The doorbell rang and a woman answered.
There stood an adult man and a pair of teenage girls.
The woman looked puzzled – Who are these people and what do they want?
There was a pause as her eyes met with one of the girls’.
“Me, him, my dad, wash cars,” one of the girls said to the woman, as she pointed to her father. Her English was very broken, with a Hispanic accent.
The door promptly closed in the faces of the stoop-standers.
Loopy Godinez took a breath and stepped down off the stoop. She trekked down the walkway with her sister and father, Carlos Godinez, past their white van that contained cleaning supplies.
It was on to the next house. Hopefully, they’d have more luck.
Godinez was 15 at the time. Her life was vastly different than most kids growing up in the Vancouver area. She wasn’t going to school yet. She couldn’t. Instead, she had a job. Well, multiple, actually.
It wasn’t always that way, though. The months that followed her surprise immigration from Mexico to Canada hit the teenager hard.
“I cried for the whole year, I think,” Godinez recently told MMA Junkie. “Every day, I was so upset. I just didn’t want to be there.”
Godinez was 14 when she made the move, embarking on a life-changing adventure unbeknownst to her, until she boarded the plane. She knew Mickey Mouse didn’t live in the Great White North.
“(My parents) didn’t say, ‘Oh, we’re going to move away.’ They just said, ‘We’re going to Disneyland for vacation,'” Godinez said. “When we were at the airport, it said, ‘Vancouver, Canada.’ I’m like, ‘What the hell? Where is that? Where are we going?’ Then, they didn’t say anything until the next day when we arrived there. I was like, ‘Just tell me what’s happening.’ … We didn’t have an option.”
As a child, Godinez couldn’t fully grasp the circumstances that catalyzed her father’s decision to move his wife and four girls across North America. Her father’s car dealing business encountered threats from a cartel. It was time to go.
Regardless of circumstance, the move made life harder. Godinez left behind good people and good memories. Familiarity and comfort were replaced by foreignness and inconveniences.
Whether it was going door-to-door offering blue-collar labor, cleaning toilets at the local bar, babysitting, washing cars, or assisting her father with his job in a restaurant, Godinez became accustomed to a grindstone way of life.
An exponential grind
There was a knock at the door, and Godinez answered.
It was … her father?
Carlos Godinez was not supposed to be home from work right now. So what was he doing?
“We’re like, ‘This is kind of early. It’s lunchtime,'” Godinez recalled. “He didn’t even make it through lunchtime. I looked and it was my dad with his little lunchbox thing. He was pretty upset, actually. He wasn’t used to someone kicking him out from a job.”
Carlos was sent home early from his recently acquired painting gig. Translation issues were at least partially responsible.
“There were townhouses and they had to put the ladders and you had to go up and start painting,” Godinez said. “He was scared and he had to do it anyway. They told him, ‘Don’t drop any paint on the ground. If you do, you’ll go home.’ He had no idea what they were saying. So he was trying, but he dropped a couple drops on the ground – or at least that’s what he said – I don’t know how much he actually dropped.
“When that happened, they told him to go home. He didn’t know the words, ‘Go home.’ He didn’t know what that meant. So someone told him what it was.”
Godinez decided to take a walk with her dad. Hopefully, spirits would lift. They went business to business with her father, as it was a group effort of Spanish speakers trying to get her old man hired.
“We didn’t speak English, so we brought a little electronic dictionary that we could type and see if stuff came up,” Godinez said. “We also had a little booklet where we’d look for the words and tell them the words. Some people let us in the office to use the computer to get the pronunciations. He actually got one job like that. He was washing cars for about two weeks or something.”
Eventually, the proper paperwork was put into place. Godinez could go to school. Not one to ever ask her parents for money, she still worked on the side to support herself, but a layer of normalcy was laid. When her work grind stopped, however, Carlos’ continued. The ethic was unmatched.
“In the summer, we would wash cars. And any time I wasn’t with him, he was still doing it,” Godinez said. “We would leave at 7 or 8 and go to his restaurant where he was washing dishes at 4, because he’d start at 5. We’d have an hour to eat, then I’d go home or whatever. He would just start washing dishes at the restaurant until midnight. He’d come home and do it all over again. Every day. And he’d work weekends.”
Fruits of labor
The plane door closes.
Next stop Guadalajara.
Godinez doesn’t have much time to reflect, but as she makes her way down to Mexico for her second fight camp, it hits her how full circle her journey has become.
In a short time, Godinez has established herself as the anywhere, anytime, anyone phone call for the UFC, giving off near Donald Cerrone vibes to fight fans. A grind that is too overwhelming for much of the UFC roster doesn’t bear weight on Godinez. Her internal programming is simply different. Fighting is something she enjoys – much more than cleaning bar toilets, that’s for sure.
“Honestly, I see life as a movie,” Godinez said. “Everything has to end at some point. No matter how sh*tty right now is, let’s say we’re going through something really bad, it’s only going to last so long until it finishes. It’s up to us to say, ‘Do you want to be suffering for 10 years? Or do you want to suffer for two?’ It’s all up to us. That’s how I see it. If you want to suffer less, you work harder. You have to change what is making that situation sh*ttier. Everything has a fix. That’s why I say it’s up to us.”
Godinez competes Saturday vs. Tabatha Ricci at UFC 295 at Madison Square Garden, one of the most legendary combat sports arenas on earth. She can extend her winning streak to four. An impressive performance could potentially push her into the top 10 in the official UFC rankings.
She isn’t the only Godinez reaping the benefits of a laborious decade-plus of labor. Her father’s life has come full circle as well. Carlos owns a house and recently opened up his own business selling cars, which brings his daughter great joy.
“It’s something that he loves, first of all,” Godinez said. “He gets to make more money and wake up late if he wants to. He gets to actually travel. He goes all over B.C. to pick up cars. He has no need to do that, but he just does it. He drives like 10 hours just to pick up a car. He took a bus and the guy said, ‘We’re leaving in 15 minutes’ and he thought he said ’50 minutes’ and he missed the bus in the middle of nowhere. He was taking rides to get to the next place or whatever. He just has fun.”
Sixteen years after her move, Godinez has a matured, newfound appreciation for her sacrifices during an unusual upbringing – and even more for her father. All the grueling sacrifices he made to keep his family safe and provide for his family won’t be forgotten. The lessons she learned from him are invaluable.
“Me and my sisters, we were still young,” Godinez said. “We could still adapt. It’s easier for a kid to get by. He was somewhere between 30 and 35. To have it all and just in one blink you have to leave everything behind and start from scratch, it’s very hard. Just by watching that and looking at that and being part of it, it kind of gives me a different view of life.
“Yeah, right now we’re pretty good. We have everything. But tomorrow, you don’t know. At the same time, you have to be ready to take an action. You cannot just sit and cry. Nobody cares. You and your family are the only ones who care. That’s why it’s easy for me to take short notice fights and stuff like that. I’ve done worse. I’ve been in worse situations. That’s the easy part.”
Nothing is for granted and circumstances are ever-changing. The highest highs and lowest lows are temporary states, Godinez explained. But what won’t disappear is the engrained perspective Godinez and her sisters see the world through – nor her appreciation of living in comfort.
“The other day, I was thinking about that, like, holy sh*t. It’s been crazy, but look what we have done. Not just me, but my whole family,” Godinez said. “My sisters (Ana Paula and Karla) want to represent Canada for the Olympics. They’ve traveled all over the world. Not in a million years did they think they’d meet any other part of the world. Now, they have been to Europe, India, so many places. I don’t really like traveling that far, so they can just show me the pictures. But yeah, it’s pretty cool. My parents are super proud, right? Just to watch all of this.
“… It’s crazy. I always thought that I wasn’t made to be here for just a normal job. I knew that. I just didn’t know what. I’m not a good dancer. I’m not a good singer. There is no way I’m going to be sitting in an office. There is no way I’m going to be a mom just stuck at home. No way. This is it. It’s fighting. Now that we’re here, it’s crazy.”
For more on the card, visit MMA Junkie’s event hub for UFC 295.
