Steve
Erceg’s father initially provided the motivation for one of the
world’s best flyweights to not give up on mixed martial arts.
Erceg will look to get back into title contention against Kai
Kara-France in the co-main event at UFC 305
in Perth, Australia, on Saturday. The Australian looks to bounce
back from a hard-fought title loss against Alexandre
Pantoja, where he silenced his doubters who considered him
undeserving of the title shot in the first place.
Erceg recently revealed that he was about to leave the sport almost
as soon as he started training. Erceg was first intrigued by the
sport of MMA when he saw Frank Mir
submit a visibly larger Brock
Lesnar at UFC 81 in 2008. The urge to figure out how Mir did
what he did led Erceg to Wilkies Martial Arts at the age of 14.
While Erceg had started training with the intention of competing,
he was joined by his father Matthew Erceg, who needed to lose some
weight. However, it was “Astro Boy” who first stopped turning up at
the gym. But his father continued to train and would come back home
with details from training, which motivated Erceg to start training
again.
ESPN+. Order Now!
start with. He wanted to lose weight anyway at the time, so he
decided to join at the same time I started. And luckily for me, he
did. Because I actually, I didn’t wan to keep doing it, but he kept
going. And then he started coming home and telling me about all the
chokes he was doing, the sparring and all these things that I
originally started to do. So it all sort of brought me back to the
sport, and we haven’t stopped since.”
When Erceg wanted to compete for the first time after just two
years of training, his father did not think he was tough enough.
The future UFC fighter got the nod after passing a small litmus
test scrap in the backyard with his father, and the rest is
history.
While he is just four fights into his UFC tenure, Erceg paid his
dues on the regional circuit, as the loss to Pantoja was his first
in 13 outings since 2018. Meanwhile, Kara-France is coming off
consecutive losses against former champ Brandon
Moreno and top contender Amir Albazi.