It was a good night for UFC light heavyweight Patrick Cummins at UFC Fight Night: Long Island. The mustachioed tough man won a blood-and-guts split decision over heavy handed New Yorker Gian Villante, taking some serious shots that left his eye a mess but didn’t stop him from pushing forward and pressuring for the win. Cummins celebrated the win with his fans on social media in an interesting way: by posting a selfie from the back of an ambulance.
This isn’t the first time Cummins has taken an ambulance selfie following a grueling battle in the Octagon. He took a similar picture after another razor thin decision victory in April, this one over up and coming Polish light heavyweight Jan Blachowicz.
Those two wins are a big turnaround for Patrick, who went 1-3 over 2015 and 2016 before getting back to his winning ways in 2017.
“I was homeless for a while,” he admitted in a recent interview. “Not on the street, but ‘Hey can I stay with you’ for a while. [Now] I’m good. I had a fight recently, so I’m okay. I was coming off of two losses, I was a year in between fights, and that’s my income, you know what I mean? So it was hard. When you lose, you make half the money than if you won. And so I was hurting.”
Cummins, who was once an alternate Olympic wrestler, won a ticket into the UFC off a last second injury to Rashad Evans, who was set to face Daniel Cormier in the co-main event of UFC 170 in 2014. The UFC called up Cummins with a week to go before the event, plucking him from his job at the time as a barista for Starbucks based off his history as an undefeated former two-time All-American wrestler that ‘made Cormier cry’ in training.
While Cummins wasn’t able to win that fight, he secured himself a home in the UFC by going on to win his next three before losing to top of the division opponents like Ovince Saint Preux and Glover Teixeira. And while he may never be a light heavyweight title contender, he’s got the heart and the skills to guard the gate and knock back anyone unable to put him down with their fists, or unprepared for the 15 minutes of relentless war he’s ready to bring with every fight. We think it’s the mustache.
