Phuket Prospect: Dylan Zanetti on fighter lifestyle in Thailand, Muay Thai to MMA & Strikeforce Gym

Ringkasan

Dylan Zanetti is a fighter hailing out of Gold Coast, Australia training in Phuket at Bangtao.

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download the allstar app make your picks for UFC fights challenge your friends level up and win prizes Link in description get it now hey guys I'm Dylan the machete zetti I'm from Gold Coast Australia and I'm currently a moai fighter but very soon I'll be transitioning into MMA full-time so I was born in Sydney Australia but moved to Gold Coast when I was about 2 years old and had a pretty good after bringing I always had good parents they put me into martial arts when I was very young I got started in karate when I was 3 years old and uh eventually when I was about 12 13 I said I wanted to fight to one of my uh karate instructors and he got me to go to a boxing gym so I did boxing for a few years before eventually going to a Muay gym doing a lot of sparring and eventually had my first fight when I was 15 and then just been tracking down the muar road since then while doing a little bit of Jiu-Jitsu on the side so the first fight at 15 um probably didn't train the way I should have for it just because you know your first fight you don't really know what you're doing I was kind of transitioning between karate boxing and Muay like going to three different gyms I didn't really have a lot of structure but um yeah it was it was a good experience and it obviously kind of got me to where I was and I ended up winning the fight so it was a K1 fight amateur and it was a good building block for me to kind of get to where I am now so that fight kind of made me realize how hard you have to train for for a fight and ever since that fight it's kind of made me realize how in conditioned I have to be for a fight and I always make it a priority not to be slacking in the conditioning area when it comes to fights so yeah going into my first amateur M May fight I had about probably 20 Muay Tha fights all up but that fight kind of taught me the differences between Muay Thai and MMA and that you can't really like split your focus too much so at the moment I'm doing M TI is my main focus and I'm still doing a bit of gjit 2 and wrestling but I'm not really sparring MMA because I feel like when you try to do both you kind of confuse yourself a bit like there was a few times in that fight where I knocked my opponent's mouth guard out and then he would go down and pick it up and just because of the Muay Tha brain I wouldn't go down and hit him like I wouldn't even think about the ground impound or you know just the fact of stepping into a cage and not having the tie music you know all these little things they do add up and they kind of change the environment and now that I've kind of felt that environment and I've felt that experience I believe going to my next MMA fight I'm going to be a lot better I'm going to be a lot more mentally prepared and also going into that fight as well you know during the fight it was probably the most TI I've been since my first amateur kickboxing fight just having that change of environment and but even though I fought high level M you know I've fought some good dudes in Australia I've fought some good guys in Thailand like it's just a different experience going into a ring versus going into a cage so any muar Fighters that are thinking of transitioning to may I would highly suggest that you have at least one or two amateur fights so that way you get that feeling so when it matters and you're going into a pro fight you don't you know have this big pressure and this big kind of difference because it is definitely a different sport and you have to keep that into you have to take that into consideration when you're going into the cage so coming from the gold cross Australia I'm from one of the best gyms in Australia I'm from Strikeforce gym which is a pure Muay Tha gym um we've got coaches like Mark peas who he's trained many world champions some of the best in Australia uh Mr C who's one of my main coaches and he's been Pat holder for me since I was 16 years old um and he's really believed in me since the start so I've I've got a lot of love for him and we've got some great Fighters we've got Chad Collins who he's just big Paton he's the rise world champion WBC world champion WMC world champion at 632 kilos uh we got some of the best guys in Australia like we got James honey who's perfect for me cuz he fights at 72 and2 kilos I fight at 69 kilos so he's a great training partner for me and he's probably the best middleweight in Australia at the moment we got Jaden enyard who's a WMC world champion and then other than that like I kind of just go to different gyms and do some training so I got a good mate Josh King we do a fair bit of training together um he's on the rise as a TI star he's coming back over to Thailand pretty soon so yeah all all these guys they they've definitely helped me become who I am and I think everyone has their each individual role like Chad taught me a lot about clinching and about the tie style James taught me a lot about boxing um you know sping rounds with Jaden Jaden's like 90 kilos and me being a [ __ ] 70 kilo fighter it's you know it's good to have hard rounds with big guys like that and got to learn how to use my size to my advantage you know Mark taught me a lot about M Tai Mr see and then you know Josh and his trainer Clayton colier and his dad like they've they've all just kind of brought me into this world of Muay Tha and made me a very good fighter and then also me training Jiu-Jitsu at cnbt and some wrestling at cnbt that's kind of bring my merging into MMA while still focusing on Muay Tha I think one of my biggest accomplishments in Muay Thai is probably my last performance back in Australia um it so there's a lot of kind of [ __ ] that went on before that fight like three 3 months before the fight like when the fight just got booked I I got dropped on the back of my head and got a really bad concussion um and I was dealing with that for like months on end and um I thought it was 100% but then going into that fight two weeks before I was boxing sparring with James and uh he hit me in the head a few too many times cuz I was just being an idiot and running forward and trying to hit him and um concussion syps flared up like I was dizzy I felt like vomiting all that stuff and then I called Mark and I said like you know I I don't know if I can fight like this is um going on and that that morning actually he had like told me oh you've got a new opponent so a week out I don't remember the last time I've had like an opponent stay the same like it's probably been like four years since I've had an opponent for x amount of time I always get pull outs and I always get opponent changes but you know it keeps you on your toes but anyway um I called Mark and I was just like man I don't know if I can do this fight like my my concussion is [ __ ] like it's popping up and then he just said to me like well you're very skilled you're very good this is one of the biggest shows in Australia um and I believe that you've got what it takes to kind of go out there and put on a show and show Australia who you are so I went out there and I just kind of had the mentality of like I'm going to fight but I just can't get hit basically and I got hit clean seven times in 8 and 1 half minutes before stopping my opponent with leg kicks so just showing my um skill set on such a big show like eruption was definitely a massive accomplishment for me and it really showed people who I am in Australia but um the plan is to go back to Australia this year and have a couple more fights and I've gotten you know so much better over at bangau and I believe that I'm just going to St my map my name on the map as one of the best fighters in Australia this year so this isn't my first time being out in Thailand I came out here in 2022 um I went to Bangkok train at samart pack rooms gym for a little bit and eventually ended up leaving that gym just cuz there wasn't really enough people that were my size um so went trained at sassy propa for a week and then I went out to Ean and I trained in Ean for about two months um I had three fights out at the Ean gym and it was a great experience to just kind of go out there in the middle of nowhere like the nearest 7-Eleven was over 10minute driveway which if you're in Thailand you know there's a 7-Eleven every 2 minutes so it was literally in the middle of nowhere an hour and a half to the nearest airport and me and one of our mates we were just in the sticks like we were the only two Aussies and only two like white people out there and that definitely made me a better Fighter for a few things like it made me a lot more mentally tough just the training and like not being able to communicate properly and all that um and obviously your training with just ties and there was so many ties around my weight so I got very good at that gym and then uh yeah I ended up having a fight in puket out of that gym so the promoter flew us to puket and um I at that time I I was obviously knew I was going to do MMA cuz I'd trained MMA in the past so I decided to come and check out bangtown I like I was very sore and bruised up from a sharp fight like my shins were [ __ ] my elbow was swollen like my face was bruised up so um I hit up one of the guys back home who knows Frank quite well and he got us in contact and I came over I had to look at one of the wrestling passes just kind of see what the gym was like and that's when I kind of set the goal like okay I'm going to go back to Australia I'm going to work I'm going to save up and I'm going to come out to bangau in 2023 and just went back worked fought got some money came back out to bangau this time and since being here I've definitely built a great relationship with the coaches uh the Tai coaches like ajan wat crew beer crew M crew cron like they're all kind of helping me become a better fighter now and I've had I believe six or seven M fights out of the gym and one MMA fight and just me looking at myself from back then versus now like I'm definitely a lot more of a smarter cleaner technical fighter now and that's all because of the trainers here and on top of that I'm now wrestling and I'm now doing Jiu-Jitsu and I believe that I'm going to have such a good base for when I eventually go into MMA that I think I'm going to be an Unstoppable Force there's a lot that kind of attracts me to Thailand like one it's a lot cheaper than back home so you can kind of focus a lot more you don't have to be worrying about work working and money and all that like that's one thing another thing is the people like there are so many people from especially in puket there's so many people from all around the world that you kind of get this one hot spot where you've got like you know you got Russians you got Aussies you've got Canadians you've got Americans You' got like Portuguese people you got Kore like so many people come to this one spot to train and you get like not only the different cultures but you get different styles of fighting and that helps a lot as well and obviously being in bang toau we're like 5 minutes from the beach so you can have a hard training session in the morning go down to the beach recover chill come back like go home have your nap come back in the afternoon train hard like the training is great but also the lifestyle is great here um and you got pretty much everything you need here like Pat is a lot easier to live in than what Ean was cuz in Ean you know there's like they're not great at communication cuz they're you know they speak a different language you you know even even if you know Tai isan Thai is a different language to Tha you know what I mean so yeah yeah it's um I just love everything about Thailand the people the community the training like it's just this is where I want to be I don't really want to be anywhere else I think probably one of the biggest obstacles as an upper comom fighter is probably just the mentality and the commitment and all that because fighting is something that takes all of you it's not something that you know you can do like part-time like if you're not fully committed your opponent could be fully committed and they're going to [ __ ] you up like it's this isn't a sport where you can just play around with it you know you've got to be fully committed and that means like everything from you know you've got to be on top of your diet your sleep you know you got to be watching film you've got to be doing like you got to be taking care of your social media so you can get your name out there there's so much things that come into contact but also you've got to find the balance of like living life but you can't live life too much because then you kind of start to take your focus away so you've always got to kind of have that balance and I see a lot of people on social media these days they focus too much on the social media to where like they think social media is fighting like with me yes I'm very active on social media but I don't let it consume me like I go on I do my posts I get off I chat to people on social media all that type of stuff but a lot of people they kind of forget to do the other things like they don't watch film they um you know they don't speak to other Fighters about their experience so yeah I'd say the main thing and especially if you're at bangt like you've got so many high level Fighters out here that you can kind of learn from and speak to like you know so one of the biggest things is just keeping focused and knowing where to put your energy and that definitely takes time and experience to kind of figure out so I'm lucky enough that I'm only young I'm only 21 years old so I've definitely got a lot more time if I was a bit older I probably wouldn't be doing the Muay Thai thing I'd probably be in MMA now but my kind of time frame I'd say is about two to three more years in Muay Thai because I know I've got the potential to do some big things in Muay thaai I know I've got the potential to build a good name and you know get some money and like be able to build enough of a name for myself to where I can support my ma career when it comes around whether that be through like doing online work courses PT seminar all that type of stuff um so yeah I'd say about two to three more years in Muay Tha but during that time I'm still going to be doing dutu I'm still going to be doing wrestling that way when I do go on and I do fully Focus it's not like I'm catching up to all these people it's like my skills are still there but now that I'm putting more emphasis into MMA it's now like I'm just getting better at everything and you know it's just going to be better for my career in the long run there's so many people I'd like to thank but the main two would have to be my mom and my dad you know my mom especially for bringing me to training every day when I was younger and you know paying for it and kind of helping me build a skill set while I was younger my dad for teaching me a lot of last Les lessons and he went through a fair bit of struggles when he when I was about 16 I did learn a lot of lessons for him how to deal with struggle so I appreciate you a lot for that Dad and then I've got my friends and my training Partners obviously Chad um we got SAS out here who's helping me a lot we've got Josh King Clayton Collier Mr C Mark pasas all these people that have helped me becoming to the fighter I am today um obviously George and Frank have been part of that when it comes to wrestling and all that um and then going down to the social media you know everyone that follows me on social media anyone that likes my stuff comments like I see it all and I really do appreciate it and everyone that subscribes to my YouTube I really appreciate that as well because I do have content that's coming out every week and you know I'm pushing that and if you haven't already go subscribe to that and check it out