Athletes
Brad Katona Found Peace In The Process
After Winning The Ultimate Fighter For A Second Time, Brad Katona Hopes To Make The Most Of His Second Stint In The UFC Starting At UFC 297: Strickland vs Du Plessis
A year ago, Brad Katona was the saddest he ever felt in his life.
The winner of The Ultimate Fighter: Undefeated in July 2018, Katona found himself cut from the roster less than 15 months later after a 2-2 run in the Octagon. He proceeded to win his next four fights under the Brave CF banner in 2021 and 2022, but when the calendar turned to 2023, he was starting to lose hope of ever making it back to the Octagon. He admits he was “nearly broken” at that point, but then the door cracked open. Specifically, the door back into the TUF house for a season pitting prospects against veterans, featuring Michael Chandler and Conor McGregor as coaches. The well-rounded fighter out of SBG Ireland enjoyed having familiar faces throughout his second TUF run — though it started with Katona on Chandler’s team before flipping over to Team McGregor — and he won two fights en route to the final at UFC 292 in Boston. In a Fight of the Night effort against Cody Gibson, Katona became the first two-time TUF winner and earned the status of UFC fighter once again.
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That journey comes full circle for the Winnipeg-born Katona when he fights Garrett Armfield at UFC 297: Strickland vs Du Plessis in Toronto, the same city in which he made his first post-TUF 27 appearance in December 2018.
“It makes you just appreciate what you have,” Katona told UFC.com. “It completely changes you. I still feel like I'm the same person, but I'm a little harder, and it's going to be is going to be impossible to break me.”
When he made the walk at UFC 231 more than five years ago (“Where did that time go?” Katona laughs), he was an undefeated 26-year-old in a red-hot bantamweight division.
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Now 32 years old, Katona believes the time off the roster “hardened” him. He admits to having a bit of a “sheltered” existence before then, one that included earning an engineering degree from the University of Manitoba before pursuing mixed martial arts full-time. His passion and drive were always present, as was the necessary grit and toughness required to fight professionally, but he cannot deny the way the journey back to the Octagon impacted him.
“I'm such a different fighter, such a different human than I was then,” he said. “It was a difficult road, but it's making me definitely appreciate everything. Not like I didn’t before, but really now it's just (about) soaking it up and enjoying it, and (I’ll) have a smile on my face all week.”
Brad Katona Post-Fight Interview | UFC 292
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Brad Katona Post-Fight Interview | UFC 292
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Despite getting cut, Katona’s skills were always evident. Losing to Merab Dvalishvili and Hunter Azure aren’t exactly results worth hanging one’s head over, but the thoughtful Katona hopes to start his second life on the right foot. Katona’s opponent, Armfield, dropped his UFC debut to David Onama in July 2022 but bounced back well with a first-round knockout of Toshiomi Kazama a year later in Singapore.
The 9-3 American has shown his own resilience, but Katona believes his steeled resolve—one built on two runs on The Ultimate Fighter and plenty of fights he deemed “in enemy territory”—gives him an extra edge over Armfield.
“That's a story and that's a career’s worth of difficulties,” Katona said. “I don't think he's had to quite face that. I don't think he's quite had to do that. With all that said, I still need to go and do it. I need to go and do it again, but that's what I do. That's what my career is built off of.
“(My) dedication never broke. I never said, ‘I feel bad about myself. I'm not going to train today.’ I found peace in the process and the work, and I've stayed on that since I was 14 years old. It’s been 18 years of this, of pushing for it. I've never broken or strayed from that path. I've been living there this entire time. A win on Saturday is just part of that path. It's another step for me.”
Making his return in Canada makes it all the sweeter. He is eagerly awaiting the buzz coming off the crowd in Toronto, particularly because he lives and trains in Ireland and cannot come home as often as he’d like.
The moment Katona makes the walk will feel undeniably sweet, the completion of a long path out of the spotlight, scrapping his way back to the top level amidst doubts both external and internal. But, it’s only a chapter of Katona’s story. While the return-arc is complete in a way, the redemption begins on January 20. Each part of the journey, Katona hopes, is a steppingstone on his way to proving he is the best in the world.
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“Everything I want is on the other side of this,” he said. “Another fight in the UFC, (a fight) higher up on the card, (another step) towards that belt. The statement, “I want to be the best bantamweight in the world,” is so absurd. It's so absurd. There's no reason why a kid from Winnipeg should be the very best in the world, better than anybody else, better than somebody from California or, Russia or anywhere else in the world. It's an absurd statement.
“But maybe I'm just a little a little crazy.”
Crazy or not, Katona did what he needed to do to get back to this spot, to give himself another opportunity to make his dreams a reality. When he thinks about what he’d tell the version of himself that made the walk in December 2018, he takes a moment before settling on the basics: “You’re really freakin’ good, and you’re really freakin’ tough.”
Katona didn’t let the five-year marathon back to the UFC break him.
Now, he hopes it’s his time to break out.
UFC 297: Strickland vs Du Plessis took place live from Scotiabank Arena in Toronto on January 20, 2024. See the Final Results, Official Scorecards and Who Won Bonuses - and relive the action on UFC Fight Pass!
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