Wrestling, down south in the Carolinas, wasn’t the same activity Joe Pacheco was used to. His family moved from Queens, New York, to Charlotte when he was a fifthgrader, then to Chester, S.C., and back to Gaston County where he enrolled in Mount Holly Middle School in seventh grade. A classmate, Charles Mauldin, asked the new kid if he liked wrestling. “I love when they jump off the tops of the ropes!” Pacheco said. “They have that down here?” Pacheco didn’t get the WWE, but he did land on a middle school team where he learned that version of the sport. And that launched a high school pursuit in which he was part of the East Gaston High School NCHSAA 2002 state championship team and won the 2002 N.C. 189-pound individual state title, his first of two. His accomplishments have earned him a 2026 induction into the Mount Holly Sports Hall of Fame. Pacheco graduated from East Gaston in 2003 and went on to a rewarding professional career in mixed martial arts, where he compiled a 7-2 record, one by knockout.

Those high school wrestling team years were more about group effort, he says, than individual awards. “There are so many different tournaments I could think of where a teammate won who shouldn’t have won, and it felt better than your own win,” he says. “We only had 11 on the team and there’s 13 weight classes. We wanted to show up for our teammates more than we wanted to show up for ourselves.” Pacheco finished high school 189-34 with 134 pins. He wrestled at 171 pounds his freshman and sophomore years, then moved to 189 pounds. Middle school was his training ground. “I was fortunate enough to start in middle school. It was the first real sport I participated in, and I fell in love with wrestling,” he says. “The camaraderie you had was second to none.” He lost twice in seventh grade – his first match, and his last match – to the same opponent. So he and Mauldin worked out in the offseason with Mauldin’s brother, Eddie, who was at East Gaston. He and Charles each won their weight class in eighth grade.

“My freshman year wasn’t as good. My first match in high school, I remember it vividly,” he says. “It was versus Kings Mountain, and the person was a returning state finalist, and he beat me pretty good, pinned me in the first or second period. And the upperclassmen were like, ‘Welcome to high school!’ So there was a big difference from middle school to high school.” The 2002 team, he says, was a comeback season for the Warriors. “We had just lost the state tournament the prior year by about a point and a half, so we really picked each other up and pushed each other to be the best we could possibly be,” he says. “We had a lot of fun.

It was the first year in a new conference (3A), and we wanted to make a statement that we belonged with the best. We were definitely able to reap those rewards at the end of the season.” Pacheco left high school as four-time All-Conference, threetime regional champion and two-time N.C. state champion. After graduation, he coached at Mount Holly Middle alongside Eddie Mauldin, worked a few other jobs, started a family and discovered Mixed Martial Arts. He showed up for a practice. A coach asked Pacheco if he had ever boxed. He had not. “The coach said, ‘Here’s some gloves and a mouthpiece. Why don’t you start?’ And I did,” he says. “It was the first time I ever got punched in the face. And that started my Mixed Martial Arts career.”

He turned pro and, and as he became more well-known, received a six-figure deal from Bellator MMA, a mixed martial arts promotion that began in 2008 and ran numbered promotions through 2014. Events were held in California, Maine, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Charlotte. Pacheco’s debut in February 2013 in Bellator 89 was a victory by knockout in the second round. He compiled a 7-2 record through 2014. He now lives in Rock Hill. He and his wife Jamie have five children – son Javon, 23; daughters Simone 18, Leah, 17, and Luna, 6; and son Bishop 5. He’s the head coach of Modern Warrior Wrestling, which he started in 2018 to help Javon train for his high school team. The business became a non-profit 501(c)(3) in 2021. “I’m absolutely honored to be inducted into the Mount Holly Sports Hall of Fame,” he says. “I don’t ever really talk about what I’ve accomplished, because I don’t like being braggadocios, but I’m truly honored for being recognized in a place that I love, that being Mount Holly, and to be going in alongside my brothers on the 2002 team. I’m honored to be able to be recognized and go down in history with them. It’s like a dream come true.”