Mike Pyle

Michael Wayne Pyle (born September 18, 1975) is an American mixed martial artist currently fighting in the welterweight division of the UFC. He is a former WEC Welterweight Champion, and has also competed in Strikeforce, the IFL, Elite XC, Affliction, and M-1 Challenge. --- Pyle grew up in Dresden, Tennessee. At age 17 he moved to Birmingham, Alabama. It was there that he began studying Taekwondo. One of the people he was training in Taekwondo with told him, "Man you gotta check out this cage fighter stuff they got going on. There's this guy who lays on the ground and breaks peoples arms ..." The cage fighting they were talking about was the UFC. The man they were talking about was Royce Gracie, the masterful practitioner of the martial arts discipline known as Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu who won the tournaments at UFC 1, UFC 2 and UFC 4. Mike created a gym in a 13 x 15-foot shed behind his mother's home in Dresden, searching for any instructional videos for Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu he could get his hands on as well attending seminars put together by the Gracie family, whenever they were close enough for him to make the drive. Despite having no formal Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu training, Mike would go on to be a moderately successful submission grappler in mixed martial arts, the large majority of his wins coming by submission. --- Pyle's first sanctioned amateur MMA fight was in 1999 against future UFC Light Heavyweight Champion Quinton Jackson. The bout was on ISCF MMA & IKF Kickboxing Promoter Jeff Mullen's November 13 event at the New Daisey Theatre in Memphis, Tennessee, (Jackson's hometown). Pyle and Jackson were to be the Main Event and was supposed to be for the ISCF Amateur Mid-South Regional Middleweight Title. However, Jackson weighed in 25 lbs heavy (200lb.) for the title so technically, Pyle (175lb.) won by forfeit. But this couldn't keep these two from going for it in the ring. The young Pyle, who tried various different submissions during the fight, was thrown and slammed several times, at one point being actually throw out of the ring by the future PRIDE veteran. In the end, Jackson won by unanimous decision but Pyle, who had also fought with two broken fingers, felt that he had won and was quick to ask for a rematch. From this fight, Pyle learned that "just jiu-jitsu wasn't going to be able to cut it." On October 14, 2005, Pyle became the WEC Welterweight Champion by defeating Bret Bergmark. He would go on to successfully defend his WEC title against veteran MMA fighter Shonie Carter on January 13, 2006. He defeated Carter by triangle choke submission in the first round. --- Pyle played the role of Capt. Kevin Burke in the movie Universal Soldier: Regeneration starring Jean-Claude Van Damme, Dolph Lundgren and fellow MMA fighter Andrei Arlovski. Pyle played a small part in a 2012 blockbuster Men In Black III starring Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones. --- Pyle and his girlfriend were married in October 2009.