Once you’ve fully understood the unlikely success story that is Cub Swanson, you’d probably think it’s destined for the big screen.
And you’d be wrong. From birth to present day, the life of the longtime UFC fighter, replete with peaks and valleys and hairpin turns, is best served as a series over the course of several seemingly far-fetched episodes.
Hollywood is known for blurring reality and overdramatizing events. No need here. Fact is greater than fiction, and there’s ample drama and disbelief throughout the 40 years of Cub Swanson’s life.
The latest chapter to be written comes Saturday in Las Vegas when the Anaheim featherweight takes on Andre Fili in a UFC 303 prelim bout.
The respect Swanson has earned is congruent to the respect the MMA veteran has for the sport and martial arts. One only needs to watch, as Swanson steps into the Octagon for the 24th time and bows inside T-Mobile Arena.
“I haven’t really talked about this that much. But when I go in the cage, I always bow and step in because I try to remind myself,” Swanson said, emotion halting his voice. “This is a dangerous game and you should always be ready. Be prepared.”
And while he’s never held a single title belt throughout his 20-year fighting career, there is one undeniable fact.
Cub Swanson has become a champion at life.
‘HE HAD TO WORK’
“I have no memories of my father,” Swanson said last week during an interview at UFC Gym in Costa Mesa.
The tension is palpable, Swanson breaking down as several gym members toil, oblivious to the man who has logged 42 professional MMA fights – and countless others in the streets before finding the sport – and arguably shouldn’t be where he is today.
Three months after Swanson was born, his father died of melanoma. The life that ensued was chaotic to say the least.
“I feel like the only way that I could describe his whole upbringing is he really overcame a lot,” his wife, Kenda Swanson, said in a phone interview. “It really could’ve gone a different way. And he made the conscious decision. ‘I don’t want it to go that way. I see what it looks like and I don’t want that for myself. I want better for myself.’ And he had to work.”
Yet here he is, a father of three, married to a model and former TV host for the UFC and Fox Sports, standing inside the sprawling fitness center he co-owns with former UFC middleweight champion Michael Bisping, removing his glasses to dab at his tears with his shirt.
After collecting himself upon mentioning his father, Swanson continued: “Like I said, I don’t have memories of him. So, yeah, my biggest thing is all my memories came when I was about 3 years old, right? I just want my kids to … I want my kids to have memories of my career.”
And what a career it’s been.
On his fight résumé are clashes with the likes of UFC Hall of Famers Jens Pulver and Jose Aldo, 2024 Hall of Fame inductee Frankie Edgar and surefire future Hall of Famer Max Holloway, as well as victories over former champions Charles Oliveira and Dustin Poirier.
He is himself a UFC Hall of Famer, inducted two years ago into the Fight Wing with Dooho Choi for their unforgettable three-round brawl that was deemed 2016 Fight of the Year.
Swanson (29-13) has never missed weight while collecting nine UFC postfight bonuses, four in the WEC before that.
That’s “Killer” Cub, always delivering with his electric and unpredictable arsenal of sheer violence. Fans see the intense glare and myriad tattoos, “SoCal” etched across his chest, palm trees – an homage to his hometown of Palm Springs – inked so they appear to be growing from his waistband.
But then there’s just Cub, thoughtful and soft-spoken, his prescription lenses and cerebral manner softening a steely exterior. He is a businessman and entrepreneur, a coach and manager, a fight commentator for LFA. Most of all, he’s a family man with a 6-year-old daughter and twin 5-year-old sons.
“He knows all about sacrifice. He knows all about hard work. He knows all about losing and coming back from injuries, all about loss, all these things that he can pass along, not just to his teammates, but the kids,” Kenda Swanson said. “And I definitely think that all these things have made him the father that he is and that he continues to be.”
Said business partner Mani Ahmadi: “Even when he was like, you know, knocking out Oliveira and beating Dustin Poirier and being in the top five, it never changes. Never, never got arrogant or talking down other people. Kept it consistent. I think my cousin helped him with that, helped guide him a lot throughout those years.”
Finding Kami Safdari gave Swanson’s life meaning. Losing Kami Safdari gave Swanson a new purpose.
‘A BIG LOSS’
“People ask me, ‘Is it easier?’” Swanson said about competing at 40. “I’m like, No, it gets harder. Because when I was 20 years old, I had nothing.”
Swanson’s formative years were tumultuous. When Swanson was 3, with his mother racked with depression and drugs, his uncle adopted him and his two older brothers and acted as a father figure. To Swanson, it was “a good, sheltered childhood.”
By the time he was a teenager, his adoptive parents divorced and Swanson went back to his mom, who was clean. Only this time it was Swanson caving to temptations, hanging out with gang members and doing drugs.
At Cathedral City High, he dreamed of becoming a pro soccer player. When he realized that future was unattainable, he considered the military and joined ROTC. After a few days of wearing the uniform, Swanson decided it wasn’t cool and returned to his rebellious ways.
“I realized that I cared more about not getting made fun of, being with the tougher crowd than the nerdy side,” said Swanson, who wound up getting arrested with two friends for committing a house robbery. “And that led me down a path and going to Juvenile Hall.”
Released at 17, Swanson knew soccer was a long shot, though he played one year at College of the Desert. The military took one look at his criminal record and declined. He began working at United Cerebral Palsy with children with disabilities, driving a bus to pick up the kids and take them to the facility, then working with them on their social skills.
He was 19 when one of his friends said a bunch of them were going to try a jiu-jitsu class. Swanson was intrigued. None of his buddies decided to go – “They all had already been drinking and smoking,” Swanson said – so he went with one of his brothers.
“I got beat up by this nerdy kid who was a blue belt. And I was like, I didn’t even know you could fight on the ground. And it blew my mind,” he said. “And then I told the instructor I’d come back the next day.
“And, yeah, I had a quarter-pound of cocaine in my top drawer, and I was addicted and I used to sell it, and I never touched it again.”
That’s when Safdari entered the picture. An anesthesiologist and jiu-jitsu black belt, Safdari began to mentor Swanson, in his corner as his coach and in his ear as his manager.
He was there for Swanson’s first pro fight – when the 20-year-old neophyte got tapped out in 15 seconds in Tijuana – and there for all 38 of Swanson’s fights, the capper being a second-round knockout of Daniel Pineda at UFC 256 on Dec. 12, 2020.
Ten days later, Safdari died of a heart attack, leaving behind a 1-year-old son who is now 4.
“That was obviously a big loss for him, and it became a big loss for me too, because he was such a big part of Cub’s life,” Kenda Swanson said. “I definitely think that he’s owed a lot of credit to really helping Cub focus on financial security and making the right decisions long term and maturity and all that kind of stuff, too.”
From there, Bloodline was born.
‘HE’S A LEADER’
“I’ve thought about it a million times what I want to do after fighting,” Swanson said. “And the crazy thing is, I have all this knowledge and experiences that are mostly translatable to this sport, like all the time I’ve spent, and I would like to pay that forward.”
Without Safdari, Swanson was one of three or four fighters suddenly without a manager. Ahmadi, Safdari’s cousin and a corporate attorney, was already helping with the paperwork. He and Swanson realized that the two of them – Ahamdi as the agent and Swanson as the coach – could maintain Safdari’s legacy.
And in keeping it in the family, they created Bloodline Combat Sports Agency.
“The agency has kind of been a way for us to channel all that … there’s a lot of hurt,” Ahmadi said. “I can just use that as a platform to bring us together and do good and continue the mission.”
Three of the agency’s fighters – Dan Argueta, Rafa Garcia and Danny Silva – are in the UFC. A fourth, LFA’s Lerryan Douglas, could be close, Swanson says.
They have less than 10 fighters under contract and that’s exactly how they want it. Quality over quantity. The fighters train with Swanson at his UFC Gym, where the coach can impart his wisdom and they can keep him on his toes.
“It’s one of those things where I’m less worried about them winning titles in my honest opinion,” Swanson said. “I’m more worried about them buying a house and being secure, making sure that they’re all set.”
And his fighters see it.
“The way he guides us, everybody. He’s a leader,” said Garcia, a 29-year-old lightweight. “He just shows the way. He shows what to do and what not to do.”
Said Silva, a 27-year-old featherweight from Santa Ana who has known Swanson for eight years: “Being able to see such a great role model, he’s helped me out being able to follow his lead. Just that alone has helped me get into the UFC and be under his guidance. He’s been a blessing for me.”
Argueta, a 30-year-old bantamweight, said Swanson’s lessons pertain to more than sports. “Life is hard. It can be tough. It can beat you down. You can lose fights. You can lose things in life, but at the end of the day, you can’t lose your dignity.”
‘WE KEEP GOING’
“I don’t know if I can do it,” Swanson said.
That was the phone call he made to his wife last year from Denver, where he went with Garcia to help him train. The mile-high altitude hit Swanson hard. And as he struggled against younger fighters, his back screamed in agony and his mind grappled with doubt.
Kenda Swanson had to pause. Sure, there had been injuries, but never such a mental obstacle. Her message was simple: “Then don’t fight.”
Swanson wound up keeping his word to fight Hakeem Dawodu in August, earning a unanimous victory from the judges.
Then he went to a back specialist who removed a cyst from his SI joint in his pelvis, relieving a nerve that was being pressed by years of inflammation and freeing Swanson from the feeling of “being stabbed in the back every night.”
Kenda Swanson compares this point in her husband’s career to a teeter-totter. Does he have something to prove? Or does he not?
“It’s kind of hard, but we do both know that, you know, the end is coming. You know?” she said. “So it’s like, it’s there, and I wasn’t sure. I’m like, ‘OK, maybe this one will be the … maybe he’ll retire after that last one?’ And he didn’t, and that was OK. And so I’m like, ‘All right, so we keep going.’”
As someone who works for the UFC managing their VIP hosting, Kenda Swanson knows the fight game. A 12-year employee, working events with an average of 12 fights per card, it’s easy to estimate she has seen thousands upon thousands of fights.
And Cub Swanson has been through it – 42 professional fights, 14 hand fractures, plates in his wrists and, wildest of all, undergoing reconstructive surgery on his face thanks to an overzealous training partner’s knee in June 2011.
“Fractured orbital, nasal, cheekbone was crushed. My upper jaw broke,” recalled Swanson, who then made his UFC debut five months later.
As difficult as that was for Swanson, with his jaw wired shut for eight weeks, Kenda Swanson agrees with her husband: The fights do not get easier with time.
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Saturday will be no different. The knot in her stomach will twist as he makes the walk to the cage.
“It feels like I’m literally standing on the edge and someone’s gonna push me out of an airplane,” she said. “And I have zero desire to do it, but they’re like, ‘You’re doing this, like you have no choice. You’re doing this. You have a parachute on. Just trust that it’s gonna come out and I’m pushing you out.’”
And then Cub Swanson will ascend the steps to the Octagon and bow in.
As for when he bows out? That chapter is still to be written, but you know how it goes.
Cub Swanson has already won.