“I’m going to be a champion within a year, and I want titles in multiple divisions.”
That is what Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) Middleweight veteran, Tresean Gore, declared during his time on The Ultimate Fighter (TUF). The prediction has haunted him ever since, branding him as a cocky fighter before he ever stepped foot inside the Octagon. After he lost his first two UFC fights, the backlash only intensified.
Gore is far from the first fighter to proclaim that he will become a champion or a two-division titleholder. Nevertheless, his ambitious prediction stuck—and continued to follow him throughout the early stages of his UFC career.
So much so that Gore addressed it after his most recent win (watch it).
“I know when I came on the scene, I was talking a lot of shit and said I was going to be a champion in one year,” Gore said. “But, hey, man, how could you blame a young kid who came from the projects and wanted to have title aspirations one day?”
Gore’s confidence did not come from nowhere, but it came with a tough childhood.
He grew up in South Carolina with his father incarcerated his entire life and his mother struggling with drug addiction. Although Gore remembers enjoying his childhood and would not change it because it ultimately shaped him into the man he is today, he eventually began hanging around the wrong people. That led to a stint in juvenile detention for dealing drugs and fighting.
His life changed after he was released at 17 years old and finally found martial arts — something he had wanted to pursue since childhood.
“I wanted to box. I wanted to do karate—all of that. But my mom wouldn’t sign me up because I was such a bad child,” Gore recently told MMAmania.com. “I wasn’t listening, and she was like, ‘I’m not signing you up unless you behave.’ She didn’t realize that if she signed me up, it would make me behave. It would give me an outlet. But in her mind, as a single mother, she didn’t want to reward bad behavior. So, she didn’t put me in martial arts, and I had to find martial arts myself when I was 17.
“After I got out of juvie, there was a jiu-jitsu school right up the street from my grandmother’s house called Legion Martial Arts, and I went there,” Gore continued. “I trained, trained and trained. I immediately called out the toughest guy on the mat, got my ass whooped and kept going back until I started whooping the guy’s ass who had whooped mine. The rest is history. I got to the point where I had to leave South Carolina and go to Georgia for higher-level training, and that’s where I linked up with Douglas ‘Phenom’ Lima and Diego Lima.”
Gore competed in his first amateur fight in 2013 and compiled a 5-1 record before making his professional debut in 2018. He then raced out to a 3-0 professional record before receiving the call to compete on TUF.
Despite having only three professional fights, Gore did not hesitate to accept the opportunity.
“I didn’t think about it,” Gore said. “I just jumped right into it. That’s what I did, and I’m still jumping right in. There’s nobody I’m saying no to. I have no fear.”
Gore became one of the breakout personalities of the season and eventually advanced to the finale, but an injury forced him to withdraw. It was also during his time on the show that he proclaimed he would become a UFC champion within one year.
He does not regret the statement, but he acknowledges that he could have delivered it with more humility. He also never anticipated the level of backlash it would generate.
“I didn’t expect people to hate me as much as they did,” Gore said. “At the end of the day, I do have regrets in the sense that I could have been more humble about it. You know what I mean? At the same time, I thought that was me being humble. The whole reason I started training in martial arts was because I wanted to be the best in the world. A lot of people are like, ‘Oh, I started MMA, realized I was decent and decided I was going to make it to the UFC.’
“No. From the beginning of my training, I was telling my coaches and everyone around me that I was going to be a UFC champion one day,” Gore continued. “From the day I stepped onto the jiu-jitsu mats, my dream was to become UFC champion. I was telling my coach that from the beginning. It was never, ‘I hope I make it to the UFC.’ I always knew I would be there. So, when I got the call for The Ultimate Fighter, I just knew God was going to bless me, I was going to go on a tear and become a UFC champion overnight. But that just wasn’t my story. It wasn’t my time.”
Losing back-to-back fights to begin his UFC career forced Gore to confront his own humility and brought him back to reality. He responded by rattling off consecutive wins, including one of the nastiest submissions in recent UFC history, but then dropped two fights in a row once again.
According to Gore, his biggest problem was not his confidence or lack of professional experience. It was a long-standing habit: smoking marijuana.
“Whenever you’re doing things that hinder you—like smoking the amount of weed I was smoking, drinking or eating Filiberto’s during fight week—that’s not good,” Gore said. “I did that with Cody Brundage. I slept on him. I looked down on him. I was like, ‘This dude is just a wrestler. He doesn’t have anything for me.’
“I smoked weed the whole time,” Gore continued. “I was in Phoenix getting prerolls from my sponsor — 50 percent THC, $50 prerolls. I was smoking those every night and smoking myself to sleep. Then, come Monday, I’m hauling ass to Vegas after going on this binge and smoking so much weed. I’m 212 pounds. By Tuesday, when I get to Vegas, I’ve been eating burritos and whatever else I wanted. I’d been training a little bit, but I wasn’t training like I needed to train to beat this guy.”
“I stopped smoking cold turkey, and my body immediately went into shock,” Gore added. “I lost my appetite. I couldn’t eat anymore. I didn’t eat from Tuesday through Thursday. I didn’t eat until after I made weight Friday morning. That’s when UFC sent me to get an IV. They approved it, and that’s a rare thing.”
Gore was knocked out in the first round, but even that result was not enough to make him quit smoking. Indeed, according to Gore, marijuana was a common thread throughout all of his losses.
When he remained disciplined and stayed away from it before a fight, he won. When he slipped back into his old habits, he lost.
Gore finally quit smoking in December 2025, and the results showed in his most recent performance.
“God really got to me. The Holy Spirit really got to me,” Gore said. “I didn’t just quit weed because I wanted to have a better career. I quit weed because I wanted to be obedient to the Lord Jesus Christ. I quit smoking weed in December 2025, and it’s been the best year of my life.
“I got a new house—a half-million-dollar house. I got a new vehicle. I have a son who is 10 months old, a new baby. I got a new contract with UFC. I got the biggest win of my career, and I’m feeling good now. I’m about to fight a guy in Vicente Luque who, honestly, could get me into the rankings after I beat him.”
In addition to giving up marijuana, Gore is now training full-time at The MMA Lab in Arizona, one of the most respected gyms in the sport. Next, he will face Luque at UFC 330, and a win over an established name could announce Gore as a new threat in the Middleweight division.
With a new gym, a new lifestyle and everything finally moving in the right direction, Gore is back in the driver’s seat of his career. This time, however, he is not setting championship deadlines or looking several fights into the future.
“I would like to have a ranking before the end of this year, but ideally, I just want to keep winning step by step,” Gore said. “One thing I learned from The Ultimate Fighter is that you have to go step by step. You can’t jump ahead and say, ‘I want to win two titles.’ You have to go opponent by opponent and moment by moment. Right now, I’m taking my time and enjoying each moment.
“I want to enjoy this weight cut. I want to enjoy the pressure of going out there and fighting,” Gore continued. “I enjoy these moments because one day, I’ll be an old man telling people how I eventually got to the UFC title and how I did it. But right now, I have work to do. I can’t look past Luque. He’s a veteran, and he knows how to fight.
“My mindset isn’t my old mindset anymore,” Gore concluded. “I know what I have to do to win these fights, so keep watching. I promise you’ll enjoy my story.”