After a long time in the Ultimate Fighter house, with a crazy amount of uncertainty from one moment to the next, Bryan Battle exited the house with one name on his plate, Tresean Gore. For the first time since the show started, it wasn’t an opponent named earlier that week. It wasn’t a team of coaches picking the fighter along with Dana White. Instead, it was a scheduled opponent with a full camp at home. That is, until it wasn’t.
Just a couple weeks before UFC Vegas 35, which also functions at the TUF 29 finale, Tresean Gore was pulled from the finals citing a knee injury. Battle’s former teammate Gilbert Urbina will now step in to face him in the finale. Although this latest shakeup was not ideal for Battle, fighting has never been about the opponent for him.
“I didn’t start training because I want to beat one specific person, I want to be a cool badass who could beat anybody in a fight,” Battle said. “Having an opponent change, it’s a bummer, but this isn’t anything I can’t handle.”
That drive to be a ‘cool badass’ comes from Battle’s formative years. As a kid, Battle grew up on some of the classic portrayals of martial arts from the late 90’s and early 2000s. Those shows helped guide his view of what is important in the fight game.
“I grew up watching anime and Walker Texas Ranger, you know, all the fighting stuff,” he recalls. “Back on those shows, that was always the main character’s goal. They didn’t care about money. They didn’t care about fame. They didn’t care about if anyone knew they were the strongest, they just wanted to be the strongest. They always sought out the best challenges to prove themselves, not to anyone else, but to themselves. That’s something that subconsciously stuck with me as I grew up.”
Deep down that idea that he wanted to challenge himself to be the toughest person out there was always there. However, finding the correct outlet for it took a chance encounter with an early cable TV staple.
“One day I stumbled upon UFC Unleashed on Spike TV. I saw Matt Hughes get kicked in the balls, almost get choked out, get out of the choke, and carry the dude, slam him and choke him out. That was the most badass thing I’ve ever seen a human do with my own eyes up until that point,” Battle said, highlighting how he was drawn to the UFC from that moment. “Then after watching Robbie Lawler vs Rory MacDonald 2 I was like, I have to do this.”
Running into roadblocks and getting beat up early didn’t deter Battle from his ultimate goal. In fact, it only drove ‘Pooh Bear’ to work harder to get to the highest level.
“After I started training and started getting my butt kicked routinely by almost everyone in the gym, I was like, I don’t want to lose to anyone,” he said. “Basically, I just want to beat everyone up.”
A win this weekend would ensure that Battle regularly gets the prefix “Ultimate Fighter Champion” at the beginning of his name being announced. While fame and money were never part of what pushed him, having this moniker for the rest of his life still means something personally to the South Carolina native.
“Knowing what I went through to be able to get that title, it’d just be so nice and validating to the people who did believe in me,” Battle said. “Then it would be nice to be able to throw it in the faces of the people who didn’t believe in me, so I’m pretty excited about it.”
Battle’s next step towards becoming a ‘cool badass’ is this Saturday as the co-main event of UFC Vegas 35. The bout with Gilbert Urbina will appear on ESPN and ESPN+.
You can hear the entire audio of this interview at 11:10.
You can also check out Battle’s UFC Vegas 35 media day appearance below!
