issue 219
July 2025
Bryan Battle tells E. Spencer Kyte how he shed the smiles, embraced the boos, and found power in being the bad guy.
Everything about Bryan Battle has changed in the four years since he romped through the middleweight competition on Season 29 of The Ultimate Fighter. He had long, curly black hair, the remnants of being an overweight kid that found MMA as a means to get in better shape still present around his midsection. There were only a couple of small tattoos on his torso that you could easily not see in a passing glance. And his nickname was ‘Pooh Bear.’ Today, Battle is on his way back up to middleweight for a clash with Nursulton Ruziboev after a six-fight stint at welterweight resulted in a 4-1 record with one no contest and a five-fight unbeaten streak. The twists of hair that cascaded to his shoulders have been chopped short and bleached blonde for fight week. He’s transformed his body and developed into a genuine person of interest on the UFC roster, with multiple victories in two divisions, and he’s done away with his old moniker.
“You’ve heard of the Four Kings in boxing, and out of the four of them, three of them had alter egos,” begins Battle, explaining the origins of his more ominous nom de pugilism. “Sugar Ray said if he looked in the mirror and saw Sugar Ray, he knew it was gonna be a good night. But if he saw Ray Leonard, he was in trouble. Marvin Hagler had a monster locked up inside of him that he let out on fight night. Hitman Hearns had ‘The Hitman.’ The only one that didn’t have an alter ego was Roberto Duran, and that’s because he was a menace all the f***ing time!”
He lets out a cackle as he pauses on the gravity of that thought.
NEW NAME
Embracing a new mentality starts with how you see yourself and what you call yourself.
“That’s why I was like, ‘I gotta get rid of this ‘Pooh Bear’ s***; it’s too sweet!’ I’m going against killers,” smiles Battle. “I’m going against the best fighters on the planet, and this ‘Pooh Bear’ s*** is too sweet. I wanna kill people. I wanna take their heads off. I’m ‘The Butcher! Bryan the Butcher!’ So there is Bryan and there is ‘The Butcher.’ People can tell (there is a different edge to me) on fight week, too. I’m cool. I’m a nice guy, but there’s a little tension there where it’s like, ‘Don’t push my buttons because things can go south real f***ing quick.’”
That “don’t push me” ethos came into play in what has thus far been Battle’s breakout moment in the UFC: the night he walked out to face Kevin Jousset in Paris last September. Though Jousset trains at City Kickboxing in New Zealand, he was raised in France, and had the full support of the crowd at Accor. Battle leaned into playing the villain. Sporting his short-cropped, bleach blonde hair, he walked out to a Jay-Z and Kanye West song off Watch the Throne that was a definite choice and removed his Venum shirt early to strut to the Octagon with his multiple gold chains gleaming in the arena lights. After finding his footing and dispatching Jousset in the second round, he flipped off the crowd as they rained down boos upon him, and then cut a post-fight promo that felt like an updated version of the classics Chael P. Sonnen used to deliver in his heyday.
NEW ATTITUDE
The promo itself went viral and instantly elevated Battle’s profile. None of it was planned.
“When I went to Paris, I was planning on saying something nice after the fight,” he says, laughing. “I was gonna be encouraging and uplifting, and once again, they pushed my buttons, and I was like, ‘You wanna push my buttons? I’m gonna push yours right back!’”
His physical transformation and switching of nicknames are clear markers of the changes that have taken place for the soon-to-be 31-year-old fighter.
“My journey has been such a wild journey,” he says, shaking his head as he reflects on the previous four years. “I’m so blessed and privileged that sometimes I look around and it’s like, on paper, there is no reason I should be doing what I’m doing. You can say, ‘Oh, well, you worked hard.’ Everybody works hard. I’ve just been extremely fortunate. Things are just falling in line. Like the Paris fight. That was crazy. That was a movie. Fighting in Charlotte. That was a movie. Fighting Randy. There’s not a whole lot of fights where you can win and learn a lot. A lot of times you’ve got to lose to learn, but that was a fight where I’ve watched that fight back and 10 times outta 10 I won that fight. Maybe I’m biased, but whatever; I won that s***.”
He chuckles, knowing that the controversial decision result still sits poorly with Randy Brown.
“That being said, was that my best performance?” says Battle. “Hell no, and there’s a lot of factors that play into that, but at the end of the day, we’ve got to get into the cage no matter what is going on and perform. It was a great learning experience, and it’s just, these four years going from TUF to where I’m at now is crazy. I can’t even imagine what’s gonna happen by this time next year.”
FAN’S OPINIONS
As much as there was an abundance of lessons learned from the fight with Brown, perhaps the most critical takeaway Battle had was recognising the ever-shifting nature of MMA fandom and how worrying about the opinions of a populace whose allegiances are constantly changing is wholly unnecessary.
“I really felt how fickle MMA fans are,” begins Battle. “Coming off Paris, no one would say anything bad about me. I was treated like the second coming. And then I have this fight with Randy, and it’s just like it flipped like that.”
He snaps his fingers and laughs.
“I still have some diehard fans, and I love y’all, but you can see how fast you can get it and how fast it can all go away, so it teaches you to appreciate things and not take anything for granted. The opinions don’t matter, but I like it because it gives you a little edge back, like, ‘Okay, I’ll show y’all something.’”
He entered the UFC as the affable underdog with a soft nickname and something to prove. Now he wears gold chains, flips off crowds, and thrives in the role of the man you love to boo. Could it mean that he’s doing something right?
