"If you want to be the best, you have to learn from the best"
It’s well-known that MMA fighters are willing to dedicate their lives to the sport and will go to great lengths to acquire the full range of skills and disciplines demanded by elite mixed martial arts.
It’s been seen and done by the likes of Darren Till, who left his home city of Liverpool to move to Brazil in order to hone his skills at specialist gyms far superior to the ones based in the UK.
It’s this time spent abroad, absorbing information and gaining invaluable experience that eventually separates the good fighters from the elite. Nathan Wolf hopes that one day he’ll be in the UFC looking back on his time training abroad with fond memories.
The 19-year-old’s desire to become a pro martial-artist prompted a drastic change in lifestyle, as he left the seaside town of Teignmouth in Devon for the exotic island of Phuket in Thailand back in November 2018.
To explain the dedication required, Wolf says, “I came to Thailand because if you want to be the best, you have to learn from the best and that’s why I decided to move here and learn from all these former champions who are now trainers. That’s something I wouldn’t be able to get in the UK and especially in Devon”
“It was a completely new environment where I didn’t know anybody and had no distractions at all so I wanted to move here to focus purely on martial arts. If I was living back in England I’d want to go out and see friends or I’d have to work constantly.”
"You have to live a poor man’s life to reap the benefits in the end.”
Although moving to another country on the other side of the world may seem daunting to most, the 6ft 4” southpaw expresses how adapting to his new lifestyle was rather more straightforward than he expected.
“Sometimes, it doesn’t really feel like I’m in Thailand because you’ve got all these Americans, Australians and Canadians, so it’s not a complete culture shock.
“Where I am in Phuket, it’s like a melting pot of different cultures because there are so many different nationalities in this area here to fight. At first it was strange getting used to everyone speaking a language I didn’t understand and that’s very difficult for Europeans to learn, but you get used to it.”
To manage the finances of living and training abroad, Wolf worked endless hours in the UK during the summers of 2018 and 2019 as a lifeguard to save up enough money to support himself while out in Asia for the rest of the year.
Although he remains determined to fight at a professional standard in MMA, for the time being, Wolf made the decision to specialise in a specific form of martial arts - Muay Thai. A combat sport founded in Thailand which uses stand-up striking along with various clinching techniques.
“My end goal is to do MMA, but for now I’m only training, fighting and focusing on Muay Thai, as I want to fight and get loads of experience in it. It’ll mean that when I move over to MMA later down the line, I’ll have an advantage on everyone else in terms of my striking ability.”
Wolf made his professional Muay Thai debut in March of 2019 and smiles as he reminisces over a successful first outing as a martial artist.
“I remember during the day I was slightly nervous, but when I got there in the evening the nerves drifted away. When I walked into the ring there were around 300 people staring at me and the adrenaline was crazy.
“I’d put so much on the line by risking my health and everything so when I won it was an amazing feeling that I can’t really describe.”
Wolf won the fight after five gruelling two minute rounds and earned £150 for the victory. Although he’s aware it wasn’t a ground-breaking amount of cash to receive; the teenager is aware that many have had to work their way up through the ranks to earn the big money.
“Once you reach the top of combat sports, there are millions of dollars to be made, but on the way up you’re getting paid peanuts, hardly anything at all”, he states.
"Any pro fighter in the UFC will tell you that they’ve been very poor at some point, because you have to dedicate all of your time to it so you don’t have time to work or things like that. So basically, for anyone that’s willing to reach an elite level in combat sports, you have to live a poor man’s life to reap the benefits in the end.”
At the tender age of 19, Wolf still has many years to reach the pinnacle of MMA but with his patient, determined attitude, hopefully it shouldn’t be too long before we see another Englishman make a name for himself in the UFC.
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