Bryce Meredith thinks he might be cut out for this MMA thing.
Meredith, a three-time Division-I All-American wrestler and the 2018 Big 12 Conference champion at 141 pounds at the University of Wyoming, is three fights into his MMA career with a trio of bouts under theLFA banner.
Friday, Meredith (3-0 MMA, 0-0 BMMA) will make his promotional debut at Bellator 293 in a bantamweight bout against Brandon Carrillo (1-0 MMA, 0-0 BMMA). The opportunity to be on a bigger stage is one he’s been thinking about for a while.
“It feels great,” Meredith recently told MMA Junkie. “I feel like I’ve been dreaming about this stuff for quite some time, and even as a young boy in wrestling, you always dream about making it your way up.
“(It’s a) big promotion, the MMA world, and having a good time doing that. The wrestling world took over for a while, and now that we were done with that, I’m stoked to be in this new world. It’s been a lot of fun.”
Meredith will turn 28 at the end of next month. Based at the MMA Lab in Phoenix, he has no shortage of teammates who can help him get ready for how things work on a bigger stage.
They also might be able to help keep him grounded in the early going. When Meredith knew for sure he wanted to transition to MMA and knew the time was right, he also learned he’d need to become multi-dimensional. But one thing he was pretty sure of is that the nature of the beast in the sport might be right up his alley.
“I hit this tipping point where I was like, ‘Dude, this is what I want to do,'” Meredith said. “This is more appealing to me and my personality, anyway – the fighting and the chaos and the media and all this stuff. It’s always been so fun to me. I’ve always loved that part of wrestling, but in wrestling you only get a little bit of it.
“You’ve got to go back a few steps. You’ve kind of got to eat sh*t and learn and do all this stuff. I think maybe that’s what it is. It’s like having patience and understanding. You’ve got to do your time in MMA, especially at 135, where everybody’s super developed in every aspect of MMA.”
But in terms of joining the ranks of the “super developed,” he thinks he picked a good place to start at the MMA Lab in Phoenix.
“I lucked out,” he said. “I came to the MMA Lab, where currently we have four guys on the team that are on the UFC roster. … I was really, really fortunate that I stepped in and I saw what the highest level is. Even with Sean (O’Malley) – he’s the No. 1 contender in the world right now (for the UFC bantamweight title0. So I got to learn very quickly you’re going to have to learn a lot of new sh*t because these guys are really good and really skilled everywhere.”
It’s been a perfect start for Meredith so far with three fights and three stoppages. He picked up a first-round TKO in his pro debut in 2021, then followed it up with another knockout in April 2022. This past September, he added a submission win to his resume.
In February, he signed with Bellator, a promotion with a reputation for plucking elite collegiate wrestlers to build them up in the MMA world. And again, that’s where his training at the MMA Lab comes in so quickly into his pro career.
“I know where I stand against the best dudes in the world, and I can confidently say that I’m on the right path and I’m excited to see where I’m going,” Meredith said. “There’s no doubt in my mind …Until you actually beat somebody that is really good or you compete and practice with people that are really good, it really puts it in perspective.
“One side of the coin, they are better than you think they are. And these people are tough and they will whoop your ass. But the other side of the coin, they’re not as good as you think they are, and they’re just men and they’re not that strong. They’re not that fast. They’re not that good. Both those are true. I think that’s kind of how we have to look at it.”
Meredith’s promotional debut is part of the Bellator 293 prelims Friday at Pechanga Resort Casino in Temecula, Calif. The main card airs on Showtime following prelims on MMA Junkie.
For more on the card, visit MMA Junkie’s event hub for Bellator 293.
