MMA
Sam Bruce, Deputy Editor, espn.com.au 6y

Australia's Jim Crute ready to rise through UFC light heavyweight division

MMA, UFC

As the latest rising star in a burgeoning crop of Australian MMA fighters, Jim Crute has a simple message for those who lie ahead in the light heavyweight division: wanna brawl?

The boy from Bendigo has a streak of comedic antagonism, but he's deadly serious about scaling the lofty heights and global stages of the UFC having earned his contract late last month. Fighting as part of Dana White's Tuesday Night Contender Series, Crute was the recipient of one of three UFC contracts following his victory over American Chris Birchler.

At just 22, Crute's UFC career is certainly at its outset. But the Victorian is a seasoned combat-sport campaigner for whom Australian Rules football, the state obsession, was never going to take hold.

"I've been doing martial arts since I was a kid, I started karate when I was about four or five [years old] and I just moved on to judo when I was about eight," Crute tells ESPN. "And then I eventually got around to joining a jiu-jitsu club that my old man was mates with the coach of.

"When I started jiu-jitsu, I heard a few of the boys talking about UFC in the changeroom and when I went home and 'YouTubed' it I fell in love with it. When I was 12 years old the first time I saw UFC, it was that moment that I decided that's what I wanted to do.

"I played one game of footy when I was a kid and they said 'go tackle' because that's all I was good at. And I ended up clotheslining someone and I got sent off, and that was it. I wanted to play rugby [league], rugby's my second favourite sport outside of combat sports. But I had to make a decision of what I wanted to do and I wasn't really good at rugby, I could just tackle hard. So I chose fighting."

Crute continues to train in Bendigo, the comfort and familiarity of the town where he grew up providing the best atmosphere in which to hone his UFC craft. A move to join renowned MMA coach Sam Greco, however, has helped fire him to the next level.

"I still train in Bendigo to this day; I go down [to Melbourne] every weekend to see my jiu-jitsu coach [Stuart Moulden], I've been with him for about 10 years," Crute tells ESPN. "I started at kickboxing school in Bendigo and they were really good. They got me a plan but we wanted the best, not just the best in Australia, but the best in the world. So when the opportunity to train with Sam came up I was all over it because I'd been a massive fan of Sam Greco's for years before I met him. When my jiu-jitsu coach said 'we've got a contact for Sam, we want to get you down there to train with him', I was all over that."

At 19 years of age, it was time for Crute to take the next step in his development and enter the cage, professionally, for the first time. But rather than find an opponent with a similar lack of experience, he came up against veteran Ben Kelleher.

Describing himself as the 10-1 underdog, Crute finished the fight with a first-round submission to begin his professional career in the best possible fashion.

"I just went in there with the attitude to fight: win, lose or draw, I was going to fight," Crute says. "I ended up putting him away in the first with a submission and that's how I kicked off my career; I got thrown in the deep-end but I came up swimming.

"I've never really put too much emphasis on results, I just wanted to fight. So win, lose or draw for me, it was always just 'I'm going to do this, I don't care.' But that was a very special moment, it reassured me that I was on the right path, if that makes sense."

Six fights later, with an unbeaten record, Crute received word the Contender Series had sounded out his management. There was one more fight to negotiate beforehand, though, the five-round slugfest against Doo Hwan Kim almost the perfect treatment for the three-round bout he'd face on the Contender.

True to his word, his fight with Chris Birchler exploded.

"It was a pretty wild fight actually, it was a bit of a brawl," Crute tells ESPN. "I was hitting him more than he was hitting me, but I was getting hit a little bit more than what I would have liked. It was about three minutes in when I heard Sam scream, 'throw your punches off your chin and move your head'. And as soon as I started doing that, I touched him at will.

"Chris Birchler is really tough guy, he's such a good fighter; people don't give him the credit he deserves but he'd improved a lot since his last fights. But it was really cool because I pulled off the combination we'd been working on at training and got the win with it, so it was a good moment."

Crute's immediate goal is to secure a spot on the UFC Fight Night Adelaide card for December, giving him the chance to make his UFC debut proper in front of a passionate Australian audience. He's happy to fight anyone, too.

While it continues to grow in Australia, the sport of Mixed Martial Arts isn't without its detractors; Conor McGregor's recently-announced return to the Octagon drawing plenty of criticism. The Irishman clearly remains the sport's biggest name, but his antics ahead of UFC 223 in Brooklyn in April, and subsequent arrest, plunged the sport back into the exact environment they want to avoid.

Australia's contingent of fighters, headed by the likes of middleweight world champion Robert Whittaker, rising heavyweight Tai Tuivasa and Alex Volkanovski, are doing their best to improve the sport's image.

"It was a tough road for MMA to really go mainstream in Australia, and we've still got a long way to go," Crute says. "But Aussies love competition and they love tough sports, and you don't get any tougher and you don't get any more competitive that in MMA.

"I think what's important, though, is us guys on the front line, we need to set an example and keep promoting the sport in a positive way."

Inside the Octagon it's a different story however, Jim "The Brute" Crute just wants to throw down.

"If you're in the light heavyweight division, I want to fight you."

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