Two UFC Unknowns Hope UFC 239 Is Springboard To Bigger Fights and Paydays
By Alan Snel
LVSportsBiz.com
They’re tucked in the corners of the UFC media day room on Independence Day Thursday, away from the UFC 239 headliners like Jon Jones and Amanda Nunes and passing time by monitoring their cell phones or chatting with the occasional MMA media person who asks for a photo.
There was Chance Rencountre, a 32-year-old house framer from southwest Nebraska who says he’s Native American and is fighting in his third UFC match at UFC 239 Saturday. Rencountre, noting he weighed 176 pounds and needed to reach 170, is fighting a UFC welterweight foe with a name he said he found hard to pronounce — Ismail Naurdiev.
And on the opposite side of the T-Mobile Arena lobby was 27-year-old 135-pound Pannie Kianzad, who left Iran when he was only two years old with her parents and three older siblings to move to Sweden. Kianzad, a former Invicta fighter who trains in Denmark, lost her The Ultimate Fighter 28 Finale and is fighting in her second UFC match on short notice against Julia Avila in a bantamweight bout.
Rencountre and Kianzad come from backgrounds as far as you can get — he is a former college wrestler born in Oklahoma in middle America who trains in San Diego and she from Iran in the Middle East Iran who started MMA as a teen-ager in Sweden who trains in Copenhagen.
But they were linked this morning as they sat in chairs in front of UFC name boards as part of the hype process for Saturday’s fight show.
Rencountre has been training with former UFC light heavweight Phil Davis.
“Fight is about the journey,” Davis said. “He’s working his way up.”
Known as the “Black Eagle,” which pays homage to his Native American roots, Rencountre said he will earn more than $10,000 from UFC 239, but he will keep his home framing skills.
Meanwhile, Kianzad said she has assistant nursing skills to fall back on.
ADD: Kianzad lost via unanimous decision Saturday at UFC 239. But Rencountre won by unanimous decision.
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