His father arrived from Cuba at the age of 14, travelling 90 miles at sea over five days on a makeshift raft made out of a tractor tyre. His mother had moved to the United States from Peru. Masvidal was born in November 1984, in Miami, to two immigrant parents.
#Kimbo slice back yard ko professional#
"A professional fight is much safer because your mind is in a totally different place." Masvidal (pictured here bottom left) has often paid tribute to Kimbo Slice (top picture, left) in social media posts Somebody's friend might get mad, and they might have a knife, or a gun, and there's no doctors or nurses around. "I never wanted to seriously hurt anybody, but a backyard fight, you can't control it at all and the things that can happen after the fight are scary. "I never worried about getting in trouble - we'd both signed up for the same thing," he says. He was more than aware, however, of its unpredictable nature. Masvidal says he never had any concerns about the legalities around street fighting and mutual combat. There is no official law in Florida forbidding it, but it remains a grey area and participants could be charged with various crimes on a case-by-case basis. Mutual combat is when two people consensually engage in a fight while not hurting bystanders or damaging property. He was 18 when he took that fight with Ray, in 2004, and he beat him again in a rematch around a year later. Masvidal started competing in mutual combat street fights from the age of 14. That's when he asked if I'd like to fight in his backyard. "He'd already seen me working out and we built up a little bit of a connection after talking a couple of times. "Me and Kimbo, rest in peace, we used to train at the same gym," says Masvidal. Masvidal drove to the other side of Miami to face Ray that very same day. The call came from the late Kimbo Slice, a former MMA fighter and boxer who rose to popularity in 2003 by uploading his mutual combat street fights to YouTube. Masvidal was sat in a McDonalds drive-through when he got the phone call asking if he wanted to fight Ray. If I'd lost, I would have gone over to him, shook his hand and hugged him." "It was just fierce competition and two guys going at it. "There was never any animosity," Masvidal tells BBC Sport. He looks over towards the ponytailed Masvidal and demands for him to step inside the yard. The crowd bellows in excitement, the bout is quickly over. The fight gets started, and Ray soon clubs his opponent to the concrete ground with a huge right hand. He's six feet tall and weighs around 200 pounds. He's built up a fearsome reputation street fighting in this Florida city. There's an eager crowd gathered around two shirtless men about to engage in a mutual combat bare-knuckle fight.
The yard where he's standing is usually empty, but on this day it's brimming with people. The story of that transformation begins outside a sun-baked yard behind a laundrette in Miami, 16 years ago. Masvidal is now one of the biggest MMA stars in the world.Īnd yet, up until that night in Vegas his life and career had largely been defined by a very different type of fighting, in a vastly distant scene. It was a career-defining moment which has elevated the 35-year-old from Miami to the height of his sport.
More than 18,000 spectators erupted, united in an outpouring of deafening roars and expressions of shock.Īt five seconds, Jorge Masvidal had delivered the fastest knockout in UFC history. That sound was Masvidal's flying knee knocking Askren out, sending him falling to the canvas as stiff and motionless as a toppled statue. That all changed in seconds, as a brutal smacking sound ripped throughout the arena Only murmurs of conversation and the odd whistle of support for the two American fighters could be heard from fans watching at ringside.
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