Stefan Struve, Cub Swanson and Tom Watson preach UFC's gospel to the converted in Stockholm That is a world away, quite literally, from the teenagers with their inquisitive minds, and then, when they took to the mats with the fighters, quite startling skills. Martin Lavin, once a tearaway, now an MMA teacher at FightZone, with cauliflower ears and bright ginger beard, explained how he had poor grades, and would constantly get into fights, until he joined the FightZone Gym, run, owned and funded - either by themselves or by the subs of members - by husband and wife Hans Ersson and Margareta Myhr. Hans changed my life. In a way, he tricked me into becoming involved, but this really is my life now," he explained. It completely changed my life. I finished University with two degrees, in Business Management and Economic Affairs, and now all I do is teach, I train, and I compete. BJJ black belt Myhr herself has recently finished on the podium in internationally renowned BJJ tournaments, while her husband, Hans has lived and breathed the sport all his adult life. He was paralysed from the neck down after diving onto rocks in 1999, and now uses a wheelchair. Yet, as a tetraplegic, it has changed nothing of his passion. Which is using MMA and the respect values to both inspire, and transform lives. Together, he and his wife have brought many Brazilians over to the gym from the favelas in Rio di Janeiro bordering Ipanema and Copacabana, where life is unimaginably tough, and privation ubiquitous. The teachers and fighters stay with them at their home. But MMA has always been about sharing, about teamwork, and ultimately, respect. The wider picture to associate with the visit of Swanson, Struve and Watson didactic in the sense that it was to teach that you can be tough, healthy and wise - is that MMA needs to develop its role with communities, and use its most obvious role models to talk of the effects on their lives. Their effect of the role models on the kids aged 14 to 18 is immeasurable. "Some of those kids were really very talented, too," said middleweight Watson, who had come from California on Monday where he had been working with Mark Munoz on his wrestling. In the long term the MMA gym will become what the boxing gym once was - a refuge to change and shape young people's lives which had become twisted and entangled in negative society. As the UFC and the sport of MMA grows more, should there be a move to make fighters contractually bound to make such visits? Possibly. But most fighters I've ever come across take pleasure from these visits. A win/win all around.