Adam Fugitt moved from the prelims to third place on the main card of UFC 289 in his third fight in the UFC. His father gave him the good news recently.
Until then, the Eugene, Oregon native was pulling in as usual at the gym. He thought the main point of his fight was to give Mike Malott, a native Canadian, a paper from out of town to go home to Vancouver, British Columbia.
“This has been my go-to since I started fighting—the underdog going into enemy territory,” Fugit told MMA Fighting.
Nothing has changed about it. Now, he’ll do it on a much larger platform. Two-time welterweight title challenger Stephen Thompson and stuntman Michel Pereira have vacated the pay-per-view spot, and the rookie weightlifters will benefit.
Fugitt and Malott could be Figure 1 in the case against UFC saturation. But Fujit is happy to take advantage. Ask any fighter where they want to be and it will be as close as possible to the main event.
“I want to be a master card fighter,” Fugit said. “I want to be a leader at some point. You don’t get into this sport until those things aren’t.
“You either think you’ve got it, or you don’t. I think that’s the honest truth about it, and I think I can step in there against anyone and beat almost anyone.”
For now, things are moving in the right direction for Fujit. But it didn’t start that way. Five years ago, he sat down with his boss at the lumber company where he managed 33 employees and admitted his mind wasn’t on the job. This can be a problem in a place with giant saws and windmills that threaten life and limb.
“I’m supposed to be there and check what’s going on, and I’m in my office looking at the MMA ratings and wondering who I’m going to fight with,” he recalls. “It took me almost a whole month to work up the courage to go and talk to my boss about it. I finally did and he said to me, ‘Yeah, man, we can’t have you here.'”
This made Fugit, then 29, a full-time MMA fighter with a 3-1 record. Running was as good as ever. He then had a scrimmage on nine days’ notice and was out in 91 seconds.
UFC Hall of Famer Randy Couture has said repeatedly that if getting knocked out of a tournament is the worst thing that could happen to you, then you’re doing a good job. Fujit chose this explanation and moved on.
“It kind of made me more confident than anything else, that I would still always have the same support system, the same family around me, that they would always love me,” Fugit said. “As long as I got that, then I got everything I needed to go out there and just be me and fight my own battle. So it was definitely a huge relief, I think.”
Two months after the knockout, he was back in the cage. He won his next three fights, the last of which was in the LFA, a popular UFC feeder promotion. Then the pandemic struck, forcing us to check out financial diversity.
When she opened up on short notice at UFC 277, Fugitt eagerly took on the job. He cut 30 pounds in one week to fight, and once again, disaster struck. After two rounds back and forth, Michael Morales stopped him with a flurry of punches in the third round.
After this worse reminder, Fujit bounced back, stopping his next octagonal opponent, Yusaku Kinoshita, in the first round. There was a trend developing.
The UFC 289 main card slot is unfamiliar to the fighter Fugitt. But he believes that the circumstances surrounding the fighting are the same. He’s getting into another situation where he expects to lose, and he loves it.
“I think it gives me another higher-level competitor that they think they’re just going to throw at me and I’m going to go out there and lose,” he said. “I guess that’s kind of how I see it. So it’s another chance to go and prove them wrong again. And as long as I go out there to prove people wrong, sooner or later they won’t be able to deny who I am.”
If Fugit can send a message to the 29-year-old who has decided to turn this MMA thing into a career, it’s that there is strength in sticking with it. He’s about to do what he’s always dreamed of, which is to show everyone that Eugene, a place better known for the Oregon Ducks than for prohibition fighting, has some serious fighting talent.
He said, “You want to be ready to go through the worst of times, to suffer, to endure, and to truly understand or your dream will come true, even though it looks bleak.”