Brandon Royval burned with desire to beat the odds before becoming UFC champ

The kid from Denver hopped on his bike and rode, chasing a dream his heart knew was real but he could not see. All Brandon Royval knew for certain: If he stopped fighting, the dream would die.

And isn’t that a pretty decent definition of blind faith?

Back in the day, on the streets of his Denver neighborhood, Royval recalled, “I feel like every Mexican kid had the Fernando Vargas haircut. I had my head shaved, with those bangs. Every Mexican kid was a boxing fan because of him.”

So as a teenager, Royval jumped on his bike and pedaled 13 miles to the gym, where, to tell the truth, he thought all the dudes practicing mixed martial arts were doing an injustice to the sweet science of pugilism.

“I was never a fan of kicking or wrestling,” Royval admitted. “If you’re a boxing fan, you think that’s kind of lame.”

But now 31 years old, after chasing a dream for half his life, Royval sees his destiny inside a cage in Las Vegas, when at Ultimate Fighting Championship 296, he will do battle in a rematch against Alexandre Pantoja for the flyweight title at 125 pounds.

Emerge from that cage victorious and Royval will do what no Denver-born kid before him has ever achieved: be a champion of the UFC, now the undisputed king of the fight game.

“I’ve seen so many people have their dreams discouraged, and then submit to that doubt. Never quit on yourself,” Royval told me after a recent workout at Factory X in Englewood, where he trains under the guidance of coach Marc Montoya

“This is my purpose for waking up in the morning. If I didn’t have MMA, I don’t know what else I’d be chasing. But I wake up every morning and chase my dream.”

As a teenager, Royval stole mixed martial arts moves from television, maybe a little reluctantly at first, feeling as if he was cheating on boxing, his true love.

But the kid did it to survive the no-holds-barred battle royales he staged with Darian, his older brother, at home. For fun. Their idea of fun? “We’d fight until my shoulder dislocated,” Brandon recalled. “My shoulder would come out of the socket, he’d put it back in, then we’d go shower and eat dinner.”

In a sports-crazy city where everybody knows the names of Nikola Jokic and Russell Wilson, Royval has fought in the shadows for the vast majority of his life, not landing his first shot at success in the UFC until May 2020.

“All I wanted to do was get to the UFC. I didn’t know if I was going to last or if it was going to work out. I just wanted to be there,” Royval said.

“When I took my first fight, I thought: ‘I’m probably going to lose, but I made it and got the shirt. I can tell my kids later I made it to the UFC.’”

When he beat Tim Elliott by submission in the second round, nobody was more shocked than Royval. He credits Montoya for instilling the vision to dream bigger than the limits of his own imagination. He fights with a purpose, motivated by years of working a job in the juvenile justice system, alongside teenagers often born into a life that dares them to fail.

“I took that job home with me,” Royval said. “I’ve seen a lot of those kids pass away. I’ve seen a lot of them overdose. I’ve seen them get arrested again. I’ve seen them commit murder. You see so much. But you also see it for what it is: a bunch of kids dealt a rough hand.”

This week, while rolling down the Las Vegas strip, Royval looked up, saw his face larger than life on billboards. And hand to God, it didn’t seem quite real to a Denver kid who rode his bike 13 miles to the gym in pursuit of a dream now 15 years in the making.

But at a pre-fight press conference, he clearly saw what awaits him on Saturday night. Royval saw the future. And it wasn’t pretty.