MISSOULA, Mont. – Matt Riddle didn’t need to do Flip Gordon like that. Not here, not in front of the guy’s family. They drove all the way from Kalispell for this, and how did Riddle greet them? He threw their beloved Flip on the mat and stomped on his throat, then turned to the front row and berated the whole crew – even grandma.

He used to be such a nice boy, too. Now the dopey, smiling kid from Season 7 of “The Ultimate Fighter” has found a whole new life as a bro-tastic professional wrestler, suiting up multiple times a week to play a pro wrestling character who seems like a meaner, more menacing version of Spicoli from “Fast Times at Ridgemont High.”

You can still see the UFC Riddle somewhere in there as he flings Gordon from one end of he ring to the other. But this new version is more grown up, more muscular, with a swagger and a sneer to him.

He’s also happier than the guy who used to fight for a living, and it’s not just because his new job allows him to smoke weed outside the arena before he clocks in.

“I love what I do now,” Riddle told me after the night’s main event, where he was eventually defeated by Gordon, who was definitely not about to lose in his home state of Montana. “I mean, I loved MMA, but it didn’t always love me back.”

I’m not much of a pro wrestling fan these days, but I did grow up with it, back in the golden era when Hulk Hogan vs. The Ultimate Warrior and “Rowdy” Roddy Piper vs. “Ravishing” Rick Rude seemed like the pinnacle of sports, if not all human endeavor.

So when some friends of mine wanted to promote a local pro wrestling show just for fun, the nostalgia factor was enough to rope me in. I only recognized one name on the card, and it was the guy I’d last seen standing in the press room at the Bell Centre in Montreal, the night Georges St-Pierre beat Carlos Condit at UFC 154.

Riddle took a unanimous decision over John Maguire that night. What he didn’t know at the time, when he showed up backstage and railed against the regulatory approach to marijuana in MMA, was that it would prove to be his second-to-last fight in the UFC, and one of his final fights in the sport as a whole.

A few months later he’d have his second UFC win in the span of a year overturned because of a positive drug test for marijuana. The UFC released him then, despite the fact that he’d won four straight (at least until the drug test results came back), and he fought only once more before retiring from MMA at 28.

At the time, Riddle seemed like a cautionary tale: Here’s what can happen if you take the wrong turns in your MMA career. But five years later he’s one of the top wrestlers on the independent circuit, not to mention something of a trendsetter.

Lately, it might seem like every UFC fighter wants to flee for the WWE. Back when Riddle made the transition from legitimate fighting to the scripted variety, the move wasn’t quite so popular.

“For me, I felt like MMA kind of gave me the cold shoulder,” Riddle said. “I had grown up watching pro wrestling, and in fact, the main reason I got into amateur wrestling in high school was because I heard the wrestlers I loved, guys like Bret Hart, had a background in it. But wrestling led me to jiu-jitsu, which led me to MMA, but then the next thing I know I’m sticking with it even as I’m about to lose my house and go bankrupt.

“I just had to ask myself, why am I still chasing MMA?”

Watching the WWE one day, Riddle got a different idea. What if he revisited his childhood dream of becoming a pro wrestler? Maybe there was a way to put his athleticism and his skills to use in some other way. And maybe he’d even enjoy it more.

These days, “The Chosen Bro” Riddle doesn’t worry about weight cuts or injury replacements. He doesn’t spend his days being battered by training partners just so he can go out and fight three times a year.

“Now I get to perform three times in a weekend,” he said. “And I’m making good money doing it.”

Riddle estimated that he earned in the six-figure range last year, between his wrestling work and his merchandise sales. For indie promoters like Matt Farmer of Defy Wrestling, which operates out of Seattle, Riddle is a hot commodity.

“I feel Riddle’s greatest strength in wrestling is his ability to bring the intensity to his matches that so few in wrestling can deliver,” Farmer said. “The intensity translates into a hybrid style of wrestling that grabs the fans’ emotions and pulls them into his matches. Matt’s style is the purest style of professional wrestling.”

What’s really changed, Riddle said, is how much more appreciated he feels as a wrestler. He might have to roll in after a three-hour drive, work a match, then sell his own T-shirts at the merch table before heading off to glad-hand at the after-party, but everyone he comes in contact with during that time seems to genuinely value his contributions. That wasn’t always the case in MMA.

“Wrestling fans are like people going to see Shakespeare,” Riddle said. “They come, they have a favorite character, they’re invested in the story and they know it’s a story. They’re all about how well you play your part, whatever that part is. MMA fans are more like people going to the Coliseum. They don’t care whether you kill the tiger or the tiger kills you. All they know is somebody’s going to die today. That’s how it feels when you’re in the UFC.

“Nobody gives a (expletive) about you. You could be fighting in your hometown, and if you get knocked out the crowd’s still going to roar.”

They roared in Missoula when Riddle got pinned for the three-count. Gordon’s family, the ones Riddle was taunting a few minutes earlier, they roared the loudest of all.

The difference was, this time he was in on it. This was part of the service he was providing, the show he was pleased to be putting on. It may have been in front of 300 people rather than 15,000, but for Riddle this new life suits him much better than the old one did.

And later, with a drink in hand at the after-party, where a woman in the bar overhears what he does for a living and asks him whether he won or lost that night, he’ll flash her that stoner smile of his.

“Of course I won,” he’ll say. “When you have a good time and put on a great show, you always win.”