Trevor “The Unknown Element” Wallace returns to the LFA cage for the second time on April 30, 2021, for LFA 106. He faces his toughest test yet in Bubba Grant, something he has been asking for.
“I’m excited about this fight; I really am,” Wallace said to Cageside Press in an exclusive interview. “I’m glad Bubba took the fight. I want better competition! But at the level that I’m at, it’s hard to get competition, you know, people don’t want to risk fighting a higher caliber guy for, you know, for chump change. I’ve had several guys turned me down.”
“I want to fight tough competition. I picture myself having a small window, you know, you only have a small window of success, especially in this sport, and especially the day and age because everything is just so fast. Nobody sticks around for long, and you only have a certain amount of fights if you ask me, and you can only take a certain amount of damage, especially in the heavyweight. Of course, there are the outliers like Arlovski. That dude is different.”
Wallace is from Mississippi and resides in Southhaven. He’s another MMA fighter that comes from a football background and a somewhat prestigious one. In 2009 and 2010, Wallace played offensive tackle at East Mississippi Community College in Scooba, Mississippi, under Buddy Stephens. EMCC is widely regarded as one of the best junior colleges in the United States.
The college was documented in Netflix’s critically acclaimed, Emmy-nominated series Last Chance U.
“I’m just very fortunate to that program for the years that was there,” Wallace said. “It is the best program ever. I’m blessed to be part of it. I was in the very first half of building that program, you know, I was with some very amazing talent.”
The legendary Buddy Stephens coached Wallace, someone he really admires.
“I love that man. He’s actually a very great man. He’s was a great guy to me. He did a lot of great things off the field that no one talks about as well,” Wallace said. “He’s very fiery, of course, but he’s a great guy; he’s done a lot of amazing things for a lot of guys. He’s changed a lot of lives in a great way.”
Wallace would transfer to Murray State University in Kentucky until he was done playing football in 2012. He would then transition into bodybuilding. In 2014, he would sustain an injury powerlifting, which would lead him to a kickboxing gym a year later, and the rest is history.
“I wanted to be a bodybuilder after I quit football, but I hurt my back powerlifting. I had a couple of herniated discs and fractured my L4 [Spinal Segment],” Wallace said. “I took a year off to heal, and while I am waiting tables at the time, my friend Katie introduced to this guy named Jaime who had opened this gym, Total Fitness Kickboxing.
“I walked into the gym and just started hitting the bag, and then I got asked if I ever thought about fighting before. I was like, ‘Yeah, it would probably be fun, but I’ve never really had the opportunity to do so.’ That pretty much led the way because Jaime is actually the owner of Summit Fighting Championships, where I had my first amateur fights and my first couple of professional fights. So, Jaime was the one to kind of push me, and that was back in 2017, and I haven’t looked back.”
Wallace has had four professional fights, and all of them have ended in the first round. As he said, he started in SFC, and then in his third fight went to CFFC, and his most recent fight was in LFA, against Cesar Gutierrez, who he stopped in 58 seconds.
While the fight was only 58 seconds, Wallace felt like there was more to work on.
“I thought it was pretty good. I obviously made several mistakes, and I’m hopefully going to, you know, get better from it, but I should definitely, you know, use my hands more. Just quit throwing naked kicks,” Wallace said. “I mean, I love kicking a lot, that’s one of my favorite security cards, and I kick really hard, but I have to set those up, use my hands, and doing that. I missed a couple of punches that should have landed and an uppercut that should have landed. I missed it just barely.
“I’m pretty critical of myself because I want to be in a higher level from where I am.
You gotta be the best so if not, then you got to get on somewhere else.
“The Unknown Element” returns to action this Friday at LFA 106 against Grant (7-6), and he is very excited for his toughest competition yet.
“Bubba is pretty tough if you ask me. People might look at his record and raise their eyebrow, but, you know, it doesn’t really tell the tale of his overall skill-set. If you ask me, he’s a very scrappy guy, he’s got good boxing, and he trained with Justin Gathje if I’m not mistaken,” Wallace said. “So it’s going to be a good scrap. Obviously, I’m trained to go in there and win, and that’s what I’m going to do. I want to go in there and get another knockout or TKO, but this guy is tough, and he goes to the distance a lot, so if it does, I’m ready. I am honestly expecting a war.”
LFA is one of the best feeder leagues to the UFC. Over 100 fighters have made their way to the UFC or Bellator through LFA, sometimes very quickly. Wallace wants to take his time and earn his way. He signed a three-fight contract with LFA and hopes to get tough competition before making his way to a major promotion.
“I don’t want to get to the big stage and fall off. You know, I want to be prepared. I want my next few fights to be hard battles, you know, tough competition. My goal is not to say ‘I fought in the UFC’; I don’t want that. My goal is to be world-class, a top-of-the-line athlete, and if I can’t be that, I’m going to move on, you know what I mean?” Wallace said.
“When I get there, I want to be proven as a great fighter. I don’t want to be like, ‘Oh, this guy is 5-0, and he’s fought a bunch of trash cans, and he’s not proven.’
“I don’t feel at this time I’m proven to get into UFC at this time or Bellator. I would really like to fight for the championship in LFA. I want to be their heavyweight champion. You know, be a world champion. Be a proven world champion and be a world-class fighter before I get to the stage where I am fighting world-class fighters every single fight.”
“Fight Bubba at LFA 106, headline or co-headline an LFA card, and then fight for the LFA heavyweight championship. That would be a perfect plan, and then I will be ready.”
Trevor Wallace fights Bubba Grant at LFA 106 this Friday on UFC Fight Pass.
