How a call and a parents' note got a teenage Logan Storley his MMA start

Aspiring fighters tend to live by some iteration of the same mantra: Stay ready. A 16-year-old Logan Storley was no exception.

The wrestling standout-turned-Bellator blue-chipper, now 25, had designs on trading his singlet for four-ounce gloves long before he excelled on the mats at the University of Minnesota, and a local promoter - who he contacted two weeks prior - took him up on them one Saturday when Storley was on the clock with a dock crew in his home state of South Dakota. With no regulatory body to answer to, the young Webster native was sharing the cage with a former Marine 10 years his senior that very day.

Storley's parents - required to formally sign off on the matchup - were none too pleased with the notion of sending their progeny to sling leather with a grown man, but to hear the Bellator welterweight tell it now, they ultimately saw little use in delaying the inevitable.

"MMA wasn’t sanctioned, we didn’t have a commission in the state of South Dakota at that point," Storley told theScore before Friday's date with Joaquin Buckley at Bellator 197. "That was almost 10 years ago already, and you just needed to have a parent’s consent. They weren’t super thrilled about it, but they figured, at that point, I’d won three or four state wrestling titles and I’d been involved in MMA for a while, and I guess they’d figured I was gonna do it regardless when I got done with college or turned 18.

"They always did the small-town shows, like they do now, and I went to one of them - back then I watched the UFC, I knew Brock (Lesnar). Brock is from my hometown and I’d watched him compete, and I guess I just called the guys and asked. I wasn’t able to do it that Saturday because I was out working and then I got a call and they said that according to the rules, I could fight. And so I left work at noon (laughs), my buddies came up and watched, and I beat him up."

Storley did enough to get his hand raised over the ex-Marine's at the conclusion of three rounds of as many minutes, but he admittedly looked every bit the teenager he was.

"But I learned a lot, honestly. I got caught in an armbar, picked him up and slammed him. I was throwing spinning back kicks and Superman punches (laughs), I was just playing out there. Obviously, I got to my takedowns and beat him up on the ground, but I was just having fun. I was this 16-year-old kid just enjoying it. At work, you get the call, and I just ran up to the next town over, took the fight, and called it a day."

Storley picked up another pair of Ws on the amateur circuit - one of them as standouts Ryan Bader, Robbie Lawler, and Gray Maynard sat cageside - over the next year-and-a-half before the foray took a backseat to a collegiate wrestling run that saw him claim All-American honors four times and compile a solid record of 119-27.

Now less than three years removed from his pro debut, the welterweight owns an MMA slate of 7-0, with all but one of his tilts ending by TKO. As with a bevy of upstarts boasting similar pedigrees, Bellator has handled Storley's development with care, and while he counts himself among the Rory MacDonalds and Douglas Limas of his division's shark-infested waters, the prospect isn't clamoring to test his skills against the 170-pound titans just yet.

"I would say, skill for skill, I could fight them tomorrow, but you have to go through the right process. Right now, it’s just about getting experience and taking whoever Bellator gives me. But skill for skill, there’s no doubt in my mind that I could go fight those guys tomorrow and feel comfortable. So that’s not a concern for me, but I would say that I’d like another two-to-four fights and see where we go with the contracts and make sure everything makes sense."

Storley meets Buckley in Bellator 197's main-card opener Friday at The Family Arena in St. Charles, Missouri.