Making a life out of martial arts

 There are few who can say that they not only took their hobby to its highest levels, but then parlayed it into a successful business.

Travis Davison is, quite happily, among those who can.

Davison is the owner of downtown Kalispell’s Straight Blast Gym, located on the corner of Fourth Street and First Avenue East and focusing on Brazilian jiu-jitsu, martial arts and fitness for adults and children. Davison’s wife Kisa’s yoga business, The Yoga Room, is also part of the facility. 

The Straight Blast Gym space, part of which is leased to physical therapist Kat Ingalls, has grown from an original 750 square feet since it was opened in December 2008 to about 7,000 square feet. 

“It’s been an amazing journey out of necessity, out of the need to provide for our children, a desire to do something that we’re passionate about, a desire to basically go to bed at night feeling good about what we’re selling people, the product that we’re providing people, that people are getting value for their investment,” Davison said.

Davison was born in 1974 in Grants Pass, Ore. Before Davison’s second birthday, while his then-19-year-old mother was pregnant with his brother, his father died. His family then moved to California, where his mother had relatives who could help support them.

Not much for athletics as a youth, Davison played a few sports, but never for more than a single season. His mother even put him in a karate school at one point, but he said it didn’t last long, and, as he remembered, he may not have even made it past the introductory class.

Davison said he spent much of his time skateboarding and doing “individual-type activities.”

Davison enrolled in the University of California at Riverside after graduating from high school, completing two years before he transferred to the University of Oregon in Eugene. There, he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in biology.

It was also during that period of time that he met Kisa. They then moved to Portland and got married.

Something happened then that would forever change the trajectory of Davison and his family’s lives.

“My brother and I ... started watching the early UFC ... back when there was no weight classes, no time limits, it was tournament-style, you had to fight like three times in the same night, no gloves,” Davison said. “Really there were no rules back then — hair pulling was legal, groin strikes were legal.”

Through watching those old videos, they were introduced to Brazilian jiu-jitsu by seeing the now-legendary Royce Gracie defeating those who were considered the tough guys of the time — kung-fu and karate practitioners, boxers, kickboxers, brawlers and the like — despite his much smaller size.

“And he wore a gi, which for most people they think it’s a kimono, it looks like a pair of pajamas kind of,” he said. “We were blown away that somebody that size in a goofy outfit could do so well. So we immediately started searching for somewhere that taught Brazilian jiu-jitsu.”

But that was much harder than it seemed, even in a city the size of Portland. Still in its infancy in America, Brazilian jiu-jitsu was not yet widely taught. Davison and his brother persevered, though, and eventually found Straight Blast Gym, led by mixed martial arts training pioneer Matt Thornton.

Within his first six months of training, Davison had already signed up for an instructor candidate course and began paying $336 per month, payments that would continue for a year, to purchase a lifetime membership.

That investment came despite the fact that he and Kisa was pregnant with their first son, Ted, they were living in an apartment and didn’t have a lot of money. At the time, Davison was working as a laborer for a construction company.

“That’s how much I knew I loved it and that I knew it was always going to be a part of my life,” he said.

Of course, not everyone was so enthused by his decision.

“It didn’t go over that great with my family at the time, they thought me and my brother both were silly and crazy and stupid, and why would anyone do that, how could we spend all that money on it and why would we want to go get beat up, why would we want to beat people up, and so on and so forth,” Davison said.

He was also at the gym “all the time.”

“That caused some friction,” he said. “Not necessarily between my wife and I, and when it ever did it was usually because my family or her family would call and then they would make it an issue that it really wasn’t.”

BUT LIFE changed Davison’s plans when his first son was born and diagnosed with infantile spasms.

“In the worst-case scenario it’s fatal, best-case scenario was mental retardation,” he said. “Obviously that was a traumatic time in my and Kisa’s life. There was about a year that I had to take off, I had to focus on my marriage, I had to focus on my son.”

Through medication and other efforts, they were able to stop their son’s seizures, and it was not long after that Kisa again became pregnant with their twins, Ricky and Stella.

“Unfortunately, in the middle of her pregnancy, Ted’s seizures started again with a vengeance, worse than previously,” Davison said.

Kisa was placed on bed rest for a month while Ted was put on a specialized ketogenic diet to help regain control of his seizures. Davison continued working, but while he wanted to continue his martial arts training he was limited by circumstances.

“It was obviously not going to take precedence over those issues,” he said.

As Ted improved, Davison continued to teach and train in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, but it was largely a hobby. By that point he had worked his way up to construction superintendent and was overseeing the construction of 15 to 20 houses at any given time while developing a tract encompassing 162 houses.

During that time Kisa became pregnant again, this time with their youngest son, Joe.

Then, when Joe was about 3 years old, the family had the opportunity to move to Kalispell through Davison’s work so he could develop housing for the Trumbull Creek Crossing development in the Evergreen area.

“With Kisa being a real estate agent and myself being a general contractor and superintendent, we came out and visited Kalispell, fell in love with it, thought it was beautiful,” he said.

“Kisa, originally from a small town — Dodge City, Kansas — it appealed to her. We had four small children, three of which hadn’t started school yet, and we felt like this would be a great opportunity to move our family to somewhere that we would feel comfortable raising our kids.”

THE DAVISONS made the move and things were initially going well, but then came the recession and the crash in the housing market.

“Houses weren’t selling and people weren’t building, and I got laid off on Thanksgiving the first year we moved here,” Davison said.

And when houses aren’t selling, he added, real estate agents like Kisa were effectively out of work as well.

“I’m not proud of this, but, in full disclosure I was on unemployment, which when you have a family of six it was not enough,” he said.

Davison came up with an idea.

“Kisa had been practicing yoga for longer than I had been practicing jiu jitsu, so we figured what the heck, let’s try to do the only other thing we’re good at and that we know how to do well,” he said. “So we opened Straight Blast Gym ... 750 square feet, $750 a month and we gave it a go.”

The beginning of the gym brought a lot of hard work, a lot of trial and error and some mistakes, but within six months, their new venture had outgrown the space.

Around that time there was a furniture boutique in the area, so they met with the owners, Nick and Carol Fullerton, who agreed to rent out part of their building. The move expanded their gym to 1,800 square feet, more than doubling their monthly overhead and tying them to a 12-month lease.

“We did really well,” Davison said. “Before our lease was even up, six months into that lease, we had started to outgrow the space.”

So they again spoke to the Fullertons, who graciously agreed to swap sections of the building with the gym, doubling their overhead again but also doubling their space to roughly 3,600 square feet.

“This time we signed, I believe, a two-year lease at that point, and lo and behold, 12 months into that, we had outgrown it again,” he said. “So we were two years into starting the business and we went back to Nick and Carol and they were willing to lease us the entire building and we had the foresight to ask them about a lease-to-own option, and again they were willing to accommodate us and we took over the whole space.”

That foresight paid off for the Davisons, who became owners of the building as of February 1.

LOOKING BACK, now 35, Davison has a hard time believing how fortunate he has been and what his love for mixed martial arts has helped provide for his family.

“I can’t even describe how crazy it is to look back 14 years ago to have a pregnant wife, to have family that at every turn was thinking that you were crazy and stupid. ... To have it come full circle and have now not only the full support of Kisa’s family and my family but to see the pride that her dad, that her grandpa, that my dad, the people around us now, to see how proud they are of what we built on an unemployment check and with hard work and vision is super gratifying.

“In a way I feel like we are living the American dream because we are truly entrepreneurs, neither one of us have a trust fund or wealthy background, we didn’t have anyone to bail us out when stuff went sideways and we basically created a business for ourselves, a successful one, that has grown and continues to grow.”

Reporter Jesse Davis may be reached at 758-4441 or by email at jdavis@dailyinterlake.com.