Joaquin Buckley had nothing but good things to say about D.U.S.T commander Dale Brown, who was in his corner at UFC Vegas 48.
Middleweight fighter Joaquin Buckley drew some attention for his UFC Vegas 48 fight against Abdul Razak Alhassan on Saturday. That’s because the 27-year-old had a familiar face in his corner: D.U.S.T Commander Dale Brown.
If you’ve seen the videos online, Brown earned some notoriety for his self-defense tactics. “New Mansa,” however, claimed to be a believer right off the bat. During his recent appearance on The MMA Hour, Buckley revealed how this partnership came to be.
“We just started brainstorming, what if I put this man in my corner? What type of impact would that make? After that, history was made on Feb. 19,” he told Ariel Helwani.
“When everything started blowing up the way that it did, I reached out to him and was like, ‘Hey, would you be cool being in my corner?’ And he was like, ‘Yeah, I think we’ll pretty much blow up the internet,’ which we did. It went crazy.
“He was down from the get-go. Shout out to Dale Brown. He’s a cool dude, he gets a lot of negativity about the things that he’s doing but he’s legit in the self-defense and security game [for] like 26 years. He was a military paratrooper, he knows what he’s talking about. He’s been in the game for a minute.”
Buckley also revealed some of the advice Brown gave him.
“It was really just to get attention for the fight, but he did give me some good advice,” he said. “It was more mental, telling me I had more commitment than the fighter that is fighting me, that I put in more work, and that what he was trying to take away from [me] is [my] life.
“‘He doesn’t want to just take this win, he wants to take your life away from you. The way that you’re trying to build your future, he’s trying to remove that and re-write history. Forget all that. We worked too hard for all of that.’”
As he celebrates his first win with Brown in his corner, Buckley urges his fellow fighters to have themselves their very own D.U.S.T experience, firsthand.
“His gym is open for anyone that wants to come in,” Buckley said. “He doesn’t turn away anybody. There’s a lot of fighters talking about how they want to beat him up, they want to test these tactics. You all can go see him. Just go down there. Go to Detroit, you got to have that money, though. Can’t go in there for free.
“You can definitely use these [moves] on streets. Whatever it takes, whatever you got to do to get yourself out of a certain situation — eye gouge, elbows, joint manipulation — those things will work in an actual fight, definitely when you’re talking about someone who has never trained in combat.”
Buckley is now on a two-fight win streak as he improves to a record of 14-4.