6

Keeping an eye on Conor McGregor was by no means the only challenge I faced in 2008. After nearly two years in Rathcoole, we had settled in well at the new gym. In spite of its peripheral location, membership was steadily increasing, particularly among the younger age groups.

Then, quite suddenly, I was hit with an unexpected setback that would push me closer than I’ve ever been to throwing in the towel.

While going through the post in my office one morning, I came across a letter from the owner of the building. It was short and to the point. The businesses on either side of us in the industrial estate weren’t happy about kids running in and out of the gym. They were concerned about a child being hit by a van or a forklift. In hindsight they were absolutely correct: an accident could very easily have happened. But at the time, focused on the implications for the gym, I didn’t really see it that way.

I was given one week to vacate the premises. I stared at the letter in disbelief. Finding the place in Rathcoole had been an enormous chore, yet less than two years later we were back in the same position: looking for a new home.

I really wasn’t sure if I had the mental energy to go through it all again. My dad helped me look for new premises, but the search was a bit half-hearted. Thankfully, we managed to convince the owner of the building to give us a few weeks’ grace, so we were able to keep going while looking for a new premises, but I felt like I was only postponing the inevitable. It seemed as though I was approaching a crossroads in my life.

My parents, while still not fully on board with the whole MMA thing, had seen how much effort I had invested in it, and they were supportive during what was a difficult time, but ultimately they were still in favour of me putting my engineering degree to use. I was starting to come around to their way of thinking. I’d never expected MMA to make me rich, but I had believed it was possible to make ends meet while doing something I loved. Seven years after opening my first gym, it appeared that I was back at square one. Sure, we had come a long way, and there were now some very promising fighters in the team, but the reality of my situation was that I was a thirty-one-year-old with an engineering degree, but with no clear prospects and not a cent in my bank account. When I evaluated the pros and cons of continuing to pursue a career as an MMA coach, the cons heavily outweighed the pros. For the first time in my life, I opened the jobs section of the newspaper and assessed my options.

Fed up and lacking motivation, I was quite close to giving up altogether when I was tipped off about a potential premises on the Long Mile Road. I needed a lifeline and perhaps this was it. I had no idea if the place was even going to be suitable, but it was the first positive development in the three months since we had left Rathcoole, so I clung to the hope that something good might come of it. I went to take a look at it and brought my dad with me.

‘This place is a dump,’ he said. And that was before he had even spotted the tree that was growing down at the back of the building. A tree! Indoors! How is that even possible? Apparently the place was an old woollen mill that hadn’t been occupied for many years. It was absolutely filthy. But it was an available space, and immediately my optimism returned. My dad couldn’t see how it was going to work, and I sought to reassure him: ‘It’s not so bad. A bit of cleaning, a lick of paint and a lumberjack will sort this out.’

‘For Jesus’ sake, John! There’s fungus growing out of the walls.’

One thing the place definitely did have going for it was that it was much closer to the city centre. But that would also come at a cost. I was already €25,000 in the red, having taken out a loan for Rathcoole. Relocating to Long Mile required an additional top-up of €15,000. For that, the bank needed someone to act as guarantor. My parents obviously had a little bit of faith in me because they stepped up to the plate when I needed them, putting their house at stake in the process.

With a €40,000 loan to pay off, I signed a lease to move Ireland’s top MMA team into an old mill so damp that it had an indoor tree. It might not sound like anything to get excited about, but after a weekend clear-out I was ready to give one last push to get SBG Ireland back on track. Over the course of a couple of days, almost every one of our sixty members chipped in as we set about making the place look like a gym. No matter where the gym has moved to over the years, the people involved have all stayed with me, as well as helping to get each new version set up. I’m eternally grateful for their incredible loyalty.

My parents, sister and brother also made a massive contribution to the painting and cleaning. By the time we got someone to remove the tree, the place actually looked pretty good: like a gym where we could build success.

Quite soon after we set up camp on the Long Mile Road, a major opportunity presented itself. For the first time ever, the UFC announced that it would be hosting a show in the Republic of Ireland. Taking place in Dublin on 17 January 2009, the event would feature legends like Dan Henderson, Rich Franklin, Maurício Rua and Mark Coleman.

This was a massive development for MMA in Ireland. The UFC had been to Belfast eighteen months earlier, but that was viewed by most as another UK event. For the UFC to acknowledge its growing fan base in the rest of Ireland was significant. Since its first event back in 1993, the UFC had developed into the world’s largest organization in mixed martial arts. It was where every fighter aspired to be. MMA was still very much a niche sport in Ireland, but the UFC had decided to come nevertheless. This was a huge opportunity for SBG Ireland.

I knew the UFC would be looking for a local fighter to compete on the card. In my mind, there wasn’t a shadow of a doubt about Tom Egan being the right man for the job. At twenty years of age and having fought – and won – just four times, Tom was still quite inexperienced. He had only competed in small local shows so far, and the step up to the UFC would be enormous. It would be a big risk, but I was adamant that it was a risk worth taking. If the UFC were looking for a fighter to represent Irish MMA, nobody had a better chance of doing the job successfully than Tom.

When it was announced that UFC 93 would be taking place at the O₂ Arena, I managed to get contact details for Joe Silva, the UFC’s matchmaker. For weeks I bombarded him with e-mails, explaining why Tom Egan was the fighter he needed to represent Ireland.

He eventually responded: ‘You want to put a guy with just four fights in the UFC?’

‘You’re going to give a debut to an Irish fighter for this card,’ I replied. ‘Trust me, I’ve been around the Irish scene longer than anybody and I can assure you that Tom Egan is the best fighter in the country.’

Although his grappling was yet to mature fully, Tom was as well-rounded as any fighter in Ireland at the time, and his striking was particularly impressive. He was young, he was charismatic and he could hold himself well in front of a TV camera. I just thought it all made sense for the UFC.

Joe was in touch again a few days later to say that the UFC were offering Tom Egan a four-fight contract, starting with a bout at UFC 93. That was the good news. The bad news was that Tom’s opponent was dynamite. John Hathaway was an unbeaten welterweight from England, and although he too would be making his UFC debut, Hathaway was significantly more experienced, having bulldozed through the UK scene to accumulate a record of 10–0. More significantly, however, he was a monstrous grappler.

Tom and I had been hoping for a match-up with Dan Hardy, who had made his UFC debut just a few months earlier. Hardy, like Tom, was mostly a striker. Hathaway, on the other hand, would provide a really tricky test for Tom at such an early stage in his development as a mixed martial artist. Nevertheless, we embraced the challenge and prepared to put on a show. Tom was going in as the token Irish guy, but we were determined to prove that he deserved his shot.

Having the UFC in Dublin was an amazing experience. For the first time ever, MMA was making the news in Ireland. The organization gave it a huge promotional push and the tickets – just under 10,000 of them – sold out within a fortnight. As Tom was about to become the first fighter from the Republic of Ireland to compete in the famed UFC octagon, he had a fairly hectic schedule of media commitments in the build-up to the event. But none of that was a problem as far as we were concerned. This was what we had been striving towards, so we made sure to enjoy it all. Seeing Tom at press conferences and photoshoots with some of the biggest names in the sport was pretty surreal. There was a massive buzz around Dublin throughout the week, with the likes of UFC president Dana White being in town. This was our first taste of the big time. It was also a massive deal to have UFC TV crews turning up at our little gym on the Long Mile Road. That was fun, and it was also very welcome from a commercial point of view. Conor McGregor was having the time of his life, running around all week taking selfies with the UFC legends who were in Dublin.

When fight night finally arrived and we made that first walk to the octagon, the noise the Irish fans generated was absolutely deafening. I had actually helped Matt Thornton with cornering duties when Rory Singer fought for the UFC in Belfast in 2007, but this was one of my own fighters so it was a much bigger occasion for me. The UFC was the reason I fell in love with this sport in the first place. Just over twelve years earlier, I was in awe as I watched these guys battling it out inside that octagon for the first time. Now a fighter I had coached was about to become one of them. Thinking about that aspect of it was quite overwhelming, so I tried to put it to the back of my mind.

Standing cageside behind Tom as Bruce Buffer introduced him to the crowd – ‘From DUB-LINNN, IRELAND …’ – I had to resist the urge to pinch myself. For years I had been watching Bruce roar the names of fighters from the USA, Brazil and other parts of the world, but now it was the turn of an Irishman. An Irishman who was part of a team that had been based out of a tiny shed in Phibsboro just six years earlier.

As for the fight itself, there’s no point in sugar coating it. Hathaway was able to secure a takedown, dominate in top position and force a stoppage due to strikes with twenty-four seconds remaining in the first round. Stylistically, it was one of the most difficult match-ups Tom could possibly have been given. With a little bit of good fortune, perhaps things could have been different. He just wasn’t prepared for a guy of that kind of grappling calibre yet. There was absolutely no shame in losing to John Hathaway, who went on to do extremely well in the UFC and has since been unlucky to see his progress hampered by injuries.

In spite of the defeat, nobody was feeling despondent afterwards. We didn’t get the win, but we learned a hell of a lot. Having experienced coaching one of my fighters in the UFC, I realized that, while we weren’t quite at that level just yet, we were certainly within touching distance. Up until that point, the established fighters in the UFC seemed like they were up on a pedestal, looking down on small teams like us. What UFC 93 taught me was that it wouldn’t be long before we caught up. We didn’t need to rip up the blueprint and start again from scratch. I had been wondering if we needed to train in America in order to go to the next level, but now I believed that if we continued to do what we had been doing all along, we’d soon reach the top.

I had been giving the other teams far too much kudos. In the warm-up rooms throughout the week, rolling with some of the guys from the other camps and watching them on the pads, I realized that there was nothing extraordinary about them. Okay, we were a little bit behind, but that was purely because they had been doing it longer. There was absolutely nothing daunting about what they were doing.

I also felt that the family vibe we had among ourselves was something other teams didn’t have. Our team was basically a bunch of crazy kids in their late teens and early twenties. They were all like siblings and that was something special. Some of our most promising fighters were guys who had joined the gym quite recently – the likes of Cathal Pendred, Chris Fields, Paddy Holohan and Artem Lobov. The SBG fight team was really beginning to blossom and many observers were telling me that I was dealing with a golden generation of young fighters. When we competed with other gyms, my fighters were mowing down their opponents. I suppose that made me realize that maybe we were doing things a little differently, and for the better. It was an ‘iron sharpens iron’ scenario in the gym, with everybody on the team pushing each other on. All my fighters were pulling in the same direction, and that kept the standards high. The way I saw it, we were in the lab all week preparing, and Saturday-night shows were where we ran the experiments. More often than not, the results were encouraging.

In the days after UFC 93 I kept telling myself: Some day we’re going to be major players in the UFC, and that day isn’t very far away.

Tom Egan’s contract had been for four fights, but the UFC released him after that defeat. Was that a harsh call? You could argue it both ways, but I wasn’t surprised. Four-fight deals are standard entry-level contracts for fighters joining the UFC, but that’s for the benefit of the organization, not the fighter. They don’t actually guarantee you four fights. If you turn out to be a superstar, the UFC have got you tied down; but if you don’t perform, they can cut you loose without offering a second bite at the cherry. Unfortunately, Tom wouldn’t get another chance, but he had blazed a trail for his teammates to follow.

UFC 93 merely added to my desire to achieve success. I was much stronger at the end of that week than I was at the beginning. Now that we knew how to get to the UFC, the next step was to ensure that the next person through the door had what was required to stay there.