Long before Mar­Quel Mederos earned his shot in the UFC, he was find­ing his way on the streets.

Mederos was home­less for a time in his native Texas, sneak­ing into movie the­aters and apart­ment com­plex gyms to sleep. Once he moved to Col­orado to reunite with his bio­log­i­cal dad, it was a sim­i­lar theme: He end­ed up home­less again, and sleep­ing in his car.

Along the way, he sold mar­i­jua­na to get by, got into heat­ed dis­agree­ments with his fam­i­ly, and ran up his street-fight tal­ly to more than 25 brawls. But then he found MMA, and that rough-and-tum­ble back­ground fueled him, even­tu­al­ly lead­ing to his UFC debut this weekend.

“All that made me grow up more as a man,” Mederos said. “I was only 17, 18, 19 years old, and was still in a lit­tle boy mind­set of, ‘Life just comes and goes,’ and I had no pur­pose. Me being put in those sit­u­a­tions gave me pur­pose, because I was final­ly like, ‘I’ve got to do some­thing dif­fer­ent. Or else I’m going to just be liv­ing the same life the rest of my life.’”

Mederos takes on Lan­don Quiñones at 2 p.m. Sat­ur­day in the pre­lims of UFC Fight Night at the UFC Apex in Las Vegas. The begin­ning of Mederos’ big-show career coin­cides with the Com­merce City fighter’s mat­u­ra­tion from a direc­tion­less teenag­er into a 27-year-old now with a young fam­i­ly of his own along with immense career goals.

The lightweight’s train­ing for Sat­ur­day traces back to about sev­en years ago, when he signed up for the adult MMA class at Fac­to­ry X in Engle­wood. Once there, his nat­ur­al ath­leti­cism and tough­ness quick­ly sep­a­rat­ed him from the aver­age Joes.

Bri­an Camozzi, a for­mer UFC fight­er who trained at Fac­to­ry X and is now an offi­cer with the Den­ver Police Depart­ment, took notice. And when he dis­cov­ered Mederos was liv­ing out of his car, Camozzi offered him a place to stay.

That out­stretched hand proved to be a turn­ing point for Mederos.

“When I first saw him train­ing, some­times you can pick those (elite) guys out, and right away I knew that guy was going to make it,” Camozzi recalled. “Offer­ing him a room at my house, it was the least I could do. I said, ‘I’ll do what­ev­er I can to help you.’ And then from there, he was just a guy who nev­er quit.

“In this sport, there’s a lot of guys who show up (to MMA gyms) and real­ize it’s a pain in the (butt), it’s hard, and they’re done. The guy nev­er stopped, he worked hard, I nev­er heard him com­plain, he trained mul­ti­ple times a day and bal­anced that with a job. He did every­thing he need­ed to do, and it’s cool to see it final­ly pay­ing off for him.”

Late­ly, Mederos has been work­ing as a serv­er at Pap­padeaux Seafood Kitchen in Green­wood Vil­lage but hopes to put that gig in the rearview, espe­cial­ly if he’s award­ed a pos­si­ble $50,000 bonus from a vic­to­ry on Sat­ur­day that comes in addi­tion to the win­ning purse. Mederos and his fiancée, Savan­nah Ragan, have a one-and-a-half year-old daugh­ter, and also wel­comed their new­born son, Myles Mederos, into the world on Monday.

So life is com­ing at Mederos fast. Only now, in a good way.

“The most reward­ing part is the man he’s become,” Fac­to­ry X head coach and own­er Marc Mon­toya said. “When he came in, he was just a young, punk kid. And I don’t mean that in a deroga­to­ry way, I mean that in the truest sense. He was tru­ly just a kid who was green in everything.

“And the cool part is, he’s a kid who came into the room and got his (butt) kicked a lot. … He’s always been a good ath­lete, but in fight­ing, when you don’t know all the tech­ni­cal aspects, it’s a huge moun­tain to climb.”

After months of beg­ging Mon­toya to put him on Fac­to­ry X’s fight team, Mederos final­ly earned his spot one Sat­ur­day morn­ing when he climbed into the cage with Mon­toya. There, the coach schooled the pupil, and in the process, the pupil earned the respect of the coach.

“I wasn’t say­ing no (to the fight team) because I didn’t like him or think he could do it — I want­ed to see if he could put in the con­sis­ten­cy and sac­ri­fice for him­self,” Mon­toya explained. “When (young fight­ers) start show­ing that, I start get­ting inter­est­ed, and him ask­ing over and over again is always a good sign because that means he was hungry.

“(That day) was a con­trolled (beat­down), where I was assess­ing what he’s got. I saw the things I need­ed to see, and I said, ‘OK, this kid is ready.’”

Mederos has been on a heater ever since, bring­ing an 8–1 pro­fes­sion­al record record into Saturday.

His one loss came by split deci­sion in 2022. Of his eight wins, six were by knock­out, includ­ing three first-round fin­ish­es, and the oth­er two were by unan­i­mous deci­sion. Mederos’ most recent vic­to­ry was dra­mat­ic, when he jump-kneed Issa Isakov in the face for a first-round knock­out in a Con­tender Series fight last Octo­ber. That upset, which came in front of UFC boss Dana White, booked Mederos’ pro­mo­tion to the UFC.

“I just fig­ure guys out fast,” Mederos said. “If you give me two min­utes with a guy in the cage, I can fig­ure out all his tools, and I can pull anoth­er man’s game out and be able to manip­u­late it to my best ability.”

In Quiñones, Mederos faces a fight­er with sim­i­lar expe­ri­ence at 7–2‑1, and one whom Mon­toya describes as a “good strik­er” and “well-round­ed in his grap­pling.” But Mederos isn’t worried.

“I just don’t think we’re on the same lev­el at all,” Mederos said.

Mederos believes Sat­ur­day will be just the the start of a long run in the UFC, and one he hopes even­tu­al­ly cul­mi­nates with a shot at the belt.

“I didn’t go through all of that (adver­si­ty) for noth­ing,” Mederos said. “And the baby needs some new shoes.”