Montrose Town Hall is only 120 miles from the Hydro in Glasgow but also another world away. Lorenzo Parente’s challenge now is to try to treat them both as equals.
The previous time the Edinburgh mixed martial artist fought in June it was in front of a few hundred spectators in the Angus town where he duly won the third fight of his short professional career.
Just a few weeks later he was signed up by the Professional Fighters League [PFL] for whom he will make his debut at the cavernous Hydro next month on the same card as MMA luminaries including Stevie Ray and Robert Whiteford.
It is an occasion and atmosphere that could overwhelm anyone stepping into it for the first time. Parente will have the support of his Higher Level teammates, as well as a clutch of friends and family, but the 23-year-old revealed his primary coping technique will be to reduce his focus to no larger than the size of the ring, shutting out the extraneous noise and colour until after his contest is over.
“It’s a massive jump going from Montrose to the Hydro but it’s still about getting in there and having a fight,” he reasons. “The bright lights, the big arena, the cameras – none of that really matters. I just focus on the task at hand and that’s to go in there and eliminate my opponent. It won’t be hard to block out everything else. When I’m locked in, I’m locked in. It’s a big night for me and for Scottish MMA and I’m excited. But I won’t enjoy all of that other stuff until after my fight.”
Few MMA combatants take the same path to arrive in the sport. Parente was a handy footballer as a youth – scouted by Hibs at one point – before drifting into boxing and then jiu-jitsu before expanding his skillset to include the entire martial arts armoury. He admits that the chance to become the next swaggering Conor McGregor was an early motivating factor for getting involved.
“I think he was everyone’s idol back in the day and I got into the sport because of him,” he reveals. “Watching his fights when I was around 15 made me really want to do it. To see where he had come from and where he got to - that inspired me a lot.
“I left school pretty early and didn’t have a job. I was just training all the time. I didn’t care about having money or a nice car or anything like that. It was tough for a while but I can get by okay now.
“I started out at CVA Jiu-Jitsu in Edinburgh with Ben Fletcher when I was about 17. He took me under my wing until I was about 18 or 19. I spent a couple of months up in Aberdeen as well and then two years later started training at Higher Level. In that time I’ve really improved a lot.”
Parente doesn’t have to look too far for role models in his quest to reach the top, the sport echoing to the sound of Scottish accents. Given how much he has committed to the pursuit of this dream – training twice a day – it is little surprise to learn that Parente is all in.
“I worked so hard throughout my whole amateur career,” he confirms. “Something I’ve wanted for some time is to be on the PFL roster so it’s a dream come true for me. I only turned professional in December but I’ve had three fights already. I like to stay busy, stay active. I’m not going to sit around and wait for things to come to me.
“I’ve always trained full-time and taken it very seriously. I did landscape gardening for a wee while but I gave it up after six months. It was brutal. I felt like a slave and I could never do that again. I do some personal training to get by but this is my job now and I’m extremely grateful for that. You only get one life so I want to give it all I’ve got.”
MMA is such a brutal, unforgiving sport that you wouldn’t need to be the most squeamish or protective of parents to object to your child taking it up. Parente’s mum was the same in the early days, although after three first-round “ground and pound” stoppages in his first three professional fights, she is less anxious now.
“At the start my mum never really supported me as much as she was a bit worried,” he adds. “And then I started choking and knocking folk out and she started to get less worried. I’m the bad guy in there, they’re not the bad guys! It’s my opponents’ mums who should be worried.”
Fans can purchase tickets for PFL Europe Glasgow at the OVO Hydro Arena on 28 September through Ticketmaster.
