What the hell just happened?: Opponents, teammates share Tony Ferguson stories -

Who is Tony Ferguson?

The former interim UFC champion has been in most of our lives for almost a decade, and he may very well be one win over Khabib Nurmagomedov away from being the greatest lightweight of all time. Yet he also remains an enigma, as mysterious to us today as he was when he entered the UFC in 2011.

Known for his unique style both in and out of the cage, Ferguson is the kind of guy to cut weight for a fight that didn’t even happen. So Ferguson’s UFC 249 headliner and interim lightweight title fight against Justin Gaethje in Jacksonville, Fla., on Saturday, fast approaches, The Athletic reached back into his past, speaking with former opponents, teammates, roommates and others to unravel some of the mysteries of “El Cucuy.”

Editor’s note: Answers were edited for length and clarity.

Ferguson first announced his presence on “The Ultimate Fighter 13” and won the welterweight season despite being a natural lightweight. And from day one, it was apparent to many of his TUF 13 housemates that there was more to “El Cucuy” than met the eye.

Chris Cope (TUF 13 teammate): Tony Ferguson, he’s an outlier.

He’s kind of like a black swan. He does things that you don’t think are going to happen, you couldn’t possibly comprehend somebody even doing — and he goes out there and does it.

Chuck O’Neil (TUF 13 teammate/opponent): When I made it onto the show, I was on his team. We quickly gravitated toward each other because we had similar work ethics and we trained together so closely throughout the whole season. He’s a very unique guy. I was probably one of the people that got to know him better than anyone else on the show. People don’t want to understand others, and they’re kind of drawn away from that. They don’t want to engage. But to me, those are the kind of personalities I like.

Cope: We get into the house, and I’m thinking to myself, yeah, this guy’s not going to do anything. This guy just basically seems like a regular dude. But then he would be doing all kinds of crazy stuff in the house. He’d be doing, like, magic tricks. The guy’s literally doing legit magic. I was blown away. And he’s doing breakdancing. He’d be doing just some whack trick, and then all of a sudden, you’re just like, “What — what the hell just happened?!” This guy’s literally doing this magic, and then he’s doing backflips and cartwheels.

You’re like, this might possibly be the most interesting man alive.

Ryan McGillivray (TUF 13 opponent): I think a lot of people from our season, they remember he had a bit of an argument with Charlie Rader on the show. They went back and forth a little bit, and Tony said some not-nice things. I get asked about that all the time. The thing is, when you’re on that show, it drives you crazy. There’s no TV, no music, no books, no contact with the outside world. You’re literally stuck in that place with those people you might have to fight with, and there’s nothing to do. I was used to training three times a day, six days a week. We went training only once a day for two hours. So there’s a lot of idle time, and the way the show is kind of designed is to kind of get some drama.

Tony Ferguson, second from left in the front row, was one of 14 original cast members on “The Ultimate Fighter 13” in 2011. (Atiba Jefferson / Zuffa)

Javier Torres (TUF 13 castmate): That’s what people don’t understand. The way he is, I think Latinos understand that. We’re really intense. I’m a really intense person, so I understand it. Yes, he’s intense, but that’s the way we are as Latinos. We’re really intense people with everybody. And Tony, he’s not going to hold back. He’s going to tell you straight up, “No, you know what? You’re fucking up. Go fuck yourself.” Like that. He doesn’t have a sweet touch. And I’m the same way. That’s how my mom and my dad taught me. But that’s how Tony is too.

Cope: The concept behind the magic for him is, magicians have to be very creative when they do these tricks. They have to practice it over and over and over again, and they have to be flawless with what it is they’re doing. When Tony trains, he’s just like a magician. He runs his own camps, literally. And he does his own stuff, but he practices these moves over and over again. So when it comes time to put it on, he does it without even thinking about it. And that’s why he catches people, because he’s just constantly rehearsing his mind over and over and over and over again.

It was a one-of-a-kind type of thing. It’s like, you ever meet a celebrity in person? A lot of celebrities are just like talking to a wall. They have no depth of personality away from the screen. But there are some, they’ve just got magic, you know? They literally just do cool stuff. Tony had this thing where the biggest thing about him was he was so damn creative. That’s what makes him such a good fighter. He’s just so creative with everything he does. He’s doing stuff that nobody else does, from the way that he would shadowbox, the way that he’d do jiu-jitsu, the way that he’d wrestle. Out of all the guys who were on the squad though, TUF 13 coach Brock Lesnar liked him the most, kind of from day one. And he had that wrestler’s mentality from day one. When it came time to train, he always got after it hard. He never made excuses. And the craziest thing about that guy is he will fight anybody.

And he has no problem with that at all.

O’Neil: Every day that he fought on TUF 13, he always had a suit that he would put on. He was very different. Like, we’re all sitting there with our stupid corny Tapout gear and backward hats on and looking like idiots, and Tony had a suit on.

Brock Jardine (PureCombat 12 opponent): Even when we fought on the regional scene, he’d still dress up like he is now — a suit and tie. He always has a tie and is dressed sharp. He’s always been that kind of guy.

O’Neil: He also had this little jewelry box on TUF 13, like a ring box. And inside of it, he said it was a promise that he made to his mom back when he first started fighting. It said, “I will be the UFC 155-pound champion,” and this is back in 2011. He had this in a ring box, and it was something he would look at before every one of his fights. He said he didn’t want to make himself a liar to his mom. It was really cool, and it’s cool to see how far he’s come.

That’s always stuck with me. There are many people who say “I’m going to be a Super Bowl champion” or “I’m going to be a UFC champion.” It’s like, you’re a kid, and you grow up and get out of that crap. And here’s a grown man saying this. He’s living it. It’s pretty cool to see that.

McGillivray: I think a lot of times the people that win that show are not always the best fighter — they might be — but it’s people that can handle the craziness of the show. And Tony was one of those guys that just kind of rolled with it.

Cope: Literally, I’d be like, “Dude, how is this guy doing this?” Everyone on the show would be dying trying to make weight, and he would just be doing his own thing. Everyone’s stressed in the house about doing well on the show and being the best they can be, but Tony’s just kind of the guy like, “Hey, I’m going to beat everyone’s ass. And until that time happens, I’m just going to sit back, relax and have a good time.” For him, he treated it like a vacation. He really didn’t care.

I mean, the guy was eating whatever the hell he wanted. He drank really whatever he wanted. And then he was still just going through knocking people out. And the craziest thing about it was he never bragged. He never really tried to showboat or anything else. He just was like, “All right, we’re going to fight, and I’m going to beat your ass.” And that was it. He just let it be, and he never showboated. He didn’t try to build it up. And the thing about him, when he fights you, he’s literally fighting you.

He’s not treating it like business. He’s taking it personally.

Tony Ferguson knocked out Ramsey Nijem to win TUF 13 in June 2011. It kicked off his official run in the UFC, which includes a 15-1 career mark. (Josh Hedges / Zuffa)

After winning TUF 13 with a run of four vicious knockouts, three of them in the first round, Ferguson graduated to the UFC and continued his winning ways, racking up a 15-1 octagon record and establishing himself as one of the most talented — and unique — lightweight fighters in the world.

Jon Anik (UFC play-by-play commentator): For me, in terms of mental toughness, this is the guy that I always think about. When I’m struggling on a run or getting through a workout, Tony’s the guy that I’m thinking about. I think he’s inspired a lot of people with his mental toughness, with his physical toughness, getting through that injury. His coach Eddie Bravo once told me that he trains for six hours straight without taking a break. He’s taken almost a marathoner’s mentality at certain times to his MMA training. I think a lot of us just draw a lot of inspiration from that.

O’Neil: There are guys who go out to fight, and it’s like a sport for them. But Tony is going out there to genuinely hurt you. And there’s a lot of guys that are like, “I’m going to hurt you. I’m going to change your life.” But every shot that Tony hits you with has a purpose to hurt you. You just see it in his eyes. He has something different that no one else has. He’s going out there to kill or be killed. And that’s his mindset. So it’s very different. He’s not trying to go out there and be buddy-buddy with anybody. There’s that separation that he’s going to put into play before each fight.

Cope: The crazy thing about him is a lot of the stuff that he’s got is basically self-taught. He shows up as a wrestler from Grand Valley State University, and then all of a sudden he’s going to a boxing gym in Ventura. And then he does a little jiu-jitsu somewhere. But he kind of just ran his own thing all of those fights until he got into The Ultimate Fighter. When he got to The Ultimate Fighter, I think he was like 12-0 or 12-1 — and he literally just, like, coached himself. But the way that he trained was like a boxer. And if you know anything about boxers when they spar, they go 100 percent all-out, right? Boxers don’t have any teammates; they just have sparring partners. The sparring partner comes in to literally get beaten up. That’s why they’re paid.

Tony, somehow, in some way, you take a look at his fight camps, and it looks like a hippie convention. And you’re like, “Dude, this guy’s got no chance.” He’s got the striking coach over in the corner taking bong hits. The other one’s playing hacky sack. And then all of a sudden, what happens? He wins. And he doesn’t just win, man. He literally destroys people. And there’s something to be said about that. Tony, in his unorthodox ways, he’s got a very good way to break down the game.

Kevin Lee (UFC 216 opponent): I mean, I’ve fought the man. He’s got his own rhythm. He’s got his own rhythm in the cage — and it’s very hard to figure out.

Lando Vannata (UFC Fight Night 91 opponent): Here’s an analogy that fits. You think of like a language, right? Like, every language there is, every way of communicating has a pattern to it. But every language sounds different. So it’s the same with fighters. Every fighter has a pattern to them. The language is just different. How they fight is different. And fuck, bro, yeah — Tony’s language is something out of this world.

Danny Castillo (UFC 177 opponent): I think that’s the reason why he’s been so successful, especially with his length, his reach. In a couple of these fights, he’s getting really good with those elbows. I mean, I don’t know how you can train for thickening your skin and not getting cut by anything.

Tony Ferguson defeated Danny Castillo by split decision at UFC 177 in August 2014. Only five of Ferguson’s 25 career wins have gone to a decision. (Josh Hedges / Zuffa)

Torres: It’s because he switches styles. He’s got so many tools. Khabib’s only got his hands and he’s going to ground-and-pound. Hold you down, ground-and-pound, ground-and-pound. Tony Ferguson throws elbows, knees, anything. He throws everything from everywhere, every position. He just throws stuff from out of nowhere, and that’s the thing about Tony.

Castillo: It’s his technique. He doesn’t have, like, crisp technique. Maybe just because of the awkwardness of it, and his frame — he’s a big dude. I wouldn’t doubt if someone said he was close to 6-foot-2. I just remember in the fight, him being a really big dude, and when I took his back and I was trying to lift him, it was hard to lift him and get his legs off the ground — he was such a big guy.

So I think just his awkwardness and his ability to try anything, I think that works. The element of surprise works well for him, and his ability not to, just — he doesn’t give a fuck, you know? He keeps pushing and rolling for weird stuff. It’s like if you’ve trained before and you roll with a guy who’s good, like if you go with a guy who was a brown belt, you know exactly what you’re going to get. But if you go with a guy who’s a white belt, sometimes they’ll do some shit that you’re not used to because it’s not very orthodox. I mean, I’ve sparred guys who fucking absolutely suck and, you know, over the top you get hit with some shit because you’re like, “What the fuck?” Like, “You’re not supposed to throw a punch like that!” It comes out of nowhere.

Vannata: He also has just the absolute mindset unlike anything anybody else has. He has this mindset where it’s just on a ridiculous amount of tenaciousness and self-belief. He has Diego Sanchez-level self-belief. So if you put all that together, you put being able to smash the transitions between all the arts, and then you put that mindset in there with him and the work ethic?

That’s a dangerous opponent.

O’Neil: You just can’t teach what he has, this inner strength that he has to want to kill everyone who’s in front of him. That’s where all that creativity comes from. He doesn’t care what you’re going to do. He’s just going to keep moving forward.

Cope: The thing with Conor McGregor, a lot of that’s just an act. You know what I mean? With Tony, it’s real. Like, you piss that guy off, he’s like, “Dude, I am going to hurt you.” And then he’s just hellbent about it. And he didn’t read any books like “The Secret” or anything else. He literally believes. Nobody believes in Tony Ferguson like Tony Ferguson. He literally runs his own camps. He coaches himself. I’m surprised he’s not in the corner giving himself water. That’s just the way the guy rolls in. He just sits there like, “Hey, who’s next? Who’s ass am I going to beat next?”

I sparred him in the TUF 13 house. And usually when you spar somebody, if they’re getting the better of you, they back off or whatever it is. But he calls himself “El Cucuy,” which is Spanish for “Boogeyman” — and that guy is possessed when he fights. Literally, when he was sparring with us — and remember, we’re 170-pounders on the show, and he was a natural 155er — he just had this crazy look in his eye. I just thought to myself when I was in there, I don’t want to fight this guy.

And the thing was, when it came time for the matchups, what happened was three of us made it to the semifinal matchups from Team Lesnar, and one guy from Team Dos Santos. So immediately I didn’t want to fight anybody on the team, so I said I’ll fight Ramsey Nijem. But the reality was, I didn’t want to fight Tony. Because I knew just how brutal that guy would be.

Anik: When he fought Anthony “Showtime” Pettis in 2018, I’ve never had a blood shower like that sitting octagon-side before. We get splattered with blood on my note cards, on my face, on the front of my neck a little bit, on my shirt. But never where the blood is spewing over on top of us like a shower. I was getting legitimate dollops of human blood on the back of my shirt. And of course it wasn’t Tony Ferguson’s blood, but he had no problem tasting it and fighting through it and winning another fight by style points.

The UFC keeps all my suits, but I asked if I could keep that shirt and never wash it, and that’s the plan. I still have my suit unwashed from Mark Hunt vs. “Bigfoot” Silva in 2013 in Brisbane because we got a little sprayed there too. But this shirt I’m hoping to frame and do something special with.

Jon Anik got “splattered with blood” while calling Tony Ferguson vs. Anthony Pettis in October 2018. (Courtesy of Jon Anik)

Castillo: He blocked me on Twitter. He blocked me on Twitter. He blocked me on everything. It’s actually kind of funny — like, even to this day, I’m still blocked. I think I tried to look a couple of months ago or something. Every once in a while, I’ll get a fan that’ll put like, “Yeah, but Tony’s not on this win streak because he lost to Danny,” and I’m like, “Oh, that’s cool.” And then, you know, I’ll star that, and I’ll click Tony Ferguson — and it’s just not there. I can’t even see his tag.

Lee: A lot of people behind the UFC are going to know this one. It was UFC fight week, International Fight Week, and I was one of the people they had come out and sign pictures. There was maybe 12 or 14 of us on one bus. Then there were another 12 or 14 on another bus. Tony’s on the other bus. We pull up to T-Mobile Arena — it’s maybe like 7 o’clock in the morning — to sign autographs. And while I’m standing there, I kind of have my coffee in my hand. He comes up to me because we had the back and forth after my fight with Michael Chiesa, and I don’t know what he was saying, but I could see — I could feel the energy. I could see he wanted some action.

And I’m standing there just like, “Bruh, just let me finish my coffee.”

Jardine: We were fighting for a title out in California in 2010. To me, I won the first two rounds. I felt pretty good that I won the first two rounds. But then I was just like, “Jesus Christ, man. This guy’s not going away.” Like, “Man, I don’t know if I can make it three more rounds.” I tried pacing myself a little more because that was my first-ever five-round fight, but that third round, that’s where he really started to beat me up. Then in that fourth round, I was just in survival mode. Tony’s always been that pressure fighter. To this day, I still question whether he beat me because I was so exhausted, or did he beat me because he made me quit? He puts that kind of pressure and pain on you to where you’re second-guessing yourself while you’re fighting.

That’s a testament to his work ethic and his will to win and be a champion. I would love to say I would beat him at my best, but I’d just be lying to myself.

McGillivray: I’ve never watched our episode back. It was pretty short, anyway, so I’m not going to have many memories of it anyway. I make that joke a lot — people say, “Oh man, you fought Tony Ferguson?” I say, “Not for very long, and I don’t remember it.”

O’Neil: I took a pounding in our fight. My body didn’t want to do anything anymore. I obviously had to go to the hospital, and they wanted to check my head out afterward, and that was the last day of filming. So when we got back to the house, finally after the doctors checked me out, everyone already left for the hotel, but Tony was there, and he already started packing my stuff up for me. Putting it in boxes. And it was almost like the weight was off both of our shoulders at that point, and we could be friends again. He helped me pack all my stuff up, which was cool because I was a little banged up from the fight obviously. All the animosity was just lifted off of us at that point.

Cope: That’s just his mentality. And after he knocks you out or submits you or whatever, he’ll help you up and he’ll be your buddy. But with him it’s like, you know he’s going out there just taking souls. That’s just his whole thing. There are people out there that legitimately like to compete, and there are people out there that legitimately like to fight. He does both.

(Top photo: Stephen McCarthy / Sportsfile)

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