John Hathaway (Pictures) locked on the armbar and extended his hips. His opponent's limb bent, then bent some more, until it had passed the point of reasonable flexion.

"It's gone," Hathaway told the referee.

His grip loosened, and his foe slipped out. No matter. Hathaway won via ref stoppage in the next round.

A year later and Hathaway still remains uneasy about popping Wesley Felix's (Pictures) arm.

"You almost don't hear it, but you feel the sound," Hathaway said. "It's not that nice, and Wes is such a nice guy as well."

As the 20-year-old fighter is emerging as one of the top up-and-comers in the U.K, nice isn't Hathaway's business anymore.

He has torn through competition at 170 pounds and recently moved up to middleweight. A member of Sol Gilbert (Pictures)'s Zero Tolerance gym in Brighton, England, Hathaway is now close to his first appearance on the Cage Rage main show.

Outside of fighting, "The Hitman" works next door to Gilbert's gym as a personal trainer. The proximity allows him to rotate his shifts and train with the fight squad on a more-or-less full-time basis.

"It's a great team," Hathaway said. "A nice atmosphere … and the training staff are excellent. There's an amazing freestyle wrestling coach, and Sol's MMA and boxing is excellent as well."

Hathaway has spent a great deal of time honing his skills with his mentor. He says Gilbert's striking-for-MMA style has influenced his own approach to competition.

"He's pretty much showed me how to fight MMA in his style, so it comes through in mine," Hathaway said. "Sol is definitely originally a boxer. That is what he's always going to fall back to when he steps into the cage."

"I suppose that's his best point," the fighter continued. "But he has a very good aggressive stand-up style, and he has some nice moves on the ground as well -- especially in anti-grappling. He's not so much a jiu-jitsu player, but he's very good at stopping submissions -- bugging jiu-jitsu people really."

Appearing regularly on the Brighton club's Zero Tolerance Fight Nights, Hathaway has even fought under boxing rules to develop his striking skills.

"I won a decision," he said, "but I didn't really enjoy it too much. I think I'll just stick to MMA. … I like grappling people and being able to take them down and stuff."

In his most recent outing against Charles Barbosa at Cage Rage Contenders on Aug. 18, Hathaway learned a lesson many young fighters discover while climbing the ranks against relatively unknown opponents: your adversary might be better than you think.

"I didn't actually know anything about the guy I was fighting, apart from that he'd had a few Muay Thai fights and that this was his first MMA fight," Hathaway recalled. "So my whole plan was to take the fight to the ground and just keep it on the ground, but he turned out to be quite good at jiu-jitsu as well."

Hathaway still won the match, earning a unanimous decision.

"I've heard a lot of things about (Barbosa) since the fight happened," he said with a laugh. "Lucky I didn't hear anything before because that might have put me off a little bit."

The young fighter has a tall ladder to climb, but he's on his way up.

On his future in the sport, he remains modest but speaks in a determined tone: "I'd like to go all the way and become at least top ranked in the U.K. as well. It's just little dreams at the moment. Just getting into Cage Rage would be a wicked thing at the moment."