Taylor Heffernan interview

Ringkasan

Taylor is an amateur fighter from MMA Cork and BMA Cork and has a 2-2 record He comes in from kickboxing of 14 years and made the crossover to MMA two years ago. He competes for the lightweight belt in the tournament next weekend We speak about his journey into MMA And then his…

Transkrip (youtube_captions)

Perfect, man. >> Okay, I'm delighted to have with me. This is an interview that has supposed to happen for a long, long time. For whatever reason, mostly my issues, it hasn't happened. I wanted to talk to Taylor. Taylor Hefman. He's from MMA Cork and BMA in Cork as well. So, he's got two gyms. He's a longtime kickboxing. He's moved over to MMA, made quite a splash. Um, he's going to be fighting the lightweight tournament. I first came across him at Elite and he had this aura about him. I wanted to get to know more and and you can even just talking to him you can kind of get it as well. Thank you so much for joining me. How are you today? >> I'm good Dave. I'm good. Thanks for having me. >> And uh we're just uh it depends on when this gets released. So just for context for people this is on Saturday the week before. So we're seven days out. How are you feeling about the tournament next week? >> Brilliant. Phenomenal. Cliche as it sounds. Best camp in my life of my life. Best shape I've been in. I'm more than ready. I was ready from from the second we accepted this tournament, but now had a good run in for it. Can't wait. >> Yeah, it was like said we were talking earlier. As soon as the post went up, your coach, your father came straight in. It was like boom straight away and then I went right the names down. You've got obviously the kickboxing background. So, do you think you're going to come into this with an advantage? Because you don't see many tournaments in MMA where it's in kickboxing and K1 and everything that you do tournaments all the time. Do you think you will have an advantage over the fighters because of that? >> Absolutely. I think I'll have a huge advantage in the fact of like the amount of competition experience I have. Like fact of the matter is I have more fight experience than most pro veterans ever get in their career. I have 14 years of competition at the highest level. All of them are tournaments, over 500 kickboxing fights and all of those are like two fights in a day. This is light work. No problem. Two fights in a day in a kickboxing tournament is a handy day. I've had 10 fights in days against the world and European top 10 ranked fighters, highlevel fights, 10 in a day and now you're just saying I have two. This is no problem. I can't wait. It's good. You don't really see that the tournaments happen that much. So when when we decided or when we when Arnold decided to do it and we were looking for people uh we want to we want to kind of use it to make the next kind of superstar. Like I said, you've got that aura. There's Nathan that's in there as well. And obviously Dale is still in there. Nathan comes from FI, so he's kind of the next generation coming out. Do you feel uh that if you won this that it could really obviously people do know you, but do you think it could really launch it into the lightweight rankings and and get you out there if you were to be successful on the night? >> I think so. I think so. Like look, I'm the best lightweight in the country and I have no problem saying that. I've said it for ages. me and everyone on my team knows exactly where I am and what I am right now. And this is a perfect opportunity for me to go out and showcase it. Whether it's two people I'm fighting, four people I'm fighting, bring every lightweight in the country in. I'd love to show them all up. No problem. This is like it's really nice the stage that you're giving us to do this and you're giving me because quite frankly it doesn't matter who else is in it. I'm going to go out and show it on the best lightweight in the country and this is just to put a stamp on it. No one else is doing two fights in a day. Like I'm sure you even saw it in the matchmaking. How many people would actually reach out? As soon as you kind of filter out who the real fighters are, you find there's not that many in the country. Like who's actually willing to go out of their comfort zone for something like this. No problem. No problem. The best lightweight in the country should be able to do that. And I can't wait to prove it next week. >> Yeah. I I remember I actually remember that speech at the end of Elite. You were like, I'm the best lightweight. I'm here to show everyone. And that's one of the other things that kind of got me intrigued in into but with obviously you've talked about the kickbox experience. What made you kind of to transfer over to MMA? What like sparked your interest and why MMA Coke? Obviously we know it's a fantastic gym but there's a couple of gyms. Why why that one in particular? Look, this started started 14 years ago in all honesty. Like from the second I stepped foot in a kickboxing gym, I set the very clear goal. I want to be the best to ever do this. And I knew the best place to go and prove that you're the best fighter in the world is MMA. So the plan was always to go to MMA. Always. It was just a matter of time before I eventually crossed over. And now this is the first year where things get really interesting cuz now I'm fully in MMA. You know, I put kickboxing to the side. Now this is my pure focus. This is what my long-term career is going to be. And like now it's all systems go towards this. So, it's very very exciting as to what's coming in the future. >> Yeah. And MMA Cork, what a gym. Obviously, Brian Manning, you see what he's doing. He is a he's a he is absolutely mental. Um and then you've got like the gym, they had a clean sweep there at Vertus as well. Uh what's it like being a part of that gym? >> Brilliant, man. The guys are very welcoming from day one. Now, we have a relationship, me, my dad, and also my jiu-jitsu coach, Kieran Bran, down at D45. Like, I train between the three gyms. And just the team of specialists that I have, man, I'm really, really lucky to have. Everyone just has my best interests from Aaron to Ed, my dad, to Kieran. Like, everyone's on the same page. And that's something that like I know from traveling the world, training, and going around, it's very rare. Like you don't even see that at the highest level pro gyms, let alone we're all in the same county. Like it's just the odds of that happening are insane. You have three people that are so good at what they do that are all like able to collaborate and work together through doing this. But to go back to the gym, like it's brilliant, man. It's brilliant. You look at the room like there's a there's a big argument I would say from next week that it's the best amateur room in the country. Like look at the people I'm sparring. I'm sparring like welterweight champions. I'm sparring featherweight champions, former bantamweight, super bantamweight champions. Like top guys in the country, all of us. And we're all there to work together to get each other better. It's just it's an iron sharpens iron scenario, you know. And then that to the highest kick level kickboxers in the country that I'm sparring with still to stay sharp to the boxers that I'm working with all the time to then jiu-jitsu specialists things that you you don't get that sharp in just MMA that I'm working with those people down in T45. Like the team is tremendous and I'm absolutely blessed to be able to work with them every day. >> Yeah, I like what you're doing as well. There's very few fighters that do that. I know Max Li is one of the people who does he goes to like Dublin Combat Academy for striking obviously he's got his home gym and then he goes other places for jiu-jitsu as well and I think that could be a path that people could follow as well like yourself obviously you've just done that off the back you want these specialists in your corner cuz you said this is your career you want to be the best um like you started off really well you you've came off the back of two losses as well and then you're coming into this tournament how does it feel coming like when you started so high and then what was the emotions kind of like going from high to low or is that just something you're used to dealing with mentally as a fighter through two to 14 years in kickboxing? >> Look, I've had plenty of losses throughout 14 years, you know, but like even if you break down those fights, those MMA fights how they've went. So, I had the two to start off at two finishes. My third fight I had a very poor performance. Hands up. It wasn't me. That's not who I am. That's not who I am today. That's not who I should have been. It was a poor performance. I had enough to beat him back then and I'd absolutely smoke anybody of that level now. I've changed dramatically since. After that, I had a fight at the Bank Raw. I headlined the Bankto Brawl over in Bank MMA where I fought a 5-0 80cc gold medalist, probably the best guy I fought so far. I knocked him out in the first round. Then two weeks later, I came back home to court and just about everyone in the room thought I won that fight, too. So, yeah, I'm three and two on my record, but really, it's 4 and one if you ask me. No excuses. Things happen in kickboxing. It's happened loads of times, you know. I hope it'll be the last time, but you can never guess those kind of things. The ups and downs of it, I'm used to that. I coach kids through that every week. You lose a spar, you win a spar, you know, you lose a competition, you look great the next competition. The most important thing is I'm working harder, smarter, and more consistently than anyone else, amateur or pro, I'm putting in more hours in the gym. I'm doing better things. I'm really fine-tuning things in a way that nobody else is. And now, this year in particular, now that MMA is my only focus, all those things are going to come to fruition. And the performances that are going to come this year are going to cement me as by far the best lightweight in the country and next year I'll be one of the hottest professional prospects in Europe. >> Yeah, I I really like that answer and you answered it with so calmness and coldness as well. So, it's so easy to believe that like you've been through. Is there any advice you would give to an amateur fighter that like that if they start off well and they have a loss because a lot of people do take losses very hard and it's very easy for me space especially cuz I haven't thought like Joe if you won you wouldn't be celebrating for two or three weeks you'd be back in the gym Monday or Tuesday. Would you say it should be the same as if you lose you have 24 hours to kind of get it out of your system and then kind of move on or is there more to it than that? I'm going to be careful in how I answer this because I'm a bit of a maniac. So, I'm my own worst critic. So, I don't know what I, you know, sometimes I have to tone things down a bit when I'm coaching the kids as to like tell them the right answer as opposed to what I tell myself. But for me personally, even when I win, if if I get hit in the fight, I'm raging. The next day, if I have a mark, if I have a Velcro burn on my face, I'm snapping because they got close to hitting me. That's too close. like things like that. So even in wins are very critical. In a loss, these are all tests. Fights are tests. Every fight's a test. You see what you got wrong, you go back, you fix it. Like if people site get things wrong, that's a different story. But if you've done everything that you can, there you go. Build on it. But if there's clear things to be addressed, that's your job to address them. And if you don't address them, you deserve to lose. I have addressed everything every week in every positional round I've lost inspiring. Like I'm that hard on myself. So maybe don't go to that extreme anyone watching. But definitely there's there's got to be a level of self honesty that comes into things. >> I love that. I love the self-awareness, the self honesty, the humility as well. There's one thing that you said that was very interesting. When you win, you also look at those. the velcro burn and snapping is going to be a saying I'm going to insert somewhere in my life cuz I just love that. But um when you win, you look at kind of the the performance as well. Do you think sometimes fighters when they win, they overlook looking back on that fight to improve because they've won the fight? >> Yeah, I think so. I think and it happens an awful lot in MMA more. That's a habit that I developed from the highest level of kickboxing. When you've competed at the highest level of something, the margins for error are so small that if you win a fight, just cuz you got your hand raised at the end, you might have made mistakes along the way. And highlevel competitors, people that are specialists in their craft are going to pick up on those mistakes and exploit them. So when I win, just because like I've had knockouts, I don't chase knockouts, but they happen, right? I still look at what happened before that shot. How was that shot set up? What did I do for that shot? Okay, how can I avoid there being a pattern? There's no pattern to any of them. There's a different setup every time. And that's working in the lab with my dad. He's a genius at designing these type of things. But like you have to be hard on yourself in order to keep growing, to keep evolving as a fighter. And that I feel is something that really sets me apart because I can adapt very very quickly. Like from fight to fight, from week to week, I can be a dramatically different fighter. And that's what's going to set me apart from everybody else. >> Yeah. No, I love that. And I think that comes into facets in in personal as well. If if I find myself, whether it be work or even doing this, I'm like, "Oh,  that's not good. That's not." And I always And people like, "You're too hard on yourself." I said if I wasn't I just coast and I would be still back where I was eight four years ago when I started and I would have never evolved and I would have never done the Jon sort and I think people need to look inside and you're like there's a lot of self-awareness and a lot about you that I really like that I'm really getting from this interview so uh I'm looking forward to the fight but in terms of or the fight in terms of the tournament obviously you know the competitors in there how do you feel you match up against them >> in the kindest words possible I think I absolutely kill all of them. At the moment, there's three, me and two others. I'm going to say this now. If you wanted to see a fair fight, you should have put me in against the two of them at the same time. But, you know, there are rules. We have to stick to them. So, what do I think about it? I think one fella's already ran away from me last August. So, I'd like to get him first. I don't want the bite. Somebody has to get a bite to the final. I tell you now, I don't want it. I want to be undeniable. When I win that belt and raise that belt over my shoulders, I want everyone to know that's the best lightweight in the country. And you do that by taking out everybody. Not by hoping for a buy and oh, maybe he's compromised and oh, I might have an easier fight. No, I want everybody. And I want them at full strength. That's why I want Mulligan first. I don't want them in the final. Give the homeboy the final. He deserves it. He's up in his He's up in his own crowd. Most of the people are there for him. He's local. Give him the bite. I'll smoke him in the final. But first, give me the guy that ran away from me cuz I don't want to give him any chance to see me fight first, get scared, and run like he did in August. So, I want him and then I want the final. And when I'm done, I'll be undeniable. So basically now I'll just go back talk to I'll say you're not getting the buy then because we were going to do an automatic kind of draw sort of a thing but look if you're putting your hand up uh we'll see like I said it's something that you've been accustomed to for years. Um Nathan Mulligan someone who's been on my radar as well. Obviously you were supposed to fight him and that fell apart. So you're you're really looking to get Nate. You'd like to have him in the in the first uh first draw, let's say. >> Yeah. Look, it's more that he's the person that's in the draw. If I had a vengeance for all the people that have pulled out, I'd have about 80 venances since last August. We've had countless pull outs. I've been cursed with them since coming back from Thailand for my training camps last year. So, it's it's not so much, oh, I have to get him because he's not important. What matters here is me proving I'm the best lightweight in the country and then I'm going to go on to do phenomenal things for the rest of the year and the rest of next year and so on. But he's in the bracket and people seem to like him based on comments and votes. And I really like proving people wrong. So why not upset some people, take him out and then we'll see if they like me by the end of the night. Well, all that matters if if you are raising the title, all that matters is you will have that title at the end of the night and it'll be there. Like I said, I think it's a really good platform to create the next kind of lightweight because we're in a position where you look at Sam Simon and a couple of these guys are going Damian McKenna have all kind of gone pro and you're kind of the next emerging kind of generation of of lightweights and you want to stay top of that. You talked about a lot of pull outs. How frustrating is that for you to have so many fights lined up and then they fall like that? It's very frustrating. I won't lie, it's been very frustrating. But the more them to pull that pull out, like the more screwed the next person is, I've had so many of these that I've just gotten so much better. I just haven't gotten as many opportunities to show it. That's the main reason I'm annoyed because I know how much better I've gotten in the buildup to every single one of these fights only for 2 days, 3 days before someone to be gone. But that's that's the past. Past is in the past. That's done. Sure, people are going to pull out. But the best thing about a tournament like this is, okay, three people can't pull out, right? If three people pull out, there's a problem. Then like then I need to move or something. Maybe I'm in the wrong country, right? But all that matters now is there's going to be somebody foolish enough to be in the same cage as me on a Saturday night when a door gets locked and a pin gets dropped. And that's all that matters because from there I'll do the rest. All these people need to do is show up. I'll do the rest. >> Yeah. And if you get the title, one thing uh I think when people gain a title is then like that a lot of people that have turned them down in the past will be looking to fight and then do you envision that if you grab this title and you get maybe another title that all these people who who had pulled out it until now will be then looking to fight you possibly. Possibly. We'll see. I keep receipts for all these things though. I remember I know who's pulled out. I know who's done this, who's done that. If you're going into business, you're starting a business and your business partner has pulled out three times. All of a sudden, you're rich, they're not, and they want to come on board. You going to come on board? Like, look, that's one side of things. Maybe I'll have to catch them at an open mat somewhere where they can't pull out or knock at their house or something. But if they come running, if they come looking for fights, I'm never somebody to say no. You know, I'll I'll fight all of them in one. Let's do an eightman tournament. No problem. I'll just fight the other seven in that in that one cuz everyone's going to pull out anyway. I I'm loving this interview. I'm just I'm just sitting here going, "That's a clip. That's a clip. That's a clip. That's a clip. I got to have to get AI to do all these clips for me because I won't be able to do it manually." But no, it's I'm looking forward to seeing like I have seen you fight in person. Like I said when you kind of at elite like I said you came you had the entourage you had the you came in you were in a suit I was like who is this boy who is this guy and then you walked into the building and it was just kind of like there was just something about you. Then you fought Tig in the second fight who really impressed me as well cuz he debuted on the same show as you. He looked very good. Uh that was another impressive win. So, I'm looking forward to see how far your sh star can shine because I'm very high on your talents and especially now speaking and the way you look at things and analyze things and you're so in inep with yourself and improving yourself and self-aware. I I think there is a a big big future for you once you just keep going the track that you're going and uh I I can't be I I can't wait to be a part of the journey, watch it and obviously commentate uh next weekend. But look, I'm going to let you go. Is there anything you want to say before you go? Thank you so much for your time. It's been an absolute pleasure, but the floor is yours if you want to thank anyone or any messages before you go. >> Well, firstly, thanks for having me on. You know, it's great to have a platform like this. Of course, coming up in kickboxing and stuff, you know, this didn't exist and especially in MMA, there's not even many people doing what you're doing. So, first off is thank you for having me, giving me the platform to speak. Um, next I suppose I send a message just to everybody watching, everyone that doesn't know who I am. Maybe they haven't seen my fights. Just summarize things quickly. You know, look, I have a package and a style that's unique to me. It's unique across combat sports from everything from the way that I train to the way that I dress as you mentioned. Shout out to Ray Nent and my mother suits Susie. Um, the way I the way I'm talking, the way I walk to the cage to what I do in the cage, I'm one of one. There's nobody like me. You know, I've got over 500 amateur kickboxing fights and 14 golden reasons hanging on a wall over there as to why I'm one of the best strikers in the world. Work with specialists every day. I'm getting better and better at MMA. I'm going to get to a point where I'm going to be undeniable full stop in the world. So to everyone watching, you can win with me or you can lose against me. I'm loved by some and hated by others and I have it no other way. So thanks everyone for watching. Thank you Dave for having me on. Thanks to my team for your continued support and let's go to work next Saturday. Let's go show off. I can't wait. Thank you. I really like that last bit. That's definitely going to be the first clip that I'm going to probably put out in about an hour or two hours. Um, I can't wait to commentate on the fight because obviously I've seen you fight in person, but being able to commentate on a fighter's fight is a is a kind of a personal thing as well for me, especially when I've seen people I've seen them rise through and and it's going to be a pleasure. So, look, I will see you next weekend. Thank you so much and uh best of skill next weekend. I'll see you there. >> Perfect, Dave. Thanks again. Much appreciated.