Fernando Padilla Discusses Significance of 'Luffy' Hat After UFC on ESPN 53 Triumph

Padilla dropped Ecuadorian debutant Luis Pajuelo before submitting him with a standing brabo choke less than three minutes into their fight on Saturday at the UFC Apex in Las Vegas. Padilla was seen sporting a straw hat during his walkout and after the fight, which he later revealed was a tribute to a fictional anime character. Padilla’s hat resembled that of Monkey D. Luffy, also known as "Straw Hat" Luffy, a protagonist in the Japanese manga series “One Piece” and founder and captain of the “Straw Hat Pirates.”

Much like Luffy, Padilla, who has been a longtime member of the Team Oyama gym in Irvine, California, is looked up to by his teammates. Under the guidance of head coach Colin Oyama, Padilla is ready to take up some leadership responsibilities and plans to lead by example.

“You know right now in the gym at Team Oyama in Irvine, I’m one of the guys who’s been there the most, I’ve been there for eight years already and lot of the people who was there before me, they’ve been coming and going or just going,” Padilla told assembled media after the bout (video via MMAjunkie.com). “So I’ll lie to you if I say that a lot of them don’t like look up to me and coach has been telling me you know, ‘It’s your time to like make things right and focus on being not just a teammate. Try to push the other guys.’ And the hat for me represents that.”

“I need to move not just, I don’t like to say captain, but as a leader. I try to be in the gym every single day, it’s my gym, it’s where I spend all the time, I wanna be all the time. I really believe in hustle and motivate. I don’t wanna talk about training hard or nothing. If I’m not in the gym and you’re not seeing me training hard, don’t let me tell you, ‘Hey, you need to train hard.’ So that is what the hat represent for me. I go there, I go with the hat too and I go and work hard. I work my ass off, til I throw up or til I’m crying, but I’m there.”

Padilla further delved into his love for anime, which started with “One Piece” at the age of 11. Padilla moved on to reading the manga when the show ended and there was no looking back.

“I have been watching it since I was like 11 years old,” he said. “In Mexico there’s this channel named Helsinko, and I remember they passing ‘One Piece’ for the first time in Spanish and I just fall in love with the show, you know. I really liked it, I was like, ‘Oh damn.’ It was always ‘Dragon Ball Z,’ ‘Malcolm in the Middle’ and then ‘One Piece’ and I was like, ‘Oh damn, I really like ‘One Piece.’’ So I start watching it then and I keep watching it in English a little bit. But the show obviously wasn’t long enough, but the manga was still going so I started reading the manga and man, it’s just history from there. I’m a geek when it comes to anime you know — I watch everything, read everything. And I just really like it, but ‘One Piece’ stick with me, you know.”

Reference: https://www.sherdog.com/news/news/Fernando-Padilla-Discusses-Significance-of-Luffy-Hat-After-UFC-on-ESPN-53-Triumph-193079