At 18, Jenkins was young enough to dream and old enough to know better when it came to fighting for a living. But he didn’t care about the sacrifices; he was all-in.
“If it has anything to do with face punching, I’m in it,” he laughs. “I love any type of face punching.”
He’s not kidding. Whether mixed martial arts, boxing, or kickboxing, the Iowa native has competed in it to the tune of nearly 80 fights. That’s a lot of face punching.
“I feel like a young dinosaur,” said Jenkins. “This will be my 79th fight between amateur, pro, boxing, pro kickboxing. There’s not a lot I haven’t seen yet. I’ve only fought a couple black belts, but I’ve seen most of it, to be honest.”
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And all along, Jenkins has had his dad in his mind as the initial reason for all of this.
“I was always trying to live up to my dad’s toughness,” he said. “He raised five of us kids by himself for years. He was a single dad working three jobs, so I was always like, ‘What would my dad do?’ He’s a tough SOB, so I’m gonna try to be as good as he is.”
Jenkins has earned his stripes, not just as a tough guy, but as a legit member of the UFC roster, which puts him among the best 155-pound fighters in the world. That doesn’t mean it’s been an easy road. Far from it, but he never stopped pushing from the time he first put on the gloves and battled through an amateur career that was longer than most.
“I wasn’t that great,” he said when asked why he put in 31 fights on the amateur circuit. “I was one of those gym hoppers. I went from dojo to dojo, and you go to too many places you spread yourself kind of thin. So until I went to a real gym at American Top Team, I wasn’t really ready to go to that next level. I was just fighting twice a month all over Florida.”
Understood, but if you’re not that good, wouldn’t it be better to get paid to fight than to be not that good for free?
