In less than a year, what began as a lifestyle change for chef Walther Adrianzen became so much more. On Saturday, April 11, the Peruvian-born chef stepped into an MMA cage at the UFC Gym in Torrance to go hand-to-hand with an opponent for the first time in his life.
Adrianzen’s journey to the octagon didn’t begin with a midlife crisis (he turns 39 this year) or as a radical attempt to change careers from his work as a chef. It began with a health scare that threatened to take him out.
“I was in the hospital not that long ago,” Adrianzen tells L.A. TACO. “Because I almost had what I think is called a diabetic coma.”
A diabetic coma is a severe symptom of diabetic ketoacidosis, which is “caused by an overload of ketones present in your blood,” according to the American Diabetes Association. High levels of ketones make blood more acidic and can poison the body, leading to numerous symptoms, including a coma and death in worst case scenarios.
“I was fat,” Adrianzen adds, very bluntly. “I was tired of looking in the mirror and just seeing my face so big.”
Adrianzen took the next step and enrolled at the UFC Gym in Rosemead. He began working out and training, but was unhappy with the results. Everything changed when representatives of ALTA approached him in the gym.
“I started with a basic workout, and then they [ALTA] saw me and they’re like, ‘We’ve seen you and we think you have the potential to do it.’ Because, to be honest, just me going regularly to the gym, I’ve tried to do it a few times and I wasn’t getting the results that I wanted up until I joined ALTA,” says Adrianzen.
ALTA is a “Warrior Training Program” developed by MMA Inc. as a 20-week fitness and mixed martial arts training program. Each participant in the program receives training, gear, nutritional guidance, and then competes in a sanctioned amateur fight in a finale event at the end of the program.
This month’s finale event in Torrance included participants from UFC Gyms in Torrance, Corona, Point Loma, Huntington Beach, City of Industry, Brea, and Rosemead.
“The intense training that they [ALTA] put us on, that’s what actually made me change. I was burning probably about 3,000 calories a day,” says Adrianzen.
He began the program weighing at 211 lbs and had dropped to 170 lbs by the end. More importantly, his doctor informed that his diabetes had gone in remission when he did bloodwork before the fight.
“This is not only like a training session for me. This was more about changing my lifestyle. I stopped drinking, even socially. It helped me change my eating habits. Spiritually too, you’re more dedicated to God,” he says.
“It’s just a change about everything,” he continues. “You’re really locked in to doing what you really want to do. For example, the ALTA program, it’s one hour a day, but I was training three to four hours, so I was putting [in] the extra work.”
L.A. TACO readers will recognize Adrianzen, who was raised in Santa Monica after moving to the States at the age of 11, from his past work in Culver City at Lonzo’s and his own restaurant, Ceviche Stop, a TACO favorite.
After a reopening in La Puente last year, his physical restaurant location is no more. Still, Peruvian ceviche lovers have been able to order his delicacies as prep meals via Cook Unity.
“Nowadays, having a restaurant is really tough. I was struggling so much and my head was going crazy,” Adrianzen explains about his decision to close down the restaurant and sell through Cook Unity.
Through that platform, he’s able to sell between 1,500 to 2,000 prep meals per day across four states. He’s also planning on launching the official Ceviche Stop app on May 8 to sell more of his own fresh ceviche and other dishes directly to his customers.
On fight day, Adrianzen was paired against a 19-year-old amateur fighter. The chef did well until halfway through the second round when he ate a punch that wobbled him and eventually sent him to the ground.
“I just got too confident,” he says. “Like in the second round, in the middle, I was like ‘I have it. I’m gonna win.’ But then, I don’t know what happened. I just put my hands down and then he just got me.”
Despite the loss, Adrianzen is considering competing in one more amateur fight in October before leaving the cage for good.
“I’m thinking about it,” he says. “It would have been a different story if I would have won. I think at my age, I think I already accomplished what I wanted.”
The full card of ALTA amateur fights can be streamed on UFC Gym TV. Adrianzen’s fight begins at the one-hour-forty-minute mark.
