Sayles begins new journey at UFC 227

Teenage Matt Sayles couldn’t be more excited. He was about to meet some of his MMA heroes at the Alliance MMA gym in Chula Vista, and the night before he scoured YouTube for highlights of one of those fighters – then-UFC bantamweight champion Dominick Cruz.Then he met Cruz, who was wearing gloves and a mouthpiece. And they sparred.“I’m an amateur fighter at that point, so I get in the cage and I’m doing pretty good on the feet,” Sayles recalled. “I got t