It crept up on Chris Fields at first, his crossover from fighter to coach. He only realised it about two years ago. No longer was he watching fights and imagining himself as the fighter but as the mentor. A subtle but seismic shift for a one-time Cage Warriors champion.
Fields' was one of the more intriguing plotlines on season 19 of hit UFC series The Ultimate Fighter too, back in 2014.
Bad blood hung in the air between the Dubliner and Matt Van Buren ahead of their light heavyweight elimination bout.
Van Buren promised to 'smash' Fields who described his opponent as 'a slower version of me'. Fields reckoned it was 'my fight to lose' which, unfortunately, he did by decision. And that was that.
North of 40 now, he's the lead MMA coach at the Team KF Martial Arts gym in Swords, county Dublin and training up a batch of ultra talented prospects.
Three of Fields' fighters - Leon Hill, Taka Mhandu and Ryan Shelley - are on the Cage Warriors 161 bill at the RDS, the first ever MMA event at the famous Dublin venue.
"It was a strange thing for me," said Fields of the change from fighter to coach. "I suppose it's a weird job in that it defines you almost, being a fighter. It's everything, it's your whole being. It's your essence. Then that part is gone. I still compete in Jiu Jitsu and stuff but that part is kind of gone from you.
"Now I'm just solely focused. When I watch fights I don't think, 'I could do that technique', I'm thinking, 'That could be implemented into Leon's game or Taka's game or Ryan's game'. That's the way I look at it now."
Truth be told, there was always a coach inside Fields just waiting to burst out.
"I would have coached Cathal Pendred for a lot of his UFC career," he said. "The likes of Paddy Holohan, all this kind of stuff, I would have coached with them. I would have coached a lot of amateurs back in the day and kind of was always the guy that people would go to for advice."
Fields has high hopes for his fighters. Drogheda man Hill is on a six-fight winning streak. He'll touch gloves with Ieuan Davies in a welterweight bout while Shelley, cousin of former League of Ireland star Brian Shelley, is a 29-year-old featherweight with a kick-boxing pedigree. Bantamweight Mhandu, 25, is considered a top prospect.
Mhandu will face veteran Moldovan Alexander Pirev and plans to 'finish it in the second or the first, more than likely by strikes'. With full focus, he could go to the very top.
"Taka is very open about this," said Fields, "he's fallen into the trap a few times of everybody telling him how cool he was and how great he was because he was winning fights. Then he'd start hanging out a bit more and a few times I've had to go and pull him out of parties and stuff.
"I've just seen this laser focus the last while and he has the belief now. I think he's going to keep gathering momentum, I don't think there's any stopping the kid."
Coaching is an 'obsession' now for Fields, a way of life. When he's not at the gym, he's watching reruns of classic Anderson Silva fights, or poring over old boxing footage.
"Modern boxing is very difficult to transfer over to MMA because there's no clinching allowed, there's no 'dirty boxing' as we call it," he said. "But if you go back and watch, say, Roberto Duran, he's using it constantly in his fights. Or if you go back further and you're watching fights from the '50s with Joe Louis and that, I'd be watching all those guys because they fought in a very different way.
"The old school stuff I find just crosses over better. Like, there's a thing that Rocky Marciano does when he comes forward...so he's coming through and he'll change from an orthodox fighter to a southpaw fighter to throw a shot. And he's pressing forward. This kind of stuff is what I'm trying to transfer to the guys. It's just an obsession."
* Cage Warriors 161 takes place this Saturday, October 14 in Dublin for a historic event at the RDS which will see Mixed Martial Arts take place at the venue for the first time. Tickets for Cage Warriors 161 are available at ticketmaster.ie
