By Terra Avilla
For this week’s Why We Love This Place Wednesday, we are talking about a true Susanville legacy, Rudy Valentine.
If you have spent any time around the local martial arts scene, you already know the man who has kept a martial arts gym running longer than some of our current fighters have been alive.
Rudy opened Iron Horse Gym and launched the Iron Pit Fight Team way back before little Terra Avilla was even out of kindergarten, giving generations of locals a place to train and belong.
Since then, he has built an environment where people do not just show up to sweat but actually find life changing discipline and direction. For a lot of folks in Susanville, walking through his doors was their very first taste of combat sports, and probably their first real humbling experience on the mats.
Through martial arts, he teaches people how to check their ego at the door, how to face extreme adversity when they are exhausted, and how to respect themselves and their opponents. He shows his students that getting taken down or knocked out is not the end of the world, it is just a lesson in how to get back up and try again. Watching Rudy… just being Rudy has been such a cool thing to see.
Before he was running the gym, Rudy was busy winning two Nevada state wrestling championships in the late seventies. He eventually earned a brown belt in judo and put in over fifteen years mastering Muay Thai and submission grappling.
You would never know he is in two different high school coaching halls of fame because he is usually too busy pouring all that knowledge into the next guy.
When Rudy is not coaching, he a big family guy, while also running Valentine Co. Painting, a family business.
He also does not shy away from a different kind of fight, regularly standing up at city council meetings to demand better safety and solutions for our local crime issues. He is exactly the kind of guy you want in your corner, whether you are stepping into a cage or just trying to raise a family in this town and is one of the reasons I love where we live.
