Athletes
Tom Nolan | The Australian Uprising Continues
DWCS Alum Discusses Aussie MMA Boom, Crucial Matchup With Fares Ziam
It might be surprising to some, but Australia now boasts the third most athletes on the UFC roster with 23, trailing only the United States (200) and Brazil (106). What’s most interesting about the Aussies rounding out the podium is that just a handful of years ago, that number was halved. In the last couple of years, though, a new wave of talent arrived. Since the beginning of 2024, there have been a dozen Australians that have made their way into the Octagon — four in 2024, six last year, and two more already this year.
While mainstays like Robert Whittaker, Alexander Volkanovski, and Jake Matthews continue to hold down the fort, competitors like former welterweight champ Jack Della Maddalena, Quillan Salkilld, and Tom Nolan are leading the way for the next generation of standouts to emerge from down under.
“It does feel like we’re one big family,” Nolan said ahead of his fight against Fares Ziam on June 6. “Obviously, some teams are going to feel closer than others. Cody (Haddon) and Quillan’s coach, Romel (Luistro), I get along with him, we get along with them so well that it does feel like our gyms are almost brother gyms or sister gyms, whatever you want to call it. Same with Ben (Vickers) and Scrappy (MMA) and those guys.
“It feels like eventually, hopefully, every team in the country is like that,” added Nolan, who reps Brisbane’s Team Compton. “It’s cool even seeing Rob (Whittaker) and Izzy (Adesanya train together)— there’s a really big evolution now that our part of the world is starting to show how good we are, how many guys we have. There are still so many guys that are gonna go through; guys on the local scene that are like, ‘That guy is gonna be in the UFC, that guy is gonna be in the UFC; this guy is gonna do well, that guy is gonna do well.’ Eventually we’re probably gonna have a roster as big as the American side and that.”
Although matching the number of Americans on the roster is going to be a tall order, there is no denying the level of the competitors coming from Australia these days.
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Della Maddalena made a rapid rise through the welterweight ranks and joined Whittaker and Volkanovski as the third Australian UFC champion while Salkilld had rocketed into the Top 15 in the lightweight ranks on the strength of five wins in a row. Add in Haddon and Jono Micallef, DWCS Class of ’25 grad Cam Rowston and his heavyweight teammate Brando Pericic, and you have a pack of ascending talents beginning to make waves in their respective divisions.
So too is Nolan, who touches down in the Nevada desert on a four-fight winning streak and coming off a bonus-earning finish of Charlie Campbell back in September. Now starting his third year on the roster, the 26-year-old “Big Train” is really starting to settle in and finding confidence.
“The experience of working with other high-level guys is phenomenal. It goes without saying,” Nolan said. “When you’re a bit younger and a bit greener, you can’t really gauge when you go with dudes who are awesome, but once you become awesome yourself, you’re like, ‘I’m hanging. We’re all world-champ level
and at different positions in our journeys.’ We all have UFC guys we train with and stuff, but it’s really nice that — we’re on one side of the country, they’re on the other side of the country, and we’re all doing things similar, but we’re also doing things differently"
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"You get comfortable with your own teammates. You get comfortable with other UFC guys who are your teammates, but when you go and mix it up, learn together and share knowledge, it’s like, ‘Aw man, we can put all this together in a pressure cooker and everyone can grow in these different individual areas.’ We all have different skills sets and specialties, and it’s cool to be able to mix that together.”
The other piece that has helped unlock things for Nolan is making the adjustments that can only come once you start to acclimate to life competing on the biggest stage in the sport.
When you’re a genuine UFC-caliber athlete competing on the regional circuit, you have the talent to get away with any number of sins, but once you’re there, all of those things need to get dialed in, and it takes a little time. For Nolan, that period is now largely behind him.
“I was quite young getting signed to the UFC, I felt a little pressure to be careful what I say, be careful what I do, care about what other people think,” he said. “Now I’m just doing my thing. I love my life so much. Every day I’m waking up and thank God like, ‘Thank you that I get to do this every day,’ and the results come from that.”
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Nolan also attributes a shift in approach to his increased comfort. Instead of running himself into the ground for the sake of “hard work,” he is more focused on the quality of his training.
“I’m like, ‘I enjoy these sessions. I wanna do more, but I won’t because I need to be smart for the fight,’” Nolan said. “I need to win the fight; I don’t need to win in the gym.”
In order to win this weekend, he’s going to need to do something that no one has managed to do in more than four years: beat Fares Ziam. After splitting his first four appearances inside the Octagon, the 29-year-old French lightweight has posted six straight victories to climb to No. 14 in the rankings, having most recently earned a second-round stoppage win over Nazim Sadykhov at UFC 323 in December.
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“I think presence and pressure,” Nolan said. “Patience, but make it uncomfortable for him. He uses his range well against short guys, but I think that’s gonna be hard for him. I think that’s gonna be hard for him to do against me where we’re pretty similar height. I’m not gonna be coming up underneath him as much. We’re gonna be very similar and I think that’s a big advantage for me. I’ve got a gas tank for days. I can go and go and go. Not to say he can’t, but I think he’s a bit of a guy where he needs it to be a little bit pretty, he needs it to be tidy on the outside, and when I disrupt his rhythm and my presence is there, I think it will be difficult for him to get a roll going.
“And if he does get a roll going, I also think I’m just resilient. I love fighting, so for me, that’s sweet, I don’t mind, whereas I do think on the other end, once I get that going, I think it will be a hard hole for him to dig himself out of.”
With the depth of talent present in the lightweight division at all times, Nolan knows that getting tabbed for a fight like this speaks not only to the success he’s already had, but the positive way in which the promotion views him as well.
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It’s a massive opportunity for the Contender Series alum, but one he’s been steadily building towards, and he fully intends to make the most of it this weekend.
“A bonus would be awesome,” Nolan said with a smile. “It’s not one of the markers (of success) because it is what it is, but that would be great. A successful trip for me would be waking up Monday morning with a number next to my name.”
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