Christian Wellisch recalls rolling out of bed one morning last April, glancing in the mirror, and being surprised to see the person who was staring back at him. "It was a pretty amazing sight," he remembers. "My whole face was so swollen that I could barely even recognize myself.

I had about 17 stitches in my head. You should've seen the other guy. The previous night, at an event called "Caged Combat" at Sacramento's Arco Arena, Wellisch had gone to war against a brute named Dan Evensen, a 265-pound Norwegian strongman who looked like a James Bond villain and was every bit as ominous, having either punched out, or choked out, all of his previous opponents.

After a 10-minute blood bath, Evensen failed to answer the bell for the third round. The fight was over. Wellisch's victory celebration took place at the hospital, where a doctor sewed him back together.

But more of that kind of fun will have to wait. The 31-year-old Monterey High alumnus, a law school graduate, currently is studying day and night for the California bar exam, notoriously the most-difficult in the nation. He'll take the test to become a full-fledged lawyer over a three-day period, July 24-26.

"Until then, I just don't want to lose any more brain cells," he says with a laugh. Afterward, he plans to resume training as a mixed martial artist a cage fighter and return to the ring they call "The Octagon" at the Ultimate Fighting Championships (UFC), the major-league level of what might be the roughest sport on earth. Mixed martial arts events are attracting enormous crowds and worldwide Pay Per View audiences to watch elite-level fighters go head-to-head in all conceivable disciplines of karate, kickboxing, judo and jiu jitsu, submission wrestling, boxing, and any other form of fighting and grappling.

Combatants wear lightly padded 4-ounce gloves (boxers wear 8-12 ouncers) that are designed mostly to protect the knuckles, not the skull. They start each round on their feet, but the striking (with feet, fists, elbows, knees and forearms) doesn't stop when the fight goes to the ground. One-punch knockouts aren't uncommon, but the more-painful conclusions often result from joint locks, when one fighter twists or hyperextends the arm or leg of his (or her) opponent.

Many bouts end when one person is choked into unconsciousness. If none of the above occurs after three 5-minute rounds (five rounds in a title fight), the decision goes to the scorecards. A referee oversees all the action, enforcing the rules (no biting, eye gouging, headbutts, hair pulling, small-joint manipulation, strikes to the trachea .

..) and intervening if one fighter becomes unable to effectively defend himself.

And make no mistake: These guys love what they do. "Christian went up against an Australian named Anthony Perosh at the MGM Grand in his second fight in the UFC," recalls Wellisch's manager, "Crazy" Bob Cook, who got his ring nickname by driving three hours (one way) to train every day during his own fighting career. "In the first round, he basically beat the tar out of Perosh, but he kind of gassed himself out while he was doing it.

So Perosh beat the tar out of Christian in the second round. Then, in the third round, when they were both exhausted, they beat the tar out of each other. It was absolutely great.

" The split-decision victory went to Wellisch, improving his MMA record to 8-2 as a pro (and 1-1 in the UFC). At 6-foot-3, 237 pounds, he's one of the little guys in the heavyweight division, where his opponents can be enormous, particularly when he leaves the country, where the heavyweight division sometimes has no weight limit. "The biggest guy I fought was in Australia.

He was 6-6, 300 pounds, and solid muscle, which kind of scared me," he says. "But I really wanted to go to Australia I'd never been there before so I took the fight." (He won.

) Size can be intimidating, but it doesn't always help. Fighting and grappling for 15 to 25 minutes, with only a minute between rounds, can be exhausting for a person carrying extra weight. And many martial arts techniques are specifically designed to neutralize an opponent's size advantage via quickness, leverage, or superior ground skills.

The ground is where Wellisch excels. He was an outstanding wrestler at Monterey High, where, as a senior, he became only the second athlete in school history to be named Most Valuable Wrestler in the Monterey Bay League. "When he first showed up as a ninth grader, he was very tall and skinny maybe 6 feet tall, and only about 145 pounds but his feet were enormous," said Bill Grant, his high school wrestling coach.

"I remember telling him, 'You need to start eating everything you can get your hands on. One of these days, you're going to grow into those huge feet of yours and you're going to become a great wrestler for us.' " Wellisch proved to be a coachable kid no surprise, considering the head he had on his shoulders.

HIs family had moved to Seaside from Budapest, Hungary, when he was an eighth grader. By the time he entered Monterey High the next year, he had become bilingual. And his work ethic was evident in everything he did.

"We'd have kids who maybe didn't think an exam was fair, and I'd say, 'Wait a minute that guy over there didn't even speak English a year ago, and he's not complaining.' " Grant says. "He really worked hard to overcome any obstacle that was in front of him, and he showed the same kind of heart, and poise, and tenacity as a wrestler.

" Stranded at West Valley| When Wellisch went on to West Valley College in Saratoga, where his three roommates unexpectedly bailed out on him, the 18-year-old college freshman went to his wrestling coach, Jim Root, for advice. "One roommate quit school and said, 'I'm outta here.' A few days later, his other two roommates some kid and his girlfriend up and moved to Florida," Root recollects.

"So Christian's suddenly stuck with all the rent, and I've got this big, naive, Herman Munster-type kid a real teddy bear standing in my office, saying, 'Coach, I don't know what to do.' " Root and his wife liked Wellisch so much that they not only helped him get out of his lease, they moved him into their own home. That worked out just fine, Root says, with only one downside.

"I remember the day he moved in, Christian and his mother showed up with about four big bags of groceries, and our house was already pretty well-stocked with food," the coach says. "But Christian pretty much ate us out of house and home, anyway." Says Grant, "Root kept saying, 'Stop telling him to eat so darn much!

' " Wellisch was a two-time state placer at West Valley, winning a third-place medal in 1993, and was All-America at the junior college level and in U.S. He went on to wrestle at San Francisco State, where his career was cut short by a shoulder injury that sent him into the workforce in Silicon Valley's high-tech industry.

Later, Wellisch returned to school at San Jose State, earning a degree in philosophy. That's when he started working out at the American Kickboxing Academy, mostly for the exercise, and got recruited into the world of mixed martial arts. "I was just trying to learn a little bit of jiu jitsu, but all of these world champions were training there: the owner was an ex-world champ in kickboxing.

There was a former WBC boxing champ. And there were black belts everywhere you looked," Wellisch says. "So I just kind of got lucky.

" The first challenge and a never-ending one was to diversify his training, learning new fighting skills that would enable him to survive and thrive on his feet or on the ground. Mixed martial arts matches experts in all types of hand-to-hand combat, meaning a fighter could encounter almost any kind of attack Tae Kwon Do, Muy Thai, Brazilian jiu jitsu, Kung Fu, submission grappling ..

. you name it from a given opponent. A second challenge, he says, was adapting mentally to the violent nature of MMA.

"When I first started, I was afraid to get hit because I'd never really been hit by anybody who knew what they were doing," he says. "But after I started sparring with some of the guys at the American Kickboxing Academy, I started to get past that." Some lessons were learned the hard way.

He remembers shooting in for a takedown one day while training with Brian Johnson, a 6-4, 250-pound former professional wrestler. Johnson threw a knee at the same instant, catching Wellisch flush in the face. "I went black for a second, but didn't lose my balance," he says.

"After that, I figured I wasn't likely to get hit any harder than that, so I wasn't too worried about it from that point on." He traveled to Hawaii for his first-ever mixed martial arts fight in 2001, and worked about 80 seconds for his money. "I took the guy down and pounded on him until the ref pulled me off.

It was the best hourly rate I'd ever made, and I got a trip to Hawaii out of the deal, too," says Wellisch, whose ring nickname, "The Hungarian Nightmare," was given to him by former high school wrestling teammate Cosmo Randazzo. "Afterward, I was so excited and hyped up that I had to go outside the arena and run sprints to calm down." Soon to be a contender?

| Cook, who works his corner during fights with trainer Lynn Schutz, says Wellisch's grappling and submission skills are top drawer, his work ethic is great, and his heart is huge. All of those things could put him on a level with the sport's best fighters guys on the level of world champ Randy "The Natural" Couture, Tim Sylvia and Chuck Liddell somewhere down the line. "He's not ready today, but down the road, with a lot of hard work and more experience, he very well could be," says the manager, who expects Wellisch's next fight to be in September, either in Los Angeles or Las Vegas, against a yet-to-be-determined opponent.

"He needs to improve a few of his skills and gain a little bit of cage savvy, and he'll be right there." All of that will have to wait, though, until Wellisch accomplishes his next goal and becomes a California lawyer, specializing in intellectual property (trademarks, copyrights, patents, etc.).

He envisions a day when he might even use his law background in the world of the UFC. "It's possible that I could become a promoter or a manager someday," he says. "I also could see myself starting some kind of organization to represent the fighters and negotiate on their behalf.

They don't have a lot of bargaining power at the moment the UFC pretty much owns everything, and you're basically going to fight for the amount they want to pay so there's definitely a need in the sport for somebody like that." "There aren't many guys fighting in the UFC who are also lawyers," Cook says with a laugh. "Christian's going to be a little bit unique that way.

" Dennis Taylor can be reached at dtaylor@montereyherald.com or 646-4344. Christian Wellisch recalls rolling out of bed one morning last April, glancing in the mirror, and being surprised to see the person who was staring back at him.