Mixed martial artist Cung Le, of San Jose, trains in his Milpitas gym. Le will fight another local boy Frank Shamrock in the Strikeforce mixed martial arts world championship cage fight on Saturday, March 29th at HP Pavilion in San Jose. (Patrick Tehan/Mercury News)
The racist taunts on the playground were relentless.
Cung Le, then a skinny, shy 8-year-old, pretended he didn’t hear them. But the hurtful words felt like daggers in the heart. Then the attacks turned physical. A trip, a push, a punch.
Tired of black eyes and bloody noses, “in the fifth grade, I started to fight back,” said Le, now 35.
A rising star in mixed martial arts and one of the best San Shou-style fighters in the world, the San Jose resident and Vietnamese emigre has gone from being taunted on the playground to hailed as a hero inside the cage.
In the biggest mixed martial arts fight in Bay Area history, Le battles another San Jose resident - the charismatic, cocky pioneer of the sport, Frank Shamrock - at the HP Pavilion on Saturday night. Shamrock, aka “The Legend,” who has never been knocked out or submitted, said he will prove he’s the true champion of San Jose.
“The truth will come out in a beautiful, explosive and violent way,” Shamrock said.
The two popular athletes will battle for Shamrock’s Strikeforce middleweight championship, and the war of the hometown heroes has San Jose fight fans abuzz. Both fighters will earn comfortable “six-figure salaries,” said Mike Afromowitz, vice president of Strikeforce, who is co-promoting the fight with EliteXC.
Promoters are expecting a full house - 18,265.
On the outside, Le is 5 feet, 10 inches tall and 185 pounds of well-conditioned muscle. He carries himself
with confidence but a refreshing lack of arrogance. When he speaks, it is not to tout his in-cage conquests. Rather, he’s soft-spoken and humble.

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