From the very beginning, Dom Mar Fan has been overlooked. As a kid he was not a standout in school or the atheltic fields. He found focusing on instruction – no matter the type – to be difficult and hard to absorb what was being taught. He notes that a lot of his teachers had probably given up on him at the time when he found the world of MMA.
“I was always kind of like an ultra ADHD kid that could never like sit still in the classroom and could never really focus on what was happening in front of me. Then when I walked into an MMA gym, did my first few classes there, I was hooked. It felt like the first time I could ever fully focus in my life,” he explained. “I could just feel myself get better every session in a way that I’d never felt myself with anything else before in my life. I’d played football. I’d played cricket. I was never like a talented guy, nor was I a guy that could like sit down and really learn what they were like trying to teach me. Then with MMA, it was completely different. It was like everything that these people are telling me, I feel like I’m absorbing. I feel like I’m a sponge for this. I made it my purpose from then on.”
That mentality shift and having a purpose changed everything for Mar Fan. He shared that there was never a plan B after that point and it was all arrows pointing in the same direction. However, his first fight definitely didn’t help that trajectory and further made him an underdog to the people watching him.
“I started my MMA amateur career with a 10-second knockout loss. From then on, I was the underdog. So it’s become an area I’m very comfortable being in,” Mar Fan revealed. “I’m very comfortable with people kind of doubting me – assuming that I’m weaker in areas than I actually am. So yeah, I carry that all the way through my career.”
That moment, while it didn’t help his public image, did fuel his mentality moving forward. He embraced the idea of the doubters and the idea of winning as many as he could over to his side.
“It was definitely disheartening at first, and it’s one of those cool things nowadays because I did have people at the time say, ‘hey, this is going to be a really cool story one day when you make it,” he said. “At that point in time, there was no one other than myself that really thought I was going to make it. So it’s been cool, each fight, being able to sway a few more people to my side and then sway a few more people after that to my side. Then eventually it’s going to get to the point one day where there’s no one in the world that doubts me, and everyone is going to just assume that I’m going to win.”
He started moving more over to his side during the Road to UFC – winning in the first round of the tournament as a +350 underdog. Now he looks to continue his winning ways as an underdog when he takes on Kody Steele at UFC Perth. That fight takes place on the prelims of the fight card, which starts at 4am EST on Paramount+.
