{"id":326954,"date":"2025-12-05T12:00:20","date_gmt":"2025-12-05T12:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/326954\/"},"modified":"2025-12-05T12:00:20","modified_gmt":"2025-12-05T12:00:20","slug":"ufc-323-how-his-mothers-murder-steeled-chris-duncan-for-ufcs-toughest-fights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/326954\/","title":{"rendered":"UFC 323: How his mother’s murder steeled Chris Duncan for UFC’s toughest fights"},"content":{"rendered":"

Performances like Chris Duncan’s gutsy win over Mateusz Rebecki four months ago can define a fighter.<\/p>\n

In a brutal back-and-forth battle, which left both fighters bloodied and battered, it was Scotland’s Duncan who got his hand raised<\/a> in a fight-of-the-year contender.<\/p>\n

Fans and pundits praised Duncan for the grit and determination he showed, while Duncan says even his coaching team were surprised by the level of his performance.<\/p>\n

“My training partner Robert Whiteford – I don’t think he knew I was capable of that and he sung my praises after,” Duncan told BBC Sport.<\/p>\n

Duncan, however, was not surprised by his showing. <\/p>\n

He knew what he was capable of because the trauma he experienced as an amateur fighter built the resilience he would need to overcome life’s toughest challenges.<\/p>\n

On 18 April 2014, a day before Duncan’s amateur debut, his mother Elaine was murdered<\/a> by her boyfriend James Morley, who was jailed for life for the crime. <\/p>\n

“I still went ahead with the fight the following day. A lot of people would have pulled out in that moment,” said Duncan.<\/p>\n

“I won the fight, and I remember standing in the club after with a couple of bottles of beer. I was a shepherd at the time, and I was like ‘this life isn’t for me any more’.<\/p>\n

“I’m working hard and my life can be ripped away from me at any instant.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Performances like Chris Duncan’s gutsy win over Mateusz Rebecki four months ago can define a fighter. In a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":326955,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,641,638,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-326954","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-fighting","11":"tag-mma","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=326954"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326954\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/326955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=326954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=326954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=326954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}