Issue 224

December 2025

Before championship belts were on the line, the world's greatest fighters were locked in their own battles. Isaac Barnett delves into the gritty and inspiring MMA origin stories that forged these warriors into the legends they are today.



BRANDON MORENO

Brandon Moreno was born on December 7th, 1993, in Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico. Raised by his father, Alfredo, and mother, Cecilia, they ran a successful piñata business, which expanded to LA, where the family lived comfortably. A young Moreno loved video games, especially Tekken, which he’d play while smashing junk food. After elementary school, he decided to change his lifestyle and had never done any sports, and was inspired by his favourite Tekken character, Eddy Gordo.

Speaking on the MightyCast, Moreno said, “To me, it was amazing, and I wanted to learn how to do it. My mom tried to find a Capoeira gym, but there wasn’t a gym in my town. There was an MMA gym close to my home. In Mexico, MMA wasn’t well-known. I didn’t know anything about kickboxing or jiu-jitsu. I thought the name sounded cool, so my mom called them, and I started classes the next Monday.”

Moreno trained consistently for two years, which led to fighting in amateur tournaments. It was his single focus, so his school grades plummeted, and his mother’s approval of it. If he failed to achieve his pro-MMA fighter goals, she feared he would have nothing to fall back on. Moreno followed his mother’s advice and graduated from school, but as soon as he turned 17, he turned professional. His daily routine was gruelling at first. He trained for two hours in the morning, worked in the family business for six hours, and then trained again for two hours. He maintained this routine for five years, and competed in 14 bouts, earned an 11-3 record, and a flyweight title, which he defended three times in the World Fighting Federation, before he got an opportunity to appear on TUF, where the rest is history.

MAGOMED ANKALAEV

Magomed Ankalaev was born on June 2nd, 1992, in Dagestan, Russia. He grew up in the mountains of the Shamilsky district, in the village of Teletl, with his father, mother, and four siblings, and with a family heritage linked to the Avars. Like many Dagestani children, he learned to wrestle, and an almost military-like lifestyle was imposed on him to instil discipline. He enjoyed volleyball, but there wasn’t much else to do in the mountains.

“What kind of a childhood can you have in the mountains? Everyone does pretty much the same things. You help your parents out with whatever you can. We didn’t have iPhones, only a few people in the village had a TV, and the other kids had to come up with our own little games,” he told UFC Russia.

His family suffered a tragedy when he was 14, after his father passed away, and he became the man of the house.

“I was in the ninth or tenth grade, and I lost my father. That was the most difficult age for me, when I really needed a father’s support. Since the man is the eldest in the family, it turned out that I was the man.”

Despite the hardships of a fatherless life, he graduated from high school and moved to Makhachkala, where he attempted to enrol at Dagestan State University. He was unsuccessful at first, so he attended another college before he was accepted into the University on his second attempt. His cousin attended the University, and he was having success in Greco-Roman Wrestling. He brought Ankalaev to his gym to begin training. His interest in combat sports quickly developed into a love of MMA, and he transitioned to an amateur career just after graduating at 22. He got a job as a security guard at a bar, which gave him a free flat to live in and allowed him to focus on MMA training. He became the three-time Russian MMA Champion at Light Heavyweight after turning professional in 2014 and amassed a record of 8-0 before losing his infamous UFC debut from a hail Mary triangle choke from Paul Craig.

LERONE MURPHY

Lerone Murphy was born on July 22nd, 1991, in Manchester, England. He had an enormous family because his father had nine siblings, and they would gather at his grandmother’s house every Sunday for food. Murphy began to regularly play fight with his cousins, which shaped his competitive nature before he could even count to 10. His family lived in Moss Side, a sub-borough of Old Trafford, an area known for its high crime rate. Murphy was exposed to this when his father was shot when he was four. Despite the hard environment, Murphy kept away from the gang violence, and he spent his time riding bicycles with his friends after school.

He was a promising young footballer as well, and even had academy trials for Liverpool FC. His life took a turn during his teen years, after he got involved with gangs following a knee injury he suffered when he was 16, which stopped his football ambitions.

 “It’s more than easy to fall into that lifestyle because it's all we used to hear about, even on the radio, so a lot of the kids growing up wanted people to like and respect them, so yeah, I fell into that path,” Murphy told the UFC.

He lived the street life for 5 years until he turned 21, when he was shot outside of his local barber shop.

“I was shot in the side of the face. It went straight through my mouth. The bullet lodged in my mouth, and I thought it was just blood at first. It wasn’t until I had to spit it out that I realised it was a bullet.”

The traumatic experience forever changed ‘The Miracle’, and he knew he needed to escape. He decided to begin MMA training and had better access to combat sports than most beginners because he was the nephew of Oliver Harrison, a renowned boxing trainer who helped Amir Khan become one of Britain’s greatest boxers.

“My first day in the gym, I liked it a lot because everyone was equal in there. It didn’t matter who you were outside the gym. Everyone respects MMA fighters, and I just wanted to be the best.”

His boxing skills developed quickly because of his family ties and were evident early in his professional career, which began in 2016.

In his first eight fights, he went 8-0, and this included five first-round knockouts. The call came from the UFC in 2020 and he was offered a fight with three weeks’ notice after he had just returned from a family vacation. Despite the odds, he took the fight, and it ended in a controversial draw.