He’s the man without a plan
Moon native Worthy rises quickly in UFC
Khama Worthy was feeling himself, understandably so.
Not even 10 seconds earlier, he had a man’s neck squeezed between his chest and his right bicep, a position so unbearable that his opponent had no choice but to tap his hand twice to the mat and concede. As he rose up from the floor and smoothly strode away from the scene of his triumph, he let out a boisterous cry.
“I’m the real [freaking] deal,” the mixed martial artist screamed.
In a Las Vegas arena that was largely empty in late June due to the COVID-19 pandemic, his message wasn’t directed at any specific person. As anyone close to him will tell you, Worthy is relentlessly humble. If anything, it was a declaration of belief, an assertion that echoed both in the sparsely populated venue and before a national television audience. At the highest level of his sport, the Ultimate Fighting Championship, Worthy had once again shown that he belonged on a stage that would have seemed improbable years ago to those outside, and even within, his inner circle.
Worthy’s third-round submission of Luis Pena at UFC Fight Night marked another step forward in the fighting career of the 33-year-old Moon native, the only fighter from the Pittsburgh area currently in the UFC. It pushed his record to 16-6 and marked his second victory in as many UFC bouts.
His career trajectory in the sport appears to be on the rise.
If nothing else, Worthy’s first 22 fights — and his two most recent ones, in particular — are a validation of an unconventional, oft questioned career path that took him from Pittsburgh to New York to a return home and from a runway to a ring. He never truly lost belief because he had no other choice.
“I always tell people there is no Plan B,” Worthy said. “I’ve never had a Plan B. I always like to use the Batman analogy. In the Batman movie [The Dark Knight Rises], he’s jumping without the rope. That’s how I approach fighting. I’m just going to jump without the rope, so that way, I’m going to have to give it my all. If I fail, that’s it.”
Though it was years before he immersed himself in mixed martial arts, Worthy had the spirit of a fighter shaped inside of him at an early age. He grew up with a father who was trained in traditional martial arts and a mother who was equally enamored with fighting, both of whom would regularly show their captivated children Bruce Lee movies. Interested as he was in fighting, though, Worthy didn’t see it as a viable career option.
Life, as it has a way of doing, took him elsewhere. Shortly after completing high school, Worthy was at a local mall when a woman approached him. A modeling talent scout, she asked if he had ever modeled before — he had, in a couple of shows in Pittsburgh — and invited him to come up to New York. Two months later, after saving up all the money he could, he packed up his apartment and left home.
Worthy found opportunity in New York. While working at a restaurant to help support himself, he secured several gigs and participated in a handful of runway shows, along with some print work that included a shoot for an insurance company. He enjoyed his new life, but over time, he came to realize it was unsustainable, noting that male models often have to chase an acting career to professionally excel.
Eventually, another avenue emerged. Worthy was a regular at a New York gym, where he often kicked a bag as part of his workout regimen. While there one day when he was 20, an older man asked Worthy if he ever thought about doing MMA. He hadn’t, but as he left the gym, fortuitously, he saw a gigantic billboard of UFC star Georges St-Pierre. Later, he bought about $100 worth of “King of the Cage” videos at a local store and was astounded by what he saw. The next day, he went to his boss and told him he was moving back to Pittsburgh in two months.
“I was like, ‘There’s no way they really pay people,’ ” Worthy said. “When I found out they did, I moved back home, started training and the rest is history.”
It was a decision that came with questions, some more biting than others. The irony of going from making money from his face to having it get repeatedly punched was lost on few.
“We teased him a lot, I’m not going to lie,” said Akeem Worthy, Khama’s older brother.
Beyond jokes were legitimate concerns from loved ones. Friends and family knew Worthy as a kind and caring individual whom they feared wouldn’t fare well in an assaultive, aggressive endeavor. Akeem, for all of his teases, was confident in his brother’s drive, but he said others in his family thought it might be a phase, something he would toil at briefly and quit after fully realizing the personal and financial toll that comes with it.
Some fears were deeper and more visceral.
“They said, ‘You’re going to get murdered,’ ” Worthy said of the reaction he received to his career change. “All of my friends and family were like, ‘What are you talking about?’”
For Worthy, though, a critical distinction existed. He’s a non-confrontational individual who, by his own admission, doesn’t like fighting, but he’s obsessed with competition, which is how he views what it is he does for a living. If he’s given four months to train for the opportunity to best someone — “That’s the whole essence of existence,” he said — he’ll do whatever it takes.
It was that drive and determination that propelled him in the early, uncertain days of his career. As he trained and fought as an amateur, he kept himself afloat financially by working at Steak ’n Shake. He drove an old Honda Civic with more than 200,000 miles on it that friends jokingly called “Michael Jackson” because the car would pop up and smoke would come out the back of it whenever it was started. It mattered little. It was all a part of the journey.
“All I did was spend all of my money on training,” Worthy said. “I sacrificed a whole bunch to get to the point where I’m at now. When my family started to see that, they started to see, ‘Oh, he’s putting so much into it that something has to come out of it.’ You can’t push so hard at something and have nothing come out of it.”
Whatever skepticism initially followed Worthy’s pursuit quickly started to vanish. He compiled an 8-2 record as an amateur and earned his nickname, “The Death Star,” after delivering a vicious uppercut in his first fight that knocked his opponent to the floor, tongue out and all “like a cartoon character.” Family and friends beyond Akeem began showing up to his fights. In 2012, he turned pro, left his job at Steak ’n Shake, and won seven of his first nine bouts.
What may have seemed like a straightforward ascent became littered with obstacles. After fighting at 155 pounds for his entire career, Worthy cut weight and dropped to 145 pounds. He lost more than just weight; of his next six fights, he fell in four of them. Those failures hit him hard. Akeem said his brother was openly pondering retirement and some close to him were urging him to do so.
“It was just too much,” Akeem said.
Something had to change, and eventually, it did. He moved back to 155, a switch that Chris Williams, who has trained Worthy the past four years, said provided him with hydration he was previously missing and allowed him to be able to better absorb punches. After his firstround knockout loss to Kyle Nelson in May 2017, Worthy took almost a year off between MMA bouts. He and his girlfriend had a daughter, Marley, who has given him a different form of inspiration. He learned to change the way he fought, as well, becoming more patient and calculated rather than throwing everything he could at his opponent in the first round.
In the process, he rediscovered whatever it was he lost. Since getting knocked out by Nelson, he hasn’t been defeated. The sixth of those seven wins was perhaps the most notable. After Devonte Smith’s first two scheduled foes had to withdraw due to medical issues in August 2019, Worthy was offered to fight Smith on four days’ notice. He jumped at the opportunity to make it to the UFC and made the most of it as a sizable underdog, knocking Smith out with the dazzling combination of a left hook and a right uppercut just over four minutes into the bout.
About 10 months later, his submission of Pena, using a maneuver he dubbed “a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania guillotine,” proved that his emphatic UFC debut wasn’t a fluke. Worthy, once dismissively labeled as a journeyman, was here to stay.
“There’s a confidence where you believe in yourself and there’s the confidence of you actually saw yourself do something,” Williams said. “I really saw that after the last win with Pena. He was like, ‘We’re here. We’re here.’”
For someone who labored in relative obscurity for years and whose UFC premiere ended so suddenly that it couldn’t be fully processed, the adjustment to the fame he’s now receiving would seem jarring. After knocking out Smith, an adrenaline-filled Worthy loudly expressed shock and glee at something as routine for top UFC fighters as getting to be interviewed by Joe Rogan after the bout (his friends have since gotten him a shirt with his quote, “Oh [shoot], I’m about to talk to Joe Rogan,” printed on it).
Attention and success have done little to change Worthy, though. He can understand he’s becoming famous, Williams said, but he doesn’t care.
He’s the owner of a local gym, The Academy of Martial Arts and Fitness in the West End, that he has worked to build up and keep operational during the pandemic. He has a family to support and dreams to satiate. As his 34th birthday approaches in October, Worthy still has years to contend left in him but knows the fight game only becomes more unforgiving with age.
Worthy’s best days may be ahead, though, with those in his corner seeing his two most recent victories as evidence.
“Nobody expected us to get this far, so who the hell’s to say we can’t get farther?” Williams said.
Where exactly that will be is uncertain. Williams believes Worthy is flirting with a spot ranked among the UFC’s top 15 lightweights. Akeem envisions his younger brother one day winning a title.
The ability to dream, and the success that has made it possible, is part of the beauty of where Worthy finds himself. Worthy didn’t follow a meticulously plotted plan to get to this point and he’s not going to turn to one now, especially with all the present offers to savor.
“When you keep putting in so much work, you’re guaranteed to get wherever you need to go,” Akeem said. “If it’s 100 miles away and you take two steps a day, at some point, you’re going to get to your destination. He believes that.”