Growing up Alton Cunningham

Growing up Alton Cunningham

Growing up Alton Cunningham
MMA

Growing up Alton Cunningham

Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Google Plus

Recess at school is supposed to be fun for kids. It’s a time to get away from class, play with friends, and think about anything other than schoolwork.

But on a day in 2003, that was not the case for then-fourth-grader Alton Cunningham.

“Literally the whole fourth grade class was surrounding me, making fun of me,” Cunningham, now 26, says.

Born in nearby Memphis, Tennessee, Cunningham grew up an only child in the small town of Marion, Arkansas. He had a sister who died at the age of two months. He was two years old at the time, and doesn’t remember her much at all. Life was difficult in Marion, which Cunningham described as “ghetto as sh-t.” There, opportunities to make it in this world were few and far between.

“You go down a road and see nothing but liquor stores, a McDonald’s. You don’t have much. That’s ghettos in America.”
“It was nothing but rough,” Cunningham says. “It was nothing but gang-banging, playing basketball or football, or going to the military. Your options are really limited. There’s only a couple ways you can go.

“It was country as hell. You go down a road and see nothing but liquor stores, a McDonald’s. You don’t have much. That’s ghettos in America. It was all I knew.”

Cunningham was a die-hard pro wrestling fan as a kid, so much so that he wanted to be a pro wrestler himself when he got older—far from the ordinary for someone from Marion.

“When you come from the ghetto, and the people you are influenced by are rappers, basketball players, the local people that are in the ghetto, you don’t have anybody to have any positive influence on you, or anybody that was successful you can look up to,” Cunningham says. “I always felt like I had to change the dynamic of my family and the people in my city by doing something different.”

In search of a change of scenery and a different way of life, Cunningham and his parents moved to Madison, Wisconsin in the summer of 2002; he was nine. Cunningham missed Marion at first, because he wanted to be back home with his extended family, but eventually opened up to city life.

However, Cunningham’s new life in Madison soon took a turn for the worse.

Starting in elementary school, Cunningham was severely bullied for being different than everyone else. He looked and talked different, dressed differently, and had different interests.

He loved pro wrestling; kids gave him a hard time for that. He wore khakis to school, while others sagged their baggy jeans; kids gave him a hard time for that. Coming from the south, he was darker than most; kids also gave him a hard time for that.

“No one really understood me,” Cunningham says. “You got this kid who comes and he’s dressing all proper, wearing glasses, talking this way. He’s the new kid on the block, and what he likes doesn’t fit in with what this group likes. But he wants to get along with this group. What do they do? They pick on him.”

That day in Madison, the one where Cunningham was surrounded by bullies, it stands out in his brain. He remembers it well.

Cunningham stood in the middle of the playground, his classmates all around him. They were shouting at him, calling him names, saying mean things for fourth grade. One girl smacked him in the face. The teachers did nothing.

“That was one of the lowest days of my life. Hands down.”
“That was one of the lowest days of my life,” Cunningham says. “Hands down. Now that we talk about it, it was one of the lowest days of my life.

“I got a son now; I couldn’t imagine—I would go to the school, I would go inside that classroom, and smack the f-ck out if somebody ever did that to my son.”

The students who taunted Cunningham returned to the school after recess was over, and so did Cunningham. He carried on his day at school, then went home and told no one about what happened.

“I dealt with it,” he says. “What am I gonna say? I grew up in the ghetto. If I said, ‘Dad, they’re picking on me,’ my dad gonna say, ‘Go smack one of the motherf-ckers in their f-cking face.’”

That day put a chip on Cunningham’s shoulder. It grew a certain kind of intensity inside him that he believes eventually led to his career in mixed martial arts. He wanted to be better than those kids, and he knew he would be.

“Some of those people that bullied me are some of my biggest fans now. If you want to talk about ultimate fulfillment, there you go right there.”
“I look back and you see these kids, those same type of kids, look where they are today,” Cunningham says. “Some of them are in jail; some are working at the local McDonald’s. And when I go there, they’re flipping my f-cking burgers. What’s funny is, some of those people that bullied me are some of my biggest fans now. If you want to talk about ultimate fulfillment, there you go right there.

“The bullying led to me visualizing greatness, visualizing being successful, visualizing having a better life than what I felt I had. It wasn’t a sh-tty life, but it definitely could have been much, much better.”

Cunningham’s parents divorced in 2004, two years after they moved to Madison. His father stayed in Wisconsin for a while, then moved back to Arkansas, then much later back to Wisconsin. Back then, his father not being around made things more difficult for him. Today, Cunningham has a good relationship with both his parents.

“We struggled for a while,” Cunningham says. “I never grew up in a financially stable home. I grew up with a mom who worked hours upon hours just to make sure we made ends meet.

“I didn’t have a father figure, and I didn’t have any brothers or sisters. I grew up with my friends like they were my brothers. I spent a lot of time alone.”

Around high school age, Cunningham and his mother moved to a small town half an hour outside Madison called DeForest—which at the time was predominantly white. That’s when he experienced racism and prejudice for the first time.

“It got to the point where I was just like, ‘I’m f-cking tired of this sh-t. I’m tired of being disrespected.’ ... I just did not give a f-ck anymore.”
“You walked down the road, and you looked to the side of the road and people are yelling out ‘n-gger’ outside their f-cking car,” Cunningham, who attended DeForest High School, says.

“That created a series of anger, and it also created a series where I felt I had to prove myself. It got to the point where I was just like, ‘I’m f-cking tired of this sh-t. I’m tired of being disrespected. All I’ve done is just try to give love to everybody and uplift everybody’s spirits around me.’ From that moment on, I just did not give a f-ck anymore. Did not give a f-ck.”

The same intensity Cunningham felt when he was bullied in elementary school had hit a climax.