Two months ago, mixed martial arts fighter Kaushik Saikumar was cooking dinner for himself after a training session when, out of the blue, he got a potentially career-changing call. It was his manager on the other end of the line asking if he wanted to fight in the Contender Series.
Without missing a beat, Kaushik gave a big affirmative. “I was like f*** yeah. Let’s do this. These kinds of opportunities don’t come too often, and I just happened to be at the right place when it did land,” he tells Sportstar.
While Indian fighters haven’t had the best of outings in international MMA this year with a string of high profile losses in the UFC, the 27-year-old Kaushik whose roots are in Chennai, is more than excited over the opportunity he’s got to compete at the Contender Series — a fight promotion that’s meant to scout talent for the UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championships).
Kaushik knows he will be facing the hardest challenge of his professional fighting career when he takes on UK prospect Louis Lee Scott (9-0) in a bantamweight bout on the Dana White Contender Series in Las Vegas on Tuesday.
Kaushik knows he will be facing the hardest challenge of his professional fighting career when he takes on UK prospect Louis Lee Scott (9-0) in a bantamweight bout on the Dana White Contender Series in Las Vegas on Tuesday.
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Special Arrangement
Kaushik knows he will be facing the hardest challenge of his professional fighting career when he takes on UK prospect Louis Lee Scott (9-0) in a bantamweight bout on the Dana White Contender Series in Las Vegas on Tuesday.
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Special Arrangement
But Kaushik, who has a 5-0 record– with four wins coming inside the distance — as a professional, is also aware that a good performance on Tuesday could open the doors to a potential contract with the world’s most prestigious MMA promotion. “It’s a big opportunity. I do think I got it a bit prematurely because most fighters who do get called to the Contender series have 9 or 10 professional fights,” he says.
It’s a big opportunity and one Kaushik would only have dreamed of at one point in time.
Expectations of engineering
Born in the USA, where his parents worked as engineers, but raised and educated in Chennai, a career in sports, let alone fighting, never seemed to be on the horizon for Kaushik. “Both my parents are engineering professionals. Most of my relatives are engineers too,” he says. When it was time for Kaushik to decide what he was going to do after finishing school, engineering seemed like the obvious choice, and he enrolled in a mechanical engineering degree at Anna University in Guindy.
He didn’t know it at the time, but the choice of college would be a lucky one.
Although his parents had expected him to prioritise studies, Kaushik’s parents had also encouraged him to participate in as many sports as he wanted during his school days. “I got to play tennis, basketball, hockey, table tennis, badminton, swimming, chess, and karate. Out of all of them, it was karate that I enjoyed the most. I don’t know why, but I always had this interest in fighting,” he says.
He moved from karate to taekwondo, and then moved to judo and boxing, competing in the state level as a boxer and the national level in taekwondo.
While his parents never stopped him from taking part, Kaushik admits they weren’t keen on him getting too serious about it. “They hoped that I’d outgrow my interest in combat sports, but when that wasn’t happening, they grew uneasy. They were thinking why I was not changing. They honestly thought combat sports were barbaric,” he says.
Kaushik’s accomplishments helped in a way – he got into Anna University on a partial sports quota. But in a stroke of luck, his college in Guindy was near Combat Kinetics, an MMA gym he had convinced his father to let him join the same summer after being inspired by former UFC champion Conor McGregor. “I was going to college in the morning, but then at every free moment I got, I’d try to go and train. It was hard, but I found a way to manage both my studies and my training, although I still panic when I think about studying fluid mechanics,” he says.
Once Kaushik graduated from college with an engineering degree, he decided to take the plunge into training full-time and pursue his ambition of being a fighter. His background in various fighting styles meant he had progressed quickly as a rookie fighter and even started to earn money from private coaching classes. Soon, though, he realised that although he was winning amateur fights in India, he had hit a ceiling.
Shift to the USA
“I took part in a few competitions in India, which went well, but then I also managed to take part in one competition in Russia, where I lost to a Russian fighter. I realised there was a big gap in my game. I was predominantly a striker. I knew that if I wanted to be competitive at any elite level, I needed to work on my grappling,” he says.
He had gone as far as he could in India, and if he had to take the next step, Kaushik felt he had to train in the USA. Although he had a US passport by virtue of being born in that country, the decision was still a hard one. When his then-girlfriend and now wife got admitted to Virginia Technical Institute for further studies, Kaushik realised that things were falling into place.
Kaushik Saikumar with Ryan Hall (L).
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement
Kaushik Saikumar with Ryan Hall (L).
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement
“I looked around for high-quality gyms around that University campus and came across Fifty50 MMA Academy run by UFC fighter Ryan Hall,” he says. Hall, who incidentally has an engineering background himself, is renowned as one of the finest BJJ (Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu expert and grappling experts in professional MMA. Kaushik emailed the gym, requesting the opportunity to train with them. When they said they would give him a tryout, he moved to the USA in 2021.
Personal improvement
In the USA, Kaushik could see the improvement he was making as a fighter. “Training (at Fifty50) has given me a lot of confidence that has come from the kind of training partners and coaches I’ve been working with. It didn’t matter if my opponent was really fast or strong. At the end of the day, a technique works because of the physics and biology of the human body. And if I’m able to do that under pressure, I should be able to do it against anyone in the world. When I worked with all these high-level fighters who were training alongside me (his current partner is UFC bantamweight Carlos Vera), I could see the gap between my game and theirs start to narrow,” he says.
Kaushik’s seen his own fighting style change, too. “I had fought some 20 amateur fights in India, and I was predominantly a striking-based fighter. I’m a lot more rounded now. I have a really good low kick, and I have a good right hand, but I’m also not worried if I have to grapple with a wrestler or anyone. In the USA, my overall understanding of how fighting works has gotten a lot better. There are obviously things that can change with different people, but there’s a set foundation of how fighting works, how damage happens, how to use leverage, position, base, and posture. I’ve started to become a better athlete, too,” he says.
Kaushik fought for the first time in 2023, followed by four more bouts, the most recent one being in October last year. The quality of his opposition has been getting better, too, with his last three rivals coming into the fight with winning records. “I think the big difference between India and the USA is simply that I got the chance to expose myself to high-level training and competition outside and inside the cage,” he says.
This isn’t to say that things have always gone well. A couple of years ago, Kaushik suffered a serious back injury from overtraining that left him unable to even walk without pain. It took him several months of therapy to be able to recover from that. He has no complaints about his life, though.
Having put all his savings towards his training in the USA, Kaushik feels he is in a good place. “When I first came here, my wife and I had to share an apartment with four other people. Now I’m working at the gym where I’m training, and I’m also providing private classes to others. I also have a supplement business. My wife has also completed her post-graduation, and she’s got a good job. I’ve had a roundabout journey to this point, but I’ve been very lucky that whenever I’ve wanted to push myself towards a goal, things have worked out for me,” he says.
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He’ll hope things continue to fall in place on Tuesday in Las Vegas. Regardless of how the fight goes, Kaushik is grateful to be able to do what he’s always wanted to. The fact that he’s an Indian fighter competing for a potential place in the UFC comes with undoubted pressure, but he says he’s trying to avoid thinking about it.
“The strange thing is, a lot of people are messaging me on Instagram saying that I have to win because it’s a matter of pride and honour for India. To that, I think, why does your honor depend on whether I win or not? At the same time, I understand because I’ve had that perspective once myself. When I was in India, I would wonder why these Russian and African origin fighters were so good. But I’ve outgrown that thinking. Of course, if I do do well and I’m able to inspire Indian fighters to break out of their shell, then great, but that’s not my focus. When I fight, I’m just thinking of how to react to what I’m facing and doing what I’ve trained for. I just want to be the truest version of the fighter I can be,” he says.
