Issue 118

August 2014

Gareth A Davies MMA and Boxing Correspondent for The Daily Telegraph, London, UK, on CB Dolloway, Nick Hein and the UFC in New York

Delve anywhere in the backdrop of MMA’s leading fighters and there’s always a golden nugget. Take CB Dolloway, with back-to-back wins over Cezar Ferreira – that stunning 39-second KO – and top 10 ranked Francis Carmont already in 2014. At college he’d hoped to become a more typical law man.

He explains: “I didn’t know I was going to be a fighter when I was studying. I was thinking along the lines of joining the FBI, CIA or DEA. I wanted that excitement in a job. Obviously I knew I’d need a background in justice studies and sociology would also help. That’s why I went for those subjects.”

He went for a few try-outs, but realized it was a tough door to break down. “I met with recruiters from the likes of the CIA, but the one thing I didn’t like is that they were going to send you to another country for the term of your employment. The FBI is very competitive, with long waiting lists, and the DEA was probably the easiest one to get in, but in the end it all felt like a crap shoot.”

He ended up getting a job “as a recruiter, a type of head hunter” but it didn’t enthrall him for long. So he plumped for head-hunting in fight

sports, instead.

“You know what, I love this life now and I’m always happy,” says Dolloway, recently father to a little girl. “I get to do what I love and travel the world on someone else’s dime.”

Judge Dredd: the fighter, policeman and TV star

In a similar vein, what about new German UFC star Nick Hein? Even more layers there. 

Hein, who secured a successful UFC debut in Berlin in May, has an incredible back story. He is known as ‘Judge Dredd’ by his colleagues as he is a serving police sergeant in the Cologne police force.

And quite by chance last summer he shot to fame as an actor in a TV drama in which he plays an undertaker, one of three brothers whose idiocy forever leads them into trouble.

He was a late-minute call-up for an audition after a friend from way back in his judo days told him about a script he was working on. He got there late, on the last day of auditions, and got the part.

The widely acclaimed pilot has now been taken up by German terrestrial TV. The irony is, the UFC is still not permitted on TV in that country, but one of the nation’s rising MMA fighters, Hein, is being promoted as a major star. Funny old world.

To add to Hein’s tale, his wife is Japanese, the romance having begun when he was in the German national judo squad attempting to make it in to the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

They corresponded with love letters for a year, and then Marie Suzuki decided to come to Germany. They have a son, Noah.

New York, New York...the eternal return

Followers of this column will know my adherence over the years to following UFC vice president of regulatory affairs Marc Ratner’s quest to see a UFC event being held at Madison Square Garden.

The New York senate passed a bill that would legalize MMA in the state early in May – for the fourth time. But then for the fourth time it was vetoed by New York’s general assembly, thanks largely to the unions’ vote.

UFC women’s bantamweight title challenger Alexis Davis joined Ratner in Albany in the second week of May as a lobbyist. Assembly speaker Sheldon Silver has made the decision not to vote on the measure for the last four years.

“I know if it could get through the assembly the governor would sign it,” Ratner told me. “I feel very strongly about that but I’ll be cautiously optimistic. We have Chris Weidman and Jon Jones as two great champions and they can’t even fight in their

own state.

“History hasn’t been kind about these things, so I don’t speculate.

But I’m fervently hoping.” Aren’t we all...