Ferguson proposes a 'TUF' title
LAS VEGAS – The baggage claim area at Los Angeles International Airport isn’t the place most romanticists would choose to propose marriage to the love of their lives.
And, if truth be told, neither did Tony Ferguson. Things just happened that way.
For weeks, Ferguson would lie in his bed at ‘The Ultimate Fighter’ house and think of his fiancée, Cristina Servin. He’d kiss her picture. He’d think of what he’d say when the time was right. He wanted to tell her how much he loved her and how he looked forward to spending his life together with her, but he wasn't sure how or when or where would be the right place.
After the final night of filming of TUF, following Ferguson’s victory over Chris Cope that enabled him to advance to Saturday’s live finale at the Palms Resort & Casino against Ramsey Nijem, Ferguson went out and bought an engagement ring. And then he scribbled his thoughts about his girlfriend onto paper, in the form of a poem.
But getting to the point where he would propose marriage in a public area was the tricky part. And anyone who had watched the penultimate episode of TUF, in which a drunken Ferguson taunted a teammate about not having custody of his child and started a wild brawl, would have to question what kind of switched got flipped inside of him.
Ferguson said he “brought a lot of demons with me” to the Ultimate Fighter house. He didn’t meet his biological father, Pete Murillo, for the first time until he was 13, and then, that meeting was just brief.
“He didn’t want anything to do with me, basically,” Ferguson said. “That hurts. The first time I met him, it spun my world around. I didn’t know how to handle it.”
The first time he met his father, he’d flown from Michigan to California, hoping to understand what had gone on and why his father hadn’t been a part of his life. He had a mental image in his mind of what his father might look like, but when he laid eyes on him for the first time, it was totally different.
He found a clean-cut man with a neatly pressed shirt. They weren’t, however, alone with the chance to spend some private time together to sort out their issues. His father was surrounded by family members.
“My Mom wasn’t there, but all of my aunts and uncles were there, and it was kind of like a panel of judges on ‘American Idol,’ ” he said. “I really didn’t get a chance to ask the questions that I wanted to.”
By that point, Ferguson had taken on the name of his stepfather, Jeff Ferguson. He had become immersed in sports years earlier after the family moved to Michigan from Southern California. He was an elite wrestler and won a state high school championship in 2002. He went to college at Grand Valley State on a wrestling scholarship and won an NCAA Division II championship.
But that trip to California as a 13-year-old played with his mind. He was unable to resolve the issues with his biological father and learned that he had a half brother, Javy, he didn’t know.
Instead of the trip solving his emotional issues, it expanded them.
He loved his stepfather and didn’t know how to react to having met his father. He brought photos of his father, his half brother and other relatives home to Michigan with him, but he locked them in a box. He'd look at them when he was troubled and begin to think as he pressed them against his hearat.
“You know, I’d be down and I’d look at those pictures and say, ‘Why aren’t you here so I can give you a hug? I need you,’ ” Ferguson said. “I just became more angry and I carried that with me for a long time.”
By the time he was a young adult, he was working out at a Southern California gym after having embarked on his fighting career. His trainer was a man named Raul. He began to tell Raul about his family life and, in a bizarre coincidence, his trainer also happened to be his cousin. That led to another meeting with his father and his extended family.
It took him some courage to walk up the steps and knock on Murillo’s door after the meeting was arranged, but when he did, things changed for the better.
“He opened the door and we hugged and it was like we had never missed a beat,” Ferguson said. “It felt so good. I can’t even tell you.”
But it wouldn’t feel nearly as good as pulling off the proposal he had planned. After the final fights were over and filming for the reality series was wrapped up, UFC president Dana White arranged a goodbye dinner. Before the dinner, Ferguson had a few hours to himself, so he went to a Las Vegas jewelry store with two of his castmates to pick out a ring.
He then called Servin to ask her to pick him up the next day at LAX.
When he arrived, he was limping badly and was scratched up from his hard fight with Cope. In one pocket, he had a box of Ghirardelli chocolates. In the other, he had the engagement ring.
He hadn’t seen Servin for the six weeks he was on the show, since the rules forbid any kind of contact with the outside world while filming is taking place. They were excited to see each other and quickly embraced.
“Tony told me to pick a pocket, because he had something for me,” Servin said. “Whenever he travels, he’d always bring me something back, some small little gift, so I thought nothing of it. It was the kind of thing he always did.”
Ferguson pulled out his poem and read it aloud to Servin. At the end of it, he asked her to pick a pocket.
Naturally, she picked the one that had the box of chocolates.
“I got down on one knee to make the proposal,” Ferguson said. “But when I started to talk, I sounded like I was having a heart attack. I was pretty sore from the fight and she wasn’t sure what was up. She said, ‘Are you OK? Is everything all right? I’m worried about you.’ ”
And then, Servin did something Ferguson didn’t expect. She knelt down on the ground with him. She saw how beat up he was and when he went to one knee, the last thing she expected was for him to propose. She thought he was going to his knee because he was in pain, so knelt down next to him to comfort him.
“I was nervous as hell,” he said. “On the flight the way down, it’s a real short flight and I put the tray table down and I took out the box with the ring in it and I was spinning it around and thinking and thinking and thinking. I knew this was going to be a one-time thing. I’m never going to be married again, so I wanted to do this thing up right.”
Servin, though, was completely in the dark and had no idea what Ferguson’s feelings were toward her. They’d spoken previously of a future together, but had never discussed marriage. Ferguson, she said, was a guy who kept a lot of his emotions to himself.
Plus, she wasn’t sure what the time away filming the show would do about his feelings toward her. She was braced for the fact that things could be different.
And they were. Just not, however, in the way that she expected.
“I didn’t know if he would come back and say, ‘You know, Cristina, fighting is taking off for me and things are getting crazy and I’m getting really busy,’ ” she said. “In my mind, I didn’t know what to expect, how he would be. I just got a call asking me to pick him up at the airport the next day. I really didn’t know where we stood as far as our relationship, considering what was going on and how long he’d been away.”
Servin picked the chocolates, but she was in tears as she did it because she was touched by the three-page letter Ferguson had read to her. He suggested then that she pick the other pocket and he got to one knee.
She followed him to one knee and he pulled out the ring.
“It was the greatest thing ever,” he said. “You know, she said yes and that itself was a relief. But I did it. I pulled it off.”
And now he has a chance to pull off another major feat in his life. If he defeats Nijem, he’ll earn a UFC contract and realize a long-time dream.
It’s been a whirlwind few months, but he’s eager to begin the journey to UFC success. His mother calls him “Mr. Destiny” because of the way things seem to work out for him, and winning the show and earning a UFC contract would be yet another step in fulfilling his destiny.
“My life has taken some wild and crazy turns, but winning this show, I can’t even tell you what it would mean,” he said. “I know I have all the tools to win this. I just have to keep my emotions in check and do my job.”
If he does, he may be forever know to the world as Tony “Mr. Destiny” Ferguson.
