Issue 160
November 2017
A stylish striker with substance.
Everybody loves a knockout. Fast punches, powerful kicks, ground and pound. It’s the full package for excitement in MMA, and precisely what Thanh Le delivers.
Patient, precise, powerful, with fast-twitch muscles designed to unleash explosive, fight-finishing blows in the blink of an eye. It’s what got him into the TUF 22 house and a stunning stoppage in the second Dana White’s Contender Series show. He’s a bomb waiting to go off.
His explosive defeat of Lazar Stojadinovic looked like it would be enough to get an Octagon contract, but the UFC president only offered one man a deal that day – 22-year-old bantamweight Sean O’Malley, who won a wild, one-round war.
“You understand they’re looking for a young guy that talks a lot and brings the show wherever he goes,” Le says.
“Nothing against him at all, he put on a great show and performance. But if you’re looking for one of the best and most dominating performances against a strong opponent, obviously I’m impartial, but I would take it my way.
"But you take what you’re given. You go back, knock out some more people and make your way back to the show or make your way back to the UFC via a different route, like I did after The Ultimate Fighter.”
The Louisiana native came onto the UFC’s reality show as a pure striker, thanks to taekwondo skills developed at his family’s gym since he was a kid, and honed for MMA in South Carolina with Stephen ‘Wonderboy’ Thompson. However, he was undone in his second fight on the ground.
Le didn’t have a lot of grappling experience, but that’s all changed since the show. He became friends with the season winner, Ryan Hall, and soon started traveling to Falls Church, Virginia, to train with the BJJ mastermind. He’s since moved there full-time to make his MMA game complete.
“We’re trading as many ninja secrets as possible,” he adds. “I’m a million times the grappler I was on the show. No one’s had the chance to see it yet, but I’m excited to show it off. It’ll be a rude awakening for whoever decides to take it there.”
Since his tenure in the TUF house, he clocked two more first-round wins to make it back to the UFC Training Center to audition for that big-show slot that has eluded him thus far. Two more wins on the regional circuit, including one in the Legacy Fighting Alliance, and he was back in that building to put on a show in front of White, Sean Shelby and Mick Maynard. Though he may not have made the cut, Le still sees the experience as one more step on his journey towards the big show.
“I’m definitely in a really good place right now. I’m excited that I performed well on the Contender Series, and I’m excited that I had a well-known, strong opponent that was probably expected to win and get the contract.
“The next guy they put in front of me with the same kind of background and expectations, I’ll do the same thing, whether it’s in the UFC or the Contender Series again. I’ll put them down until they can’t deny me anymore.”
3 MORE TO WATCH:
BATRAZ AGNAEV - RUSSIA
With no fights since 2015, barely anyone outside of Eastern Europe had heard of this 205lb-er before this year. But now he’s taken out two top guys, including ex-UFC bad boy Thiago Silva, by crushing first-round KO. Look out.
ISRAEL ADESANYA - NIGERIA
One of the top 160lb kickboxers in Glory is now 10-0 in MMA. Though his latest opponent was blown-up lightweight Melvin Guillard, the fight was such a one-sided beating it left us wanting to see more of ‘The Stylebender’ in the cage.
HAYATO SUZUKI - JAPAN
The 16-0-2 Deep and Brave veteran extended his undefeated record in a dominant ONE Championship debut in Macao. A flyweight title fight with Adriano Moraes, who won at the same event, could soon be on the cards.
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