A couple days before his fight promotion was due to hit the century mark on events, Cam O’Neill’s phone was blowing up. Not a great sign for any fight promoter just prior to weigh-ins. To make matters worse, a glance at the screen revealed that it was one of the fighter’s managers calling him.
“So I’m a bit worried,” O’Neill, director of Australia’s Eternal MMA fight promotion, told Uncrowned. “We’ve already lost one fight due to weight-cutting issues.”
This was Wednesday. Actually, make that Thursday already in Australia, where Eternal makes its home in Gold Coast. Eternal was closing in on two big events — Eternal MMA 100 and 101 — squeezed into one weekend. As if that wasn’t enough of a big deal, it also happens to be the same weekend the promotion’s top alumnus, Jack Della Maddalena, defends his UFC welterweight championship half a world away in New York on Saturday night (North American time) at UFC 322.
“Stress levels are very high,” O’Neill said. “It could be a huge weekend for Australian MMA.
“When Jack fights on Sunday, I’ll be sitting right there in front of the TV with as little company as possible so I don’t get annoyed with silly comments. Events like that, I can’t watch in public.”
O’Neill will be the first to admit that it’s a little strange to be so stressed in such a beautiful place. He grew up in Scotland before falling in love with this particular parcel of Australia’s beachfront property two decades ago. He made the long journey to visit his parents, who sought a kind of seasonal refuge on Australia’s west coast during the abusive Scottish winter, and he instantly knew he never wanted to leave. Right away, he said, he began plotting ways to sell everything he owned back in Scotland and make this his new home.
Such is the appeal of this little corner of Queensland. But it’s also a tough place to keep a fight promotion going, for a couple different reasons.
“The big challenge of life here is wanting to go to work in the morning,” O’Neill said. “It’s absolutely beautiful every single day. Growing up in Scotland where the rain comes at you horizontally most days, it’s a huge juxtaposition. I wake up in the morning and the sun’s splitting the sky. I’ve got 30 meters of waterfront out the back door of my house. You say to yourself, I understand why people don’t go to work here.”
Before he promoted his first Eternal MMA event in 2012, O’Neill said, he had a small truck company with a workshop that employed all sorts of young local men among its ranks. There, it wasn’t managers calling with bad news on injuries or botched weight cuts, but instead the surf report that became his nemesis.
“As soon as you get some good swells out on the beaches, the amount of sick calls you get — half the staff aren’t there,” O’Neill said. “They’re out surfing, and it’s hard to blame them.”
It also has not always been a hotbed for MMA. The vibe, O’Neill said, is laid back and leisurely. People want to be outdoors enjoying life. The economy is mostly driven by tourism, which means it can be up and down with not a lot of discretionary cash in people’s pockets to spend on tickets to an MMA event.
When he started out putting on shows, he said, it was just because he loved the sport and wanted there to be a local option. After each one he had to do the math on whether or not it was worth it to try another. Never did he think that, 13 years later, he’d be cresting the hill of 100 events, or that it would happen the same weekend a homegrown fighter defended his UFC title at the grandaddy of them all, Madison Square Garden.
Della Maddalena is a good example of what O’Neill regards as the best-case scenario for his promotion. He made his pro debut in Eternal MMA back in 2016 — and he lost. A third-round TKO started his career off 0-1. A couple months later he fought again. And lost again, this time by submission.
But his coach, Ben Vickers, who O’Neill said talked his way into becoming a partner in Eternal MMA (even after O’Neill had sworn he’d never work with another partner following some rough experiences), never stopped believed that Della Maddalena had the goods.
“I could tell [Della Maddalena] was good, but I didn’t know what he’d become,” O’Neill said. “Ben has always said, since the day Jack walked into the gym, ‘This kid is going to be a UFC champion.’ He said that back when Jack was an amateur, and he made a believer out of me.”
Della Maddalena’s career arc since those two early losses has been exactly what O’Neill hopes to see for all Eternal MMA fighters. He built up a solid record and got some quality experience, fighting nine of his first 11 pro bouts under the Eternal banner. Then, when he was ready, he made the leap to the big time, first with the UFC’s Contender Series and then with the UFC itself, where he became 170-pound champion just three years after making his debut.
This, O’Neill said, is the goal. To see a local fighter come up through his ranks and then hit it big with the world’s top promotion. That’s a little counterintuitive to most people, since it means losing talent he’s helped cultivate. But if the alternative is holding talented fighters back — or worse, sending them to the big leagues before they’re ready — he’ll gladly take this version of success.
“We don’t want them to move up to the big show just to come back with a free t-shirt and end up stocking shelves in a supermarket for the rest of their lives,” O’Neill said. “We feel that we failed fighters if we send them up there just to get three losses and come home. We want to set them to go out there and not just be competitive, but set themselves up so they don’t have to work again when they’re done fighting.
“This job is hard enough. That’s one thing you learn when you’re this close to it. People think it’s all this money in one night. Let’s see you do two or three years on the local scene first, making all those sacrifices, can’t even do anything with your family. After all that, I would hate to send people [to UFC] to fail.”
Between Eternal MMA 100 and 101 this weekend, there are more than 50 fighters making their own cases to be the next one to break out of this little beach paradise and onto the biggest stage in the sport. For his part, O’Neill would like to see them all succeed. And then he’d like them to leave him alone and let him watch Della Maddalena’s title defense in peaceful solitude.
