Jorge Masvidal's transformation from skinny teenage street fighter to baddest motherf***** in the UF

Jorge Masvidal has come a long way in his near 20-year mixed martial arts career.

Today, he is one of the most devastating welterweights in the UFC and a pay-per-view draw, with many looking forward to his next fight - a highly-anticipated grudge match against Colby Covington.

Masvidal is 35-15 in his MMA career. He’s been fighting in the UFC since 2013 and has gone 12-7 in that time with his past two outings chalked up as losses to welterweight champion Kamaru Usman.

However, hsi first recorded MMA fights came in 2003, but Masvidal was fighting long before that on the streets of Miami.

A viral video shows him winning a street fight with Kimbo Slice’s protege ‘Ray’.

Masvidal was very, very undersized in that fight and he still came out on top.

He says street fighting was just an extra way to make money and once he garnered a little reputation, he and his friends would bet on his fights. If another man/team could put up $40, Masvidal was game to fight them.

Recent in MMA

“I was training in the same gym as Kimbo. He got in contact with us and said ‘Hey wanna scrap? I was like hell yeah. I get the call, maybe like a week from that date,” Masvidal said.

“Literally, I was about to place my order at McDonald's, ‘Hey you wanna fight today?’ I was like, ‘Hell yeah, damn right. Let’s do it.’”

That’s when the nickname Street Jesus began to stick. Masvidal said: “When the real Jesus baptises you, you go to heaven, right? But Street Jesus, when you get baptised [knocked out] by me, you know where you go, right? The shadow realm, baby.”

Masvidal joined the American Top Team gym in 2007. Under Dan Lambert, Masvidal was able to evolve from an impressive striker into a well-rounded mixed martial artist and it’s at that gym where he met Covington - the man he’ll face on Saturday.

Masvidal’s first seven UFC fights were as a lightweight at 155lbs. He won five fights and lost two in that span, but making the weight became troublesome for the Miami native and moving up to 170lbs, while it had a rocky start with two losses - proved to be a smart move.

'Gamebred' went on a three-fight winning streak that put him in a cage with Damien Maia in a welterweight title eliminator fight.

Unfortunately, Masvidal lost that contest and then fell to Stephen Thompson a few months later leaving his place in the UFC murky.

Then 2019 happened. Masvidal was considered a decent name for Darren Till to get back to winning ways at UFC London, but the visitor knocked the Brit out on his own home soil to stun everyone.

That summer he headed into a contest with Ben Askren, the man lined up to face Till when he got the win everyone wrongly assumed he would over Masvidal.

Street Jesus stepped up to the plate and knocked out Askren in a record five seconds with a beautiful running knee.

Masvidal was red hot from out of nowhere by the end of the summer in 2019. Next up, UFC decided to create the BMF belt - bad motherf***** - and have Masvidal contest it with the legendary Nate Diaz at Madison Square Garden.

You guessed it: Masvidal won that fight as well. He beat Diaz up to the point where a doctor was forced to stop the contest due to the cuts and bleeding.

PlogX

Jorge Masvidal's transformation from skinny teenage street fighter to baddest motherf***** in the UF

Recent in MMA

Read More on talkSPORT

Betting Offer Of The Day