NEW YORK — Ethyn Ewing, a little-known, 27-year-old mixed martial arts fighter, slept past his alarms Thursday morning, only to wake to what he said were “about 25 messages” on his phone from his father, his manager, his sister and his coach.
Ewing thought there had been an accident and someone was hurt. Instead, the UFC wanted him to hustle his way from Yorba, California, to New York’s Madison Square Garden to replace injured Cody Haddon on Saturday night’s UFC 322 card.
Ewing, who competes in the A1 Combat fighting circuit and calls himself “Professor Finesser,” jerked awake. The UFC? How long had he been waiting for this call? Ever since he was a child, he had dreamed of fighting in the UFC. He had been begging for this chance. Just last weekend after a knockout win in Sacramento, he publicly called for the UFC to notice him.
The Sports Moment newsletter: Reporter Ava Wallace takes you through the buzziest, most engaging sports stories of the week. Sign up for the weekly newsletterhttps://t.co/WmrlnLPBpp
— Post Sports (@PostSports) October 16, 2025
Now finally it had. He was told he would be fighting Malcolm Wellmaker, an undefeated rising featherweight star in barely more than two days. But he had no tine to think about Wellmaker, a fighter he had watched many times on television. After three days of gorging on In’ N Out Burger to celebrate his previous weekend’s victory, Ewing needed to lose 11 pounds by the next morning’s weigh-in in New York.
All of this was just details late Saturday night, when Ewing sat at an interview dais deep inside the Garden, celebrating a unanimous decision over Wellmaker. Ewing repeatedly attacked Wellmaker, landing kicks and punches until Weillmaker, who had come into the Octagon smiling, left sullen and bewildered.
“It’s so surreal I can’t wrap my head around it,” Ewing said. “But I’ve prepared for this moment for a long time. I knew I belonged here.”
The previous two days had been a whirlwind. He had started cutting weight even before the UFC officially added him to the card by drinking almost no water. Then UFC officials asked for medical tests, all of which were in various parts of Los Angeles more than an hour to the north of his home. The traffic was bad. His mouth was parched. He was tired but invigorated. The tests complete, he scrambled to make an evening flight to New York, a city he had never visited.
When he finally got to New York at 5:30 a.m. Friday, he was whisked to the Garden, a building he only dreamed of fighting inside. Officials led him behind the curtains to The Theatre at MSG for the midmorning weigh-in. As he waited, he stared at a photo on the wall of Conor McGregor the famous double UFC champion, his arms spread wide with thousands of people before him.
Ewing had seen versions of the photo many times before but now in the same arena in which it had been taken he felt overwhelmed. He was even more amazed when he was led to the giant scale on the stage and was told it was the same scale used to weigh Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier before their 1971 fight at the Garden.
Later that night, he stood in Times Square, looking up at the lights and the buildings he said to himself, “This is my destiny.”
He kept thinking back to the previous weekend’s fight and the shouts for the UFC to bring him to its organization. Maybe, he thought, someone had heard.
“I believe heavily in the law of attraction and manifesting things.” he said. “When you speak it out loud, when you tell people is going to happen, but most importantly, you go work very hard for it. And then, I really, truly believe that’s how things work in, you know, in my postfight interview, I said, ‘I’m sharp now, I’m ready now.’
“I said, ‘You know, I want to be in the UFC.’”
And then it had happened and he had won by coming aggressively into the fight, attacking Wellmaker with a barrage of kicks and punches, leaving his heavily promoted opponent a step behind for much of the bout.
By late Saturday, Ewing was feeling good after beating Wellmaker. He was sure he had proven something. He even called himself “the future” of the UFC’s featherweight division without a guarantee of a UFC deal.
Later that night, the UFC’s CEO Dana White smiled as he talked about Ewing.
“You’re either that guy or you’re not,” White said. “This kid’s wired differently than others are.”
The post After sleeping through his call of destiny, this fighter shocked everyone
appeared first on Washington Post.
