COCONUT CREEK, Fla. – The man with the forever-broken nose is repeating a lie, but with such conviction that it may as well be gospel.

“Tony Martin was 1-3. Rocco is 4-0.”

UFC welterweight Anthony Rocco Martin leans back, resting his head against the pale walls of a practice room in Florida’s American Top Team headquarters, and grins.

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“Some guy on Twitter posted that. I like that one, so I’m stealing it. That’s my line. I’m stealing that line.”

His grin widens. It took a half-decade of struggling to tread water in two of the sport’s most talent-rich divisions, but a shift is finally starting to happen around the 29-year-old Martin. He can feel it.

It’s funny, because in actuality, his favorite new catchphrase is a lie only because he is shorting himself, at least in regards to his former self. Tony Martin, the former persona he dragged around like a ball and chain, was 4-4 in the UFC. A perfectly mediocre record for a perfectly mediocre name in a lightweight division flush with exceptionalism. His little fib about being 1-3 is exaggeration more so than anything else, myth-building for a man who thrives when his back is planted firmly against the wall. But Rocco? That part is no joke. Rocco is indeed 4-0. A powerhouse welterweight who suddenly finds himself one fight away from contendership in his new division, with an ESPN dance date looming against two-time title challenger Demian Maia (26-9) on Saturday at UFC on ESPN 3, Rocco (16-4) shares little else but a body and a black belt with the namesake whom he replaced.

It’s often strange how these sort of things go, because his switch from Tony to Anthony Rocco was never meant to be this meaningful. Three years spent floundering as a UFC mid-carder led Martin to realize he wasn’t doing himself any favors going by the nickname he carried throughout the formative years. Tony Martin sounded like the most generic create-a-character amalgamation the promotion’s video game could code together. No one gives a second look at a Tony Martin. But his birth name, Anthony Rocco? That, at least, is unique. That, at least, stands out. So when Martin made the switch in 2018, upon the suggestion of girlfriend and Olympic gold medalist Kayla Harrison, and accompanied by a much-needed move up to the welterweight division, he hoped the dual lifestyle change could be a shot in the arm his career so desperately craved.

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And it certainly seems to be working out so far. UFC featherweight champion Max Holloway famously found success after losing three of his first six octagon appearances. Former lightweight titleholder Rafael dos Anjos wasn’t able to put together a decent run until his UFC record hit 4-4. There is precedence in the sport for a slow starter to turn around his trajectory, for a late bloomer to put it all together a bit behind schedule and pave a road from the scrap heap toward a golden throne. But Martin’s story is even more extreme than that, because he isn’t even coming off the scrap heap.

Not too long ago, he was cut from the UFC altogether.

Looking back, there are two crossroads that Martin now considers to be pivotal turning points for his career. The first taught him the fleeting nature of the business, and is the reason “1-3” is so deeply burned into his brain: Because that was his UFC record in late 2015, in the aftermath of a disappointing first-round loss to Leonardo Santos, when the organization sent him packing.

“(Ex-UFC matchmaker Joe Silva) cut me after the Santos fight,” Martin said. “But what happened was, Joe forgot we made a deal. And Joe was a man of his word.”

By the time of the Santos fight, doubts had long begun creeping into Martin’s head about his future in the lightweight division. Repeated cuts down to 155 pounds from his walking-around weight of 195 pounds had started to take their toll. The war against the scale was the overwhelming focus of his camps, even after a contest was over. Martin remembers sometimes needing up to four months just to recover from the devastation he inflicted upon his body. He fought off those concerns for as long as he could, like in late 2014, when he conquered both his weight and Brazilian lightweight Fabricio Camoes on less than a month’s notice to snap a two-fight skid and finally secure his first UFC win. But a fateful phone call from Silva came soon after that, and when faced with a difficult decision, Martin determined that he wanted to be a company man.

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“Five weeks,” Martin said. “They’re like, ‘Hey, five weeks, you’re going to go fight Leonardo Santos, in Brazil again.’ And I’m like, fuck, five weeks? I’ve fucking got to cut weight again? I just fought Fabricio Camoes on three weeks’ notice when I was, again, killing myself to make weight and all the way in Brazil. Now I’m coming off my first win in the UFC, and you want me to go back to fucking Brazil on a short notice, doing you a favor because someone fell off the card, to fight a fucking 6-foot jiu-jitsu guy, when at this time all I was was really a jiu-jitsu guy as well? I’m like, this seems like a fucking terrible fight at this moment of my career. It just didn’t seem smart to me.

“So I told them, ‘Listen, if you really want me to take this fight, I’ll take this fight. But you (need to) guarantee me another fight.’ And that’s what Joe said – he said, ‘All right, I’ll guarantee you another fight.’ So I fought Santos (and lost), and I’m sitting on the fucking sidelines for six months. All of a sudden I get a call (telling me the news). When the UFC dumped like 60 fighters, remember that? I was on that list. I was on that list of purged fighters.”

Martin was livid, both with what seemed like deception from the UFC and with the cold realization that, no matter what Silva had said, Martin’s fate was ultimately his fault alone.

“I was pissed off at first, and just disappointed in myself,” he said. “(I remember thinking), ‘I’m 1-3. I shouldn’t have a job.’ I’m not saying that at the time, right? But you’re a man of your word, or you’re not a man of your word. I wouldn’t have taken the fight if we didn’t make that deal, because I knew it wasn’t smart. But I was trying to be a company guy at the time, and that’s what happens when you’re a company guy.”

Martin still vividly remembers the day of his UFC release. The afternoon was both frantic and depressing, but also eye-opening in a way he can’t really shake. Not many people learn what the implosion of a dream can feel like, then get a second chance to make things right.

As it turns out, it was all a simple mistake – Silva had merely forgotten the deal the two struck prior to the Santos fight. So after a stressed-out phone call from Martin’s manager remedied the situation and paved the way for the young prospect to get one last opportunity to prove himself worthy of being a UFC fighter, with the fire in his belly profoundly relit, Martin rattled off the first winning streak of his UFC career, a three-fight run that propelled him into a Prove It Fight against fellow fringe lightweight contender Olivier Aubin-Mercier in late 2017.

What followed was his career’s second pivotal turning point, a moment in time which Martin now views as the biggest reason he stands in the position he’s in today.

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“That was the big one,” Martin said. “The OAM fight, obviously that’s when I moved up (to welterweight afterward) – and it wasn’t because I lost. If I would’ve won that fight, it would’ve been the worst thing for my career, because I would’ve been forced to probably stay at ’55. And I was horrified about ever getting into a bathtub again.

“I was in this bathtub for 24 of the last 32 hours (before that fight), and at some point it’s like, the fighter’s health should take precedence over making weight. And that was just a big one where, I had no choice, I had to make weight. You have to make weight, or even if you win, you could lose something. And it was dumb. The more that I look back on it, it was just stupid. It took me an hour and a half just to eat or drink anything after I weighed in, because my stomach, everything was so out of it. I felt absolutely horrible.”

It was at that point that Martin realized things needed to change. What he was doing to himself and his future by cutting all the way down to lightweight was unsustainable. He vowed that never again would he endanger his health and limit his options and lower his own earning potential simply because the 155-pound division had made sense to him at some point in his career. He needed to escape his own personal hamster wheel, his perpetual running and running and running in place with no end in sight. He needed change, and so that’s exactly what he sought.

Martin soon uprooted his life from chilly Wisconsin to balmy Florida to join American Top Team. Lightweight became welterweight. Tony Martin became Anthony Rocco Martin.

Ever since? Well, he’s 4-0 – and near unrecognizable from the man he once was.

“It’s been a long road, man,” Martin said. “A lot of time spent at ’55, where I felt like I was always on the verge (of breaking through) at ’55, as well. Obviously I started 1-3, and that’s probably as rough a start as anyone would want to get in the UFC and still have a job. … I was like, ‘Shit, is this for you?’ Like, what’s going on? And you’ve got to really find yourself. You’ve got to dig deep, man. And it’s tough. That’s a hard fucking hole to dig out of, that I feel like I’m still possibly in.

“You come to the UFC thinking – you know, I was 8-0 – that you could be something special, and you’re young. I was so young. I was three years into training. That’s it. Literally. I had no background. I was a football player, and I wrestled one year of high school. That’s three months. I had three months of wrestling. And I started training when I was 21, and three years later I’m signed to the UFC, I’m coming in, and I’m like, this is my time.

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“I’m looking back though, and I’m like, I didn’t belong in the UFC yet.

“But now, truly being who I am, just coming into what I’m really capable of, and just being comfortable with myself, my skill set, and really ready too make a push now – I think that mentally I’m in the right spot now.”

For a long time, all Martin wanted was respect. Respect from fans, respect from his competitors, respect from the UFC. Tony never got that luxury. But for Anthony Rocco? It feels as if everything is finally within reach. His opponent on Saturday, former title challenger Maia, may be long in the tooth, but he remains one of the most respected and decorated welterweights on the planet, a 41-year-old savant of the canvas arts who defies time and logic over and over again by warding off the next generation to no end. The last three men who bested him have all had UFC gold strapped around their waists. Now it is Martin’s turn to test the savvy Brazilian, and fittingly enough, the late bloomer who once received his UFC walking papers will return to his adopted hometown of Minneapolis at UFC on ESPN 3 wrapped in the familiar embrace of the underdog.

It’s a snug fit at this point, but he wouldn’t have it any other way.

“I’ve always been a fighter, and … when my back’s against the wall is when I fight the best,” Martin said. “And that’s why, as much as it might sound crazy when I’m, like, you know, ‘Fuck (matchmaker) Sean Shelby’ or some stuff like that, or like, ‘Fuck this, fuck them, fuck Dana White, no respect from the UFC,’ all of that – I love that stuff. I’m negative influencer, so I may over-exaggerate.

“These guys, when they say, ‘Oh, he’s boring,’ or something, I’ll be like, ‘Oh yeah, this motherfucker’s against me.’ And I really don’t care because that’s the way I’m going to think about it until they come up puckering. Because they’re going to have to do a lot of puckering some day. Because when I’m fucking champion, Sean Shelby’s going to have to pucker those lips up, because I’m telling you right now that I’m coming for everything.”

(Top photo: Jeff Bottari / Zuffa)

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