With much fanfare, the UFC had finally returned to Canada for UFC 289 in Vancouver following the COVID-19 pandemic, which brought with it nearly four years of absence from the Great White North.
As I walk through the Westin Bayshore and see many familiar faces, one of them stands out. He is a gawky-looking fellow who is around my height with deep-set eyes and an appearance that resembles Steve Carrell paired with the drowsy facial expression of Jeremy Allen White’s character Carmine from The Bear.
His name is Steve Erceg and he has reason to appear drowsy, having accepted a fight against then-10th ranked flyweight David Dvorak on eight days’ notice and with all of his previous fights taking place in his native Australia, he has travelled nearly 15,000 kilometres to do so, with a 15-hour time difference to boast.
This was not a fight that Erceg needed to accept to get his shot in the UFC, as he had already signed a contract roughly four months prior after impressing UFC matchmaker Mick Maynard, a fellow Australian, who attended his victory over Soichiro Hirai at an Eternal MMA event in his hometown of Perth. However, Erceg did not shy away from the opportunity, regardless of the lack of time to acclimatize.
“Obviously, there are nerves and those sort of things associated with it,” Erceg told Sportsnet. “I was excited for the opportunity and when I got to the hotel, it was eye-opening how much the UFC really does for the athletes.”
At UFC 289, Erceg rose to the occasion, defeating Dvorak, capturing the attention of UFC CEO Dana White and earning a Performance of the Night bonus without scoring a finish, which is a rarity in the world of UFC post-fight bonuses.
“That kid came in and fought a top-10 guy, didn’t finish, but what a badass performance by him, let me give him $50,000, too, because he’s a stud,” quipped White following Erceg’s promotional debut.
Since then, Erceg continued his globetrotting fighting lifestyle, with trips to New York City, where he defeated Alessandro Costa at Madison Square Garden last November, paired with a statement knockout win over another ranked opponent in Matt Schnell in Las Vegas at the beginning of March.
Two weeks after his win over Schnell and just 279 days after winning his UFC debut, Erceg found himself in a very fortunate position.
Pantoja, who had been adamant about competing in his home country, which he had not done since 2013 (when Erceg was just 13 years old), was in need of an opponent for UFC 301, taking place in Rio de Janeiro in May.
Few of the fighters in the flyweight top 10 made sense. Pantoja had just beaten the top-ranked Brandon Royval in his last title defence, former champion Brandon Moreno was coming off a loss to Royval and announced a hiatus from competition, and everyone else was either booked, injured, had missed weight for their previous bout or had not impressed in their last outing.
“The guy from Australia is really good,” Pantoja told Sportsnet in Miami before UFC 299. “It’s a good fight. I knocked out Matt Schnell in the first round, he did it in the second one, maybe it’s a good option for the UFC.”
Shortly after the cameras stopped rolling, Pantoja told me that Erceg would likely be next and, soon thereafter, it was announced that Erceg, a relative newcomer to the promotion, got the call to headline UFC 301 as his opponent.
Erceg will compete for the championship under a set of circumstances that we have not seen in the last 15 years of the UFC, earning a title shot in a men’s division in less than a year without having fought for a major international promotion or having achieved accolades in another combat sport.
He will also do so as the 10th-ranked contender and, historically, those circumstances have not fared well for those ranked outside of the top five since the UFC implemented its rankings system in 2013.
Should Erceg capture the championship on Saturday, it would be a truly special story.
A fighter who was on barely anyone’s radar outside of Australia one year ago, who sparred with his father in their backyard before fighting professionally to prove to him that he was tough enough to compete in mixed martial arts, who continues to train at Wilkes Martial Arts and Fitness Academy, a small family gym in Perth and ranked near the bottom of the divisional rankings, pulling off the upset in his opponent’s home country would be stranger than fiction.
Now, having logged about 115,000 kilometres in travel in less than a year, it has been a short journey to the championship in duration, but a long journey in travel and Erceg is ready to rise to the occasion.
“I’m here to take on all challenges and prove that I’m the toughest guy in the world,” Erceg said.
As Erceg’s walkout song “You Don’t Mess Around with Jim” by Jim Croce preaches, every division has its bad folks, but the baddest of them all is “Jim”, who they call the boss. That is until Slim enters Jim’s pool hall and proves that he’s the toughest guy, causing everyone to tell “a different kind of story when big Jim hit the floor.”
At UFC 301, when Erceg walks into Pantoja’s pool hall, figuratively speaking, we will find out whether Erceg is his Slim.
