As the dust settles in the wake of his appearance on Dana White's Contender Series earlier this week, Louis Lee Scott spoke to Fighters Only's E. Spencer Kyte about his performance and his joy at winning a coveted UFC contract.
While his phone is still pinging like crazy and there has only been one solid night’s sleep all week, the reality that he’s now a part of the UFC roster is slowly starting to sink in for Louis Lee Scott.
“Yeah, it’s starting to make a bit of sense now,” the 25-year-old British bantamweight said on Thursday afternoon, less than 48 hours removed from earning a contract with a third-round stoppage win over Kaushik Saikumar during the second week of Season 9 of Dana White’s Contender Series. ”My phone has been going crazy and I’m not used to that. Since the fight, my phone has been going ‘ping ping ping ping’ with messages from people you’d never think are gonna message you.
“But yeah, it’s happening, and it’s sort of settled in now.”
The settling is certainly welcomed after the emerging Manchester Top Team representative had a challenging series of days leading into his fight on Tuesday evening.
Long travel is always difficult on athletes trying to manage their weight and quickly shed pounds once they touch down, and the lengthy transatlantic journey didn’t do Lee Scott any favours. As he worked to make the bantamweight limit heading towards Monday’s weigh-in, he became ill and struggled to drop pounds, initially coming in a couple pounds over before ending up with half-a-pound too much on his frame.
Historically, hopefuls that haven’t made weight have had a hard time convincing the UFC President to give them a shot despite their miscue, but Lee Scott’s unrelenting offense and dogged pursuit of the finished impressed White enough to prompt him to offer the surging prospect a contract. And even though he’s still coming down from the high of winning, he’s already itching to get back into the gym.
“It’s just the beginning,” he said when asked how it all feels a couple days after the fact. “If anything, it’s like, ‘We’re here now; let’s get back to work.’ More than anything, I just want to get back in the gym and get back to getting better. That’s all that on my mind now really.”
Heading back to the gym means returning to the mats in Manchester alongside a pair of teammates that are coming off their own recent successes in Ateba Gauthier and Lerone Murphy.
A member of last season’s stellar cast of graduates from the annual talent search series, Gautier has already posted a pair of first-round stoppage wins to establish himself as a serious up-and-coming threat in the 185-pound weight class, while Murphy scored the biggest win of his career just a few days prior to Lee Scott joining he and Gautier on the UFC roster, knocking out Aaron Pico in the opening round of their highly anticipated clash at UFC 319.
“It’s beautiful; we’re a real wolf pack,” he said of the crew at Manchester Top Team. “It’s not a gym where there are pro fighters that train together — we’re in this together, we go to war together. Every win is for the gym and for the team, which makes it not an individual sport. Fighting in a lonely sport, but when you’ve got good teammates around you, people that are backing you through everything — will go out of the way to help you — it just makes all the difference.
“It’s massively to be honest,” Lee Scott added in regards to training with Murphy, the undefeated featherweight title contender. “Lerone is sort of the reason I did move to Manchester Top Team in the beginning.
“I trained with Lerone for the first time probably was I were like 17, so when I had one or two amateur fights and I’d started to do a bit either “Princey” (head coach Carl Prince) because he used to come over to the gym I started, AVT in Leeds, and coach a bit of striking. At this point, they didn’t have Manchester Top Team — “Princey” was working out of a Thai boxing gym called All Powers in Stockport, so I used to go over two mornings a week to train with his little team he had there.
“Lerone was good at this point, but wasn’t like exceptional; I had good rounds with him. I didn’t see him for a few years and then I trained with him again, and he absolutely smoked me; I couldn’t believe how good he got. I was like, ’S*** — what have you been doing? How did you get like that?’ At that point I was like, ‘I need to go train with Carl Prince and Lerone; these guys are on something different.’”
Though he’s since moved to the British metropolis, being the first fighter from Leeds to sign a UFC contract is something Lee Scott clearly takes a great deal of pride in.
“That’s the sweetest bit, to be honest; that’s the sweetest bit of this whole experience,” he said of representing his hometown on the biggest stage in the sport. “Being able to show people from where I’m from, young kids coming up, that you can do it; you’re not just another Yorkshireman that’s gonna live his life and ‘get a proper job, mate; we don’t do stuff like that ‘round here.’ You can make it and go be a fighter.
“In recent years, Liam Harrison is the most decorated fighter in any sort of fighting from our area — multiple time world champion and an absolute legend for being an absolute warrior when he fights — and then we had Josh Warrington, first boxing world champion to come out of Leeds, ever, and I’ve train a lot with both of these guys and they’ve watched me come through.
“So to make this debut, be the first guy from Leeds in the UFC, and get loads of praise off them guys that I looked up to growing up is proper sweet.”
And while he’s yet to have a full sit-down with his coach and management to really start mapping out when he might make the walk to the Octagon for the first time, the newly signed prospect has a dream scenario in mind that would make for a special night for every affiliated with Manchester Top Team… except maybe Prince.
“I’m ready to get back in the gym and start working again,” reiterated Lee Scott when asked about his ideal timeline for a return and stepping into the UFC cage for the first time. “For me, I’d like to be — wherever they’re gonna do Lerone versus (Alexander Volkanovski), I’d like to have my UFC debut on that card.
“If Ateba was on it as well — all three of the boys on the same card, Lerone fighting for the title; it would be a dream, except maybe not for Coach to be honest; we need to think about his mental health as well.”
