Cerritos College’s own, professional wrestler and kinesiology major Michael Inman, will be in record books all across the world after breaking a Guinness world record in his wrestling match on Jan. 8.

Inman, who wrestles for the wrestling company “Epic War,” under the name ‘Rockstar’ Mike Cordova, finally accomplished the historic seven-hour ‘Iron Man’ match, a match where the rules state whoever gets the most pins, and submissions in the given time limit wins the match, against Jaysin Strife, an up-and-coming wrestler and who was the victor of the match, to secure their place in the Book of World Records for having the longest professional wrestling match in history.

“The match was great. It spanned through everything you can get from a match. If you wanted technical; if you wanted fighting [it was in the match]; but not necessarily high flying,” Inman said.

“The match was epic, to say the least.”

This match is very meaningful to Inman, especially after a near fatal accident in April of 2009 where his car hit a truck and crushed him from the waist down, which fractured his pelvis, broke his tibia and destroyed his groin muscles.

“[Since the accident], I’ve been training up to strengthen the muscles. I have been almost 100 percent, but there is still some sensitivity in my ankles and knees; and probably at the end of the match was where they came into play, and there was a lot of pain I had to deal with. But I think I trained enough that the injuries weren’t much of a factor.

“A year and a half ago, I was in a near fatal accident, and now I’m breaking records,” Inman said.

The match was originally supposed to be a six-hour match and taking place on Dec. 18 at the Murrieta Community Center, beating the five-and-a-half hour match in 1912 between Ed Lewis and Joe Stetcher, but a few reasons forced the match to be postponed.

“We had the [match] date set on Dec 18, so that gave me actually three weeks to get ready. So I was training hard and heavy; training twice a day, with cardio in the morning and cardio and weights in the evening, with the running being two to three hours. What ended up happening, was on the last week [before the scheduled date], I got sick. [Training] broke my immune system down so much because of the over-training.

“Luckily, we found out by a wrestling historian that the five-and-a-half match wasn’t the record, and there was a six-and-a-half hour match on the [Guinness] books, so we had to beat that one. The venue was only set for six hours, and it was an extra $500 for an extra block of time. So we said forget it, we are going to go to another place we used to wrestle at. That actually was a great thing. [Moving the date to Jan 8] opened up more training time for me, and I didn’t train as hard as I did, because I learned from my mistakes from the over-training that I need to relax a little bit, and did more quality work,” Inman said.

After the long wait, the venue was changed to the promoter’s house.

Though Inman lost the match to his opponent, he looked at the bigger picture.

“[Strife] deserved it. He’s a rising star, and he did a great job. My heart goes out to him, because without him, we couldn’t have done it. He was very professional,” he said.

After all of the guidelines of the match are met by the wrestling company, and is approved by Guinness, it will be official and the match will be cemented in history.

Fellow students are proud of Inman’s accomplishments.

“[I don’t know Inman personally], but I think it’s amazing that a student that goes [to Cerritos College] has accomplished a world record; especially since it’s something physical like wrestling,” undecided major Amanda Navarro said.

Engineering major Caleb Shen agrees.

“I am very happy to know that a student from our community can accomplish something like [a seven-hour wrestling match],”  Shen said.

The 2012 edition of the Guinness Book of World Records, which will include Inman’s record, is set to be available for the world in January 2012.

“I’m still trying to soak it all in. I’m still recovering from injuries from the match. [It feels like] I’m on cloud nine right now. I can look in the mirror and say that we (Inman and Strife) have done something no one else has ever done. We are now world record holders and there’s a big swell of pride that I feel, and I can’t help but feel proud. I am very humble.” he said.

For those who are interested in seeing video of the match, pictures, updates, go to artoverlifestudio.com and twitter.com/rockstarcordova.