Kelowna, BC is 7,102 km away from Halifax, Nova Scotia. However 15-minutes is the maximum amount of time that Toshido MMA’s Matt Dwyer could spend inside the Octagon in his UFC debut.
It was announced in June that Dwyer would be making his debut against Alex Garcia, however after Jose Aldo was unable to participate in the evening’s main event the entire card was cancelled. That fight was expected to go down on August 2, 2014, at Staples Center in Los Angeles, California. He is now set to make his first UFC appearance agains Albert Tumenov this Saturday night.
Rewind to May 2010, the first time the 24-year-old stepped inside British Columbia’s Battlefield Fight League cage. Over the next four-years he amassed a 10-2 record inside the BFL cage, both as an amateur and a professional.
Dwyer held the amateur and professional 170-pound gold for that organization and he had nothing but great things to say about fighting for them.
“I stuck with Jay [Golshani, BFL President] and he was good to me,” Dwyer told Sucka Radio. “We had that loyalty between each other and once I beat a couple of the local guys, defended the belt, our coach asked to get a few UFC vets in there [Battlefield Fight League]. That’s kind of what you need to do when you want to make that next step to the UFC.”
Many fighters have made their way from Toshido MMA to the UFC, including: Michael Hill (TUF 16), Sarah Moras (TUF 19) and, of course, Rory MacDonald. When people think of where to train in Canada, the number one name that comes up is Tristar in Montreal. According to Dwyer, Toshido has all he could ever want and so he states that he would never leave it.
“The training is top notch. We are in little Okanagon, but we’ve got world class trainers in this place. Above that it’s the people that come to train. We’re here everyday and we work hard. At the end of the day, we want to be the best and we train to be the best. A lot of us have something that they say you can’t teach.”
Not everyone can say that they’ve had the opportunity to live out there dream. In fact not a lot can say that they have even had the opportunity. Well, that dream came true for Dwyer earlier this year when his coach found an unsuspecting email from UFC matchmaker Joe Silva during a warmup at the gym.
“Everybody was warming up and getting ready for class. He yelled out a big ‘Woah!’ and everybody was like, ‘are you ok coach?’ He was like, ‘Dwyer get over here’ and Joe Silva emailed him saying just name us a fight and we’ll make it happen. I was just running around the gym screaming my head off.”
At UFC Fight Night 54, Dwyer will take on Russian Albert Tumenov; The man known as “Einstein” holds a 13-2 record and is 1-1 inside the UFC. Most recently, he knocked out Anthony Lapsley in May. That is not the fight that Dwyer has been studying though — Tumenov UFC debut was against Ildemar Alcantara who has a similar style to the Canadian, so Dwyer has noticed some holes in his game through that tape.
“Judging by what we saw, he fought a tall lanky guy and Albert throws a lot of big heavy punches. A lot of his punches are just big right hands, big left hands, left hooks and big heavy kicks. Just heavy, heavy. When he got taken down and put on his back, not a whole lot of jiu-jitsu off his back. He was able to get two reversals, like just bridging hard,but not a lot in the jiu-jitsu area and the wrestling. I’m sure he’s been working on that, but if there was any chink in his armour I’d say it was his wrestling and his jiu-jitsu.”
Everyone says that they will be fine and take the fight like it’s any other. However, following the contest, most admit that Octagon jitters came into play — win or lose. When Buffer says Dwyer’s name Saturday night, he will acknowledge and give a little wave, but pretend that it wasn’t Buffer at all.
“When I go out there I’m just going to look at it like if I was fighting in Battlefield, like if I was still trying to get in the UFC and Jay came up and said there was this Russian dude, he’s fought twice in the UFC, we’ll get him to fight you — we would take it. I’m going to go out there and there are going to be a lot of emotions that I am going to have to keep in check. The biggest thing is when Buffer starts saying my name: I’m going to have to cancel that out right away. I’ll give the thumbs up and wave, but imagine that wasn’t Bruce and just keep my eyes on my opponent and at the end of the day, it’s just a fight.”
Being Canadian, hockey and rugby are the usual past times. Dwyer did play rugby and superstitions came into play at a young age. However, he didn’t like to think about them all too much. One thing that is for certain, the number four, in fact October 4 was a huge date for him right from the get go.
“October 4 was the actual day that I made my amateur debut. The first time ever fighting in the cage was on October 4. That night I fought this guy and I knocked him out in four-seconds flat. My jersey number for rugby was number four. The day that I fought Yusuf Njie the date was October 22, so I thought that was a multiple of four. So October 4 for my UFC debut, it’s on the same day where I made my amateur debut in my first fight ever. So I guess that’s my little superstition right there.”
“If you would have told me that this was going to happen when I first started fighting I wouldn’t believe you. It doesn’t happen to too many people. I actually can’t wait to be in there.”
