Las Vegas — Neil Magny has revealed the origin of his nickname.
Magny is the last of a dying breed in MMA. He will fight anyone, anywhere, anytime, and it doesn’t matter if you’re ranked behind him or not at all. He faces rising prospect Shavkat Rakhmonov at UFC Vegas 57, and there was never a thought in his mind to not take the fight.
“I’m here to fight the best guys in the world. I mean, especially with the landscape of mixed martial arts changing and the landscape of combat sports changing. We’re not only seeing the best against the best, but we’ve also seen the most marketable against the most marketable,” Magny told Cageside Press during his UFC Vegas 57 media day. “For me, fighting Shavkat is fighting one of the best up-and-comers out there. So I’m ready to go out there and test myself against them and show why I deserve to fight a top-five opponent and eventually fight for the title.”
Magny’s fight nickname is a unique one. There is only one “The Haitian Sensation,” and he explained its origin on Wednesday.
“Yeah, so I decided to go [with] ‘The Haitian Sensation nickname.’ It was something that had been thrown around for a while. But I decided to go with that nickname, particularly after doing a mission trip to Haiti,” Magny said. “One of the things that I noticed when I go out there is that all the missionaries that I’ve worked with in Haiti and they all gravitate towards the young, innocent children. It’s like, ‘oh, yeah, a three-year-old orphan like, of course, I’m gonna like give this child the world and support them and do everything I can for him.’ But as these kids get older, as they start to age out of orphanages, and they start like becoming young adults, like 16, 17, 18 years old, there are not many people who are willing to go out there and like, support them, whether it’s like going through trade school, college, wherever it may be.”
“And so for some of these kids, they kind of like, they don’t have a vision for himself. They don’t have a goal for themselves… It’s like, okay, great, I had someone to care for me from birth up until now, but where’s my life go from here? And going with the Haitian sensation nickname, it is more so to inspire those kids to kind of dream big and go for whatever you want to do. So if you want to be an engineer, doctor, athlete, whatever it may be, go for it. Just chase whatever you can do. So, you can see me, another Haitian athlete, out there doing the best he can. There’s no doubt in my mind that you go out and do the same for yourself. So that’s kind of why I chose that name.”
Watch the rest of Neil Magny’s UFC Vegas 57 media day interview above. The event takes place this Saturday, June 25 at the Apex in Las Vegas, Nevada.
