Nickal revealed that he took his first fight after four weeks of MMA training, and signed onto Dana White’s Contender Series with less than a year of experience.
UFC welterweight prospect Bo Nickal has been speedrunning through the early stages of his mixed martial arts career. The three-time NCAA Division 1 champion was scouted onto Dana White’s Contender Series in 2022 for his second pro fight. Two fast wins later, and he graduated into the UFC.
He’s since gone 2-0 with the promotion, and is now set to face Cody Brundage at UFC 300. As if his success in the sport hasn’t been impressive enough, Nickal just revealed that he’d been training MMA for less than a year when he signed up for the Contender Series.
“It’s been so interesting, my journey,” he said on a recent episode of The Joe Rogan Experience. “I feel like I always try to look for people to compare and see how they did things, and maybe take the positives and negatives and apply those to what I’m doing. But there really hasn’t been that many people that have done what what I’ve done. I’m 5-0 right now. I started training in August of 2021 MMA.”
Wrestling is one of the best bases for mixed martial arts, but few collegiate cross-overs have arrived with the deadly level of striking Nickal has displayed. He’s already won three fights via first round KO/TKO.
“I started training, and four weeks later I was like ‘Yo, I’m freaking, let’s get a fight,’ Nickal said. “So I took an amateur fight against some poor dude that didn’t know what he was doing. He was 0-0 or 1-0, amateur. I was 0-0, and he took the flight. A lot of people had a lot of question marks [about me]. People were like, ‘Alright, I don’t know, let’s see what’s up.’”
“I choked the guy out, and was like, ‘Let’s go again.’ Four weeks later, I fought my second amateur fight, knocked the dude out cold. I had trained another six months, seven months, and was like let’s do a pro debut. And that was in June of 2022. So I’m coming out against another poor guy who thought he was gonna knock me out or something. And I knock him out in 30 seconds on UFC Fight Pass. It did, like, the most views in UFC Fight Pass history, more than any other promotion. It was something like three or four million views in the week.”
“My initial plan, before any of this happened, was I’m gonna get ten fights on the regional scene, and then I’m gonna go UFC,” he continued. “Be the champ by like thirteen, fourteen fights. That’s what the plan was. But after that it was like everybody kinda knows what’s up, everybody’s trying to sign me. I talked with my manager and I said ‘Dude, am I even gonna be able to get a fight? Who’s gonna fight me in these regional promotions?”
“He’s like, ‘I’ll be honest with you. Nobody’s gonna fight you.’ And I’m like okay then, in my mind, I was always going to UFC. These other organizations, I think they they do a good job and stuff, but that’s not really me. I’m a UFC guy.”
Thus far the lack of experience in the cage hasn’t been an issue for Nickal. Despite his clear skill, the UFC isn’t rushing him into bouts against ranked fighters just yet. Cody Brundage is a tough guy on a two fight win streak, but prior to that he went 0-3 against middle of the pack opposition.
We expect the betting line on this one to be heavily in Bo’s favor. Any juice fans want to squeeze out of Nickal may have to come on whether he pulls off a sixth first round stoppage in a row.