From cage to kitchen, a different kind of heat awaits this former MMA superstar

THERE'S something almost amusing about watching former ONE Championship mixed martial arts (MMA) fighter Keanu Subba talk about pizza.

This is a man who spent years preparing to fight, walking into cages knowing that someone on the other side had spent weeks figuring out how to beat him. Now, one of his biggest concerns is whether customers are happy with their pepperoni.

"Some people like striking, some people like grappling," he says, smiling at the absurdity of it all. "Some people like mushroom, some people like pepperoni."

It's a neat analogy, but listen to Subba for a while and it becomes clear that the biggest change in his life isn't simply that he has swapped MMA gloves for a pizza peel. It's that the fight itself has changed.

At 32, the former ONE Championship featherweight is discovering that toughness takes a different shape outside the cage. These days, he helps run Tony's New York Pizza, a casual pizzeria in Jalan Telawi 5, Bangsar — an offshoot of a Bali-born brand — while finding his feet in an industry he's still learning to navigate.

The cage may be behind him, at least for now. But the fire that kept him fighting is still very much there.

DIFFERENT KIND OF FIGHT

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Subba's decision to look beyond competitive MMA didn't come after some grand moment of enlightenment. It came from something far more ordinary — and far more pressing.

In 2023, he wasn't getting enough fights. When an opportunity finally came, it was under a smaller contract than he'd been accustomed to, and the money was poor. But he took the fight anyway.

His opponent was Kyrgyzstan's Nurzaman Eshbaev, whom ONE described as a 28-year-old debutant at the time. The fight took place at Lumpinee Boxing Stadium in Bangkok on April 7, 2023, with Eshbaev winning by unanimous decision.

For Subba, however, the defeat was only part of the story.

He'd gone into the fight knowing that ONE's Bangkok cards were increasingly dominated by Muay Thai, while MMA opportunities were becoming harder to come by. And with a baby on the way, the uncertainty of a fighter's career had begun to take on a different weight.

"I needed something more," he muses, adding: "How was I going to provide for my family if I'm getting one fight a year and in a smaller contract?"

For years, uncertainty had simply been part of the bargain: train, fight, win, lose, recover and start again. Now there was someone else to think about. "At that point, I'm like, I need to maybe... it's time to look for something more stable," remembers Subba.

It's a surprisingly simple reason for a fighter to consider a different life. There's no dramatic falling-out with the sport or any declaration that he'd had enough. It was just a young father asking himself how to build something more dependable for the people he loves.

BEFORE THE CAGE

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The discipline, of course, didn't begin with MMA.

As a teenager in Salt Lake City, Utah, Subba and his older brother Gianni became fascinated with MMA but couldn't afford to train at a proper gym. So, they bought 12-ounce boxing gloves from Wal-Mart and learnt from YouTube tutorials instead.

Those improvised sessions would eventually lead to a serious martial arts career, with the brothers finding their way into competitive MMA after first taking up martial arts partly as a form of self-defence.

For Subba, the lesson was perhaps less about fighting than learning how to begin without knowing exactly where the journey would take him. "As a 14-year-old, I knew what I wanted, but I didn't know how I was going to get there," he confides.

It's a thought that could just as easily describe where he finds himself today. Sheepishly, he shares: "I know I want to make this new pizza work, but I don't know how."

His philosophy has remained remarkably uncomplicated. "I always got my feet wet and then I learned how to swim later," adds Subba.

That willingness to begin before he has all the answers has carried him from the makeshift training sessions of his teens to the professional cage, and now into a business where he's once again the novice.

FROM FIGHTING TO FLOUR

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The connection between Subba and pizza, meanwhile, is more circular than it first appears. His father was involved in food-and-beverage supply, while Subba himself spent the two years he was sidelined by a broken leg during the Covid period working in F&B and learning the restaurant trade.

Then there was Anthony Leone.

The two go back to Subba's Bali MMA days, when Leone was both a training partner and someone who coached him in his spare time. Subba looked up to him, not only because Leone had fought at a high level, but because of his discipline.

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When Leone later opened Tony's with his friend Angelo Tellini, he eventually approached Subba about bringing the brand to Malaysia. The timing was right. Around the same time, a New York-style pizza player had exited the Malaysian market, and Subba saw an opportunity to reintroduce a style of pizza he felt had room to grow here.

He'd been reading Blue Ocean Strategy, thinking about how to find space in a crowded market rather than simply joining the fight everyone else was already having.

New York pizza, explains Subba, is softer than some of the other styles but is known for its large, foldable slices — a different proposition from the Neapolitan pizza that dominates much of the market.

There was another irony to the move. This new fight required something his old one didn't: Other people.

"In MMA, it's a team sport, yes, but you go into the cage alone," shares Subba, adding: "In the pizza business, it's all about the team. Everyone has to be synchronised — they need to work in unison." That, he admits, has been one of the hardest things to learn. "Everyone has a different attitude. You have to make them work together somehow."

For someone who spent years controlling his own preparation and performance, managing people is an entirely different discipline. "Very hard," he surmises with a chuckle.

BAPTISM OF FIRE

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Less than a year into the business, Subba is still finding his feet.

As a franchisee, he has to work within the brand while figuring out what works for the Malaysian market, from understanding his customers to navigating the requirements of running a halal-certified outlet, a recently-acquired milestone he's particularly proud of.

He talks about it with the easy self-awareness of someone who knows he's still learning. He listens to what customers say, pays attention to how they respond to the food and tries to work out what can be done better.

There are mistakes, of course. Plenty of them. But failure no longer frightens him quite the way it once did. "I may fail today, but tomorrow I know I'm going to have this information that I never had if I didn't try," confides the father of one.

It's perhaps the clearest thread connecting the fighter he was with the entrepreneur he's becoming. Fighting taught him to stay calm under pressure, to keep going when things hurt and, perhaps most importantly, that being humbled isn't the same as being defeated. You take the lesson, get back up and try again.

That mindset has carried him through injuries, losses and the uncertainty of a professional fighting career. Now, with more than his own ambitions at stake, Subba is applying the same lessons to a very different kind of challenge — building something he hopes will give his family a more stable future.

SOMETHING NEW TO FIGHT FOR

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There was a time when success meant winning.

There were the crowds, the adrenaline and the satisfaction of testing himself against someone who had prepared just as hard to defeat him. Subba admits that he still misses it. But when asked what he misses most about fighting, his answer is unexpectedly tender.

His brother.

Eyes downcast, Subba confides: "I miss more grinding with my brother. The journey we had together, pursuing the MMA route. Not knowing what will happen but being on that journey together."

That shared journey began with two brothers in America, a pair of gloves and YouTube. It took them through different countries, training camps and professional MMA, through victories and defeats, injuries and uncertainty.

Today, the brothers are in different parts of the world and on different paths. Yet Subba hasn't entirely left fighting behind. He still trains, although not with the twice-a-day intensity of his fighting years. He spends much of his time grappling now and says he'd love to compete again at a high level in the sport.

He doesn't rule out a return to MMA either. But for now, there's a young family to think about. And when Subba talks about success today, his definition has little to do with belts or applause. "Success for me right now is to learn as much as possible and make less mistakes," he says simply.

Then, almost inevitably, he brings it back to the food, saying: "Creating a good product for people to enjoy."

It sounds simple, but perhaps that's the point. After years of measuring himself against opponents, success now has a much quieter measure: building something people value, while creating a life in which his family is secure.

LIFE GOES ON

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When I ask Subba what distinguishes bravery from toughness, he pauses before answering: "I think you have to be brave before you're going to be tough. You have to take the step into the unknown and for that you have to be brave. And once you're in the unknown, you have to tough it out. That's how you build toughness."

It's an answer that could almost serve as a quiet summary of his life.

There was the boy finding his way in unfamiliar surroundings, the teenager training with his brother because they couldn't afford a gym, and the fighter who endured injuries, defeats and the uncertainty of a professional career. Now there's the father stepping into an unfamiliar industry because one fight a year was no longer enough to build the life he wanted for his family.

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He doesn't pretend to have mastered this new world. If anything, he admits he's still swimming against the tide. "I'm still learning and making mistakes. But I make sure I continue to show up," says Subba emphatically.

Perhaps that's the part of the fighter that never really leaves.

The cage was simply where we first saw it.

Today, there's dough to stretch, a team to manage, customers to please and a business to build. The opponent is no longer standing across from him, but the discipline, resilience and willingness to keep showing up remain.

Once, Subba fought to discover how far he could push himself. Now, he's drawing on that same resolve to build something beyond himself, namely a business, a family life and a future.