Nickal swears he’s a future champ and P4P great. But for now he’s happy taking things step by step, and the next step is beating Brundage.
Bo Nickal may be a three-time NCAA Division I wrestling champion, but he’s still extremely green when it comes to his new career in the UFC. Nickal only started training MMA in August 2021. Now he’s set to compete on the pay-per-view portion of UFC 300 above many former champions.
In a new interview with ESPN, Nickal discussed what it’s been like to jump into the UFC so soon, and how he sees his development as a fighter going after nearly a year away from fighting in the Octagon.
“It would have been nice to have ten or twelve fights before even getting to the big show, but that just wasn’t the reality,” he said. “And now being in the UFC, it’s one of those things where I’m learning on the fly and trying to get experience as I can. So part of that is actual fights, but a big part of it is just training and improving and understanding MMA, right?”
“I feel competition ready because I’ve competed my whole life in front of big crowds, but there’s still that aspect of learning the sport of MMA, and that’s what I feel like I’ve been diving into at this point, despite being where I’m at in the UFC.”
Nickal is set to fight Cody Brundage at UFC 300. It’s not the sexiest match-up — Brundage is 2-3 over his last five and sticks out like a sore thumb on a card stacked with hot prospects and living legends. But Bo seems happy to continue taking things step by step.
“When I think of competition level, I think it makes sense, given where I’m at,” he said.
“Every fight that I have is a step up in competition. This would be my sixth professional fight, and I think every single time I’ve fought, it’s been a guy that’s been a little bit better, which to me is appropriate. My goals are to be UFC champion and pound-for-pound No. 1 guy in the world. And so this is a part of that journey, a part of that experience.”
After five first round wins (four of them hovering around or under the one minute mark), it’s clear Nickal is extremely good. But he knows there’s still a long way to go before he taps his potential in this new sport.
“In this game, there’s always things to improve on, there’s always things to get better at,” Nickal said. “It’s very similar to wrestling in that way. I wrestled for 20+ years, and now when watch film of myself competing in college, I’m like ‘Man, I was so bad.’ I was, like, just not that good. And at the end, I was the No. 1 pound for pound guy in college wrestling.”
“So I think for me now, of course, that’s a goal of mine. But I would say the bigger overarching goal is just to continue improving and developing and just getting better. And I love the sport, and I feel like my love and appreciation is growing every day in the training room and also when I get to come out here for flight week and just experience this.”