Ashiek Ajim is a late bloomer. The 28-year-old’s introduction to competing in combat sports came during his junior year of high school when he began wrestling. It was just a few years later, at the age of 20, that Ajim would take things to the next level and, in his words, “go all in”.
“In 2015, a year before my first (professional) fight, is when I started training full-time,” Ashiek said. “I started around 20, 21.”
However, it was from an even earlier age that Ajim had fallen in love with the MMA. His time as a wrestler and his tenure as a pro fighter are due in large part to that initial passion.
“Growing up I’d always watched martial arts with my dad and then even like ‘Dragon Ball Z’ and stuff,” he said. “You see that, everyone’s like, ‘Yeah, I want to do that sh-t,’ you know when you’re a kid. Then one day I saw ‘The Ultimate Fighter,’ and I was like, ‘Oh, people actually do this. That’s pretty cool,’ so it was always in the back of my head that I wanted to do that one day.”
It was after “The Ultimate Fighter” had piqued Ajim’s that he began paying keen attention to the UFC. Being a genuine fan of the sport and the athletes within it ignited his desire to begin training.
“I guess a lot of people do it because they’re just naturally athletic or they just workout for it, but I liked watching it as a fan and just started to train with the goal of getting to the UFC and being a champion there,” he said. “When I first started watching, Georges St-Pierre was big and I liked his persona and the way he carried himself, … and Jon Jones is also an inspiration.”
Ajim, who hails from Queens, New York, has eight professional fights to his name and a 6-2 record. His most recent fight saw him take a loss in the sixth season of Dana White’s Contender Series in Las Vegas back in September.
To get to the UFC in a full-time capacity is the ultimate goal for Ajim. But, of course, there are plenty of steps to climb on the way to that destination.
Ajim (6-2) is featured in the co-main event of Saturday’s CFFC 118 event, when he matches up against Vilson Ndregjoni (6-3) for the promotion’s vacant bantamweight title. The night’s main card will stream live on UFC FIGHT PASS from the 2300 Arena in Philadelphia.
“My long-term goal is to win this belt, maybe defend it, and eventually get to the UFC, win some fights there, and then become the UFC champion,” Ajim said.
In preparation for the match, Ajim has done his homework and established a strategy.
“I’ve been looking for a head-kick knockout for a while,” he said. “(Ndregjoni) is a lefty, so it’s in that open stance. I’m standing righty, so I’m looking for that. He’s a good wrestler, so I’ll try to mind my p’s and q’s there – make sure my wrestling defense is good. But I’m looking for a highlight reel head-kick, if I can. He’s gotten caught a couple of times with flying knees, so I’m looking for something like that – a flying knee, a high kick.”
Ajim’s dedicated transition from fan to fighter has left him in awe of his own journey. While his decision to pursue a professional MMA career wasn’t on a whim, it certainly didn’t come without risk.
“There was one fight where I was an amateur, and before I walked out to the cage I was thinking, ‘What the hell am I doing? Like, why am I doing this?’” he said. “Then it hit me in the moment, I’m not really doing anything else with my life. This was the goal, just to be a professional fighter and make it to the top.
“Then I told myself, ‘This is what I do.’ If I don’t walk out there, if I don’t fight, then the next day there’s nothing really else I’m going to be doing. That was the mindset from then on.”
This story first published at CFFC.tv.
