5 Things You Might Not Know About Mario Bautista

Mario Bautista has started to cause a considerable ruckus in one of the Ultimate Fighting Championship’s deepest divisions.

The ascendant 30-year-old will do battle with Da’Mon Blackshear—a short-notice fill-in for Cody Garbrandt—in a featured UFC 292 attraction on Saturday at the TD Garden in Boston. Bautista enters his latest assignment on the heels of a four-fight winning streak that stretches across more than two years. He last competed at UFC Fight Night 221, where he put away Guido Cannetti with a rear-naked choke in the first round of their March 11 pairing.

As Bautista approaches his forthcoming confrontation with Blackshear at 135 pounds, here are five things you might not know about him:

1. Small-town living provided his foundation.

Bautista was born on July 1, 1993 in Winnemucca, Nevada—a city of roughly 8,500 inhabitants situated 470 miles north of Las Vegas. He shares a hometown with famed jazz musician Vernon Alley and Lute Pease, a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist for the Newark Evening News.

2. Excellence surrounds him daily.

The Brazilian jiu-jitsu brown belt operates out of the MMA Lab in Glendale, Arizona, where he sharpens his skills under various coaches and trains alongside a number of accomplished stablemates, from former UFC and World Extreme Cagefighting titleholder Benson Henderson to Sean O’Malley, Jared Cannonier and Kyler Phillips.

3. He took a traditional route to the UFC.

Bautista made his professional mixed martial arts debut on May 20, 2017 and started his career with six consecutive victories, five of them finishes, before he arrived in the UFC in 2019. He managed to bypass other pathways, most notably “The Ultimate Fighter” and Dana White’s Contender Series, choosing instead to prove himself in Tachi Palace Fights, the Legacy Fighting Alliance and Combate Global, among other organizations.

4. His legs have not yet fully stretched.

The John Crouch protégé has never fought outside of the continental United States. In fact, Bautista’s appearances thus far have been confined to Nevada, Texas, New York, Arizona and California.

5. Judges admire his work.

Bautista has gone the distance on three different occasions as a pro and carries a perfect 3-0 record in those bouts. He outpointed Juan Pablo Gonzalez to a unanimous decision at Combate Americas “Mexico vs. USA” on Oct. 13, 2018, did the same to Jin Soo Son at UFC on ESPN 4 on July 20, 2019 and followed suit against Jay Perrin at UFC Fight Night 201 on Feb. 19, 2022.