Refugee life prepared unbeaten Bektic for UFC career
Mirsad Bektic doesn't remember much about Bosnia and Herzegovina. He was 3 when his family left near the height of the Bosnian War, too young to understand anything except that the fighting had gotten too bad and it was time to go. He also doesn't remember much about Italy, where Bektic, now 23, first fled with his mother and two brothers.
But Germany, the country where they settled as refugees for the next five years? The UFC featherweight remembers Germany well, maybe because it was there that he first became a fighter.
In a way, it's directly related to how he eventually ended up here, as an undefeated pro readying for his second fight with the UFC at Saturday's "UFC Fight Night: Gustafsson vs. Johnson" in Stockholm (Fox, 8 p.m. ET).
"In Germany, I always felt like I was the odd one out," Bektic (8-0 MMA, 1-0 UFC) tells Paste BN Sports. "I remember playing soccer with the other kids, the teachers coming home all the time because I was getting in trouble for fighting. I remember being in class once and I had done something to mess up the keyboard on this computer, and the teacher came behind me and slammed my face onto the desk. My nose was bleeding everywhere. I remember that very well."
He also remembers the day his mother took him and his brothers to the U.S. Embassy. He remembers her crying, pleading to be let into the U.S. He remembers the Americans asking about the status of his father, who hadn't made the trip to Germany with the rest of the family. He remembers his mother telling them that he'd been killed in the fighting back home, which at the time the family believed to be true.
"It wasn't until later we found out he was still alive," Bektic says. "It was a crazy time, but I remember it so crystal clear, my mother crying at the embassy, begging."
When word finally came that the Bektic family would be relocated to Lincoln, Neb., none of them – not his mother or brothers or Bektic himself – knew what to expect.
"I didn't know anything about Nebraska," Bektic says. "I didn't even know much about the United States, other than Tupac (Shakur). So when we came here, I remember I tried to dress like Tupac, wearing my hat sideways and stuff like that, baggy pants, all that. That's what I thought America was."
He found a different world from what he expected once he and his family reached Lincoln, but he also found that, as the new kid from the strange place, the need to defend himself against every perceived slight hadn't disappeared. If anything, it only increased. To his brothers, Bektic's willingness to fight all comers was "an attribute," he says. It helped form a mentality that still sets the young fighter apart, according to his coaches at the famed American Top Team gym in Coconut Creek, Fla.
"One of the first things he showed us was that desire to fight, to train," ATT co-founder Conan Silveira says. "Even though technically, he wasn't at that high a level at first, he had such a hunger to train and learn. That motivation and mental strength really caught my attention. When you come from the kinds of things he has, either it's going to make you or it's going to break you. And it didn't break him."
He'll need that mental toughness when he faces debuting Irish fighter Paul Redmond (10-4, 0-0) in Stockholm. Maintaining a perfect record on the biggest stage in the sport won't be easy. But then, for Bektic that's nothing new.
"Growing up the way I did," Bektic says, "I think it brought some different things out of me. I always felt like I needed to prove myself. That's never really gone away."
Maybe it never will. And maybe, in a business as tough as professional fighting, that's a good thing.
Fowlkes writes for MMAjunkie