“I started competing in kickboxing and did very well and then the opportunities were presented to go to the United States,” he said. “When I went to the United States, I wanted to do more kickboxing, but there was really not much of a kickboxing culture here. It was more, you know, jiu-jitsu and MMA. So, I went to Anchorage Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, and I met Coach Ryder (Spadafore), I met the team at Anchorage BJJ, and that’s where the love for MMA started.
“They introduced the sport to me in the right way, and that’s where I fell in love. I was like, ‘Wait, I can actually make a career out of this?’ I could see myself being out there in the big lights. When I experienced the big lights, that’s where I kind of froze a little bit because that’s all I wanted for a very long time. And when the opportunity was there for me, I was like, wow, this is too much to handle right now. But my team got me back on track.”
Uros Medic: Learning Lessons, Living In The Moment
For Medić, what’s most important to him is to “be one of those guys and represent our country in the best light possible, and just enjoy my time and the opportunities this great country of the United States has given me.”
While Medić found his way to the United States to train, fellow countryman and UFC middleweight Duško Todorović has been determined to prove to the world that elite-level martial artists can be born and bred in Eastern Europe.
“Serbia is a small country, but it has a very big potential in terms of fighting and sports,” he said.
“When we were starting, everyone would be like, ‘Leave the gym, go somewhere abroad, go train, you can do nothing from here.’ And time after time, we proved everybody wrong,” Todorović explained.