Stipe Miocic

Apart from wrestling, Stipe Miocic works as a fire-fighter and a paramedic in his hometown of Ohio. He says that he makes lot of money from MMA, but he is not able to leave the fire-fighting job because helping people makes him feel good on a personal level. According to him, it also helps him in the ring.

Stipe is married to Ryan Marie Carney. The couple got married on 18th June 2016.

Stipe Miocic was born into a middle class Croatian family in Ohio, USA on August 19, 1982. Despite the fact that the family lived in difficult, there was no dearth of necessities when Stipe was growing up and both his parents worked to provide their kids with a better lifestyle.

When he was 3 years old, his parents divorced and his father went back to Croatia. His mother never remarried and as a result, Stipe always remained close to her emotionally and still regards her as the ‘biggest inspiration of his life’.

Stipe later said in interviews that he has seen his mother working hard to earn money, to provide the family with food, clothes and medicines on time. That is one of the reasons for Stipe idolizing his mother even now, and he gives her all the credit for whatever success he has achieved in his life.

Stipe studied in the Eastlake North High School and was a massive fan of almost all the sports his school teams played such as baseball, basketball, football and wrestling, with baseball being his favourite. With practice, he got very good at the sport, and when he went to college in the Cleveland State University, some teams playing in the major leagues approached him to play for them.

During all this time, he wrestled a bit, but not with the intention of making it big in the sport some day. He just did it for fun and when his coach asked him to be a regular at the gym where they were training, Stipe didn’t show much interest and once the college was over, he started taking paramedic classes with the goal of becoming a fire-fighter.

In the first five matches of his MMA career, which he fought locally, he won all the matches in style, knocking out most of his opponents.

This infused in Stipe Miocic a strong surge of confidence and he started taking MMA seriously and got signed on by an Ohio based MMA promotion, NAAFS and although he was relatively inexperienced, he went on to win the ‘NAAFS Heavyweight Championship’ within months of starting with the promotion. This was a sure shot way of getting UFC officials’ attention, which he got in mid-2011.

After signing the deal with UFC in June 2011, Stipe had his very first fight scheduled for October 2011 and his opponent was Joey Beltran. Stipe trained hard for the fight and it paid off perfectly as Stipe stole a victory via anonymous decision in a very close encounter.

His second UFC fight pitted him against a much stronger opponent Phil De Fries and was scheduled for February 2012. Phil couldn’t stand in the ring for long and as Stipe rained his heavy punches on him, he got knocked out in the first round itself. Stipe went home that night with his first UFC bonus in form of ‘Knockout of the Night’ award.

A newcomer Shane Del Rosario was chosen his next opponent, and it wasn’t very hard for Stipe to grab one more victory and the fight was over in the second round with Shane getting knocked out by Stipe. The next fight turned out to be a déjà vu experience for Stipe, the only difference being, he was taking the beating this time around. Stefan Struve knocked Stipe out in the second round, but the intensity with which the fight was fought, compelled the judges to award both the fighters with a ‘Fight of the Night’ honour.