The professional mixed martial arts debut of American Top Team’s Brandon Sandford will take place tonight when he meets Chad Wigginton in Virginia at Elite Warrior Challenge.
Sandford started as a mixed martial artist on the amateur scene in Michigan and ended up being offered a job in South Florida late last year. He saw that the job was ten minutes away from the American Top Team gym in Coconut Creek and he made the decision at that point to move to Florida.
Prior to coming to American Top Team, Sandford had already made the decision that he was ready to make his pro debut. In fact, he was hoping to have his pro debut previously.
“I was actually going to make my pro debut in July of last year and then in November,” Sandford told The MMA Report. “The show got canceled in July and it got pushed to November. Then I decided to take this job, so it kind of pushed it back even more. I came down here and got situated and finally now it came to fruition.”
His fight tonight against Wigginton is a featherweight fight, but Sanford plans to compete mainly at bantamweight. With that being said, why did he take this fight at featherweight?
“The reason I took this fight at 145 is because I wanted to fight,” he explained. “I was actually going to wait and fight until like mid-September. But I just did not feel like being inactive for that long. I just fought in May and I wanted to keep it going. I talked to Dave [his manager] and said what is up with this August 1 show. Originally it was at 135 and I was like ‘man, I don’t want to cut a bunch of weigh in a short period of time.’ I will just fight at 145. It’s not like I am small for 145 anyway.”
Sandford plans to walk out of the cage with a victory tonight and while he does not have a prediction on how he will win, he knows a key is to fight smart.
“Stay on him and stay pressured. Be smart and intelligent,” he said. “Don’t need to rush anything and fight my fight. Fight to the best of abilities.