Jordan (Young Gun) Mein’s UFC debut couldn’t have gone much better. Now, the 23-year-old from Lethbridge, Alta., has his sights set on his next challenge.
And those sights are pretty wide.
Asked following his huge win at Saturday’s UFC 158 in Montreal, where he became the first person to knock out the veteran Dan Miller, who he would like to fight next, Mein cast a wide brush.
“Everybody in the welterweight division,” said Mein, who added he has a list in his room on whiteboard of every single welterweight in the UFC. “Miller hasn’t even been stopped, he moved down to welterweight, so everybody in the UFC is top notch.”
Why does he have that list?
“You’ve got to know who you’re going to fight. You’ve got to have goals set in mind. You’ve got to know what’s next and I look at that list every day,” Mein said. “Dan Miller was on there. I look at his name and I’m like, ‘I’m ready, I gotta train.’ Every day when you wake up in the morning look at it, it gets you ready. It gets me ready anyway.
“I’m excited just to back in. I’m healthy right now, I’m ready to go next week.”
You’ll have to excuse his eagerness. When you’re young and hungry, yet have been fighting for longer than many more established UFC fighters — he’s been competing since 2006 and already has 35 fights under his belt — you feel like you want to showcase what you can do in the big show.
That he did against Miller, showing a veteran savvy. First he escaped a submission attempt from a dangerous ground fighter, and then he attacked Miller with a vicious, yet calculated approach, starting with a liver shot that was the first shot to buckle the veteran.
He said that was based on something he saw prior to the fight.
“I could see he was a little sick after weigh-ins, maybe his cut played a little factor … I’ve seen he was a little sick and going to the body doesn’t feel good, so that’s what hurt him and that’s what put him down.”
Although he’s young, he has the advantage of coming from a fighting family. His father Lee Mein was a fighter in his own right and ran an MMA show, Rumble in the Cage, in his home town, which is where Jordan got his start. In fact, even before his pro debut, he was competing in combat sports under his father’s watch.
“Traveling all around the world, fighting in different places, for a bunch of different organizations really plays a factor,” Mein said. “You’ve got to have experience, you put your work in, I did that, and I think that really helped me. Being small and fighting on my dad’s show Rumble in the Cage when I was like 11 or whatever. I think that really helps.”
Mein agreed that it was also an advantage having his father in his corner.
“It’s been that way since I was really young, competing in tournaments. We would travel to Vancouver. We’d go to different jiu-jitsu tournaments, kickboxing tournaments; he’d always tell me the same thing over and over again. It definitely pays off.”
One interesting fact is that he made his debut at Rumble in the Cage 17 in July 2006 against fellow Canadian Rory MacDonald, who went on to become the youngest fighter in the UFC at the time when he joined in January 2010 at the age of 20. MacDonald is now one of the top contenders in the organization’s welterweight division.
Mein, who is just three months younger, lost to MacDonald by first-round rear naked choke, and has since taken a longer route to the UFC. But if Mein continues to win, another matchup with the B.C. native, who now trains full-time at Georges St-Pierre’s Tristar gym in Montreal, could be in the future.
And would Mein like a chance at revenge against MacDonald?
“Absolutely,” he said with enthusiasm. “I’d love to. That would be a great fight. He’s rising, too bad he was hurt. It would have been another great fight for this card. It was already a crazy enough show.”
A crazy show indeed, and Mein was one of the stars not looking the least bit overwhelmed by the bright lights, even though he did admit it was totally different from Strikeforce, where he went 2-1 on shows in the U.S. after his whole career had been spent in his home country.
“The Strikeforce crowd is nothing like the UFC crowd,” Mein said. “When I got in there, I felt the energy, I felt the buzz and how loud it was in there and it felt great.”
Mein also said he felt like he belonged in there, which he proved quite nicely.
“It felt awesome.”
Finally, he was asked if what he would put beside Miller’s name on that whiteboard, now that he’s beaten him.
“A smiley face.”
It’s hard to wipe the smiles away from him or his dad these days.
