Jared Vanderaa Has Made Some Changes

Clearly, nothing fazes the 30-year-old. But when it comes to his lady and their two daughters, he admits that if he needed to evacuate to protect them, he’d be the first one loading up the car and getting out of town.

Luckily, that wasn’t necessary this time around, leaving Vanderaa as the only one going out of town as he traveled to Huntington Beach to work with the Kings MMA squad.

“On paper, it's only 74 miles,” he said. “But drive time is anywhere from an hour-and-a-half to two-and-a-half, almost three hours.”

Each way. Ouch.

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But for Vanderaa, after dropping four straight in the Octagon, he needed to switch things up a bit, so that meant leaving Team Quest to be with Rafael Cordeiro’s crew.

“As we've seen in the last four fights, it hasn't gone my way,” said Vanderaa. “But I don't want to sit there and be like, it's this gym's fault. No. It's just that at the end of it, I do feel like I did plateau a lot. I feel like I wasn't growing. That's the reality of it. And I'm hoping this change genuinely shows the growth that I've made at Kings, and going there made me actually enjoy the sport so much more. Their energy and the vibe there, it's nice.”

Feeling comfortable is important in a sport where uncomfortable is the default mode when someone is yanking on your arm or throwing kicks at your head. And though posting a 1-5 UFC record since earning a place on the UFC roster after a win on Dana White’s Contender Series in 2020 doesn’t look great, there are circumstances where a little luck and / or a change in gameplan could have turned some of those losses to wins.

And the UFC has given him another shot to turn things around against the Dominican Republic’s Cortes Acosta, so that’s got to be a sign that the promotion still sees his potential, right?

“I really don't know,” said Vanderaa, caught speechless for the first time in probably forever. But it shows how much this means to him and has meant to him since he was a teenager planning out his life’s path.

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“I made two decisions in my life, and both of them were for this career,” he said. “At 17, I basically said, f**k trying to commit to college and going for anything else. If you go to college, go to learn how to wrestle. I went to college for two days, then some wild s**t happened financially, so I said f**k this. (Laughs) So I stuck to fighting. Then I was with my ex, and I said, I want this tattoo, she said fine, are you sure you want it on your neck? Yes. If I get it on my neck, it means one of two things - I want to have a harder time finding job or it forces me to focus and push myself to stay on my career path. Boom, got my tattoo, and here we are.”

And here is where Vanderaa plans on staying. That means getting back in the win column and starting to build the momentum he hasn’t yet in the big show. But he’s got the talent, and he’s got the charisma. He just needs to put together some wins and maybe, just maybe, he’ll become the next big thing.

“I'm no Paddy (Pimblett) or Conor (McGregor) or Tai (Tuivasa), but I'll definitely light up a room,” he laughs. “I'm just a different kind of fun, and I'm okay with that.”