“Yesterday, we were in the casino and a group of guys shouted, ‘Wow, that’s the African guy that got the big knockout in the UFC last night!’
“That kind of thing never gets old for me,” Carl Prince tells me from a hotel room in Las Vegas, the scene of his fighter Lerone Murphy’s biggest test to date Saturday against Josh Emmett in the main event of UFC Vegas 105 at the UFC APEX.
The knockout artist that elicited such a reaction from the group of gamblers is Adeba Gautier, a Cameroonian who found his home at Prince’s Manchester Top Team, a gym which is rapidly emerging as a new U.K. powerhouse.
“It’s crazy to me, they should see where this guy came from," Prince says, "he’s been living in the back of the gym!”
Ateba Gautier vient d'atomiser Jose Medina 🤯🤯🤯
— MMA Prospect (@mma_prospect) March 29, 2025
Le futur 🤔#UFCMexicopic.twitter.com/Ydj9GfDyBr
It’s become a common occurrence for Prince’s charges to be recognized in public.
Not only Murphy and Gautier, but Dakota Ditcheva — the most mercurial presence in today’s women’s MMA scene — took her fledgling steps in the mixed code at MTT before moving over to the U.S.
PFL’s European arm has been pumped by the presence of her old teammates Lewis McGrillen and Ibragim Ibragimov, both of whom are considered among the brightest prospects on the promotion's books and represent the Manchester team’s bumble-bee banner.
Like most Mancunians involved in MMA for a number or decades, Prince is a disciple of the late Karl Tanswell — a U.K. MMA and Brazilian jiu-jitsu pioneer.
“Karl is really the inspiration behind the gym,” he explains. “He always wanted to have a super gym in Manchester that attracted talent from far and wide. I feel like I’ve inherited those goals from him.”
While names likes Gautier highlight the international expansion of his gym, Prince found the nucleus of his project on his doorstep.
He first met Murphy and McGrillen at Brendan Loughnane’s All Powers gym in Stockport. Soon, he got word of Dagestan wrestler, Magomed Shikhshabekov, training a small group in the area and they joined ...
