If nine-year-old Terrance Saeteurn met his current-day self, he’d be wowed.
That’s the mentality Saeteurn (8-1 MMA, 0-0 UFC) keeps with him every day, as he navigates the demanding and dedicated life of a professional fighter. Nicknamed “Wrong Turn,” Saeteurn admits the path wasn’t always clear. But ahead of his promotional debut at Road to UFC on Friday, he knows his internal compass has been properly calibrated.
“If I was working a day job still and I wasn’t training or fighting, I would never be like, ‘I’m trying to go to China.’ But it’s cool, dude,” Saeteurn recently told MMA Junkie. “It’s awesome. I don’t have any complaints. I’m just living my dream and I’m proud to say with confidence that I love my life and I love my job. There’s not a lot of people that can say that and there’s not a lot of people that can say I am doing what I wanted to do since I was a kid. I personally don’t know anybody that has that. I take a lot of pride in that. I f*cking love it, dude. It’s not easy. It’s hard as f*ck. But sh*t, life ain’t easy. Life is hard as f*ck. Martial arts, MMA is no different. The nine-year-old me, looking at me, he’d be proud.”
Saeteurn, 30, stepped in on short notice a few weeks ago, to face Nyamjargal Tumendemberel (8-1 MMA, 0-1 UFC) in a flyweight bout – the promotion’s first “actual” UFC fight to take place on a Road to UFC card. He earned the opportunity after consecutive title wins for Urijah Faber’s A1 Combat.
The moment is not only a dream come true, but a bit of a poetic and historic moment. Saeteurn is the first fighter to descend from the Mien people, a Chinese ethnic minority group.
“With Mien people there are 12 different families, 12 different clans,” Saeteurn said. “We all lived in the mountains of China. Our king or president, I don’t know what you’d call him, he was friends with the Chinese king and then he did something to upset him. The Chinese king said, ‘F*ck you guys. You are all banished. You guys can’t be here no more.’ That’s when we started migrating everywhere. My dad was born in a refugee camp in Laos. My mom was born in Thailand. My pop moved here after the Vietnam war because my grandfather’s generation helped the U.S. forces with the Vietnam war. Then they signed the treaty and they granted them safe passage out here. My family was part of the big-ass Asian group that came through San Francisco. When they came out here, they lived in San Francisco for a year or two.”
His Mien heritage is only a small part of the bigger make-up of his identity, Saeteurn explained. More than anything else, he’s proud of his individual journey – which included quitting his job and going all-in on MMA in 2020. The move was initially extremely risky, but the risk paid off.
“After my sixth amateur fight, I was like, ‘All right, I’ll put my two weeks’ notice in, and then literally bro, the week, f*cking COVID happened,” Saeteurn said. “The entire world shut down. So we lost that year, but in a way, it was a blessing. It really gave me an opportunity to hone my skills – the skills I was really good at, to get better, and then the skills I wasn’t too good at, to get them good.”
As for what fans should expect Friday, Saeteurn isn’t boxing himself into a specific outcome (though he does get a kick out of fighting someone nicknamed “Art of Knockout,” who has more submissions than knockouts). All he was willing to predict was that fight fans will want to tune in.
“Grab a beer. Make sure it’s cold,” Saeteurn said. “Enjoy the fight. And I hope you like what you see.”
