Jeremiajah Sanders has just punched a man in the face.

Now he is pacing a hallway in a secluded area of Firelake Grand Casino in Shawnee, Okla., overlooking the octagonal ring where the 26-year-old Oklahoma City native defeated Bill Albrecht in the 185-pound division of a Jan. 31 Freestyle Cage Fighting match — a cage fighting league based in Tulsa. The area is reserved for the 24 men and women — and their managers, trainers and friends — who will fight over the course of the evening.

Sanders is giddy, out of breath, his skin reddened. Leftover adrenaline courses through his veins. He might have just returned from a brisk run, but a fresh cut above the bridge of his nose gives him away.

Despite the fact that Sanders is happy because he body slammed Albrecht with rib-breaking force while hundreds of bloodthirsty spectators screamed their approval, he is not a violent person. Sanders is not even an angry person. Cage fighting centers him. Cage fighting, not tending to kidney dialysis machines — Sanders works as a nurse who floats to different hospitals to tend to those suffering acute kidney failure — is what he was born to do, he said.

“I used to do the whole thing — street fighting and selling drugs and going to jail and stuff — and [cage fighting] is really the only thing that kind of brought everything into perspective for me. It’s never necessarily a sense of violence,” he said.

To Sanders, cage fighting is human chess; it is a sport of attacks and counterattacks, of having a plan and adapting it on the fly, of keeping alert and focused while the fists — or feet, or elbows or knees — are flying. In mixed martial arts freestyle cage fights most anything goes, so long as a fighter stays within the few rules that govern the three, three-minute rounds which make up a match on the professional circuit.

“Everybody’s got a game plan until you get punched in the face,” he said. “Then your game plan goes out the window. But obviously if you get punched in the face — you lose your game plan — that means that person’s imposing his game plan. So you’ve got to do everything you can to break his game plan like he broke yours. Suddenly it becomes an anatomical chess match, and honestly, man, that’s what it’s all about.”

When Sanders fights, he knows better than to do so out of anger. Famed martial artist Bruce Lee said so.

“Lee said anger clouds your mind and prevents true vision,” Sanders said. “I think if you fight angry, you’re going to lose 70 percent of the time. It’s not anger; it’s hunger. I gotta get fed, and that dude’s holding a hotdog on the other side of the ring.”

Elsewhere in the fighter’s area, 39-year-old Tom Jones snoozes on a couch. Jones is an Oklahoma native who currently lives in Tulsa where he fights for Absolute Combat Alliance, a Tulsa-based fighting team founded by himself and his girlfriend of 18 years, Dorothy Foss.

Jones is mentally readying himself for his fight, which will take place in an hour or so. And he, unlike Sanders, is angry.

This is unusual, Jones said. He does not usually take fights personally — at least not completely.

“To a certain extent, you’ve got to take it all personal,” Jones said. “[But] if anyone trash talks or rematches — rematches are often times personal — there’s a bit of anger involved.”

Tonight, Jones faces Prince McLean for the second time in the 185-pound SuperFight division — Jones lost the first by technical knockout in June 2006 after being dropped by McLean’s knee in the second round.

To the outsider, Jones is placid, remarkably calm for a man who is about to step into an octagonal ring and face another human being in a gladiator-style, unarmed battle. He looks as though he is waiting for the arrival of a bus, comfortably clothed in a sweatshirt and sweatpants, stocking cap pulled low over his head, listening to sports psychology and Henry Rollins spoken word through his earphones.

But this is the calm before the storm.

“I am nervous,” he said. “Everybody’s nervous — you’re going to get into a fight. I like to try and stay calm. You burn so much energy in a fight, the last thing you want to do is burn it [beforehand].”

Jones may be nervous, but he is no stranger to fight-related injuries. His slightly crooked nose and several scars on his mug prove it. Jones suffered multiple fractures to his face last July, resulting in the internal placement of two metal plates.

“The first punch of the fight broke my face, basically,” he said. “I kept fighting for a while. I knew something was wrong, and I knew I probably shouldn’t get hit again because it wouldn’t be good because I couldn’t see.”

He is proud of the plates in his face, Jones said. He is also fond of his scars and crooked nose.

“To me, [injuries are] a badge of honor,” he said. “I’ve got a good chin; I can take a lot of strikes. I don’t have much quit in me. Some people don’t like to look beat up after fights. I don’t mind it. It just shows I stayed in there and didn’t quit.”

Jones quit his job as a systems analyst for a millwork company after cage fighting became a viable career. He now fights full-time. And he will keep at it for as long as he can, he said.

“[I’ll fight for] as long as my body lets me,” Jones said. “I’ll probably fight two or three more times after I should quit. To be honest, someone’s going to have to make me quit. It’s great doing something you love for a living.”

Liz Carriero, however, calls cage fighting her “not-very-well paying part-time job.”

As a single mom with a career — she’s a medical technologist at St. John’s hospital in Tulsa — the 30-year-old Carriero began to train for boxing to lose weight after the birth of her son. Boxing progressed to cage fighting. She now fights for Absolute Combat Alliance alongside Jones and nine other fighters.

Carriero is one of four women fighters in Firelake’s FCF bout, but does not look like a fighter. She is thin and soft-spoken, obviously nervous, and fingers an iPod shuffle as though it is a lucky talisman — a lucky charm that plays Britney Spears, Eminem and Five Finger Death Punch.

But she is ready to bring the pain to Melissa Vasquez, her opponent in the 135-pound women’s division.

“You’re here to step in the cage and hurt someone,” she said. “But not in a vengeful way. You’re just doing your job.”

It isn’t the violence that draws her to cage fighting, she said. It’s the skill set required to succeed.

“It’s the diversity and the challenge,” she said. “There’s so many more skills that you have to learn and try.”

Carierro loves to fight. It is her passion. She said she fiends for the gym on days when she misses training.

But she knows she cannot fight forever.

“[Fighting is hard on your body, so I know I’m limited in time. I would like to have at least five more years, ideally,” she said. “And then, you know, after that, I’ll do what I can.”