Spring Break
UConn Alum Fights Way To 'Ultimate' UFC Debut
Aly Shea
Issue date: 4/2/08 Section: Focus
The intense training schedule was not exactly new for Cramer, who started out with jiujitsu and competed as a teen before finding that he really liked the intensity of fighting and the UFC.
"I was a huge fan of the sport - I watched all the fights," he said.
As the sport got more popular, he said he started integrating boxing, martial arts and wrestling into his training and developed an interest in fighting competitively as he began doing better and better.
Flash forward a few years and see Dan Cramer, training for a tryout while in his final semester of college and nursing a hand injury.
"They announced a tryout for my weight class in New Jersey," he said, "and I thought it would really help me with my career."
Three hundred others thought so too and showed up at the tryout with him. Through a day's worth of competing and cuts, the field was narrowed to 30 hopefuls who were eligible to compete on the show in Las Vegas. Cramer got the call that he was being flown out to Nevada for a second elimination round of more intense tryouts including more cuts, drills, fights and drug tests just a week later.
Cramer left Connecticut Jan. 25 and was in Nevada for six weeks.
He's not allowed to say how far he got in the competition, but it's far enough that he feels confident in his ability to move into professional fighting.
The sport is a lucrative one, he said, and it will become moreso as it becomes more popular and more mainstream.
"The show gave me the opportunity to make connections so now I can train full time and pursue a career in mixed martial arts and use my degree to market myself as a pro athlete," he said.
And he's glad to be able to focus on a career in professional fighting rather than juggling training and school.
"The hardest part of training was balancing being a full-time student in Storrs and training in Danbury on top of that," he said. "It's a crazy uphill battle."
Cramer commuted from Danbury, an hour and a half away, each day for classes and trained at night during his last semester of college.
Now that he's back from taping the show, he's really focusing on his training, and preparing for more fights in the future, but is taking some time to enjoy life.
"I get to listen to music again, talk to my friends, see my family," he said, "But now it's back to training and preparing for fights. You gotta be ready for the next level."
Contact Aly Shea at
Alison.Shea@UConn.edu.
"I was a huge fan of the sport - I watched all the fights," he said.
As the sport got more popular, he said he started integrating boxing, martial arts and wrestling into his training and developed an interest in fighting competitively as he began doing better and better.
Flash forward a few years and see Dan Cramer, training for a tryout while in his final semester of college and nursing a hand injury.
"They announced a tryout for my weight class in New Jersey," he said, "and I thought it would really help me with my career."
Three hundred others thought so too and showed up at the tryout with him. Through a day's worth of competing and cuts, the field was narrowed to 30 hopefuls who were eligible to compete on the show in Las Vegas. Cramer got the call that he was being flown out to Nevada for a second elimination round of more intense tryouts including more cuts, drills, fights and drug tests just a week later.
Cramer left Connecticut Jan. 25 and was in Nevada for six weeks.
He's not allowed to say how far he got in the competition, but it's far enough that he feels confident in his ability to move into professional fighting.
The sport is a lucrative one, he said, and it will become moreso as it becomes more popular and more mainstream.
"The show gave me the opportunity to make connections so now I can train full time and pursue a career in mixed martial arts and use my degree to market myself as a pro athlete," he said.
And he's glad to be able to focus on a career in professional fighting rather than juggling training and school.
"The hardest part of training was balancing being a full-time student in Storrs and training in Danbury on top of that," he said. "It's a crazy uphill battle."
Cramer commuted from Danbury, an hour and a half away, each day for classes and trained at night during his last semester of college.
Now that he's back from taping the show, he's really focusing on his training, and preparing for more fights in the future, but is taking some time to enjoy life.
"I get to listen to music again, talk to my friends, see my family," he said, "But now it's back to training and preparing for fights. You gotta be ready for the next level."
Contact Aly Shea at
Alison.Shea@UConn.edu.
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