“Just a boy from Dagenham on the way to the top” is how former Cage Warriors Academy South East Bantamweight Champion Jimmy Quinn describes himself. Quinn’s remarkable journey from dancing with Diversity to being a part of the MMA fight academy in San Diego is a lot to be admired as he gears up for his professional MMA debut on the 1st of July in Cardiff, Wales, which is available to watch on the UFC Fight Pass.
Out of six hundred and eighty people who applied and those who attended trials in Europe, South-East Asia and America in the hope of being selected for the MMA Fight Academy, Jimmy Quinn,23, was personally handpicked by Cage Warriors President Graham Boylan to be one of the twenty-four top MMA prospects in the world to take part in the ‘X-Factor style’ series. Jimmy Quinn, also known as ‘Quinny’ has an amateur record of 5-1 (wins-loss) and is looking to cement his place into the Cage Warriors’ roster by earning a professional contract with ‘Europe’s leading MMA promotion’ and a split prize of $500,000 between the team.
What is The MMA Fight Academy
The MMA Fight Academy, which entertainment company Mola funds, is a reality-based MMA docuseries which follows the top twenty-four free agent prospects from all over the world in a bid to secure a professional contract and a full-time scholarship in San Diego. All fighters will eat, live and train together for twelve consecutive weeks, with all competitors entering the octagon on a main show in San Diego, Cardiff, Rome or Shanghai.
The MMA Fight Academy was introduced “to help develop fighters who didn’t have the means, training facilities and guidance to make their way through the MMA space,’ Boylan added.
The show might come into comparison with UFC’s The Ultimate Fighter (TUF) or Dana Whites’s Contender series, but this is not the case. Although there are similarities, the main difference is that the fighters are not competing against each other but will be forming a “supergroup” to help each other excel.
Boylan and coaching staff Marc Fiore and Jake Buracker will assess the fighters closely to see who makes the cut. Boylan described the MMA Fight Academy as an ‘opportunity of a lifetime’ and ‘have killed to have this chance twenty years ago.’
Few fighters can say they made their professional debut on a show like Cage Warriors, but Quinn seems to be relishing the opportunity. He said, “To be given a chance by Graham (Boylan) to select me and to make my professional debut at Cage Warriors is huge. The pressure is on, but I am not going to falter.”
Dancing with Diversity
Being able to excel on a big stage is nothing new to Quinn, as he performed all over the United Kingdom as a member of Diversity. Diversity are a street dance group that rose to fame when they won Britains Got Talent in 2009, which coincided with performing for the Queen the same year at the Royal Variety Performance. Quinn joined the group in 2015, with his first performance coming the same year as a guest on ‘Got to Dance’, which was a dance-related talent show with the head judge being Ashley Banjo. “They brought three of us on stage with them; we were seen as the young guns. It was me, Adam McKop and Jordan Samuel. Since that performance, we stayed on with them.”
Whilst in his hotel room in Butlins, when on tour with Diversity, Quinny stumbled across a Conor Mcgregor motivational video while scrolling through Facebook. At that exact moment, the penny dropped and got an “energy, did not know what was going on; it was like something told me to do MMA.” Six weeks after this epiphany, Quinn told Ashley Banjo that he would not be dancing anymore and was pursuing mixed martial arts.
for Diversity alongside Ashley Banjo and Perri Kiely
You may think dancing and fighting are worlds apart; however, according to Quinny, it made the transition easier than expected. “Dancing with Diversity has definitely helped; it correlates with fighting, picking up choreography, watching a movement and then putting it into practice; it’s the same as fighting. You try and find the little details when someone is throwing a punch, such as the way the opponent moves their hips and their footwork.“ This isn’t uncommon in combat sports, as some of the top fighters in the world danced as a youth, an example of this is UFC Middleweight Champion Israel Adesnaya who still displays his dancing roots with his eccentric walkouts and fight skillset.
Quinny’s MMA Journey so Far
Quinn first laced up his gloves in MMA when he walked through the doors of The MMA Clinic in Romford in 2018. The highlight reel knockouts you see today were a distant thought when taking up the sport, as he said, “I did not really know how to fight; I had a big head and a big ego. I was humbled very quickly in training.” Quinny’s blind confidence as a rookie may have installed the belief he needed to win his first fight in 2019.
He made his amateur bout at Celtic Gladiators, defeating his opponent Rohan Daar by submission via arm triangle. He added, “I had so much ego, I didn’t know what was wrong with me; I think many young fighters go through that stage when they start fighting. But I had never fought with someone trained, so you’re always doubting yourself, so I built myself up and grew a pair of balls and just got in there.” Momentum grew from that moment, and accumulated impressive victories in the four-fight win streak, where he finished all his opponents within the first two rounds. Quinn won the first title of his career when he knocked out Keiran Mezroui to secure the Cage Warriors Academy South East Bantamweight Championship in the second round in front of an ecstatic Colchester crowd; he said ‘It feels good to have the belt on my shoulder, it’s good to showcase different aspects of martial arts and to show not just my grappling’
When reaching a milestone as a fighter, it is common to become complacent and lose track of the next goal in sight. This was the case for Quinn as he was “going out enjoying himself too much” and “drinking alcohol three weeks before the fight” which eventually led to the first loss of his career against Harry Myers by submission in July 2022. This loss was the wake-up call Quinn needed and he described it as a “blessing in disguise”, he added: “Before I turned professional, I needed something to steer me back into place as I was getting a little bit ahead of myself.”
Drinking alcohol and going out was a distant memory when preparing to recapture the belt. Through hard work mixed with discipline, he defeated Kashaan Khan in the first round with a spinning back kick which was described as ‘one of the best knockouts you will ever see’ by a commentator on the night and drew comparisons to Edson Barboza’s knockout against Terry Etim at UFC 142. To win the belt back and do it spectacularly must have felt even greater and “proves if you work hard you can get the result in the end.”
Quinn understands what it takes to become elite within the sport, and one of his aspirations is to compete in the UFC one day. Training in Thailand at the famous Tiger Muay Thai Gym in Phuket was a huge eye-opener to see how the best in the world train.
While there, Quinn trained with former UFC Welterweight Darren Till and winner of the Professional Fighters League (PFL) Brendan Loughnane. “The mindset behind people like Brendan, who won the PFL is incredible; the way they work is crazy. To experience watching these fighters first-hand shows what it takes to make it in the sport. I feel like I fit in.”
