The story of getting the call to fight on Dana White’s Contender Series for Jimmy Drago was one we’ve heard before. A text from the manager late at night, quick moving parts, lots of excitement – it was not far out of the ordinary.
“I was sitting on my couch at 10:30 at night and my manager texted me. I was sitting down with my wife and he showed me an email saying Contender Series and my name was brought up,” Drago explained. “And that was like the hint, like, yo, you’re going. Then within like four days, not even – maybe three days – he told me I was matched up [for] August 12th.”
While the message was similar to so many fighters before him the wait was not. Drago is not like some of these up and coming fighters with a short path to Contender Series. He has been grinding for year, but that’s just part of the game for him.
“This was like beginning of April. It just got real, real quickly. It was absolutely surreal moment. Took 10 years to get here,” he said. “There’s no roadmap that shows you how to get to the UFC. You know, it’s kind of just win and look good doing it that gets you there. Sometimes people get there sooner than others. But I knew that I was like getting close. I knew that I was raising eyebrows.”
And that long path is not the only thing that sets Drago apart from other Contender Series hopefuls. His origins in the sport start with unsactioned fights on Instagram, which have some wild circumstances behind them.
“Back in like 2014 or 2013, they called it the BX Fight Club. Instagram was still like just on the up and coming,” Drago recalled. “I clicked on these guys one time and they had like 15,000 or 20,000 followers. I was like, wow, that’s a lot of people, especially back then. It was just like neighborhood guys, just scrapping and boxing gloves.”
So without much happening in his life, he decided he wanted to give these fights a shot. Some people close to him were less confident in that idea.
“I reached out to him and I don’t really know why I wanted to go down there. I really just had nothing going for myself at the time,” he said. “I remember I had a girlfriend at the time. She, she dropped me off at Hunt’s Point at like 7 o’clock, maybe 7:30 at night, tearing up, like, please do not go in there. I just got out, like shut the door and walked right in there. I told him, yeah, I’m here to fight.”
Those fights are wild for Drago to look back at. Not just the situation, but the way that he was fighting. In retrospect, it makes for a great origin story for the UFC hopeful.
“There’s just absolutely no technique, but I put this kid on the canvas twice. I was like, I don’t want to come back here,” he said. “They were giving out prizes – they were giving out like, like jewelry and stuff. It sounded like a great idea back then. Looking back now, it’s like desperate.”
He’s come a long way since fighting in a wearhouse for jewelry. This Tuesday he’ll instead ply his trade inside the UFC Apex for a UFC contract. That fight is against Ty Miller and can be seen on ESPN+ starting at 7pm EST.
You can hear the entire audio of this interview on Top Turtle MMA. The interview airs at 24:16.
