PAUL HUGHES started his professional MMA career with a bang when he was only 19 – but nearly lost it all with a whimper.
‘Big News’ made a splash with a first round knock-out of Adam Gustab at BAMMA 26 in his pro debut on February 2017.
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He was booked to face Patrick Wixted at BAMMA 30 in Dublin five months later but that fight was cancelled and it would be another two years before Hughes next stepped into the cage.
Four hand breaks in 12 months threatened to derail his fledgling career, with doctors warning the Northern Irishman that he may never fight again in 2018.
The 27-year-old told SunSport: “It was a crazy start to my professional career.
“I turned pro when I was 19. I had an opportunity to fight at the SSE Arena here in Belfast. It was a pro debut of dreams.
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“There was a 90-second knock-out. The clip went viral and did like 3,000,000 hits on social media. It was the perfect start to the career and then to have that hand injury immediately after that.
“It was a crazy time and a time I look back on now and still wonder how I got through it, to be honest. To be a young kid that his life is mixed martial arts and he has just turned professional.
“I was told by a few doctors and a few hand specialists to pack it in, especially after the 4th break. It was a case of this has happened four times total - three times in the same hand.
“You are not going to be able to withstand the force of punching people in the head.”
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Defying these warnings, Hughes was referred to a specialist hand surgeon by his physio Paul McCormack and the road to recovery began.
That road took Hughes two years to traverse, during which he returned to Australia, the country of his birth.
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And six years later, the former Cage Warriors featherweight champion is building towards his Bellator debut against Billy King at the 3Arena on June 22.
He added: “The first year of that would have been the recurring hand breaks, so I would have been in the gym - literally living in the gym.
“I would do two or three sessions a day with a cast on, doing my runs, doing all the one-handed boxing, one-handed sparring; all that fun stuff.
“After that, I got the surgery which would have been just over a year from my professional debut and I had to take a 10-month period of rehab for that.
“That is when I moved to Australia for the 10-to-12 months. I continued to rehab there and got a job.
“I worked in construction and lived that life of working full-time and then being in the gym as many hours as I could in the evening.”
“No one believed the dream back then. It was just me. My own dream, my own delusion that got me through that and it got me to where I am today.”
At the end of that hiatus, the Fight Academy Ireland trainee wasted little time amassing an 11-1 record, including eight stoppages.
The second of those eight came in a first round TKO of Stephen O’Neill in his return fight in March 2019.
He won four of his next five – the only defeat being by split decision against Jordan Vucenic at Cage Warriors 119 in December 2020.
In October 2021, he won the vacant Cage Warriors Featherweight Championship beating Morgan Charriers by majority decision at Cage Warriors 128 in London.
At 24, he unified the division with a revenge victory over Vucenic in November 2022, just four years after being told his career could be over.
He declared: “This is one of the most difficult games in the world. If it was easy, everybody would be doing it.
“There's a reason there are very few people that get to the top of this game. It’s because of the adversity that you come through.
"You have got to stay in the fight and you've got to find a way to conquer that and create the framework to conquer these adversities.
“That was the thing that drove me through the hand injuries, was that deep, deep core belief that you can be a world champion someday.
“No one believed the dream back then. It was just me. My own dream, my own delusion that got me through that and it got me to where I am today.”
DERRY TO DREAM
The Derryman moved up to lightweight and stopped Jan Quaeyhaegens and Fabiano Silva in his final two bouts with Cage Warriors, the latter in Dublin on April 6.
After entering free agency, he considered offers from the PFL, UFC and others, ultimately signing on the dotted line with the former.
He insisted: “It was a really easy decision, to be honest. They had a fantastic offer for me and I really like what they are doing. That is why I signed.
“They are going to keep me active and I’m in that 2025 million dollar tournament, which is the main driving force behind why I signed. so that is an incredible opportunity for a young man like myself to make some money in this game and keep pushing on.
“I had offers from everywhere. All the major organizations you can think of.
“I received an offer from the PFL about six months ago, so I have had a long time to think before I tested free agency after I completed my Cage Warriors contract.
“It was a well thought out decision. I absolutely did my research and, honestly, as time has gone on, I have been even more convinced of my decision.”
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He will make his debut under the PFL banner next month when he faces Billy King in the co-main event of the Bellator Champions Series in Dublin on June 22.
In the medium-to-long term, Hughes wants to end 2024 with four fights under his belt before the PFL Million Dollar Tournament next year.
In the short term, he is targeting a third first round stoppage on the bounce while prepared to go the distance.
“I’m coming for another first round KO I'm coming for three in-a-row.
“That's what I'm always coming for, but I’m also prepared to do three rounds of absolute war or five rounds of absolute war if needs be.
“As long as it's entertaining, which it always is with me. That is important to me because I want to put on a show for the fans every time and I think I've done a good job of that so far.”
