It was three months before the martial arts bout of his life that finance junior Carlos Vera’s father left his family. By his junior year at Jesuit High School, Vera had grown accustomed to his dad’s unexplained absences, when in August 2004, Dad went to Miami and notified his boy that he would extend his stay there to forever.

Vera’s 40-hour job as an Outback Steakhouse busboy suddenly became half his household’s income, only instead of supporting wife and children, it helped pay the bills of his mother, Nelly, and the tuition of his brother, Miguel, then in middle school at St. Anne’s. His 4.0 grade point average at Jesuit, arguably the toughest prep school in the state of Louisiana, became not a matter of pride but survival. He could only go to college on a free ride if he was to help put Miguel through school and keep helping Mamá feed and clothe him.

He turned to the “three religions” he has faith in – the martial arts of tae kwan do, hapkido and mauy thai, disciplines focusing on stand-up combat. He paid worship to their ethics, techniques and tenets inside a seedy gym in seedier Fat City.

“My body became an instrument,” Vera said. “I could dominate it. I could dominate pain.”

Good thing – it wasn’t long before his toughest opponent to date piled on to everything else going on in his life, at a regional tournament in Morgan City, La.

Eric was big (6-foot-3) and old (22) . No one was bigger, older or more experienced than him in Vera’s division in that tournament. By the time Vera faced him, he had in back-to-back bouts kicked two of his opponents in the stomach and connected on a 540-degree kick to their faces.

Paramedics strapped both opponents into a stretcher, loaded them into ambulances and rushed them to a Morgan City emergency room to get treatment for concussions.

Vera was scared. Miguel said he shouldn’t fight. Nelly said she wanted to pull him out of the tournament – the parent of every other fighter seeded to fight Eric did, which is how Eric and Vera automatically met each other in the semifinals.

Vera mulled his options in the venue’s hallways when the brother of Eric’s second victim strolled over, interrupted his lonesome thoughts and said, “Stand up to him.”

“It was like a bad martial arts movie,” Vera said. “But he was right. You never back down in tae kwon do.”

Vera spent three rounds and two overtimes tussling in his dirtiest match ever. Deadlegs. Head butts. Low knees. At one point, Vera cornered his hulking opponent, hooked him with his left arm and began manically “stabbing” him with a balled up fist and an imaginary knife.

Eric twice failed to stagger Vera with his perilous stomach kick – he absorbed them with abs hardened, ironically, in Fat City. Only the officials’ decision to award Vera; the decision staggered him that fine hour.

Vera advanced to win the final and later win nationals. That paved the way for a Junior Olympics silver medal and more in life.

He is a waiter now, and his full Loyola scholarship lets him pay for Miguel’s Jesuit tuition.

By Thanksgiving, he will have completed his tests to become a fourth-degree black belt, a six-year course of studies.

He hasn’t noticed that it takes two years less to achieve an equivalent degree in any other religious study.