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From Joe 'Daddy' to 'Coach Joe'

Joe Stevenson is a veteran of 49 professional mixed martial arts bouts, dating back to 1999. Those numbers become all the more surprising when you realize Stevenson is only 36 years old. Yet what may surprise fans of the sport even more is that the California native has been an MMA coach for almost as long as he's been a fighter.

The man nicknamed “Daddy” became a coach in the first place through circumstance, rather than as a planned gig. “My coach at the time was fighting in the UFC, and he was kind of focused on himself, so I ended up coaching a lot of [his] classes,” Stevenson told Sherdog.