For Ramsey Nijem, UFC on FOX 5 is Madison Square Garden

FOR RAMSEY NIJEM, UFC ON FOX 5 IS MADISON SQUARE GARDEN
BY DANN STUPP ON NOV 30, 2012 AT 8:30 AM ET

As a kid growing up in the Seattle area, Ramsey Nijem associated professional sports and professional athletes with one iconic venue: KeyArena.

He'd watch the NBA's Seattle SuperSonics and other pro teams, and as a sports enthusiast, he dreamed of someday being a featured athlete in the arena.

Now, as a fighter at next week's UFC on FOX 5 event, he gets to do just that – though it's a bit of a surprise that the admittedly emotional 24-year-old would have to crack some skulls to get the opportunity.

"With the arena, the idea was only professional athletes performed there," he recently told MMAjunkie.com Radio. "I'd go watch Sonics games as a kid. I always grew up with the dream that I might be an athlete who could be at the KeyArena. It's the icon of Seattle as a young boy growing up who loved sports.

"... It's like the Madison Square Garden for [Seattle]."

Nijem (6-2 MMA, 2-1 UFC), the lightweight runner-up of "The Ultimate Fighter 13," looks for his third straight win when he meets fellow "TUF" alum Joe Proctor (8-1 MMA, 1-0 UFC), who's riding a four-fight win streak of his own. They meet on the night's FX-televised preliminary card, which precedes the night's network-televised main card.

During his near-five-year pro career, Nijem's fights have come in one of three locales: Orem, Utah; Las Vegas; or Atlantic City, N.J. But fresh off a first-round TKO of C.J. Keith at UFC on FX 4, he now heads home to fight in front of family and friends.

"It's always the same pressure to win, to perform (with) your job is on the line," he said. "I feel like it's always the same. But yeah, there's a little more fighting in front of your home crowd, but I've actually used that pressure to train harder, get faster, stronger and get better."

These days Nijem's primary goal while training is to "get better everywhere," he said. He's built the foundation, and now he's learning the nuances of the fight game.

Of course, that wasn't always the case.

"I won my first fight, and I didn't train at all ever for that, and I won it," he said of his 2008 debut. "Then my second fight, I lost. I got armbarred, and I didn't even know what an armbar was."

But Nijem has some friends. A few years before he got his breakout opportunity on "TUF," he was a punching bag and grappling dummy for friend and current UFC fighter Court McGee. The "TUF 11" champion used the former high school and collegiate wrestler as a fill-in training partner. Together, they both quickly improved.

"Every day, I was like his like main training partner because no one else would show up," Nijem said. "He'd beat the crap out of me every day and stuff. But I was getting better, and then I took another fight against a really tough guy and beat him, and after that, I was like, 'Man, this is awesome. I get to beat up people? I don't have to go to jail? I get paid to do it? This is my dream.'"

Nijem, though, knows his employment as a professional butt-kicker may still come as a surprise to those who know him well. He admits he's an emotional and even sensitive guy, and the folks he knows in Seattle probably know it.

But if there's anything he's learned in MMA, it's how to purge those emotions. When he enters the cage, he strives to be an ice-cold mauler void of feelings.

Check out some of his recent fights, including that big win over Keith, and you said a different side of Nijem.

He just hopes friends and family members see it next week at UFC on FOX 5.

"It's pretty funny," he said. "I've seen these pictures of me and video after my fights. I don't even know who I am. My eyes are crazy. You'd think I'm some ancient gladiator who just killed somebody and was drinking their blood or something. I look at myself and don't even know who I am sometimes after a big win like that."