Former UFC Middleweight title challenger David Loiseau will headline Tachi Palace Fights 8 on Friday night when he challenges Leopoldo Serao for the TPF MW title. The card will also feature TPF flyweight champ Ulysses Gomez defending his title against Darrell Montague and the man many consider the uncrowned best flyweight in the world, Jussier da Silva against WEC veteran Ian McCall.
The event will be streamed for free on MMA Junkie at 8pm ET on Friday.
But there’s another fighter on the card who’s getting attention: Five foot tall featherweight Tyler Freeland will be making his pro debut.
It’s not every 0-0 fighter who gets a feature article in MMA Junkie, but Freeland has an interesting story to tell:
Freeland was there with his girlfriend, a friend and the friend’s girlfriend. The 5-foot-tall fighter who is preparing to make his professional mixed-martial-arts debut was drinking and having a good time. The visitors had continued comments.
“They kept antagonizing me,” Freeland said. “One pushed me and said, ‘Hey, midget.'”
Not good.
“There was a pool stick next to me,” he said. “I’m hot-headed, so I took this pool stick, and I busted it over the guy’s head. [Freeland’s friend] was beating the other guy, and when the guy I hit got up, he had a big gash on his face.”
Freeland is also a state high school wrestling champ with a one punch KO on his amateur MMA resume and an overall record of 15-6. (video in full entry). He’s now training full-time in Las Vegas with Sean Tompkins too.
He talked to Pro MMA Now also:
Having been born with hypochondroplasia, a form of dwarfism, Freeland stands at just five feet tall. But talking to him, you can tell he certainly doesn’t want any preferential treatment and doesn’t let that hold him back in the cage or in training.
“Everybody’s going to have a reach advantage on me because of my height and the length of my arms,” he told ProMMAnow.com. “I usually like to wait for [my opponent] to start throwing his punches and counter off of that. But I work on forcing my way in, also. This camp I’ve been working a lot on combinations to the body that I’ve never used before.”
Freeland will be seeking to avenge a submission loss to opponent Diego Melendez on Friday.
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