When the call eventually came for his Octagon debut, there was genuine excitement that the matchmakers had given him such a notable name and tough opponent for his first fight.
“I was sitting in my house, then Joanna (Jedrzejczyk) calls me, ‘We got the fight. It’s Patchy,’ and I’m like, ‘Yeah, let’s go!’” he remembered.
“It wasn’t anything big for me, because if I wasn’t sure that I belonged here, I wouldn’t do it. But I do belong here. I want to be a champion here, so it’s my place, and I’m not afraid about hard tests.”
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MMA fans not well versed in the European scene may not have encoutered Wiklacz’s name prior to his Octagon debut last year, but the 29-year-old is a seasoned veteran of 22 pro fights, many of which took place for Polish powerhouse promotion KSW, where he won the promotion’s bantamweight title and defended it on three consecutive occasions before relinquishing the belt to join the UFC.
His time competing for his nation’s biggest MMA organization has helped sharpen his skills as a fighter, while also giving him an early taste of big-arena fights. It’s experience he plans to use to take himself as high as possible up the UFC’s bantamweight ladder.
“For sure, it built me up as a fighter, complete fighter,” he said.
“And for sure, it helped mentally, because I had a lot of fights which were five (minutes) for five (rounds). So that’s a big difference, and the events were also small, and the biggest ones, so I’m prepared for everything, and it gave me this really, really precious experience.”
