Brandon Royval Sacrificed Sleep to Work Overnight in Juvenile Center, Train for UFC Debut

“I don’t know, man. I’m not impressed by myself. He gassed. I didn’t look good at all, man.”

Talk about being your own toughest critic. @brandonroyval told @dc_mma he demands more of himself after winning his debut at #UFCVegas pic.twitter.com/KQOesQlaCN

— ESPN MMA (@espnmma) May 30, 2020

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Time-honored clichés like "hard work" and "sacrifice" propelled Brandon Royval to his Octagon debut. While he was victorious against Tim Elliott in a preliminary flyweight bout at UFC on ESPN 9 on Saturday night, Royval was his own worst critic in the aftermath.

“It's been a long road, man. That’s not how I pictured my debut at all. I like to put on a show. I like to go do something crazy. I like to try to be a star out there. It’s a good time for me to be someone who I’m really not,” Royval said in a post-fight scrum. “I was a little disappointed with my effort for sure.

“I’ve got to go back and reflect on myself a little bit. I want to go out there and make myself better because I don’t think that was the way to go about my UFC debut.”

Royval endured a bumpy opening stanza against Elliott, who set a ridiculous pace at the outset and landed three takedowns in the bout’s first five minutes. As the former flyweight title challenger faded, Royval began getting the upper hand in scrambles, which culminated in him submitting his foe with an arm-triangle choke 3:18 into the second stanza.

“… Me getting taken down four seconds into the fight is not how I pictured my debut going…I want to go out here and make some good money and change my life a little bit. I’m happy with the win, but I’m not satisfied,” said Royval, who was a 125-pound champion in Legacy Fighting Alliance before signing with the UFC.”

During Royval’s post-fight interview with Daniel Cormier, he almost appeared dejected at the possibility of returning to his full-time job following a successful Octagon debut. Though earning a $50,000 bonus for “Fight of the Night” might soften the blow, Royval explained those sentiments in further detail during his media scrum. The quick turnaround from fighter to working man is real for the 27-year-old.

“I have to go to work [Sunday] night, man,” he said. “I work overnights, and then I go up and I have a two-hour session. If I don’t have strength and conditioning that night, I get four hours of sleep in the day and I go right back to training at [5 p.m.].”

It isn’t actually the job itself that has Royval bummed, however. The Factory X representative actually enjoys his work as a youth service specialist in Colorado, though he points out “It’s like a fancy way to say I work in the juvenile justice system.”

“It’s my favorite job. It sucks that I work overnight because you get to be less around the kids. I could work overnight anywhere, but I had to switch to overnight because they changed the schedule,” Royval said.

“Working around those kids, it’s a different job, man. You have to have a lot of patience. One day I’ll get called a bitch by a 16 or 17-year-old and that kind of puts you in a place and levels you out again,” he added. “But it can be the most rewarding job. You learn a lot about these kids. It’s enlightening. It’s really cool to be around some of those kids, see how grateful they are for some of the little things and just kind of gain that little bit of experience. It’s the coolest job I’ve ever had after the UFC. If I’m ever able to quit the job and do MMA full time, I’ll always go back to that job, because I love it.”

Royval credits his family for the work ethic that got him to this point.

“My mom is the hardest working person I’ve met in my entire life. She works tirelessly, from being a grocery store bagger when I was younger to running multiple stores,” he said. “When I was young, we were a family of four in a single-bedroom apartment together. My parents just had their house built from scratch four years back. I grew up with amazing parents, hard work ethic. They changed my life.”

After a successful UFC debut – regardless of his own lofty standards – Royval’s life could be on the verge of changing for the better again.