A-League, UFC: Adelaide United player Isaac Richards makes shock switch to MMA
He credits the A-League for saving him from a life that landed close friends behind bars, but the lure of following the path of an Aussie UFC champ has forced the rising star to make a wild career change.
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Kicked out of home at 15 and estranged from his mother for 18 months, Isaac Richards found the path to salvation in football.
Now the highly rated 21-year-old has turned his talents to mixed martial arts with a long-term goal of following in the footsteps of Australia’s newest UFC world champion, Alex Volkanovski.
After agonising over the decision for the past eight months, Richards has pulled the pin on his football career on the eve of the A-League’s return.
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Desperate to make his name in MMA, Richards opened up about his troubled past and using his natural gifts for all the wrong reasons as a teen who all too often found himself in trouble.
Mixing with the wrong crowd put him in situations where doing ‘bad things’ became the norm, until the situation boiled over and he was sent packing from the family home.
“(Getting kicked out of home) was the moment that made me realise how bad I had to change,” Richards told News Corp.
“It was probably the hardest thing at that time, feeling abandoned by your own mum.
“I just refused to listen, and she was sick of it. She taught me a hard lesson and if she didn’t (kick me out) I reckon I probably would’ve kept doing that sort of thing.”
It proved a turning point in the then 15-year-old’s life, taking him off a path that would land good friends in jail – and instead landing him first in the A-League, and perhaps now putting him on track for international stardom with the UFC.
“I had a good friend who I grew up with (who) would get into trouble. I saw a lot of good in him but he couldn’t get off that path and he’s in jail now.
“There’s the two sides of the story. There’s the one where you go ‘I’m just sick of that shit’ and you stop and say ‘I’m actually going to do something about it’.
“And then you look at him, and he’s in jail. It’s crazy.
“(Getting kicked out of home) was a lesson I had to learn and it was a very good turning point.
“It’s sad, and was very sad for me at the time. Because I didn’t really understand why she was doing it. I just felt abandoned.
“But I’ve got a good relationship with my mum now and it was probably exactly what I needed.”
Richards issue as a youngster, that he would find himself in trouble and let his fists get him out of it, is now going to be his greatest asset.
“I’ve always liked fighting and I probably used it in the wrong way,” he said.
“It all comes back to the inner problems that I was facing as a young person. But martial arts gave me an outlet to do it in a positive way.”
And now, after making his A-League debut as an understudy to Paul Izzo, Richards leaves with the club’s best wishes to attempt a UFC push – where he wants to emulate the likes of Featherweight champion Volkanovski, who quit his rugby league dreams at 23, and light heavyweight star Dominick Reyes, who abandoned his pursuit of the NFL to take up MMA.
“There’s those guys who give me the belief that I can do it,” Richards said.
“Everything I do I have to set the bar as high as possible. If you don’t, I don’t see the point in doing it.
“In saying that, to sit here and say I’m going to make the UFC sounds pretty crazy right now because I’m still so raw.
“I’ve got a lot of natural talent. And I’ve got the athleticism for it, but it might take ten years before I get to that – there’s no shortcuts in a sport like mixed martial arts.”
Originally published as A-League, UFC: Adelaide United player Isaac Richards makes shock switch to MMA