A popular phrase used in the fight game is how the “Fight Path” for a fighter started and every fighter has their own unique story.
The story of American Top Team’s JD Domengeaux started when a friend dragged him to a seminar being conducted by former UFC middleweight Tim Credeur.
Domengeaux (4-2) instantly fell in love with the sport and decided shortly after that seminar that he wanted to start training full time.
“I was actually dragged to a ‘Crazy’ Tim Credeur seminar one day,” Domengeaux told The MMA Report. “A friend convinced me, ‘yeah, let’s go this guy he is a professional MMA fighter. He is putting on a seminar in our town. Let’s check it out.’ I was like, alright I will give it a shot. Went to his seminar and after that I was hooked. I immediately signed up at a jiu-jitsu school and started training full time basically right after that.”
He started training in his home state of Louisiana and trained along side current UFC lightweight Dustin Poirier. When Poirier had a chance to go to American Top Team, Domengeaux came along with him and those two weeks of training made him realize that he needed to move down to South Florida.
“I had the opportunity to come down here and train with American Top Team,” Domengeaux explained. “American Top Team actually wanted Dustin Poirier to come try out the gym and I was training with him back in Louisiana. He asked if I would like to come along with him and I said sure. We came down for two weeks. I came down and saw how hungry everyone was. There was so many fighters in there, you were feeding off the hungry and determination of everybody in there. I knew I had to be there. After those two weeks, I knew I had to move down.”
After starting 1-2 in his career, he has won three fights in a row by stoppage in the first round and is coming off a win against John Bryant at Rings of Dream: Fight Night 15 in February. His next fight will take place in June at Odyssey Fights and he will meet Bryant for a second time. After defeating a guy by TKO in the first round, why is Domengeaux giving Bryant an immediate rematch?
“They were very confident right off the bat that things could have gone different,” he said. “I felt that it was a pretty dominant victory. He feels that he could have done something better and maybe after the fight he saw something he could do different. I do not know what is going on through his head but they feel confident that they can turn it around so of course I want to fight him again. I am definitely not taking something like this lightly. I am training even harder because a guy that you beat and he wants to fight you again immediately, it makes you train harder. In his mind, he thinks he is going to come back and do the same thing I did to him, but he is going to do it to me this time. Really gives me the motivation to train hard and come out to do it again.”
Domengeaux wants to fight as much as possible this year and continue to improve as a fighter. He would fight every month if the opportunity is there and it may just be a matter of time before we see Domengeaux on a big stage in mixed martial arts.