Hawaiian UFC Fighter Humbly Admits Defeat to Island’s Street Fighters Birthed by “Weird” Culture

Despite being a small island, with an area of around 10,970 sq. miles, the US state of Hawaii has produced many legendary UFC and MMA fighters. They continue to do so, with Punahele Soriano being one among the bunch. The 32-year-old has been on a roll since making the jump down from middleweight to welterweight and is currently riding a 2-fight winning streak.

Punahele Soriano, also known as ‘Story Time’, has been in Dana White‘s promotion since 2019, but fans don’t necessarily know enough about him. During a recent conversation with Xtreme Couture’s Eric Nicksick, the welterweight fighter shared information about himself. But the most interesting part of the conversation was when they started talking about the deep-rooted fighting culture that exists in Hawaii, and that too, for the simplest of reasons, and they’re good at it.

Hawaiian welterweight claims that everybody knows fighting in his native land

Punahele Soriano talked about his journey in the MMA scene. Surprisingly, he claims that the fact that everybody knew how to fight always made him think that he’d never get into it. Even the most average guy on the street had skills that not many fighters have. “Fighting was so big in Hawaii that, like, that was kind of what I thought was the reason I wasn’t going to make it. Like, ‘Dude, these guys are so good. There’s no way I’m gonna be better than these guys fighting on the street.'”

‘Story Time’ also revealed that when he started fighting as an amateur, having three MMA and a couple of kickboxing fights, he seemed to have no idea about what he was doing inside the cage or the ring. Soriano claimed to have won fights in the weirdest ways, prompting Eric Nicksick to claim that it’s probably in the fighter’s DNA. “These guys [from Hawaii] are fighting when they’re eight years old,” the Xtreme Couture head coach stated on his YouTube podcast.

Eric Nicksick was convinced about Hawaiian fighters’ abilities and claimed to have seen enough of them to admit that they have some serious technique, too. “Have you ever seen, like, just a street fight in Hawaii? Like on the beach or anything like that? Bro. [It’s] like the most technical, like leg kicks, [and] you’re like, ‘Oh s–t.’ It’s weird, but everybody out there can fight,” he added.

Well, the sentiment that almost every Hawaiian knows how to fight is not a novel one. In fact, a former UFC fighter who used to compete in the Las Vegas promotion during the last decade made this revelation a long time ago.

Former UFC fighter revealed that his and his friends’ fathers were fighters

There have been a lot of forgotten fighters in the UFC, especially because they could not shine in the promotion. KJ Noons, for example, had a rather underwhelming run in the UFC, as he joined the promotion after Dana White and Co. acquired Strikeforce. On a UFC’s promo package featuring him and fellow Hawaiian fighter Yancy Medeiros, he revealed that fighting was not only something that he had known since childhood but also something that other people in his hometown.

“I grew up in a boxing gym since I was six or seven years old. My father used to fight in Hawaii, also in the 70s. And all my friends that were in the gym, their fathers used to fight,” said KJ Noons. “So, I guess you can kind of say it’s like a bloodline. Everybody that I’ve known from my town, a lot of guys grew up boxing, fighting, and loving fighting.”

Well, it seems like the UFC may never run out of fighters from Hawaii anytime soon. But can anybody replicate the success of someone like B.J. Penn and Max Holloway? That remains to be seen, but let us know your thoughts in the comments section down below.