LFA lightweight Kevin Carrier has already experienced a lot of what is part of an MMA career coming into LFA 211 on Friday night against Dey McIntosh in Salamanca, NY.
Imagine taking your first professional fight for a rather large MMA promotion. You go in, you win, and you don’t fight again for over 2000 days.
“So in that Bellator fight I ended up breaking both hands. The athletic commission suspended me. I had a really good performance, I’m finally getting paid to go compete, I was like I need to still compete now,” he said.
“I went and took a grappling match. I won that, but in the process I tore my ACL. They said it was a potential tear the first look I had at it. They said a couple months of PT. Six months go by and it’s not getting any better.”
That second look revealed the grim truth. That ACL was gone.
“They’re like. ‘you have no ACL whatsoever’. I ended up biting the bullet, getting the ACL surgery, about a year of recovery,” said Carrier.
If that wasn’t enough his recovery timeline lined up perfectly with the COVID pandemic. Shortly after getting the fight lined up the pandemic hit and cities around the world began to shut down.
Not great for someone who already had a very long layoff due to injury, but you roll with the punches. Sometimes you also roll with some rather large life changes as well.
“Everything was kind of shut down over here. My wife and I we decided to try out Florida. When we were out there we found out that we were pregnant so we ended up coming right back to New York. My son needed surgery so MMA kind of took a back seat,” said Carrier.
“I kept training all the while, but not like a competitor. Then we ended up having a second son so it definitely took a back seat.”
Now with a happy family set in Rochester, not far from where LFA 211 is taking place, Carrier is back in on MMA. In Salamanca he’ll face McIntosh who is making his LFA debut against Carrier.
“Dey’s a very dangerous opponent. He’s well-rounded, but I think he makes some critical errors. I think he’s a young kid. I can kind of draw some of those things out of him and capitalize on them. Very dangerous fight, but looking forward to getting after it,” he said.
“There’s always pressure. Having kids there’s always pressure to get out unscathed. You want to come back home in one piece, but I’m also at an age where it’s like if I’m going to do it, I gotta do it with a exclamation point.”
End of the day it’s all about the win for Carrier on Friday night.
“I’m looking for excellence, but if need be, I’m ready for a war,” he said.
A win gets him to 4-1, and hopefully some mic time and a camera to speak into.
“I just want to stay active right now. LFA’s been really good to me. Ideally I stay working with them. Just the biggest opportunity that comes next,” he said.
“I’m kind of sick of being on these prelims so it’d be nice to get one one of those fight passes. Whatever opportunity comes next I’m going to seize it.”
Watch the entire interview with Kevin Carrier above. He takes on Dey McIntosh at LFA 211 this Friday night June 20 from Salamanca, NY.
