UW and Central alum Bryce Meredith overcomes hand injury to improve to 5-0 in professional MMA

Apr. 19—CHEYENNE — A badly injured hand isn't ideal for a combat sports athlete. Being able to land punches is a crucial part of both boxing and mixed-martial arts.

However, Bryce Meredith knows how hard bouts can be to find, and he wasn't going to let torn ligaments in his left hand force him to pull out of his April 4 Professional Fighters League matchup with veteran Ty Johnson. Meredith not only convinced himself he could handle any pain for 15 minutes, he was confident he could take the fight to the ground and land elbows.

Meredith had to rework that strategy the day before the bout.

"PFL doesn't do elbows because it's an in-season tournament," Meredith told KFBC's Sports Zone. "Literally the day before the fight, everything I was planning to do — take him down and use elbows — we were told we couldn't do. That threw another wrench in my mind."

Meredith tried not to throw strikes with his left hand, but instinct took over in the first round. The 28-year-old sent Johnson to the canvas with a right hand, followed Johnson to the canvas and immediately landed a few right hands followed by a few lefts.

The remainder of the three-round bout played out similarly, and Meredith improved to 5-0 in professional bouts, thanks to a unanimous decision.

"You hope your adrenaline is going to be going enough that you don't feel (the pain), but I felt it," said Meredith, who was a two-time NCAA runner-up while wrestling at the University of Wyoming and a four-time state champion for Cheyenne Central.

"... The ground-and-pound sucked, but, on my feet, I would just throw no matter what. On the ground-and-pound, I was trying to not throw my left hand as much."

Meredith suffered his hand injury with three weeks left in his training camp. It kept him from hitting mitts and sparring. He was able to wrestle, but did so with a boxing glove on his left hand to protect it and keep him from trying to use it.

"I was already confident in my training before that, so we ran through it, and it worked out," Meredith said. "That's fighting, I guess. You practice hurting people, so you get hurt a decent amount, too.

"It was good in the long run. It made me think about my fight more. When I was doing Airdyne (bike) sprints, you go there deeper because you know you're not getting there with your training like you're used to. It works out, but (the injury) was unfortunate."

Meredith saw a hand specialist after his bout and was told the injury wasn't going to require surgery to heal properly. Instead, he'll take up to six weeks off from training before ramping back up.

"I heard June 28 might be on the table," he said. "If that's the case, that's awesome. It's a pretty quick turnaround."

The hand injury forcing Meredith the alter his preparation made him a better student of mixed-martial arts, he said. He was still training both in the morning and afternoon, but he was forced to slow down and think about the sport.

"You watch film and not just on him or you, per se, but watch film on other fights and find things you can emulate," Meredith said. "At five fights, I still don't know what type of fighter I want to be. It's a moving target. I've always been a student of the sport, but I've done that through hard work.

"My coaches at Wyoming were always like, 'Just slow down a little bit, Bryce.' Anything that can make you slow down is probably better in the long run, but it just sucks in the short term."

Meredith decided to set aside his dreams of wrestling in the Olympics to focus on MMA in 2021. He knows he's still relatively young in the sport and is further along than others now that he's has five professional bouts under his belt. It can be hard to maintain that perspective at times.

"It's gone faster for me than most people," said Meredith, who has won two bouts by submission and another by technical knockout. "That's pretty crazy. In my head, I think it's going slow. But, when I look at everyone else, it's actually going pretty fast."

Meredith has had opponents pull out of scheduled bouts for various reasons — including injury — and knows a June 28 bout isn't guaranteed.

"There are a lot of times they say they think (a fight is) going to work out, and, the next thing you know, it's a month or two later," Meredith said. "It's weird. You just stay on the gas and try to get better. There's so much to get better at that there's no reason to ever slow down.

"You just wait around until they tell you what you're supposed to do."

Let the news come to you

Get any of our free email newsletters — news headlines, sports, arts & entertainment, state legislature, CFD news, and more.

Explore newsletters

Jeremiah Johnke is the WyoSports editor. He can be reached at jjohnke@wyosports.net or 307-633-3137. Follow him on X at @jjohnke.