When you call Eddie Fore’s cell phone you hear, “Please enjoy the music while your party is reached,” followed by Hanson’s teeny-bopper anthem, “Mmmm Bop.” Not something you’d expect from a MMA fighter and SERE instructor. “I guess I don’t fit the stereotype,” Fore says. That’s like saying Michael Jackson looked like an average fifty year-old. Fore fiery attitude and apparent Napoleon complex are a couple of reasons we like him.  His calm audacity is another.

As an Airman aspiring to be a professional MMA fighter, he’s part of a small demographic that’s dominated by the Armed Services that are traditionally attributed to direct combat roles. “The Air Force isn’t really into MMA,” he says. “Most people in the Air Force think the Army and Marines are the combat guys, so for an Airman to be fighting, they think it’s just a way to act tough.” For that reason Fore wants to represent the Air Force and be considered in the same class as the big military dogs of MMA: Tim Kennedy and former Marine Captain Brain Stann. Those are big boots for a flyweight, but Eddie’s got a dream – he wants to be the guy people think of when they hear “Air Force” and “fighting” in the same sentence.

With a pedigree in wrestling and a purple belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, he was custom made for the sport. As an amateur, he racked up an 8-2 record and won all six of his Muay Thai kickboxing fights before turning pro. Since then he is undefeated in MMA. But what makes Airman Fore, a water safety instructor at Fairchild’s SERE school, really different is the cause he fights for. A rare disease called Myelodysplastic Syndrome (MDS) runs in his family and proved fatal for one of his cousins. MDS is a bone marrow stem cell disorder resulting in disorderly and ineffective blood production manifested by irreversible defects in blood-forming cells that usually leads to Acute Myelogenous Leukemia (AML). In the majority of cases, the course of the disease is chronic and causes progressive bone marrow failure. Approximately one-third of patients with MDS progress to AML within months to a few years. Astronomer Carl Sagan died of MDS and now that Fore knows it’s in his family, his children have to be tested regularly. Not being the passive type, he’s doing what he can to find a cure.

“I try to get anyone who sponsors me to donate to Shriners Children’s Hospital to raise money to find a cure,” he says. “It’s not a lot, but it’s my way of helping out.”

How can you not respect the man? Ranger Up will be behind Airman Fore no matter how nauseating his ring tone is. Even if it’s “Into the Wild Blue Yonder.”