Claude Patrick and The 13-year Journey to the UFC

As he left his gym in Mississauga, Ontario earlier this week, Claude Patrick couldn’t help but smile. And he had good reason to. After years of toil on the mixed martial arts scene, fighting everywhere but his home province, where the sport is still not legal, Patrick is about to make his UFC debut on June 12th, and in Canada, no less, as UFC 115 touches down in Vancouver.

But a smile crossed Patrick’s face for another reason – one that showed just how far the sport has grown in his country over the last few years.
“I just left the gym and I was hearing somebody talking about a kimura,” recalled Patrick. “It’s insane. Three, four years ago, these guys would have thought that was a chicken wing sauce or something. (Laughs) I just kinda smiled and kept moving.”
It’s been a long journey to this point for the 29-year old from Toronto, one in which he’s practically had a ringside seat to the growth and explosion of MMA in his country and abroad as a training partner and friend of current and former UFC welterweight champions Georges St-Pierre and Carlos Newton. But his exposure and connection to the sport came even earlier.

“I’ve always been involved in martial arts, especially Ultimate Fighting, even before it was popular,” he said. “I’m not a guy that when 2000 came about I was suddenly into it. I definitely pre-date The Ultimate Fighter and any of that stuff. (Laughs) UFC I, I was already watching fights as a kid, constantly rewinding those tapes and studying everything.”

The next step was to get involved, and he began training in 1997, a lifetime ago compared to other UFC debutants.
“I’m about as old-school as it gets. I’ve put so much of my life into it, it would be silly to not pursue it and just kinda be an armchair quarterback saying I could have, should have done this or done that.”

And despite studying computers and logistics, and working in, as he puts it, “just about every job capacity except the food service/restaurant industry,” Patrick went all in on his budding fight career. By 2002, he had turned pro with a first round TKO of Guillaume Desrosiers, and though he would lose his second bout via decision to future UFC fighter Drew McFedries and take nearly three years off from the game, when he returned in 2005, it was with the intention of making his mark on the international scene.

“It wasn’t feasible to be fighting in North America,” said Patrick of the early years, “but I was lucky enough to know Carlos Newton and to train with him, so I always had it in the back of my mind that I was gonna train, maybe get a shot in Japan and get some cash going over there. And then when it skyrocketed here, I was like ‘well, fabulous, now it’s even more popular than I thought it would be.’”

via mmacrypt.com

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