Harry Potter’s Josh Herdman an amateur MMA fighter, but wouldn’t turn down UFC

The Harry Potter movies – to say nothing of the books and empire, generally – are one of the most successful franchises in the history of cinema. One of the actors who appeared in all eight films as Gregory Goyle is Josh Herdman. Now 28, Herdman recently won his amateur mixed martial arts (MMA) debut in London, England, defeating Janusz Walachowski via unanimous decision.

But just how did a staple of the Harry Potter series end up fighting in MMA and where does he want to go? Herdman was a guest on SiriusXM’s ‘The Luke Thomas Show’ last week and discussed how he got into MMA, dealing with life as a child actor turned fighter, if he’d accept an offer from the UFC should they come calling and more.

Partial audio and transcript of our conversation below:

You’ve been making a ton of headlines. How did this all of a sudden happen now? I’m assuming you’ve been training for a while.

Yeah, it was really [this most recent fight]. I’ve been training traditional Japanese ju-jitsu for nearly five years now, but obviously in that time I started watching UFC and got really into watching mixed martial arts as well, as I was doing my martial arts.

I was always training the ju-jitsu, but I always had it as a goal of mine to get in the cage at some point. My dad was a professional boxer. I’m the youngest of four. Two of both of my brothers have both boxed at the amateur level. So, it’s kind of been like a goal of mine to get in there and just see what it feels like. Like, an initiation type thing. I’ve always wanted to do that.

It made sense to move into MMA. I got my black belt in Japanese jiu-jitsu. I just wanted to fight, you know?

There were some folks on Facebook that found me posting about it. Where do you train for your fights?

I train at a club called Pro Mai MMA Academy, actually in Felton, which is kind of like greater …

continue reading in source www.mmafighting.com