Labao at the height of his powers

What Aidan Labao once believed was his greatest limitation is becoming his greatest strength.

The 20-year-old flyweight mixed martial artist recently earned his first amateur fighting victory convincingly at the 72nd running of Rumble in the Cage in Lethbridge, Alta., where he defeated British Columbia’s Joel Miller by technical knockout 52 seconds into the opening round.

The victory was perhaps as much of a shock to Labao as it was to those in attendance, who watched the 5-3 jiu-jitsu specialist from Winnipeg dominate an opponent who stood six inches taller and held a sizeable reach advantage.

Proving himself in that regard is what drives the young fighter.

“The last couple of years, it was a lot of mental battles,” Labao said Monday. “I feel like I wanted to find something where I could just tell everyone the height doesn’t matter.

“MMA is kind of my outlet to just show people can achieve stuff like that with hard work and dedication.”

How Labao got here is a story he hopes inspires other undersized athletes.

Labao has taken plenty on the chin, as it relates to his size. From age six to 13, he earned a black belt in taekwondo and won two national bronze medals in the discipline as a teenager.

However, it was around the same time that his smaller stature became more apparent. Labao fell behind some of his colleagues who began to sprout, and his confidence vanished. He stopped training altogether.

After four years away from a gym, Labao, a fan of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, took up mixed martial arts in 2024. It was a little over a year ago when he was inspired to get into the octagon in a competitive setting after attending UFC Fight Night in Vancouver.

“It wasn’t always the goal, because I didn’t really know how good I was going to be,” Labao said.

“When I was in the environment of the UFC, seeing the adrenaline and the crowd, and then the fighters in the cage, that’s what actually inspired me to want to fight.”

He still couldn’t help but allow some of those past thoughts to creep into his consciousness leading up to his debut.

“The whole fight week I was having the doubts, the nerves: ‘Did I work hard enough? Am I still good? Maybe the sport isn’t for me, because maybe I’ll be too small for this guy,’” he said.

Those worries all disappeared once he entered the octagon. Labao was brought back to that same feeling he had in Vancouver.

“To win that quickly and how I wanted, it just really boosted my confidence to where I think it also boosted the confidence that my coaches had in me,” he said.

Ire Efiong-Bassey has trained Labao out of Dave’s Gym since the latter took up the sport over two years ago. Efiong-Bassey’s confidence has grown just as much as his student’s in that time.

“The improvements, he’s really dedicated, very smart, really athletic and listens well,” Efiong-Bassey. “The thing is, with fighting, you have people who are natural fighters, and then people who are athletes. An athlete, you can mould them to be like a fighter because they have the natural athleticism, but sometimes they may not like getting hit or being in that ‘dog fight.’ But you can always work around that with someone who’s an athlete.

“Aidan, he’s an athlete, but one thing for sure, he’s also a fighter at heart. He has that dog in him.”

Efiong-Bassey admitted that Labao’s height concerned him when he first started training. In a sport where longer frames are seen as an advantage, Labao was always going to be short-handed.

However, that changed once Efiong-Bassey saw his work ethic.

“He just has that mindset of he’s just gonna go forward and like give it his all, which is what he showed in the fight,” the coach said. “He’s not afraid of anything. He’s an athlete, a fighter, very dedicated, and I’m really happy to be coaching him.”

While Labao has stopped growing, the security with his height has blossomed. In his mind, this was only the beginning. He wants to go the distance.

“My goal really just after that first fight and then just feeling the love of just the training camp, the nerves, the adrenaline, I really think I could really make it far,” he said. “My goal is to really make it pro in the sport or maybe even the UFC.”

Labao will continue training with eyes on Jan. 9 in Belcourt, N.D., where he is scheduled to make his next appearance in the octagon.

There’s no telling what another victory could do for his trajectory in the sport.

“I really believe, and I’ve seen, you can go as far as you are willing to go, and as long as you have the right people around you, they can also elevate you to that level,” Efiong-Bassey said. “So if he does have the determination to go that far, I believe he can go as far as he wants to.”

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