Alex Nicholson
"Spartan" is 19-14 with seventeen wins by knockout — a Florida Golden Gloves champion who came to MMA through boxing and kickboxing rather than wrestling.
| MMA record | 19-14 (1 NC) |
|---|---|
| Wins by knockout | 17 of 19 |
| Pro boxing | 1-1, both by knockout |
| Age | 36 |
| Height / reach | 6′4″ / 77.5″ |
| Born | Apopka, Florida |
| Team | American Top Team Orlando |
| Background | Florida Golden Gloves champion; undefeated state amateur Muay Thai champion; black belt in Tae Kwon Do |
A striker who ended up in MMA
Nicholson played basketball before finding martial arts, then went through boxing and Muay Thai — Golden Gloves in Florida, undefeated as a state amateur Muay Thai champion — before turning professional in MMA in 2014. He has fought in the UFC, Legacy Fighting Alliance and the PFL.
Seventeen knockouts in nineteen wins tells you the rest. This is a heavyweight who solves problems by hitting them, and the fourteen losses are the cost of that approach: nine of them came by knockout in return.
Another Orlando fighter
Born in Apopka, training at American Top Team's Orlando gym — this is a home card for him as much as for Mike Perry. Two of the card's more notable names fight out of the same city the event is held in, which is not an accident in how it was matched.
Why this is the card's most volatile bout
Most of Duel Arena 1 is boxing, kickboxing or exhibition. This is full MMA between heavyweights, which is the bout with the most ways to end — and heavyweight MMA compresses almost all of them into the first round.
Then there is the ring. Ropes are not a fence: you cannot pin an opponent against them the way you can a cage wall, clinch work behaves differently, and a tangled fighter gets separated rather than worked over. For heavyweights that means more open space and more clean exchanges, which usually means a shorter night. Given who is fighting, that is the expectation.
Full card on the Duel Arena 1 page.