An Tuan
Ho
waits patiently by the phone, confident his big-league call
could come at any time.
The undefeated 23-year-old flyweight prospect has jetted out to a
6-0 start to his career since he debuted under the
Legacy Fighting Alliance banner in February 2022. Ho sports
four finishes on his resume, highlighted by a 14-second head kick
knockout of
Matt Barro,
a kneebar submission of
Banzaragch
Enkhjargal and a one-punch stoppage of
Kendrick
Latchman. Even though his all-terrain skills and penchant for
the spectacular have made him one of the hottest commodities on the
regional scene, he prefers to take his time with incremental
progress.
“Other than the fights, I have been training myself to get better
in the gym, just preparing for the next one,”
Ho told the FightWave
podcast in January. A lot of fighters just fight, fight, fight,
fight. They take a lot of fights, but they don’t really get better
in between the fights. Right now, I’m still pretty young and I feel
like time is still on my side. I want to be a UFC champion one day,
so I have to get better now before I jump into the pool. I think
I’ve done a lot of improvement outside already.”
A native of Vietnam, Ho moved to the United States as a teenager.
He now operates out of the
MMA Lab in Glendale, Arizona, where longtime coach John Crouch
oversees his training alongside a host of world-class stablemates,
including current
Ultimate Fighting Championship bantamweight titleholder
Sean
O’Malley.
“I look up to all those guys and try to learn as much as I can,” Ho
said. “I’m really grateful to be able to train over at The Lab. I
love it. Everyone there is just so good, and it forces you to get
better. If you come in and do something great and you catch some
people with some submissions or if you catch something that they’ve
never seen before, the next week, everyone has already picked it up
and found the counter for it. That forces me to even get better and
learn how to counter their counters. In return, everyone is getting
better. Right now, we have a huge pool of talents that are coming
up.”
Ho last fought on Feb. 9, when he took a three-round unanimous
decision from
Miguel
Sanson in the LFA 176 co-main event. He traversed considerable
difficulty, as Sanson completed multiple takedowns and racked up
considerable control time in a battle marked by wild scrambles and
repeated positional exchanges. Ho managed to land a majority of the
consequential strikes, made his way to a reverse crucifix on two
occasions and threatened his counterpart’s neck with inverted
triangles. Scores were 30-27, 29-28 and 29-28.
“Miguel did a great job with his takedowns,” Ho said afterward. “I
needed to be a little bit more controlled. I came in here a little
more spazzy this time, so I needed some time to calm down. He did
great with the wrestling. Hats off to him.”
Ho chalked up the bout as yet another valuable learning
experience.
“I still have a lot to work on,” he said. “I’m going to go home,
cover the holes and come back better.”