This was sent over to me by Matt Peterson, and Matt and I do the New England Fights Podcast, and the info was pretty solid. Very good read about one of the area’s rising fighters.

Dan Keefe: Ready to “Rock and Roll”

As a student at UMass Lowell, Dan “The Ghost” Keefe played football until his junior year when the program was cut. He then transferred to Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Connecticut where he switched sports to wrestling to finish out his college athletic career. It was that experience that prepared him for the rigors of mixed martial arts, Keefe recently stated on the latest episode of the New England Fights! podcast (www.newenglandfigths.com).

In his first fight, Keefe stated he felt only a brief moment of doubt during the ref’s rules meeting: “It just kinda dawned on me that I could get seriously hurt!” After that initial fear passed, Keefe recalled his gameplan: “Impose my will, use my wrestling, and basically beat the shit out of him… It pretty much went to plan,” he said.

That’s how all of Keefe’s fights went, until his fourth fight, when he had to submit to a guillotine applied by fellow ground-and-pounder Dan Pasquarella. But Dan remains unruffled about his only loss. “You can say I got caught, but it’s a guillotine, it’s a legitimate move… In a way it was good to lose,” he stated. “It was good to get a loss out of the way because now I can just go in there and rock and roll.”

Nevertheless, Keefe stated that he’d love to have a rematch with Pasquarella. “Nothing personal towards Dan,” he said, “But you always want to avenge a loss.”

After the loss it was almost a year before Keefe fought again. He attributed the time off to the fact that he was hired by the Department of Corrections, had to attend training and get accustomed to a new schedule. During this period Dan also switched fight schools. “It was actually good because I was able to meet Jorge Rivera through a wrestling friend of mine and train with him and guys like Greg Rebello, Mike Campbell – and actually Woody Weatherby was down there.”

“Aldo’s [Batista, Dan’s former instructor] got a great school, but he’s more a strict Jiu-jitsu practitioner. It wasn’t so much an MMA school; there were a lot of gi classes,” Keefe said. He went on to say that Brickhouse more closely fits his training style. “It’s a lot of wrestlers who push themselves and hate to lose. I’m going with guys that are going 100 percent. I couldn’t be more happy with it. It feels like a home.”

Keefe’s last fight was against former sometime training partner Woody Weatherby, who was 7-2 at the time. Keefe said having trained together wasn’t an issue for either fighter. “I trained with Woody prior, but everyone knows this is a sport and a business. And he had a win over John Howard, which is huge now that [Howard]’s fighting in the UFC.”

Keefe ended up defeating Weatherby in an overtime decision. It was the first time Keefe went out of the first round in his fighting career.

“The Ghost” stated he’s willing to take on any of the middleweights in the northeast, but he’s especially interested in fighting Lance Everson. The two almost met for Keefe’s first MMA fight, but Keefe backed out due to his inexperience at the time. “My aspirations are to keep fighting better opponents, and hopefully make it up to the big time—the UFC or any other big promotion.”

Find out more about Dan Keefe by visiting http://www.dankeefe.net

For more on Keefe, his grappling history, and his goals for the future, download the latest edition of the New England Fights! podcast.

New England Fights! is the Northeast’s premiere MMA-only podcast bringing you the most complete coverage of the New England fight scene. The show is hosted by Matt Peterson and Rick Caldwell. Each episode is fully downloadable, iPod-ready and available at newenglandfights.com and iTunes.