I was defeated on my favourite TV show, now I'm living my childhood dream

A man bounced back from adversity to earn the biggest opportunity of his career. Nathan Fletcher had little interest in mixed martial arts (MMA) until he realised something about his favourite childhood sport.

Speaking to the ECHO, Nathan, 26, said: “No one in my family did combat sports. I was always very sporty as a kid. When I got to school, I thought I was going to be a football player.

“Then I didn't get into the secondary school team. I realised there was a load of other boys who were a bit bigger, stronger and way better than me at football.

“So I was like, scratch that, I'm not going to be a professional football player. I found fighting. If I'm being honest, I was probably one of the smaller kids in school, and with that came a little bit of a chip on my shoulder.

“I wasn't picked on or anything really, but I was always aware of the bigger lads, so I thought I needed some form of martial arts to defend myself.”

A friend of Nathan’s called Kieran introduced him to MMA and took him to a small gym in his hometown of Southport, called the Dog Pit. After that, Nathan was hooked.

He said: “I fell in love with it straight away. I remember on my first session, I went with Kieran. I didn't have a clue what I was doing, and my ego was hurt a little bit. I thought, being quite athletic, I was going to do better."

Nathan was an MMA fan at a time when the sport wasn’t that well known in the UK. He also started watching The Ultimate Fighter, a TV show where professional fighters from across the world compete against each other.

Doing well on the show has led to many fighters becoming part of the UFC, one of most prominent MMA promotion firms, hosting fights around the world.

Nathan worked his way up and turned professional in 2019, but his career path hasn’t been entirely straightforward. After going six fights undefeated, he suffered his first loss in 2021 and didn’t compete again for more than a year.

He said: “I had 15 months out of the cage after that, due to opponents pulling out and nobody wanting to fight me. I was still fighting on a regional scene, so all the guys who were coming up, they didn't want to risk their records facing me and as a result risk their chance of getting into the UFC.”

Nathan eventually fought again in late 2022, defeating Alessandro Giordano, and was back in the cage the following April where he beat Daan Duijs. Another fight in September was cancelled due to Adam picking up a hairline fracture. Nevertheless, he was accepted to appear on the newest series of The Ultimate Fighter a few months later and was hopeful that doing well would increase his chances of getting signed up by the UFC.

His time on the show didn’t go entirely to plan however. Nathan said: “In the first minute of my first fight, I took a leg kick. I'd given it about five, six months since the injury, so it should have been okay, but obviously something wasn't quite right. He's hit me in that area and I've snapped my fibula. I carried on fighting, lost the decision on the show and came home disappointed.”

However, figures at the UFC were impressed with how Nathan carried himself on the show. After taking this and his previous fighting record into account, he was given the offer to join. It was announced yesterday that he will compete in his first fight this Saturday in Las Vegas, with the opponent to be confirmed.

Nathan said: “I think to achieve anything at a high level, there's going to be adversity to get there. I definitely felt down after the show for a few weeks coming along, because it didn't go the way I wanted it to. This is my opportunity now to go for it.

Nathan was speaking to the ECHO at AIM Health, a facility in Hoylake that specialises in cutting-edge treatments for recovery. Open to athletes and the general public, it has facilities such as cryogenic chambers, compression boots and low-level light therapy to reduce pain and inflammation.

Nathan said: “As I'm getting on a little bit in my career and I'm taking more wear and tear through the years in the sport, I've realised you've got to train smart and like, a big part of that is recovery.

“I've always used saunas and ice baths which are more readily available. But then to get something like this, where I'm getting the compression boots, the oxygen chamber, the red light therapy, all stuff that's a little bit more advanced in the recovery world, it's perfect for me to gain those little advantages.”

Nathan trains at Next Generation Gym, which is where Paddy ‘The Baddy’ Pimblett and ‘Meatball’ Molly McCann practice too. Nathan said: “They're the first generation of guys that we've had on the biggest stage, so we can all look up to them.

“Next Gen now seems like a hotbed of talent, but give it two, three years and I think we're going to have 10 plus fighters at the top of the sport.” Nathan believes the obstacles he has to face have got him to where he is today.

He said: “It's a childhood dream. It's what I've always set out to do when I got into the sport. The UFC is the pinnacle of MMA and that's where I've seen myself all this time. The journey has not been a straight forward line. I still think I'm pretty early on in my fighting career, but I've been through a lot of adversity which has prepared me to go on and have a great career in the UFC."