After tasting fame and fortune in the UFC, the former contestant on “The Ultimate Fighter” now enjoys a quiet, low-profile life.

By Nick Klopsis

Luke Cummo stood amid eight martial artists-in-training at a gym in Garden City, New York. He showed his class their next drill—left jab, right hook, parry, right hook, double weave under the attacker’s punches, pop up, left jab, right cross, left hook, right cross—and then stepped aside and coached them as they tried their hand at the exercise. He had a quiet confidence about him; it was enough confidence for his students to respect him, but he wasn’t showing off.

Such is the typical day for Cummo, a retired mixed-martial arts fighter who burst onto the national scene as a contestant on Spike TV’s second season of “The Ultimate Fighter” in 2005. Cummo finished second that season, and impressed Ultimate Fighting Championship president Dana White enough to earn a contract anyway. After appearing in seven professional fights following the show, Luke stepped away from competition and has since returned to a low-key life teaching group lessons at Ray Longo’s gym on Long Island, where he started his own training.

It’s been more than five years since the 30-year-old Mineola native was on “The Ultimate Fighter” and almost three years since he last fought professionally. But despite keeping a low profile, people still recognize him from the show.

“I love it when a gorgeous girl comes up to me and she’ll be like, ‘You’re Luke Cummo!’ and I’m like, ‘Oh, hey!’ and then she says, ‘My boyfriend loves you!’,” he joked after the group class one late winter evening.

Cummo got into martial arts at age 8, and cites Bruce Lee as the reason why he wanted to study martial arts. But it wasn’t until he met Longo at age 20 that he began to get serious about his training. Up until then, Cummo was studying biology at Nassau Community College and worked as a pizza delivery man, a game tester, and a taxi driver, among other things.

After two years of training, he began fighting with Ring of Combat, a small Atlantic City-based promotion run by Longo and Lou Neglia. Cummo spent two years fighting with Ring of Combat, where he compiled a 3-2 record. After submitting a video of his best fights, he was chosen to appear on the second season of “The Ultimate Fighter.”

Cummo quickly developed a following on the show because of his underdog status. He was the last fighter chosen to a team, meaning he would have to prove himself in the team challenges to avoid fighting in an elimination bout.
“I thought to myself, ‘The last guy picked is probably the weakest, and that means they’d be the first one picked to fight because they’d be the easiest one to beat,” Cummo said. “So that motivated me to train as hard as I could.”

Working under his coach, Matt Hughes, Cummo proved that he had the skills to make it all the way to the finals, earning the nickname “The Silent Assassin.” He lost to teammate Joe Stevenson in the final bout, but still ended up making the UFC anyway.

Cummo said it took him a few months to adjust to life after the show, and he noticed that being on the show had changed his personality a bit. “It took a little bit of getting used to ‘being famous’,” he said. “It just made me be more outgoing, more sociable, and I had to be more like a character.”

Just one look at Cummo tells you the kind of “character” he was on the show. He’s not your stereotypical, muscular fighter; if anything, his tall, lanky stature makes him look a little nerdy. He stands tall at an even six feet and weighs in at 170 pounds, and he wears thick black goggles when training instead of his regular glasses. He’s a comic book fanatic, and regularly plays Xbox with his friend and trainer, former UFC welterweight champion Matt Serra.

“The fans that I have who have contacted me have all said that I inspired them to train—to start training or to take their training up a notch,” Cummo said. “People can relate to me being a normal person, because I don’t look or act like a fighter.”

His fighting style was also different from what most of his fellow contestants practiced. A majority of Cummo’s competitors on the show practiced Jiu Jitsu, an art that focuses mostly on grappling and ground-fighting techniques. In contrast, Cummo specializes in Muay Thai—a stand-up style of fighting which emphasizes knee strikes and elbows in additions to typical punches and kicks.

Cummo also took some flak on the show for his quirky training rituals. Those quirks started from the very first episode, when he insisted that his bed point north so that he could align his own energy, or “chi,” with that of the earth. He adhered to a strictly vegetarian diet and punched rocks to condition his fists, prompting some of his fellow competitors to call him “the odd cookie in the bunch” on camera. After the show, Cummo also began advocating urine therapy—the idea that drinking one’s own urine provides unique health benefits.

These oddities have caused many MMA fans to make fun of Cummo as well. “Cummo thinks that light comes from within his urine like he’s a Jedi and his penis is a lightsaber with healing powers,” wrote one writer on MMA fan website CagePotato.com. “Now I’ve heard everything.”

Cummo wasn’t upset by the negative reaction of fans. “Some people might look at what I do and not understand it, but everybody would see the reason why I would do something, even something like pointing my bed to the north,” Cummo said. “It helps me sleep better. Even if it actually has no physical effect, just me knowing that my head is north helps me sleep better.”

Although Cummo’s detractors may say that he is crazy, his students argue otherwise. One student, 22-year-old James McKenna of Manhasset, recounted a story where Cummo literally gave him the shirt off his back one day after a class—all because McKenna had said that he thought it looked cool.

“Luke is probably one of the most solid and down-to-earth guys I’ve ever met,” said McKenna, who has trained with Cummo since June 2010. “I was looking for a new school to train at after I left my old one. I came here, saw Luke, and was like, ‘Oh man, you’re Luke Cummo! It’s an honor to meet you, sir!’ and he was like, ‘OK, whatever…’ He’s very down-to-earth and just takes everything in stride.”

Five months after appearing on the show, Cummo made his official UFC debut, defeating Jason von Flue—another former teammate on “The Ultimate Fighter”—at Ultimate Fight Night 4. But during his second fight with Jonathan Goulet, Cummo found himself on the ground, taking a series of elbows to the head. It was then that he realized that the extra stress on his body wasn’t worth it in the long run, despite the fact that he nearly won the fight anyway.

“To go into battle, you have to consider yourself dead,” he said. “In a sport like MMA, you have to remain sharp and you can’t dull your sword by training too hard. You have to train with the right equipment, you have to train with the right people.”

Cummo said it was nice to get a taste of the riches and fame that come with competing in the UFC, which attracts more than a million pay-per-view customers per show in 130 countries. But in the end, he retired from the professional scene because the concussions, dislocated joints, and broken bones were more than he had bargained for.

“The training for the fights was absolutely brutal,” he said. “There were many times that I would cry. There were times were I just wanted to curl up into a ball.”

Since retiring from competition, Cummo has gotten married and has two sons, ages 3 and 1. In addition to teaching part-time, he is starting a custom line of sustainable boxing shorts and promoting an all-organic diet called Lifefood. He also interacts with fans regularly on his website, and he says that the show helps him and his fans relate to one another.

“I feel like, because of the show, I’m able to connect with people at a level where they feel like they know me already because of watching the show,” Cummo said. “So when I meet someone on the Internet or I meet someone in person, it’s almost like we’re old friends.”

And he still credits his appearance on “The Ultimate Fighter” with helping him grow as a martial artist. “The show itself—six weeks of training twice a day—was the most growth in the shortest period of time that I’ve ever had as a martial artist,” Cummo said. “And that set me up for the next few years with a job that paid very well compared to what I was making, and set me on a path that I’m still on right now—not making nearly as much, but still in the business.”

But although “The Ultimate Fighter” gave him the opportunity to make it big within the MMA world, Cummo would much rather relax at home with his family on Long Island.

“For a few years, I was living the dream, so to speak,” Cummo said.”But I wouldn’t change where I am right now for anything.”