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Dylan Budka, “The Mindless Hulk”, was welcomed into the Ultimate Fighting Competition umbrella on September 5th.

Armed with a drive forged from a life defined by his competitive edge, the Dundalk native rattled off 18 amateur bouts in a year to command the attention of Dana White and Co.

A convincing victory against Chad Hanekom in the Dana White Contender Series earned him his payday, a fresh UFC contract. This was the big break he’s been waiting for, which also served as his ticket to the potential glory that professional fighting can bring.

“The sport has done a lot more for me than just let me win, it’s allowed me to learn who I am as a man and how to adapt,” Budka said on Glenn Clark Radio on Sept. 13. “That night changed a lot for me inside and out because I was finally able to achieve the big goal that my father wanted me to do as well.”

Budka was raised with a constant appetite for team sports all the way through high school. (He attended both Dundalk and Kenwood High.) He was convinced that he would make it in the professional ranks through one of his athletic skills. While he originally assumed it would be a star football or baseball player, wrestling took away his other interests when he left home for college.

“My senior year, I decided, ‘Okay, let’s just do it. Let’s wrestle a little bit in college and try to win an Olympic championship,” Budka said.

He wrestled for one year at Ohio’s Urbana University before transferring to Ohio’s Notre Dame College. It was there that he further convinced himself to take the plunge, seeing himself in the professionals who passed through his gym.

“When I went there, at the end of training, I saw fighters coming and training in there from Ohio,” he said. “Notre Dame was one of the biggest colleges for wrestling in Ohio, so a lot of wrestlers from around this area go there. … I’d just poke my head in, see what they’re doing and say, ‘Damn, that I might as well do it”.

He began training with the Demolition Fight Team Gym in Findlay, Ohio, right out of college, and tried MMA training in preparation for some of his first professional fighting experiences. When Premier MMA Championship asked him why he got into mixed martial arts, he replied, “I like punching people in the mouth.”

Budka’s intensity and commitment to his job as a full-time fighter quickly set him apart from the pack as he dove all the way into enhancing his experience by challenging every threat he purposefully crossed paths with.

“As an amateur, I fought for literally every promotion I could find,” he said. “I was like chasing all the top people in my weight class, trying to figure out who I could beat, where I could beat them, what states I could beat them in. I fought in Alabama. I fought in Kentucky. I fought in

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UFC President Dana White and his scouts quickly took notice of Budka, with his work ethic and raw talent standing out enough to earn him a spot in the Dana White Contender Series, where the winning fighters are rewarded with a UFC contract. Budka, who finally got the series invite while on vacation with his sister, dropped everything to chase his goal, an in-ring date with Hanekom. He won by unanimous decision.

His UFC deal was three years in the making after racing through the middleweight circuit, just the break he’s been looking for after losing both his parents within the last year. The sacrifice his parents made to get Budka involved in athletics at a young age is something he is forever grateful for.

“In that moment, I felt like I was finally at peace for the first time in a long time,” he said.

But The Mindless Hulk, ever the workhorse, has already rejected complacency. Now that he is a signed fighter, the 35th ranked Pro Men’s Middleweight in America looks set to stick around for a while by showing what his journey has taught him.

“I want to knock out the next four games as quickly as possible and get to the next contract,” Budka said. “I’m ready to take over the middleweight division if it’s that or the welterweight division and I’m also ready to bring a strap back to Baltimore.”

For more from Budka, listen to the full story here: