Athletes
Julian Marquez's Undeniable Love For MMA
UFC Middleweight Julian Marquez Feels At Home Inside The Octagon And Is Eager To Make His Return Against Cody Brundage At UFC Fight Night: Kape vs Almabayev
Do you want to know why mixed martial arts is the toughest sport in the world? I can give you a bunch of reasons, but no one has come quite as close to truly explaining it than Julian Marquez.
“You have to do the impossible every time you perform,” said Marquez, who faces Cody Brundage in Saturday’s UFC Fight Night co-main event/ “And the impossible is to dodge that one shot, to miss that one shot. It's almost equivalent to a pitcher throwing a no-hitter. It's very, very difficult.”
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There it is. In one sentence. Think about it. A pitcher in baseball has to retire 27 batters without allowing one hit. He can have a few miscues, like allowing a walk or having someone reach base on an error, but to join a select few in the history books, he has to be almost perfect. That goes for every fighter in every fight.
“You have to dodge that one punch,” said Marquez. “You have to make sure you miss that one instant. That changes the whole entire path of the deal. And it's very difficult, because when you needed to bob, you should have weaved or when you should have ducked, you stood, or when you threw a kick, you just kept your hand down a little too low. It's very chess-like, but it's doing the impossible, and you have to be better at doing the impossible than your opponent.”
Marquez has been on both sides of the equation during his seven-fight UFC career. He’s had the bonus-winning victories over Darren Stewart, Maki Pitolo and Sam Alvey, but also the crushing defeats to Zachary Reese, Marc-Andre Barriault and Gregory Rodrigues. In baseball, a pitcher can give up a grand slam homer and still win the game. And even if he loses, he can come back in four to five days and try again. Marquez and his peers don’t have that luxury. They have to be on the night of the fight, and if they’re not, they’ll sit on that result for months. To some, that’s the appeal of this sport. Marquez is not in that group.
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“The appeal of all this is having the ability and the freedom to do what I want while enjoying what I do,” he said. “I know people that make great money working a nine-to-five, but they don't love their job. They're slaves, in a sense, to their job. They can't see their family, or they have to miss out on opportunities because they’re grinding hard. Me, I have a choice. I don't have to go to the gym; I want to go to the gym. I can fly back home to Kansas City and see my family for a weekend and come back and it doesn't affect me. A lot of people don't have that luxury that I have. And after all the hard work that you put in, all the discipline, all of the stress, the agony, the buildup, the hard sparring, the constant losses in the gym, the constant trial and error in the gym, to finally go out there and just perform and be yourself, your natural self, that’s the fun part.”
Winning is pretty fun, too. But as Marquez explains, it’s not the only thing.
“Nobody's perfect in this game,” he said. “You're going to get hit, you're going to get punched, you may get clipped, you may get dropped, you may get submitted, you may get caught. It does not matter. But you go out there and you push it to the best of your ability and see if this other person inside of you has the will and want to be able to get you to perform. And when you perform and you shine out there, then everybody loves and sees it, and they're all on the feet and they're clapping. You have an entertaining fight, or you have a fight that you get your hand raised in, it's just validation. But even if you don't get your hand raised, it's like, hey man, I did everything I should have done. This is what it is. So the thrill of it is being able to let it all out.”
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More of the same is expected from Marquez against Brundage at the APEX in Las Vegas, where “The Cuban Missile Crisis” hasn’t competed since his win over Alvey in 2021. Maybe that’s a good sign, but the 34-year-old doesn’t seem to be the superstitious sort. He’s an honest man and an honest fighter who doesn’t need mind games to prepare himself for battle. He’s just doing what he loves, and he will tell you as much if you ask him.
“I'm a competitor at heart,” said Marquez. “At the end of the day, you can see in my fights that I go out there and I'll pour my whole heart and soul into it. I'll go out there and I'll fight to the death. And sometimes my last three fights went to the death for me, and it is what it is. It doesn't change anything. If you go put anybody in front of me, I'm still going to fight the same. I'm not going to be timid, I'm not going to be afraid. I just love to compete, and I have an opportunity to compete again, especially under the UFC banner. They have every right to cut me, but they're giving me another opportunity, which I love the most, so I'm making the most of it.”
Yes, after losing three straight, a win would come in handy for the 34-year-old Kansas City native, who now trains with the MMA Lab team in Arizona. But again, it’s not the be-all, end-all for him. Does he want the win more than anything? Absolutely. A loss won’t force one of the most positive people in the game into a dark room, though.
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“I love this sport, I love everything to do with this sport, and I want to be in this sport for as long as possible,” said Marquez. “And even more, after I’m done fighting, I want to do something with the sport and I want to be involved with it. It's something that helped change my life, helped motivate me, helped build me to be a better person in and out of the Octagon. And the confidence it's given me and the ability to meet outstanding people in this world and make connections, this sport has given so much to me. I'll die for this sport and I do not care. Even if I go in there and I lose, it sucks. No one likes to lose, but it doesn't weigh on me. It's part of the game. You go in there, you do it. Some nights are your nights, some nights aren't your nights. I’ve had many times where I've put people down on the ground and had them walk out with an L and I’ve done the same. I've walked out with an L, so I understand it. But I love this sport. I love waking up every day, going to the gym, hanging out with friends, creating my own schedule, not working a nine-to-five, doing what I love and being able to do extra stuff on the outside while still doing what I love.”
That extra stuff? Well, it may include something that keeps those competitive juices flowing after he hangs up the gloves. And it’s probably not what you think.
“There's a lot of things that you can be competitive at,” he said. “I compete against friends playing disc golf. It's a competition where you go out there and you're still training, you're trying, you're having fun, but it's not as taxing on your body.”
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Disc golf?
“I'm pretty good,” Marquez laughs. “Now, I don't compete and go to tournaments, but I play with some pretty good people and I can hold my own. I can't hold my own against the world-class. Those guys are doing 14-under on 18 holes, which is not something I can do. And if I did, I would be making a crap load of money.”
That said, Julian Marquez is sticking to his day job for the time being.
UFC Fight Night: Kape vs Almabayev took place live from UFC APEX in Las Vegas, Nevada on March 1, 2025. See the final Prelim & Main Card Results, Official Scorecards and Who Won Bonuses - and relive the action on UFC FIGHT PASS!