Athletes
Malcolm Wellmaker | Making A Name For Himself
UFC Bantamweight Malcolm Wellmaker Is Looking To Take Advantage Of His Opportunity As He Takes On Cameron Saaiman At UFC Kansas City: Machado Garry Vs Prates On April 26, 2025
Warning to Malcolm Wellmaker’s employers: if the bantamweight newcomer gets Cameron Saaiman out of there in spectacular fashion this weekend in Kansas City, don’t expect the union pipefitter to show up at work on Monday.
“It’s not a two-week notice, it's a two-day notice,” he laughs. “That's the kind of notice I'm giving when I go out there and fight. My bosses know if I go out there and I get a performance bonus, man, that last day I was at work was my last day at work. And they're rooting for me. They want to see me win, they want to see me succeed. All of them know if they have a way out of the trade, they'll take it. Nobody wants to carry a lunchbox the rest of their life.”
Putting that day job aside is the dream, and the 30-year-old from Augusta, Georgia, is closing in on it after earning a UFC contract last summer with a first-round knockout of Adam Bramhald. The win lifted Wellmaker’s perfect pro record to 8-0 with six finishes, and finally, the world got to see what those on the regional scene have been raving about for the last couple years.
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Raves don’t pay the bills, though, so Wellmaker has had to keep working as a pipefitter. It’s not a bad gig at all, but it is tiring to do that and try to put together a fight career at the same time.
“To be honest, the more recent years have been easier because I've started to see some actual progress and some real results and get bigger opportunities,” said Wellmaker. “But I was in the apprenticeship before I ever even started training. I got introduced to MMA through one of the guys I met during the apprenticeship. And so I never even knew what it was like to train without having to juggle a full-time job with school two nights a week and then a couple Saturday classes every semester. So, in the beginning when I was taking trips, I even remember taking trips to Virginia and all these other places for amateur fights and, at the end, coming back at a loss because we're not getting paid.
Those years were the hardest, and especially in the early pros, as well. Those years were super hard because the paychecks were very small, and you've given so much to the sport. You trained at such a high level, and you feel like you're competing against all these guys that are full-time athletes. But literally everybody else is struggling, too. But yeah, it has been so much easier the past year or two because I got picked up by my management and they have been telling me what I could accomplish. Those kinds of milestones, they made it so much easier for me to continue to sacrifice.”
The biggest milestone was when he traveled to Las Vegas and introduced himself to the public at large with his knockout of Bramhald in front of UFC CEO Dana White. The boss was impressed enough to give the prospect a contract, and now everything has changed. Looking back, Wellmaker is glad he stuck around through the hard days that had him questioning if he was ever going to get to the big show.
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“There were quite a few times,” he admits. “One of the biggest ones I remember was before I got picked up by my management, right after my first year of professional fighting. It was going on my second year, then I went on a six to eight-month time span of not having any fight opportunities and continuing to train and grind with no motivation of a fight being signed and no money being thrown my way.
Times were hard and money was tight. It was super hard, but I stayed the course. I knew that with the trade I'm in, if I hit the road, I could make twice the money easily. But I stayed home to train. I stayed home to stay with my gym with the same guys that I started with. And it was hard, but I did it.”
And even though having seven pro fights isn’t a lot for someone stepping into the shark tank that is the UFC bantamweight division, Wellmaker wasn’t going to wait around when the call came for fight number eight.
“Of course not,” he laughs. “I had the fight that took me to 7-0 against a guy in Atlanta. But the fight I had before that was against a guy they flew in from Michigan named Taylor Moore, who had fought on the Contender Series before. My record was pretty solid, I had gotten mostly finishes in all my fights, and to be honest, I thought that when I beat Taylor Moore, I had done enough. It was a hard fight, it was five, five-minute rounds, it was my first professionalchampionship fight, and he was the toughest guy I ever fought. Dude was huge. Biggest ‘35erI've ever seen.”
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Wellmaker pounded out a five-round majority win over Moore in October of 2023, but the call for DWCS didn’t come. When he knocked out Chase Boutwell in January of 2024, that was a different story.
“When I got the phone call that I had done enough and that all I had to do now was sit back and wait for them to give me a name and a date, it was surreal,” Wellmaker said. “I knew it was coming eventually, but I had learned to not have those expectations. And when it came to the very next fight, I almost was in tears. It was a very sentimental moment for me to feel like I finally made it.”
He got a taste of making it when he got recognized in the local Walgreens and pizza parlor, and that’s just the beginning. That kind of notoriety can take down a 22-year-old kid before he even gets started. But a 30-year-old who knows what it’s like to sacrifice and work, that’s a different story altogether.
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“There are a lot of things that help me with the expectations,” Wellmaker said. “One of the biggest ones is the fact that, to be completely transparent, I feel like I wasn't supposed to be here in the first place. Everything I accomplished, even from becoming a professional fighter and then making it to getting a UFC contract, I feel like I did so much more than I was really on track to do with my life before I found the people at that gym. So, I know that regardless of what happens, my imprint on the city of Augusta is going to live forever. I know so many guys that arecoming behind me, that for sure are going to do bigger and better things than me in the UFC. But, to be honest, I don't think the world has seen what I can do yet.”
UFC Fight Night: Machado Garry vs Prates took place live from T-Mobile Center in Kansas City, Missouri On April 26, 2025. See the final Prelim & Main Card Results, Official Scorecards and Who Won Bonuses - and relive the action on UFC FIGHT PASS!
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