‘ELE‘ELE — On April 29, undefeated mixed martial artist Josh “Bushido” Quinlan (6-0, 1 NC) will face Ange “The Last Ninja” Loose (9-3) at UFC Fight Night 223.
But long before Quinlan ever stepped foot in the octagon, he spent his youth attending farmers markets and riding bikes on Kaua‘i’s westside.
“It’s a great place to be raised,” Quinlan said. “It’s a great community, and I can always have my foundation and my roots there that I carry with me.”
Born and raised in ‘Ele‘ele, Quinlan was always athletic. Whether it was skateboarding, cross-country, weight training, volleyball or tennis, he always enjoyed staying active
But above all sports, Quinlan always enjoyed soccer. After graduating from Waimea High School, he attended the University of New Mexico, where he hoped to enter the collegiate soccer scene.
However, he was quickly humbled, learning there were levels to the sport.
“When I transitioned to college, it was kind of a different ballgame,” Quinlan said. “It was a faster pace and a higher level, and I didn’t make that transition as clean. I went from being one of the top players on my island of Kaua‘i to one of the not-as-good players in the collegiate realm. So, I didn’t make the soccer team my first year of college and was just looking for an outlet.”
Quinlan would find that outlet during his spring break, when he traveled to Las Vegas to meet a few friends, who trained martial arts at Want Fight Team.
“It was a good community, some good mentors in the martial arts community — very humble people,” Quinlan said. “They invited me into a little bit of a family environment, and I transitioned to martial arts through my first year of college and never looked back.”
Having no prior martial arts experience beyond childhood roughhousing with his wrestler brother Daniel, Josh transferred to University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and began training at Wand Fight Team himself.
As unorthodox a fight background as he had, Quinlan says he was able to incorporate several of his soccer skills into mixed martial arts.
“In soccer, when you’re dribbling you have to feint the person — feint one way, go the other — and that transitioned well,” he said. “And also just the strong kicks in soccer transitioned to some good muay thai kicks, and I feel that I got a little cardio and endurance from soccer.”
Still, mixed martial arts did not come naturally to Quinlan — although that didn’t stop him from continuing to improve through training.
“I had some teammates that were saying I looked a little robotic,” he said. “But that just goes to show that if you want to do something and you put in the time, it doesn’t really matter what you start or when you start. It doesn’t matter if you start gifted, or you pick it up fast — if you invest your time, then you can really get concrete results.”
Quinlan graduated from UNLV in 2017 with a degree in mechanical engineering and began his amateur MMA career shortly afterward.
But as he found great success in martial arts, racking up three KO/TKOs in his first three fights, Quinlan found that mechanical engineering wasn’t quite what he thought it would be.
“I had a good job, a stable job, but it just didn’t fulfill me,” he said. “So that led me to put my time into martial arts. I didn’t know where it was gonna go — I was still an amateur at that time, and I didn’t know where the career was gonna go. But I felt strongly about putting my time into it, putting some good energy into it. And through that process, I transitioned to my professional career.”
Quinlan began professionally fighting in 2019 and built an impressive 5-0 record within two years, with three KO/TKOs and two submissions.
Then in 2021, he received a call every young MMA fighter dreams of. Dana White’s Contender Series, a fight promotion created to scout talent for the UFC, offered Quinlan a bout against Darian Weeks.
While Weeks was ultimately forced to pull out of the fight due to COVID-19 restrictions, Quinlan was unaffected by the shift in competition. In just 47 seconds, Quinlan scored a knockout against Logan Urban, securing a UFC contract in the process.
However, a few weeks later, the Nevada Athletic Commission ultimately overturned the win to a no contest and suspended Quinlan from competition for nine months after he tested positive for drostanolone, an anabolic steroid and banned substance.
Quinlan noted to The Garden Island while he did take steroids during his amateur career, he stopped when transitioning to professional MMA. Steroid use can be detected long after an individual stops taking the drug.
“When it happened, I was pretty devastated,” he said. “I thought that my career was going to be in jeopardy. I thought that this is the end, my image was going to be smeared and my opportunity was lost.”
In the face of a potentially career-ending scandal, Quinlan chose not to let the decisions of his past define him.
“It’s about what you do on a daily basis,” he said. “It’s about how consistent you are with your character and with the things you do, and I wasn’t going to let that decision hold me down or change what I did. So, I accepted the repercussions of my decisions and look forward to make better decisions.”
Quinlan served out his suspension, and on Aug. 13, 2022, debuted in the UFC with a first-round knockout against Jason Witt, raising his undefeated record to 6-0.
Prior to his debut, Quinlan changed his nickname from “The Maverick” to “Bushido” — the samurai code emphasizing honor and respect — as a reminder of how he chooses to approach life.
“I strive to hold that in high regard and live that type of lifestyle — I believe I’m a modern-day warrior right now,” he said. “I’m just trying to encourage people and show it’s not about what you do, it’s about how you do it, and progressing in the world by the work ethic and the character that you bring.”
And in anticipation of his bout against Ange Loose, Quinlan intends to take that same approach with him into the octagon on April 29.
“If I give my best and you give your best, there’s only good that can come from that,” he said. “We’re not going into it with ill intentions — we’re just martial artists trying to bring out the best, to be our best. And it’s going to be a good test for both of us.”
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Jackson Healy, reporter, can be reached at 808-647-4966 or jhealy@thegardenisland.com.
