Back in May, Dom Mar Fan made his way to the Road to UFC quarterfinals in Shanghai. The Brisbane native was paired with ONE FC veteran Yuji Yannick Ephoeviga. When he was given that name and saw the record that came along with it, Mar Fan knew there was a good chance that he’d probably be a big underdog.
“I kind of anticipated it. I made a solid effort not to look at the betting numbers or anything in the lead-up to the fight, but when I first got given the opponent’s name and I looked, it was 11-0. I was like, okay, chances are people are going to assume that this guy is going to win,” Mar Fan explained. “And look, I think it’s understandable. When I watched the guy’s fights, I couldn’t find anywhere that he was actually bleeding physically or metaphorically.”
Although he doesn’t like looking at odds, he wound up finding them out prior to the fight thanks to some students of his. And finding out that he was nearly a 5-to-1 underdog didn’t exactly make him happy.
“There was a group chat that I was in with a bunch of my Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu students, and then they were chatting about it. I opened the message and I saw it,” he explained. “I was kind of pissed off. I didn’t want to see that. I guess I kind of knew.”
Alas, the fight is not won or lost on the betting odds. The man they know as “Street Buddha” went out there, got the takedowns going and did some serious damage. He won a comfortable unanimous decision and punched his ticket to the semifinals this weekend.
“He was doing pretty well in his fights, but I was confident from the get-go that he had never someone like me. And I went out there and proved that,” Mar Fan said with pride.
After picking up with the win, “Street Buddha” has a ritual where he gets to take a victory lap on all those who doubted him. Not only is it a way to dunk on those who didn’t give him a chance, but it’s also a way of gaining strength for future fights.
“After the fight, I have this process where I like to go and I searched up all the different YouTube videos on me, all the previews and stuff. I just wanted to see what most people were saying in terms of if they thought I was going to win, lose. It was all very interesting –
it was a good watch,” he explained. “It gives me power for future fights, because I know I’m going to go into fights where I’m perceived as the underdog. I think it can be easy for fighters to get to in their own head when they let people that aren’t the ones in the cage control the narrative. They start listening too much to it. I feel more resilient and more durable against any of that outside input nowadays.”
He’ll look to use that mental space and confidence again this Friday. He takes on Jae Hyun Park with a spot in the lightweight finals on the line. That card begins at 6am EST and is available on UFC Fight Pass.
