Noah Thomas: from injury, troubles to redemption

For a brief moment in time, Noah Thomas was one of the most infamous figures in mixed martial arts.

A rising Colorado lightweight prospect, he was one of 16 fighters participating in the fifth season of the Ultimate Fighting Championship's The Ultimate Fighter reality series. Upon losing his preliminary round fight to Manvel Gambaryan, Thomas proceeded to get into a drunken fight with fellow cast mate Marlon Sims, resulting in UFC President Dana White expelling both from the show.

With the initial request by Spike TV, the broadcasters of The Ultimate Fighter, to have a match between Thomas and Sims on the season's finale nixed by White, Thomas sought to redeem himself elsewhere, when injury struck.

In a short matter of time, he went from one of the most buzzed about fighters in the sport, to virtually disappearing from the MMA landscape for a year and a half.

Now, fully recovered from injury, Thomas seeks to step away from his past and forge a new path for himself in a new weight class and prove that he's more than a blip on the television landscape at this coming Friday, June 13's Ring of Fire event in Broomfield, Colo.

"It sucked, definitely," exclaimed Thomas of his experiences over the last year and a half. "Coming off The Ultimate Fighter and then I don't get a chance to redeem myself right off the bat, I get hurt.

"I was training for a fight right after 'T.U.F.' and I got hurt. I thought it wasn't anything bad at first, but then my knee kept going out, so I got an MRI done and it showed I had no ACL left. I had a lot of rehab, strength and conditioning, and just trying to get back into the game."

As Thomas explains, he virtually had to re-learn to walk again, let alone just regain his fighting skills.

"They took the patella (tendon) out of my left leg and put it in my right (leg)," he explained. "It's definitely learning how to walk again, use my guard again, how to box again.

"What really sucks is that I was getting to the point where I was really getting good with my stand up and jiu-jitsu, and then all that practice went out the window (when I got injured). I got it back pretty quickly, though, so I'm happy."