. recalled how their father would sleep in his car and send his entire paycheck to his family.

With their father often away Caín and Efrain Jr. found refuge in the wrestling room of their junior high school.

Caín watched his older brother wrestle, and lose, every one of his 7th grade matches. And when it was Caín’s turn to compete in 7th grade, it was Efrain Jr.’s turn to watch.

“He did pretty well. Of course, better than me,” Efrain Jr. said. (Caín went his entire junior high career unbeaten.) “It was pretty exciting, especially for me.”

Caín continued his stellar wrestling career in high school and at ASU before relocating to San Jose to carve out a fighting career, a choice that none in his family supported.

“I talked to him, and he said, ‘No, I’m going to do this,’” Isabel said. “I cried. You know, tears can move a person. And it didn’t.”

“It was a big risk, I would say, finishing up college, and then just packing up all of my stuff and driving out here. I didn’t know anything about MMA,” Caín said. “The first week I kinda felt like…I was made for this. So I knew right away then; it was the best move I’ve ever made to come out here.”

Caín won his first nine bouts en route to the heavyweight title. He lost that title when he was knocked out by Junior Dos Santos in November of 2011, but regained it a year later and hasn’t been beaten since.

“Cain is a person who doesn’t give up,” his father Efrain said. “He wants to be first all the time in whatever he does. He has that.”

Caín credits his parents for his own success.

“Watching them work hard, I feel like I’ve gotten that. And I’ve brought it to what I do today,” He said. “For my dad to come out to the U.S. and raise us here. I think it was the best thing for all of us.”

Caín Velasquez will defend the Ultimate Fighting Championship heavyweight title against Fabrício Werdum in Mexico City on June 13.