Matt Riddle recently spoke on E&C’s Pod Of Awesomeness, where among other topics of discussion, he talked about how he got into MMA, his firing from the UFC.
Riddle noted that his freshman year at East Stroudsburg University was the first year of Ultimate Fighter and that he thought MMA made sense for him due to his size and amateur background.
“Freshman year was the first year The Ultimate Fighter was on [television] with Forrest Griffin, and the original cast, and, yeah, the fight that put UFC on the map. The thing with MMA is there are weight classes. It’s not just, ‘oh, there’s an open market’ or whatever. Well, in pro wrestling, there are no weight classes and if there is, they’re still pretty big. You still have to be a pretty solid dude to be in pro wrestling. But with my size and amateur skills, ‘do you know what? I think I might be able to go this route in MMA.”
Riddle then talked about his UFC departure, describing it was ”brutal”.
“Well, of course, I’ll be honest, I just had my third kid [at the time of UFC termination]. I just had Zach, my son. So I just had my third kid right before that fight, so it was pretty brutal. But, at the same time, I was already riding a four-win streak. I had multiple submission bonuses and stuff like that. So I was doing fine in the sense for money at the time. But yeah I was just like, ‘I want to get signed somewhere. I want to get fights to be able to keep this ride going because right now I’m top 10 in the world and if I get another win, I can get ranked even higher and keep going and going.'”
Riddle said he knew he could get into pro wrestling, but his immediate goal was to win a world title in MMA.
“Once I got fired from the UFC, [pro wrestling] was [an option], but, at the same time, I hadn’t held a world title yet and I was already ranked top 10 in the UFC, which means I could probably hold a world title in basically any other company. I just wanted to win a title either in Bellator or Titan FC.”
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h/t to Wrestling Inc for the transcription.
