The former Cage Warriors fighter’s journey started when his father enrolled him in kickboxing, but upon discovering MMA, he was hooked.
“Once I had my first day in MMA, that was it,” he said.
“That was me for the rest of my life, and now here we are over 10 years later and I’m a professional UFC fighter.”
That conviction was evident in a note Darby wrote in 2018 and shared on social media following his Contender Series victory.
It read: “One life, one chance, UFC or nothing.”
“Visualisation is very important, but you can’t sit in your bedroom looking in the mirror saying, ‘I’m the best of the best,’ and not training and backing it up,” he said.
“You have to set some goals and put the work in to get to where you want to be. I had to put the work in.”
But the Clongriffin fighter, who is currently on a seven-fight winning streak, encountered several setbacks in pursuit of his UFC dream.
He entered his second professional fight believing he was ‘the best guy in the world’, only to suffer a standing TKO defeat by Aslani.
“For a lot of people that might finish their career,” he said.
“But for me, that loss made me reflect, ‘where am I going to go from here?’
“You can’t let something like that set you back. Life’s going to hit you hard, but you have to be able to come back from it.”
A greater obstacle followed when Darby suffered serious hand and finger injuries before Cage Warriors 170 bout in March 2024, requiring multiple operations and 17 months away from competition.
“I snapped my finger in half, I broke my hand, I had to have multiple surgeries to get it back right,” Darby said.
“I was told, ‘You probably won’t fight again, you won’t be able to punch with that.’
“That was two and a half years ago, and here I am now.”
Leave a Reply