The dream of a lifetime will come true on Saturday when Indianola native and Jamaica High School graduate Ryan “The Tank Engine” Thomas makes his ultimate fighting debut at UFC 87: Seek and Destroy, a pay per view event being held at the Target Center in Minneapolis.

It will end an amazing week for Thomas, who only found out about the match recently.

“I had told my manager I wanted the summer off because I had fought 14 times in the last 20 months and the average fighter only competes 3 or 4 times a year,” Thomas said. “He then called on Sunday the 27th and asked if I would be interested in fighting in the UFC and I could not believe my dream had come true. It still feels like a dream that I just can’t seem to wrap my head around. I don’t think I will be able to until I get in the octagon and get tagged a few times.”

UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) was founded in 1993 and is the largest Mixed Martial Arts sanctioning body in the word.

MMA is an intense and evolving combat sport in which competitors use interdisciplinary forms of fighting including ju-jitsu, karate, kick boxing, wrestling and other techniques.

Each non title fight is three five minute rounds held inside an enclosed octagon where competitors can win via knockout, submission, or by total points.

Thomas (9-1) will be squaring off in a welterweight (170 pounds) contest with Ben Saunders (5-0-2).

“Jared Rollins was supposed to fight Saunders but withdrew suddenly,” Thomas said. “Saunders was featured on season six of The Ultimate Fighter on Spike TV and I never missed an episode. I never thought I would get the chance to fight him.

“He is good at striking and ju-jitsu and my ju-jitsu and Muay Thai are good but wrestling is my strongest skill and I feel his weakest. Saunders I think is a good match up for me. He has the height advantage and has had months to prepare to my 12 days, but I’m stronger and my wrestling gives me a strategic advantage.

“The great thing about wrestling is that I can out there and try and take him down and knock him out,” Thomas said. “If I feel he is getting the better of me striking or if I get hurt, I feel I can easily take him down to protect myself. If the situation is reversed, the ability to take him down becomes a strategy for me which limits him to striking as a way to defend himself. In a lot of ways, it’s like a chess match.”

Thomas is 23 years old and still a part-time student at Eastern Illinois University, where he wrestled for a year before EIU dropped its wrestling program.

“I started training with some guys on the team that had crossed over to MMA when that happened,” Thomas said. “I had always been a fan of UFC back to the early days with (Royce) Gracie, and was a big fan of Matt Hughes and Tito Ortiz.

“Locally, Chad Steinbaugh and Darren Chambliss (Danville High School wrestling coach) have always supported me. Chad has been my jui-jitsu coach since the beginning. He was a great MMA fighter when it first started in America but never made UFC. He will be in my corner during the fight and tells me often how proud he is that I’ve made it. Chambliss was my first sponsor through footsweep.net and has flown hundreds of miles to see me fight and to support me in whatever I needed him to do.”

Whether the match airs on August 9th is yet to be determined by UFC officials and the other fights on the card.

“Only the top five matches air live and I’m fighting in one of the preliminary bouts in the second five,” Thomas said. “They tape the prelims before it goes on the air and they usually air about half of them after the main event of the card has been shown. It just depends how things go and how long the other matches have been.

“I have a four-fight contract and fighting in the UFC means everything to me. It’s not about money or fame its because its the highest level of achievement in our sport to make it to the UFC. To be competitive and successful in this organization is every fighters’ dream.”