Hughes has been a big influence on Masoliver’s career as the pair have followed similar paths having to leave their north west home to further their careers by joining Fight Academy Ireland.<\/p>\n
Masoliver has made plenty of sacrifices along the way including the lengthy bus trips to Belfast before he was able to drive.<\/p>\n
“I started off in martial arts when I was about six-years-old before moving on to MMA when I was about 10,” recalled the 21-year-old.<\/p>\n
“I had a few amateur fights before I made the decision to join Fight Academy. I wasn’t driving at the time so it was long days travelling by bus to Belfast, then getting the Glider across the city before walking the last 20 minutes to the gym.<\/p>\n
“I remember getting back to Derry one night after midnight and having to walk home in the snow because there were no taxis.<\/p>\n
“Paul and myself had similar situations at the start of our careers where we kind of outgrew our original training environment at home and to progress we had to move.<\/p>\n
“He’s been a really good role model in terms of what I can do. And if Paul can do it why can’t I? He has the same coaching, he’s got the same team, he’s got the same people around him. If he can do it why can’t I?”<\/p>\n
After knocking out Enrico Scazzi with a first round head kick in a ‘dream’ pro debut at the start of March, Masoliver is predicting more of the same against Mullen in April.<\/p>\n
“I will knock this guy out, I will knock this guy out and this will skyrocket my career,” he added. “People are going to understand what I am about and what I can do after this fight.<\/p>\n
“I’ve got the world at my feet. I want to stay active, I want to keep building myself and my career to show people what I’m about and announce myself on the world stage.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hughes has been a big influence on Masoliver’s career as the pair have followed similar paths having to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":548017,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,785,85],"class_list":["post-548016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-mma","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=548016"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548016\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/548017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=548016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=548016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=548016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}