He's been nicknamed ‘The Villain', but mixed martial artist and Ultimate Fighting Championship middleweight Dylan Andrews is anything but his moniker.

The Martial Arts Academy's new MMA head coach and father-of-two is soft spoken, extremely humble, and incredibly passionate about his profession.

The Martial Arts Academy's new MMA head coach Dylan ‘The Villain' Andrews opens up about his path to becoming a UFC fighter. Photos: Tracy Hardy.

'When I first saw the sport, I thought it was unbelievable,” says the 35-year-old. 'I looked at it and I didn't see what other people saw – blood, violence. I saw two highly competitive athletes who could fight anywhere and show a level of skill unseen in any other sport.”

Knowing Dylan's past, it's easy to understand why MMA is more than just a sport for the Kiwi athlete – it's also provided an outlet for dealing with his turbulent upbringing.

His father was an alcoholic, his mother a drug addict – and both were never in the right frame of mind. Dylan recalls how he spent most of his childhood in Lower Hutt 'leaving the house first thing in the morning and I wouldn't come back until dark”.

During his early teens at Hutt Valley High School he also spent several years being mercilessly bullied by one individual, trapped in a daily cycle of unhappiness.

'It was hard,” he recalls, describing himself as 'reserved; someone who kept to themselves” at school.

'Every day I knew [the bully] could do something to embarrass me, or belittle me, but I had to just get up and go to school. It was a horrible time, but all I could do was pick my head up, go in and do it again and again, and hope one day it would be over.”

Dylan talks about a 'fork in the road” when he was growing up – he could have gone down the angry, destructive path many youth in his position had gone. Instead he took his situation and made something good out of it.

'I never grew up blaming anyone,” he says. 'I attribute everything that's happened to me to where I am today. I choose to take a positive approach to the negative in my life.”

While his childhood took an emotional toll, Dylan found solace in martial arts. Although sporty in his early years, with rugby and cricket to name a few, it wasn't until he travelled to Sydney, Australia in his early twenties that Dylan discovered mixed martial arts and the UFC.

'There was nothing quite like it back then in New Zealand, so it wasn't until Australia that I started getting into it and thought: ‘I have to find somewhere to do this'.”

How he fell into the sport was by accident – or, perhaps, a stroke of fate.

'I was in a video store looking at UFC DVDs and some dust started falling from the ceiling. I looked up and thought the ceiling was going to cave in. I went outside, and looked at the door next to the store and saw it was Lion's Den Academy – a famous MMA gym in the United States. So I went upstairs and there are two heavyweights going for it, bashing the boxing bags, causing all this dust.

'I signed up and that was the gym I started my career in. I was there for five years, and it's where I turned pro.”

Dylan was a natural, and started 'accelerating at a rate beyond normal people”.

'I was doing things in a timeframe I shouldn't be doing it in. I knew I wanted to take this far and that's what I did. It became my life, six days a week”.

He had his first professional MMA fight just two years after signing up to Lion's Den, where he beat Australian fighter Adam Narnst by technical knockout only 52 seconds into the first round. He's since won 17 of 25 professional fights and became the first Maori to compete in reality TV ‘The Ultimate Fighter'.

The dedicated trainer is known for his persistence both in the gym and the arena, notably when he refused to submit during an Australian Fighting Championship fight when his opponent had him in a chokehold. The boxer-wrestler almost never leaves a fight in the judges' hands.

'To be a professional athlete, you have to be obsessed if you want to be good at what you do,” says Dylan of his commitment. 'There are so many things you have to give up – one is being comfortable. You get complacent, then you get lazy and it's a snowball effect.

'For example, I have to accept that every three months or so I have to leave my family [wife Tracey, son Tyrese, 8, and daughter Nevaeh, 6, and I won't see them for eight weeks while I'm in intensive training. That's a huge sacrifice that has to be done in order to gain success.”

While many fans may see the glory of holding the coveted belt at the end of a win, for Dylan it's the work that comes before that that is his sole focus.

'Being a professional fighter is very hard psychologically. When I get an opponent, 12 weeks or so out from fight night, that person becomes the most important person in my life, this stranger, because he's going to try to take everything that I have worked for away from me.

'And I'd say about two minutes after your hand is raised or not after a fight [signalling if you have won or lost], you're already thinking about the next fight. Twelve weeks, two minutes to enjoy it; then it starts all over again.”

Dylan's dedication and sacrifice is one of the reasons why The Martial Arts Academy owner Scott Coburn approached Dylan to be the gym's head coach for MMA, boxing and fitness. He's only been at the academy for a couple of weeks, but he's got big plans for students, who are thrilled to be training with someone of Dylan's calibre.

'It's nice to come to New Zealand and give something back,” says Dylan. 'I want to give people a different perspective and show them you need to work hard. And I'm also here to communicate with these students and let them know that I am here to help them.”