“I remember thinking to myself,” Victor Henry said, “‘I could listen to [my mom] and be exactly where she’s at or I can go do my own thing and find out where it takes me.’” But what exactly drove the soon-to-be UFC bantamweight to this point before the South Gate native got his chance to fight in the world’s biggest fighting organization in the world?
Henry, known as “La Mangosta” in the cage, was born on May 4, 1987 in Southeast LA County, where he also grew up.
“I grew up in South Gate in the early 90’s. I was there during the LA riots,” Henry said.
He explained growing up in that era was different than it is now, recalling a story where he was mistaken as a rival gang member.
“We had this burger joint up the street called Freeday’s. They were selling drugs out of there. Me and Eric [his friend] and my friend Robert. We were caught in a drive-by one time and they were shooting at us because they thought we were rivals gang members,” Henry said.
While living in South Gate, fighting came into his life in a lot of ways, but his mother warned him not to go down that road.
“My mom told me ‘never get in fights, you’ll get in trouble,’” he said. “[But] all of a sudden I’d get in a fight because this kid threw my skateboard onto the street and I was all amped up. But at the same time, that was kinda exciting,” Henry said.
So exciting that he even used to fight his friend regularly.
“Me and my good friend Eric would regularly fight each other because the older kids would make us fight each other,” Henry said “Not because they made us hate each other. It’s more like whoever wins this fight will be the champion of the block so we’d duke it out as 7 -year-olds and after we’re gonna play hide and seek.”
Victor started training in martial arts at 13-years-old because the school he was going to attend didn’t have many sports to choose from.
“I wanted to play football, but they didn’t have football so my mom said to me ‘you need to do something because you’re not going to do nothing,’” he said. “So I looked into the paper and I saw taekwondo. I saw someone get kicked in the face and I wanted to join this,” Henry said.
However, he didn’t take his first MMA fight until after he graduated high school.
“My coach at the time [said] ‘you’re here all the time anyways why don’t you take a fight’ and I was like ‘cool’ so we tried it and I knocked the guy out in 20 something seconds,” Henry said.
Henry continued his MMA career through the pros, having over 30 professional fights with many mixed martial art organizations including many fights in Japan.
“I was 6-1 at that point and my coach, Josh Barnett, he goes ‘hey there’s this opportunity to fight in Japan and they want a 135er, you’ll be fighting this guy Hideo Tokoro’ and I was like ok cool lets go,” Henry explained.
After learning about the opportunity, he told his mom that he had a chance to fight in Japan but was met with discouragement as his mom said that fighting in Japan wasn’t a good idea.
Nonetheless, Victor Henry went on to win his fight against Hideo Tokoro and continues to fight overseas against the best fighters Japan has to offer, earning the nickname “The Japanese Killer.”
Henry said fighting in Japan opened doors to fighting in more countries with the goal being fighting around the world and seeing where that will take him.
This mindset led him to fighting in the UFC.
Before getting the call to fight in the UFC, Henry fought in the local Southern California promotion, Lights Out Extreme, also known as LXF, as the main event for LXF 6.
“After that fight, the UFC gave a call,” he said. “No one called me directly, they called Josh Barnett first to set up this fight. I was eating at a Korean BBQ place stuffing my face and Josh called me asking if I want to fight Raoni Barcelos in two weeks and I was like ‘yeah lets go,’” Henry said with a laugh.
However, his fight against Raoni Barcelos set for Dec. 18, 2021 got cancelled due to COVID-19.
“I tested false positive and now I’m over here thinking they’re gonna cut me out, they’re not gonna mess with me anymore. I didn’t work out and now I’m gone,” he said after his fight got cancelled.
However, in January 2022, he got a chance to fight Raoni Barcelos for UFC 270 N’Gannou vs. Gane, winning by decision.
“I had a one week training camp and the next week I was cutting weight and had one of the biggest fights in my life.”
Henry later fought five more times in the UFC after his debut having a UFC record of 3 wins, 2 losses, 1 no contest and an overall MMA record of 24-7.
