Born in San Francisco and raised in Sacramento, Duffy watched MMA flourish in the area for most of his life. Faber and Jens Pulver headlined the ARCO a year after Anderson Silva main evented UFC 73 in the same building, and Strikeforce couldn’t seem to resist the Bay. The top-tier promotional companies were stopping by regularly, and regional promotions in NorCal were chock-full of tomorrow’s who’s who while Duffy sat back thinking it would never end.
More recently, Sacramento is still very well known for producing talent, but the area just hasn’t felt the same to Duffy.
“Growing up it used to be amazing,” Duffy said. “They had all of the West Coast fights, they had huge shows at Gladiator Challenge. It was really high level; they had a bunch of high-level King of the Cage fights, but it seems like the past four years there hasn’t been much. When West Coast got shut down and TKO got shut down there’s been not a lot going on. It’s cool to see Urijah kind of take initiative.”
The same man who put Northern California MMA on his back has continued to reinvest in the sport, as well as the area, and fighters like Duffy are reaping the rewards. First, he was the coach; now, he’s the boss.
“I came to Alpha Male about four or five years ago,” Duffy explained. “At the start of the pandemic, though, I moved out to Hawaii to live with my brother for two years out in the jungles of Hawaii. I just came back about ten months ago and started training again.”
Training at Faber’s gym may have made for easy exposure for Urijah and the A1 Combat matchmaking team, but will home cooking cause a potential win to be brought into question by opponents and haters?
It might, but Duffy laughs at the possibility.
“I would run through anybody they put in front of me,” Duffy explained. “This guy has been training at Greg Jackson’s gym for the past ten years so he’s no joke. It wouldn’t matter, though. It wouldn’t matter if they put Deiveson Figueiredo in there that night. I’d put him to sleep.”
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