UFC Fight Night headliner Ryan LaFlare's underground roots
For many fans, Saturday' UFC Fight Night, and its main event between Demian Maia and Ryan LaFlare has flown under the radar a bit. Even with the Brazilian card's slightly lower profile stateside, the event is worlds away from the truly underground place that LaFlare got his start in, and fell in love with MMA.
The former wrestler had his amateur career derailed by injuries and then got into lacrosse. After college, LaFlare still felt a need to train and work out his competitive muscles, so he began going to a grappling school in New York, and wrestling as well as learning some Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.
Not long after he began training there, gym mates of LaFlare presented him with an exciting, though illegal proposition â taking an MMA fight. The sport was then, much as it is now, not fully sanctioned in the empire state.
So, most NY area fighters traveled to neighboring states to get their competitive MMA experience. There were, however, and still are, other, unsanctioned opportunities for MMA athletes to compete in New York.
Not that you heard it from us, of course.
"This was back in 2006. A couple of local guys were fighting and they told me about this underground fight card happening in Brooklyn," LaFlare remembers.
"It was illegal to fight in New York so instead, guy would go to New Jersey, Massachussetts, or other places. But they told me about this underground fighting league that held fights in Brooklyn, Queens, Long Island and the Bronx and asked if I wanted to do it. They told me I'd get 50 percent of the tickets I sold.
"I had never taken even one kickboxing lesson at that point, but I love fighting so I said, 'sure!' (laughs). I had about a month's notice. I sold 100 tickets and showed up."
LaFlare says that heading into his first MMA fight, he was much more concerned that his opponent might not show up than with possibly getting hurt while competing. "I didn't know what I was doing. I was just showing up because I thought it was cool that I could get a fight," he chuckles.
"I was not nervous, really, and I was gung-ho the whole time leading up to it. I was ready to fight, even though I didn't know what I was doing. I was just hoping the opponent would show up because I had sold 100 tickets, and had all these fans show up."
Mere mortals without MMA experience would likely be secretly praying for their mystery opponent not to show up. After all, LaFlare had signed up to fight someone sight-unseen, in an unregulated event where there would be no real rules, to his knowledge.
"I don't think there were rules," he tells us, with a laugh.
"I think one guy showed up and fought in jean shorts. It was basically hit the guy until he asks for mercy. I was throwing a bunch of elbows to the spine [which are illegal under unified MMA rules], and to his sternum."
LaFlare fought, he won, and he fell in love with MMA. Or, more accurately, he fell in love with the Vale Tudo (anything goes) type of scrap that predated modern mixed martial arts.
"Oh, definitely. I loved it," he remembers.
"I think I fought a regulated fight a couple months later. I realized that this was what I wanted to do."
On Saturday, LaFlare will fight in his first ever UFC main event. He's currently undefeated in the promotion and a rising prospect.
After years of struggling through injuries and other circumstantial career set-backs, it would appear that he's finally arrived at the place he'd long hoped for. Most MMA fans will just be getting to know the Long Island MMA gym co-owner Saturday when he takes on the former world title challenger Maia, in his home country of Brazil.
Stories like his first underground fight experience, however, show how fighters â real fighters â like LaFlare are born and bred long before they become recognized for it, and far away from the bright lights. After walking into a gym nine years ago with no fight experience to fight a man he'd never seen before, in a contest with little to no holds barred, chances are LaFlare won't be intimidated by the raucous home-field advantage Maia will have in Rio, in the Fight Night main event.
LaFlare once dreamed of becoming a NCAA Div. I wrestling All-American before injuries crushed his amateur career. MMA gave him another outlet for his combat sport ambitions.
This time, he's intent on finishing what he's started. "Yeah, absolutely," he says.
"I have unfinished business from wrestling to take care of, with my MMA career. I think that is a lot of what keeps my drive to be the best, going. Injuries, set-backs, and everything else just give me more motivation, now."
