It’s not often that a 3-0 fighter gets the call to join the UFC. It’s an even rarer occurrence when that fighter’s bout is one of the most anticipated fights on a pay-per-view card. Mike “Blood Diamond” Mathetha is a fighter who checks both those boxes.
Don’t let his 3-0 MMA record fool you, Mathetha is not a combat sports neophyte. The 33-year-old has reportedly had more than 100 kickboxing bouts and he is a two-time winner of the King of the Ring kickboxing tournament in New Zealand, where he trains under the tutelage of Eugene Bareman and alongside UFC middleweight champion Israel Adesanya.