Denver’s Cage-Fighting Coiffeur
wordplay: Scott Mastro
image courtesy ROF
Hairstylist by day, cage-fighter by night, Kenneth Ivan synergizes seemingly polar-opposite interests, cutting hair and kicking @$$, as deftly as a barber shaves a head and Lancelot wields a six-foot sword. A Denver salon and cage-fighting fixture, making a name in fashion photography too, if he has his Alexander-conquering way within the next several years, he’ll lay claim to the vast lands of follicle, fashion, and fighting.
“My parents met in my grandmother’s Greeley pool hall. She was fifteen, he was twenty. They married a year later, in Utah where it was legal. My dad moved us from LA to Bailey, Colorado when I was seven. I’m a mountain boy, grew up cutting firewood, hunting, running through the woods; I owe my fighting skills to that upbringing. The older kids picked on us younger ones until we could defend ourselves. I hadn’t seen those guys for several years. They said, “Ken, you got bigger. You tough now, a bad-ass?” I knocked one out, slammed another on his head, knocked a third out, and stood up with the other one for two minutes, so I knew I could fight. I’ve always been fighting.”
“My dad made us cut our hair in seventh grade. I liked it and every month said, “Let’s cut it again.” The nearest barbershop was forty-five minutes. My dad bought me a buzzer and I started cutting my hair, my brothers’, all the kids, and even my dad’s.”
“I studied at Warren Tech Cosmology School in Golden and got with a salon in Cherry Creek.”
And mixed martial arts?
“I’d been spectating and one day said, “I can do this.” I started jiu-jitsu and four months later, a friend and I booked fights in Oregon. My trainer was against it. My girlfriend was doubtful. My friend’s fight fell through, I flew out and despite what everyone said, I choked the guy out in forty-three seconds. I came back and was invited to join my coach’s fight team.”
“I’ve won all my six fights so far. This next is my first professional bout. My last fight, the guy’s an excellent boxer, but I could’ve knocked him out in thirty seconds. All my fights have been about a minute. I wanted ring experience and backed off. For me to stand up and ’go hands’ with him and prevail proved something to me.”
“He cut me below the eye with a gnarly, straight right in the second round. I opened him up in the third above his eye. We went to the ground, the blood started pouring out of him, and I won by TKO.”
Pancho Soekoro of Pashah Salon NYC: “Ken came for training. We became friends. He’s easy-going yet explosive in everything he does, all-around smart. A lot of people talk. Whatever Ken says, he backs it up. When he’s training, he’s full on, like everything he does. I’m a fan.”
Ring of Fire Mixed Martial Arts Promoter, Sven Bean: “If you could bottle Ken’s intensity, you’d be a millionaire. He’s highly marketable from a promoter’s standpoint, looks, style, and his other interests bring new fans. As a fighter, he’s got good skills, he’s not afraid to throw down, and he leaves everything in the cage.”
What’s in the crystal ball for a cage-fighting coiffeur?
“I want to be a nationally recognized hairstylist and shoot huge fashion campaigns…American Eagle, Luis Vitton, Target, Old Navy, anything.”
“When I started training, I was two-eighty five. I’ve lost a hundred pounds. I fight to keep in touch with my inner Spartan. I wanted to prove to myself that when it’s self-defense, one-on-one, nobody can beat me. And it’s great for marketing hairstyling and photography. People see me fight, hear I style hair and shoot models, that‘s unique.”
From the barrio to the mountains to high-style and mixed martial arts, sitting in an upstairs’ picture window at Scarlet Salon, art-deco fixtures and gilded columns around, sunlight catching his coffee cup’s steam, Ken pushes back his baseball cap and leans in, “I’ll kick somebody’s ass and style their wife’s hair.” Then he smiles.
Ring of Fire June 13th @ Broomfield Events Center
(720) 855.7839 (Scarlet Salon) -
ROFMMA.com