As time has progressed, the sport of MMA has more and more athletes who grew up with the sport as a part of their life. This new generation is filled with fighters who knew their destiny before they could even drive a car.

Count UFC Fight Night 138's Chris Fishgold as a member of this club. The Liverpool native’s origins in the sport started at a young age with the viewing of a future legend and have lead him into a hot-fire matchup vs. Calvin Kattar in Moncton.

“I’d seen the UFC when I was 14,” Fishgold told the Top Turtle MMA Podcast on FloCombat. “It was a Tito Ortiz fight.”

Instantly after watching the fight, Fishgold knew he had to start training.

“He took someone down and was doing him in and I remember thinking, ‘That’s what I’m doing,'" Fishgold shared.

However, lots of young kids have dreams of becoming a professional athlete, but Fishgold openly stated to everyone who would listen this was a certainty.

“I said to my teacher, ‘I’ll be in the UFC one day,’ and I hadn’t even trained then,” Fishgold said. “I was just a young kid, but I knew that’s what I wanted to do.”

Fishgold, even at this young age, began to walk the walk. Shortly after, he began training once a day to make up for his late start. As he got just a bit older, he decided that even that was not enough and began to push himself even further.





“When I turned 16, I started training twice a day, and that’s basically where it all started,” Fishgold said.

Even though watching an Ortiz fight sparked young Fishgold’s interest in MMA, don’t count the Brit as a fan of “The Huntington Beach Badboy."

“When I saw the Tito Ortiz fight, I was amazed by the sport,” Fishgold said. "But when I was growing up getting into it, I was a big Chuck Liddell fan.”

Those familiar with Fishgold’s “drag ‘em down and tap ‘em out” style might be surprised he followed a knockout artist like Liddell. But he was influenced by another early UFC fighter who further guided the development of his current style.

“When I started watching the sport more, Matt Hughes became one of my main fighters," Fishgold said.

Even though Hughes and some other grapplers helped him get into that side of the game, his natural knack for that element played an even bigger role.

“I grew up watching grapplers, but it wasn’t just that. I took to the grappling a lot more," Fishgold said.

And this weekend, we’ll see him try to put that part of his game in action and notch his first UFC victory.