Issue 097

January 2013

Heavily inked, paler than pale, UK lightweight Colin Fletcher was the star of TUF: The Smashes this fall. Surely a career inside the Octagon beckons for one of Planet MMA’s more unusual inhabitants

ALIAS; Freakshow

AGE: 29

PRO DEBUT: 2008

PRO RECORD: 8-1

TEAM: Fight Pit / Spartans

DIVISION: Lightweight

HEIGHT Six-foot-two

STYLE: Unorthodox Striker

The magic trick in combat sports – often regardless of talent – is always to have an obligatory gimmick. Create media intrigue and fan interest, and the profile is guaranteed. It’s a proven formula.

Enter Colin Fletcher. Lanky, pallid and goofy, and at first sight an improbable combat star in a cage. Yet the 29-year-old fighter known as ‘Freakshow’ has been the standout character in ‘The Smashes’ – the latest international season of The Ultimate Fighter that pitched UK fighters against their Australian counterparts.

And not merely for his propensity to be up for any dare in a house overloaded with japery. Win, lose or draw, what has emerged throughout the season is that Fletcher has an ‘X’ factor all of his own.

And while the persona, costume changes and merry-making are all part of his make-up, he can also fight a bit too. Delve into his background and there it is – a weird smorgasbord of creativity – immersion in cartoon-like fantasy, set within the backdrop of a tough community housing estate where he says he had fights like other kids learn to ride a bike or play sports in the park.

Clearly, Fletcher – heavily tattooed and never far away from his miniature clown top hat – loves the freaky, the absurd and fantasy. But he is no fantasist himself. He also likes to shock. He paints a picture of his childhood – dark, yet happy. 

Fletcher grew up in Washington, England, a suburb outside Newcastle in the North East, in what he calls, “a bit of a rough area.” It was common for people to fight. Out of boredom, and partly due to the culture. “I was just a normal council estate lad, just average really. We used to play very rough; fighting games and things like that.”

But by his mid-teens, the fighting ‘games’ had progressed a few levels. He was associating less with peers at school, reckoning he was “a lone wolf” who had few friends of his own age. He was also “left to his own devices” in the classroom.

“I hung around with grown up men who were doing things I probably shouldn’t have known about.” With a little cajoling, he elucidates. “We were bored and we would fight in gangs with whoever wanted to fight us... It was organized towards the end.”

Life in the area, like Fletcher’s rise into MMA, has changed. “There isn’t so much fighting going on anymore. It’s nice now. I still live on the council estate, but it’s surrounded by wealthy estates in general... I still live in the same house I grew up in.”

Several generations of Fletcher’s family are from England’s North East, he reveals: “My granddad on my mom’s side was a slaughterman. He used to come home with buckets of cows’ tongues and things like that. I think that’s why I’m a little bit on the dark side really.”

After working at his parents’ nightclub he got a ‘real’ job, for a year, driving a bus. “It depressed me to death,” he states. “I was expecting people would get on and talk to me and no-one talked to me, so I got very depressed and my wife encouraged me to try and pursue MMA as a career. She was brilliant. I’ve never looked back.”

Fletcher had taken up the sport a few years earlier. He recalls: “I went to the local gym, had a bit of a go, and hated it at first to be honest. I’d come from a boxing background, and it was hard to figure out. I thought, ‘This is difficult – it’s not as easy as it looks.’ I went back a couple of times and after that I thought, ‘I’m going to master this.’”

The Freakshow stuff started as a bit of fun with his pals at the gym. “I would dress up as this, that and the other. In the first couple of semi-pro fights it was The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the big bad wolf.”

And here’s the rub. Fletcher can take on a persona because of his deep confidence as a fighter. “I don’t mind being a clown really. I think ‘clown’ kinda sums me up because I am acting a fool but only because I’ve already put the time in at the gym. But I love people laughing at me.

“If people don’t like me they can f**k off because I can’t change.”