Don't Miss Aaron Jeffery's Return When He Makes The Walk At CFFC 105 On UFC Fight Pass.
In 2022, Aaron Jeffery is one of the most laid back individuals in the fight game, but in his university days he was one hell of a mix between Stiffler and Bas Rutten…well, maybe not Bas Rutten.
Enough can’t be said about how mellow Jeffery’s personality is. You’ll never get him crying from laughter, you’ll never get him screaming in anger, you’ll never get him jumping for joy. He’s a pleasantly easy-going mellow that will never overwhelm you with emotion or energy.
He’s nice beyond the “Canadian nice” stereotype. If it weren’t for being enormous and athletic, he probably wouldn’t be fighting at all these days. It definitely hasn’t always been that way, Jeffery explains.
The CFFC middleweight champion explains that there are plenty of people back in St. Catharines from 2010-2014 that saw a whole different side of him on a semi-regular basis.
“I think I was probably being an idiot and mouthing off and whatever,” laughs Jeffery.
Thankfully, the Jeffery that was throwing down in the Brock University bars and parties wasn’t the 10-3 animal he is today. Jeffery explains that long before holding CFFC gold and making two appearances on Dana White’s Contender Series, he had a run of the mill college student fight record.
“I’d say I’m running probably a .500 record,” Jeffery said. “I think some of the fights are probably impossible to score. I know my buddies have a funny story. One time there was like a university residence, a place called Village. It’s all houses with university kids and I was getting into a fight with some guy and we had both fallen down and we were both sitting on our a** in front of each other punching each other in the face. A lot of no contests.”
Very few people alive have a street fight record that is comparable to Tank Abbott’s, but it is funny to imagine a world where the disciplined mixed martial artist is getting pummeled by somebody far from any sort of combat sports gym. But college is a crazy time.
Never one to let a funny moment go undocumented, Jeffery used to keep pictures of particularly bad injuries sustained in fights he’d pay to have memory of.
“I used to have a picture on one of my old cell phones where I was at the bar. I think it was my first year of university; I was underage, I was, like, 17 using my brother’s ID to get in the bar and some guy punched me and broke my nose bad,” Jeffery said. “My nose was sideways, my face was swollen up, my eyes were swollen shut and I went to the hospital the next day to get it fixed. There were two cops in the hospital and one cop came up to me and asked me what I was doing there and I said, ‘what do you mean?’ He said, ‘I brought you here yesterday to get your nose fixed.’ I had no recollection of being in the hospital, being with cops, any of this. I somehow got from the bar to the hospital in a cruiser and then back to my university residence and I didn’t remember any of it.”
Jeffery modestly and hopefully accurately says that while his university scuffles may come with plenty of memorable stories, it’s a dense but moderate amount of fights.
It’d be nearly impossible to push Jeffery to the point of fighting in the streets these days but one can’t help but imagine what impact he left on the town and his dance partners in the early 2010’s. Has his career in mixed martial arts gone on to make gods out of mortals back in St. Catharines? Or when the tree fell was nobody around to hear it?
He wanted everything, wanted everything. Now he has it! #CFFC93
That’s the million dollar question we’d all love to know.
“I always wonder about that, if anybody from back there sees me on TV and says, ‘Oh, I fought that kid at the bar once,’” Jeffery said. “That’d be pretty funny; I’d love that. I think that’s amazing if that’s somebody’s claim to fame.”
Catch the return of Aaron Jeffery at CFFC 105 with Middleweight gold on the line. The action comes your way on Saturday, January 29, ONLY on UFC FIGHT PASS!
