Seabrook to UFC? Lucas Rosa’s journey begins with pro MMA debut at Foxwoods

Just as he did throughout his high school career at Winnacunnet, Lucas Rosa goes to sleep each night and wakes up each morning with one reminder staring blankly back at him.

“I’ve done that since I was in wrestling,” Rosa explained of the goal that he wrote and thumbtacked to his bedroom ceiling in Seabrook for all four years he wrestled for the Warriors.

“'Div. 2 state champion' was up there when I was in high school, and luckily, I managed to accomplish that in my senior year.”

A decade later, a new message is affixed to the ceiling in his bedroom in his Boca Raton, Florida, condo: “1-0 as a pro.”

Whether that simple piece of paper does its job will be decided in the octagon in the Great Cedar Showroom at Foxwoods Resort and Casino before an overflow crowd next Friday night.

Rosa, 28, is not only ranked as the No. 1 amateur featherweight (145 pounds) in the Northeast out of 351 mixed martial arts (MMA) fighters but is widely considered one of the top two or three amateurs in his class in the country. Friday’s fight is a defining moment in a journey that he’s been relentlessly training for the last three years — it’s also one he didn’t want to rush.

“A lot of amateurs come in, and they have two or three fights, and they do well and turn pro,” said Rosa, who has racked up a sterling 10-1 mark in MMA-sanctioned bouts along with another half dozen or so wins in kickboxing. “You really need to garner that experience. I learn more in a fight than I do in a month of training.”

His ultimate goal is to fight for a world title in the preeminent MMA organization in the world, the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC).

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The ultimate blueprint

Rosa spends most of his waking hours training twice, if not three times a day, with personalized training, neurovisual training, and recovering rehab in South Florida, which he terms the Mecca for MMA fighters.

While Rosa certainly looks the part of a highly trained MMA fighter inside the cage, he brings a unique and thoughtful perspective to the sport outside of the octagon. Rosa graduated from Wheaton College with a double major in philosophy and creative writing. He also earned a prestigious fellowship that saw him travel to the northern Netherlands, Thailand and Cambodia to study the origins of three different types of martial arts.

As far as inspiration and advice go when it comes to his craft, he needs to look no further than his older brother Charles “Boston Strong” Rosa. Charles Rosa has done it all in the sport and fought in 13 UFC cards from 2014 to 2022. The elder Rosa will be the first to tell you that his younger brother is far ahead from where he was when he first walked into an MMA gym some 17 years ago in South Florida with only a handful of high school hockey fights on his sparring resume.

“Lucas has been wrestling and doing martial arts since he was 3 years old and could walk,” said Rosa, who will be working in Lucas’ corner next Friday along with another UFC veteran Charles McCarthy.

“I really think that he could go all the way. I think that he has the capability, and he has the foundation and team around him to be a UFC world champion, and that’s our eventual goal.”

Previous story: WHS grad Lucas Rosa, brother of UFC standout Charles Rosa, now an MMA fighter

Lucas says having his older brother in his corner, both literally and figuratively, has been invaluable.

“Having him has been a huge resource,” said Rosa. “I think without Charles I would not have had as much confidence to plunge myself into MMA. He really gave me that shining example of someone who is literally exactly like myself to follow.”

There are plenty of other shining examples for Rosa to follow while training at McCarthy’s American Combat Gym in Deerfield Beach, Florida. Rosa trains daily with experienced coaches and fighters, including Peru’s Daniel Marcos, who at 15-0 is on the cusp of a UFC title shot. It’s that type of family and foundation that Rosa says gives him the confidence to step into the octagon. Despite that impressive network, he says, trepidation is always there.

“Anyone who tells you they are not afraid to go into the cage is lying,” he says. “It’s a really nerve-wracking thing, but, for me, what calms me down a lot is that I know that there’s confidence and courage in the preparation. The preparation helps take away that fear.”

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A big step up

Along with taking home an actual paycheck after each fight, several other differences in the octagon differentiate pro and amateur bouts in MMA. Pro rounds are five minutes long, as opposed to three minutes. Pro fighters are not only allowed to use their elbows to strike but also allowed to throw knees to the head – both practices are not allowed at the amateur level. In addition, shin guards are prohibited at the pro level.

On the surface, it’s certainly enough to give even the most confident amateur pause, but Rosa sees all of the rule changes working to his advantage. Rosa prides himself on his cardio work, and as a technician in the octagon, he feels like the longer rounds will only help him solve his opponents that much earlier.

What about dealing with the blinding spotlight that comes with a capacity crowd in your professional debut at a place like Foxwoods? Charles Rosa, for one, is confident that his little brother is up to the task.

“He’s already fought some big fights in his career, so now it’s not as big a deal to fight in front of 5,000 or 10,000 people cheering his name,” Charles pointed out.

From winning a kickboxing bout in northern California to headlining an MMA card at the guitar-shaped Hard Rock Casino in Fort Lauderdale, Rosa has crisscrossed the country over the last three years with fights nearly every two months. His latest victory, a decision over Alabama’s talented Elias Anders in front of a hostile crowd in Birmingham, put an exclamation point on his eventful amateur career and told Team Rosa what they probably knew for quite some time now.

“We’re ready to unleash him,” said Charles succinctly.

Rosa will be fighting on a card promoted by CES, a mixed martial arts promotional company based out of Providence that serves as a feeder league to the UFC. As busy a schedule as Lucas had as an amateur, Charles says it’s only going to get more hectic as a pro.

“What people don’t really understand is that it comes really fast,” said Charles, who made his UFC debut 18 months after turning pro thanks to a 9-0 professional start.

“It happens fast, so that’s why when we turn him loose as a pro, I have to truly believe that he’s ready to fight in the UFC, and by the time he gets to the UCF, he needs to be ready to be champion.”

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Family first

Rosa says he can hear very little inside the octagon during the chaos and fury that is an MMA fight, except it seems the vociferous encouragement from his sister Teresa.

“I couldn’t hear anything in my first fight because of the adrenaline, but the only thing I heard was my sister screaming in the crowd,” Rosa recalled with a grin.

That will not change next Friday as Teresa, his twin brother Francis, his parents Chucky and Mary, will all make the two-hour trip from Seabrook along with many others, including Lucas’ fiancée, Gabriella Hulsey. The entire tight-knit Irish and Italian family will be on hand with two very notable exceptions, his oldest brothers Vincent and Domenic, who both tragically lost their lives to substance abuse.

Both brothers' ashes were spread in the ocean, and every morning, regardless of the temperature or elements, Chucky Rosa takes a plunge off Seabrook Beach to be with them and to inspire others in their fight for sobriety as part of his well-known charity Chucky’s Fight. Before each fight, Rosa writes both of his late brothers’ high school hockey numbers on each fist.

“It’s one of the things that motivates me, and it’s kind of like having both of them with me,” said Lucas Rosa. “I think it’s important to take those hardships in life and find a way to garner meaning out of it. I think everyone has those different forms of catharsis that let them express themselves and be their most authentic self, and for me, that’s the martial arts.”

As of press time for this story, Rosa’s scheduled opponent for Friday had pulled out due to injury. Rosa, who has had blinders on for the last three years leading up to this moment, was unfazed. Regardless of the replacement, the goal he wakes up to each morning remains the same.

“I respect this opponent and everything, but at the end of the day, they are trying to take everything that I worked for and have sacrificed for, and that a lot of people who I love have sacrificed for,” Rosa explained. “At the end of the day, he’s trying to take something that’s mine, and I’m not going to let that happen.”

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: UFC bound: Seabrook's Lucas Rosa to make pro MMA debut at Foxwoods