Bailey
Schoenfelder
was built for combat.
The 26-year-old heavyweight prospect played football at the
University of Minnesota—he enrolled as a preferred walk-on and
eventually earned a scholarship—before he made the move to mixed
martial arts. A seamless transition ensued, as Schoenfelder has
rattled off five consecutive victories to start his career, all of
them finishes. His skills have garnered interest, far and wide.
After four appearances on
Bellator
MMA and
Legacy Fighting Alliance undercards, Schoenfelder was awarded a
shot at
Cage Fury Fighting Championships heavyweight titleholder
Greg
Velasco in the CFFC 131 co-headliner on April 12 in Atlantic
City, New Jersey. It did not go well for Velasco, who succumbed to
punches 3:24 into the second round and surrendered his tenuous grip
on the CFFC throne.
“It feels incredible,” Schoenfelder said afterward. “With the
amount of work we put in, me and my team, it feels incredible to
see an end result like that.”
Velasco, who outweighed the unbeaten challenger by 37 pounds, did
all he could to close the distance. Schoenfelder shrugged off
repeated clinches and made the
Dana White’s Contender Series alum pay on the exits, either
with knee strikes to the body or sharp punches upstairs. After a
relatively even first round, Schoenfelder found another gear. He
swarmed Velasco with shots to the head midway through the middle
stanza, sprawled on his increasingly desperate takedown attempts
and wheeled behind him, piling up points and damage with palm
strikes, elbows and punches. Schoenfelder squashed the New
Jerseyan’s bid for a leg lock, progressed to the back and flattened
out “The Viking King,” prompting the stoppage with an unanswered
burst of punches, hammerfists and elbows.
“I’m not even sure yet [what comes next],” Schoenfelder said. “I
want to go home, take a little break and gather myself. Then I’ll
make a decision.”
Schoenfelder has thrown out his anchor at the esteemed
Kill Cliff Fight Club camp in Deerfield Beach, Florida, where
top-shelf coaches like Henri Hooft and Greg Jones oversee his
development. The academy offers him daily access to a wide
assortment of accomplished stablemates, including ex-
Ultimate
Fighting Championship titleholder
Robbie
Lawler, current Bellator champion
Jason
Jackson and former two-division
ONE
Championship titlist
Aung La N
Sang. Schoenfelder recently made the gym his permanent
home.
“Before this, I was just traveling down to Florida, staying in a
hotel and doing four or five weeks for a camp and then going back
to Minnesota, where I was originally,”
he told CFFC.tv in April. “It was mainly just committing to my
fighting career. More training partners. More opportunities.
Coaching staff is great. It’s just kind of a better situation all
around, and I feel good.”
Schoenfelder brings plenty of physical and mental tools to the
table. A certified strength and conditioning specialist, he holds a
bachelor’s degree in kinesiology and a master’s degree in education
from the University of Minnesota. Schoenfelder also won a state
wrestling championship at Huron High School in South Dakota, and he
credits those skills with forming a base from which he can operate
in MMA.
“I know that I can still rely on my wrestling and especially even
just the mentality,”
he told Dakota News Now in 2022. “If nothing else, wrestling
practices are hard. Wrestling kind of sucks. It’s tough stuff and
prepares you for pretty much anything. I’d say it’s probably the
main reason I was able to do this and start this—because I had that
foundation.”