Long before he was Australia’s newest UFC fighter, Stewart Nicoll stood watching from a beach as his father disappeared, maybe forever, in a dugout canoe. Barefoot, as he recalls it, “and bawling”. Even now, some 25 years on, Nicoll can still see the old man slowly moving away from that sliver of Solomon Islands beachfront which, just quietly, was already playing the role of family hideout.
“Because dangerous people,” he says, “were after us, chasing revenge ...
” Call it an image Nicoll, now 29 – and on an undefeated tear stretching six years and eight professional fights – will carry during his walk to the Octagon at UFC 305, this Sunday. When apart from becoming the nation’s newest UFC fighter, this now Redcliffe local will continue his own yarn all chaos, violence, warring militia, old school justice, street fighting uncles, Max Holloway sparring sessions, even island hopping via dodgy aircraft and dugout canoes. Most of which, Nicoll admits, exists as something of a blur.
“Because my memory,” grins the man set to make his hyped Octagon debut against Mexican tough Jesus Aguilar, “it isn’t that great. “I’m forgetting things all the time. “But that image of dad leaving? Man, it’s seared onto my brain.
“As if it happened yesterday.” Yet in truth, the event occurred way back in 2000. When Nicoll was still only six.
A happy, oblivious schoolboy living in the Solomon Islands with mum Suzanne, a local, also dad, Stewart -- an Aussie who had.