“Bing, bang, bosh,” was how Mario Pinto described his knockout of Austen Lane, standing in the Octagon after a successful UFC debut. It was a playful description, given he had nearly decapitated Lane with a blistering right hook, set up by a teasing left.
Still, that playfulness belied Pinto’s disappointment. One round earlier, in the opening frame, the Portuguese-Briton was dropped by Lane and had to scramble to his feet in a brief, desperate moment. “I was just like: ‘Let me feel what he has,’” the 27-year-old tells The Independent. “I’ve learnt that, at this level, you need to be first. I feel like by waiting, I gave him the confidence to attack. It was a hard lesson, but it was worth learning.
“Obviously the knockdown wasn’t great, but I wasn’t buzzed, because I saw the shot coming. And I’ve been hurt before, so I was like: ‘Stay switched on; until the referee waves it off, it’s not over.’ I looked at my coach, he said: ‘What the f*** are you doing?!’ I looked at him like, ‘I know, I know, I f***ed up…’”
Yet Stuart Austin, Pinto’s coach, gave a shrewd pep talk between rounds, ensuring a nightmarish intro to the UFC was avoided – and a dream debut was ensured.
Austin alluded to some nerves in Pinto. “It’s not my facial expressions, he could tell by the way I was fighting,” Pinto explains. “He said: ‘You’re hesitating because you’re doubting yourself. Sometimes you’ve just got to go.’ And if you lose… it’s not nice, but at the end of the day, I’ve got my family and people who care about me. The smart thing was… [during the round] he was shouting, but [between rounds] he calmed me down.”
Forty seconds later, Pinto produced the knockout shot, winging a right hook around Lane’s jab to send the American lolloping sickeningly to the canvas.
“It’s weird, the way he went down was like slow-mo,” Pinto recalls. “I see his head snap, he falls, and I’m going towards him but I can hear [referee] Mark Smith: ‘Stop, stop, stop!’ I pulled the extra punch – I punched the mat. Sometimes those punches are unnecessary, but you have to consider the human element: You almost become neanderthal, because someone’s trying to kill you.”
There was also something primal about Pinto’s post-fight roar, yet it was one of frustration, not elation.
“I wasn’t shouting because I won, I was shouting because I was upset at my performance,” Pinto admits, despite having secured a $50,000 bonus with his KO. Still, people will remember Lane dropping to the mat – not Pinto, who moved to 10-0, having acquired a UFC contract on Dana White’s Contender Series in October.
And for any qualms Pinto might have about his performance, the right man won, as tends to happen in what he deems a “fair” sport.
It is an interesting view, given many would deem MMA unfair – or at least unforgiving. But Pinto has held this view since he first fell in love with MMA by watching Strikeforce as a teenager.
“This is a blood sport… but it’s fair,” he says. “There are different variables – injuries, illness – but in the fight, there’s no one to blame. It’s not like team sports. It doesn’t matter if you’re doing well until the final minute; if you lose, you lose. You have to take ownership, and the cost of losing is so high. It could cost your life, half your pay, you have to deal with the public…”
Nick Diaz, a UFC and Strikeforce legend, once noted: “In order to love fighting, I gotta hate it. You gotta love it so bad that you push yourself to where you simply hate it.” And Pinto’s first time training, as a 14-year-old? “I hated it,” he deadpans. “It’s not that I wanted special treatment, but I didn’t feel recognised. I felt like the coach had a chip on his shoulder.”
Now Pinto’s talent is being recognised, and in an interesting turn, he is also a coach at Fightzone London, Fight City Gym and Canary Wharf Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. Members at the latter tell The Independent of Pinto’s genuine interest in their progression, showing the 27-year-old’s keenness to connect with students in a way that his first MMA coach didn’t.
Key to that connection is not only Pinto’s articulation, but his generally measured demeanour. “A lot of people think MMA fighters are meatheads or bullies,” he says. “Probably at 17, I felt I wanted to make a career out of MMA, but I still went to uni,” where he obtained a degree in Sport and Exercise Science, while he also worked as a bouncer and a security guard at a charity.
“I’m proud of myself. Me and my sister are the first two in our family to get degrees,” Pinto says, hinting that they did it, in part, for his parents – who were born in Guinea-Bissau but moved to Portugal, where Pinto was born before moving to Britain.
“And growing up,” Pinto continues, “I was fortunate to see the mistakes fighters make: bad investments, the scary thing of not knowing what to do after retiring. Some almost call it a ‘half-life’: ‘I’m gonna go all out, regardless of the repercussions.’ But I want to be a pundit or analyst, provided I don’t take too much damage.”
That may await at the end of Pinto’s fighting career, but he is still at the very beginning. And right now, his opponents are the ones who need to worry about taking damage. Bing, bang, bosh.
