Exclusive Interview with 2024 FightMatrix Rookie of the Year, Thomas Gantt

Introduction

[#302 WW]  Thomas Gantt (9-0, 1 NC) is a 31-year old professional MMA athelete, fighting out of North Carolina. He is also the recipient of the 2024 FightMatrix.com rookie of the year award.  The primary reason for Gantt claiming this award is his incredible schedule in his first year as a pro.  He has fought in nine professional bouts in 2024, winning eight of them, and receiving one No Contest due to an unintentional knee to the head of a downed opponent. Including his three amateur fights in the same year before beginning his pro career, Gantt has fought a total of twelve times in a calendar year. He has already fought and won once in 2025, and we are only 6 days into the year!  Keep reading to learn more about Tommy Gantt and his journey.

Q& A

FightMatrix: Tell us about your childhood and upbringing.

Thomas Gantt: I was raised in a loving Apostolic Christian household with a family of 8. I was the oldest of 5 boys and one girl. My father and mother have been married for going on 40 years now. My “house” was blessed and I’m nothing less than grateful for everything my parents did for and provided for us. The town I grew up in is Centreville Illinois; it’s close to a city more would be familiar with, St. Louis, MO. I love where I’m from but it’s not the best environment to raise a family. Anything negative you can think of, it’s there. But honestly it’s made me who I am, so as much as people say it’s this or that, my heart will always be there.

 

FM: How did you get involved in Mixed Martial Arts?

TG: MMA really was something I was interested in because of its recent surge into mainstream media. It’s became a household sport. I’d watch all the time but I never thought I’d pick the sport up myself until I took that amateur fight and ended up loving it.

 

FM: You have fought 11 times in 2024, with 3 amateur bouts and 8 professional bouts.  How do you manage such a busy schedule?  Do you plan to fight this frequently in the future?

TG: It’s not easy managing my schedule to be honest. If I only had to worry about taking fights and not have work full time on top of being a dad to my kids it would be a lot easier. I’m still a full time wrestling coach at North Carolina State, where I wrestled in college. Being a wrestling coach is very demanding time wise. It involves a lot more than just wrestling with the team for two hours a day. It’s a 10 hour per day office job with two hours of wrestling mixed in. Sometimes I have to miss my own training time for fights to spend time with my kids. It’s hard to manage scheduling training sessions and not miss too much time with my kids.

I think it will hard for me to be this active once I get signed to a bigger promotion. The guys in the UFC are all tough and you aren’t coming out of fights with most of the guys already on the UFC roster ready to fight again the next week unless you just wrestle them for 15 min straight. The UFC and their fans have made it very clear that neither of them want to watch the elite level wrestlers just lay on everyone else on the roster for 15 min, so you have to try and do damage. But in doing damage to the opponent you also beat up your body in the process. Outside of some type of novelty situation like the UFC scheduling me for fights on back to back weeks like they did for Chimaev once or twice, it would be basically impossible for me to stay this active.

 

FM: Do you have an opinion on why other up-and-coming fighters don’t fight as often as you?

TG: I’m still pretty new to MMA overall so I don’t want to criticize or speak badly about other people specifically. I try and just focus on myself and what I need to do. I probably wouldn’t have fought this frequently if I had started fighting in my mid-twenties. A big part of why I was this active was my age. I had to get a lot of experience very quickly. If I had only fought 3 or 4 times a year like most people do, I would have been too old to get signed by the UFC by the time I had enough wins. I do think professionals are more concerned with their records than they were years ago because you must have a good record in order to get picked up by a major promotion. So unfortunately I think trying to build a great record is what makes most pros shy away from tough fights and fighting as frequently as I did.

Most other professionals usually aren’t scared to fight another tough opponent, they just worry about what a potential loss might do to their record and how the UFC will view that. It’s also harder to come out of pro fights healthy because the opponents are tougher, the rounds are longer and the elbows and knees that are allowed in pro fights cause more injuries and cuts to both guys fighting. I do think most amateurs who say they have UFC aspirations are making a big mistake by not taking challenging fights as an amateur or even later on when they are further into their pro careers. You have to take tough fights to get better. There is no way around that. Amateurs who say they want to go far as professionals turn down way too many tough fights and they don’t fight as often as they probably should because they are trying to pick and choose opponents.

I learned early on when I first started that your amateur record doesn’t count and it’s best to take tough fights as an amateur so you can go back to the gym and try and fix your weaknesses before you turn pro. Once you are pro there is no going back. My first coach tried to find me the toughest amateur fights possible because he wanted me to have seen most everything by the time I turned pro. I would have kept fighting amateur for a few more months if possible but there were no more opponents available so I was forced to turn pro. Once you turn pro you just aren’t fighting as frequently for a variety of reasons. Prestigious pro organizations like LFA understandably won’t let you fight within a period of 45 days of their event after you sign a contract to fight for them. I think that’s one of the reasons why a lot of pros don’t fight as frequently.

 

FM: What are your short-term and long-term career goals?

TG: My short term goal is to keep fighting, keep getting experience, stepping up my competition, keep getting wins and hopefully get signed to the UFC before the end of this year. I don’t generally like to get too far into my long term goals because that’s not the sort of thing our coaches ever allowed us to do in wrestling. I still am in that same mindset. We were always were forced to just focus on the match in front of us. I was kind of surprised when I first came over to MMA how arrogant and obnoxious a lot of the competitors really are. I don’t really pay attention to other fighters besides my friends from wrestling who are also fighting now.

Once my coach showed me a video of a potential opponent who I didn’t think was very good doing an interview. The potential opponent was saying all kinds of crazy things that even he doesn’t believe and he knows he can’t back up. He obviously wasn’t signed to the UFC yet and he was calling out Makhachev and other guys in the top five at 155. He sounded absurd honestly. He was saying he wanted to fight all of these guys in the top 5 but he had found someone else when the promotion offered me as an opponent to him.

I’ve learned that a lot of what these guys say about who they will fight and what they will eventually accomplish is pretty absurd. They don’t even believe what they are saying. Seeing these kinds of people just reinforces my belief of just focusing on the opponent in front of me and seeing where it takes me. If I am fortunate enough to stay healthy and keep progressing as quickly as I am, I know I can go far.

 

FM: Describe a typical day of training.

TG: I’ll go into the wrestling room at 11 AM with the team. I’ll drill technique with one of the better guys for 45 min and then we’ll wrestle live for 45 min. After I get out of work I’ll head to the boxing gym to spar for 6 rounds, then punch, kick, elbow and knee pads for another 6- 8 rounds or so.

 

FM: Who do you consider to be the greatest MMA fighter of all time, and why?

TG: It’s hard for me to pick who is the greatest fighter of all time because everyone has such a subjective standard of what makes someone the greatest to ever fight. If you look at who people consider the greatest to ever fight everyone would probably have a different order of mostly the same 10 guys. My top 10, in no particular order would be Demetrius Johnson, Henry Cejudo, Dominick Cruz, Jose Aldo, Frankie Edgar, Khabib Nurmagomedov, Georges St. Pierre, Daniel Cormier, Jon Jones, and Cain Velazquez. In terms of pure skill and impact on the techniques and strategy of the sport, those 10 guys all undeniably changed the sport. Each of those guys has changed the perception of what we thought was possible and influenced the style of everyone to come after them one way or another.

 

FM: What motivates you to stay focused in training and in the cage?

TG:Even when my wrestling career was winding down I still loved to compete. I love wrestling and always will but after hundreds of matches it just started to feel a little stale. I was ready for a new challenge and after taking that first fight I knew I loved it and I wanted to pursue fighting as a career. At this point though I want to set my kids up to be successful and be comfortable in the future. The money in the UFC has really come up the last few years for everyone on the roster. I want to provide my kids with opportunities that I never had. At this point a big part of why I show up to the gym and train everyday and why I fight as often as I can is the money for my kids and their future.

 

FM: Who is your biggest influence in the sport?

TG:I would have to say Daniel Cormier. I knew him pretty well before I even started fighting. My college coach and current boss was his teammate at Oklahoma State, a few of my other good friends also wrestled with him in college. He probably stayed wrestling competitively for one too many Olympic cycles just like I did. He also started fighting at a later age, I think he started around 30 if I can recall correctly. If I hadn’t watched him start fighting at a later age, I wouldn’t have thought it was even possible for me to do the same.

 

FM: What are your hobbies, apart from MMA?

TG:I don’t have much free time other than coaching and training. I like to try and spend most of my free time with my kids. But as far as hobbies go, I like to fish, play basketball, golf and play video games when I can.

 

FM: Who has been your toughest opponent to date?

TG: That’s a little hard for me to say honestly. Unfortunately I ended up liking most of my opponents when I got to speak to them in the back after the fight. I’ve become pretty good friends with a few of them and still speak to them after we fought. I’m grateful to most all of them for fighting me and helping me get the experience I needed to move forward in the sport. I wouldn’t be here within them as well. Josh Henry was world class tough. No matter what I hit him with he came back throwing harder. He was still trying to win the fight no matter how much punishment he took. He never quit trying to win at all right up until the referee stopped the fight.

My last opponent named Anthony Benevides was also a very tough guy. Even though I wasn’t hurt by his punches, I could tell he has really good power in his punches. He was very game in the fight and tried to win in every position we were in during the fight even if he didn’t have an extensive pro record. Cody Reece was another tough opponent that I fought while I was an amateur. He was 8-0 as an amateur at the time. He couldn’t find an fights as an amateur or as a pro because no one in the Carolinas would fight him. He was tough and didn’t concede in any position at all during our fight. I knew after I fought him that I had a pretty good future as a pro. He was tough.

Kyle Wright was much more skilled than his record. He was only 2-2 at the time we fought but he had fought nothing but tough opponents. Wright had made it the distance with UFC Heavyweight Karl Williams when they fought even though he got tossed around. In terms of skill, Wright was very good even if his record doesn’t reflect that. But in terms of toughness and heart he was by far the weakest opponent that I’ve ever fought as either an amateur or a pro. High School kids who come into the wrestling room occasionally during wrestling camps were a lot tougher mentally and physically than he is. In all of time I have spent in both wrestling competitions and in fights, I’ve never felt anyone completely quit halfway through a wrestling match or a fight like that. I can’t recall anyone even quitting as soon as I hit a takedown on them. Immediately after the last takedown of the fight, he started grabbing the inside of my glove and just trying to survive.

I felt him quit right then and I couldn’t believe it. As soon as I felt him quit, the ref called for a break in the action and I couldn’t even figure out why. I was confused as to why the referee even called a halt to the fight. I was still trying to figure out what was going on, I looked over to see if Wright was going to continue after the ref explained why he paused the fight and Kyle was rolling around in the cage, throwing his mouth piece, holding the back of his head, crying tears and mouthing that he couldn’t see. As soon as the fight was waived off he walked back stage with no guidance and told the promoter he wanted a rematch. The entire scenario was so absurd that I just started laughing. He could have won an academy award with his performance. I’ve never seen anything like it. That fight is “No Contest” I have on my record. People should go look up Tommy Gantt vs Kyle Wright if they want to see it. It’s crazy. I wasn’t even mad. I thought the whole sequence of events was comical and I still do. Go watch it if you want to have a good laugh.

FM: Is there anything else that you would like your fans to know about you?

TG: I would just like to say that I’m very appreciative for whatever support I have from the fans this early on. I’ve had a few fans congratulate me on the results of my fights at our N.C. State wrestling matches right before or after the match. I didn’t think anyone was really even following my career this early on so I’m especially grateful for that kind of support and acknowledgement so soon. I’m assuming that anyone following me already is an exceptionally knowledgeable fan of MMA and/or hardcore fan of amateur wrestling who also follows the guys who make the leap from wrestling to fighting. I’m grateful to have both types of people following my career regardless of whatever small number of people that maybe at this point.

I don’t use social media that much but apparently the UFC pays a lot of attention to the type of following fighters have on social media when deciding who to sign and who to promote so I guess I should use this opportunity to plug my social media and try and gain some followers. You can follow me on Instagram at tgantt74kg. My Twitter handle is also tgantt74kg. Currently I’m looking hard for fights after the wrestling season ends. I’ll post on my social media when and where my next fight will be. I’ll also post a link to the PPV video if the promotion offers one. If anyone is in driving distance and wants to buy a ticket and come watch in person, I’d love to have you there. I kind of keep to myself when I’m cutting weight and before the fight but after the fight is over I’m more than happy to talk to anyone interested in my career.

Conclusion

Thomas Gantt has had an incredible start to his MMA career, and he has his sights set on the UFC.  With a solid background in wrestling, Gantt is a promising prospect who is certain to make waves in the future. He has started his MMA career at 30, but managed to keep an amazing pace in his first year as a pro and obtained a great record. I’m looking forward to watching him progress as a fighter, and hoping to see him in the UFC soon. Gantt is also a great role model, dedicated to coaching wrestling at North Caroline State University. We at FightMatrix wish Tommy the best in his future endeavors.