Chase “Mannimal” Mann has never lost a professional fight, and his powerlifting background is a major reason why.
The unbeaten American fighter, who walks around the 185-pound mark, once totaled 1,820 pounds across his squat, bench press, and deadlift in a single competition. Those numbers aren’t just impressive on paper. They’re felt inside the ring, and it’s the kind of strength that makes opponents think twice.
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Mann returns to ONE Championship’s global stage against undefeated Turkish phenom Dzhabir Dzhabrailov in a welterweight MMA clash at ONE Fight Night 42 on Prime Video, which goes down live in U.S. primetime on Friday, April 10, and he’ll look to unleash that massive power once again.
Where it all came from is a story that starts not with his mistakes, but with what came after: a chance encounter in a local gym that redirected his entire life.
Fresh Out of Trouble, Ready To Lift
When Mann was 19, he was desperately looking for something positive. The Arkansas native had fallen on a wayward path and spent the previous several months at a rehabilitation center, so he was looking for a new direction in his life.
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MMA had always been the dream, but the anxiety of being seen to fail publicly – a fear that had shadowed him since his early teenage years – wasn’t something he’d conquered yet.
Mann’s daughter had just been born, so he needed direction and needed it fast. He ultimately found it in a place he didn’t expect:
“I went to a local gym, and the day that I went to that gym, there was a powerlifting competition going on. Everybody was like a freaking giant, scary-looking dudes using smelling salts and going nuts. So, it was pretty cool to see. I’d never seen one before.”
What happened just a couple of days later changed everything. While bench pressing at the gym, a stranger walked over to him and offered a tip.
That stranger was Logan Chapman, a man whose personal best in powerlifting – squat, bench press, and deadlift – totaled 2,397.5 pounds. He’s also an individual that “Mannimal” describes as the strongest person ever from Arkansas.
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Chapman gave Mann a few more pearls of wisdom, and a mentorship was born:
“He said, ‘Hey man, I think if you do this and this, you can bench a lot more.’ He showed me a couple of things, and sure enough, I did bench a lot more. He told me I had potential in this, and we ran with it.
“At that point, I was just fresh out of trouble. So, I needed something positive, and as I said, I was not mentally ready to put myself out there in MMA.”
The Kid Who Couldn’t Stop Breaking Records
Within three months, Mann was competing. He placed first in his division at 181 pounds in the junior group. Just a couple of months later, at his second meet, the Arkansas native took his squat personal best from 565 pounds to 617.3 pounds. It was a state record.
From there, the obsession took hold, as it always does, with “Mannimal.”
He told onefc.com:
“Within six months, I became obsessed with it, just like I am with anything I’m doing. I got to be all in. I think it’s an ADHD condition. All in or not in at all.”
Over the next two to three years, Mann smashed records on the platform. State records fell first. National records followed. He even competed in weight classes over 200 pounds across four more powerlifting competitions, placing first in three of them.
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The competition itself drove him most. The same mentality that had carried him through his early football years translated perfectly to the solitude of the platform. Mann felt the pressure, and that motivated him to succeed even more.
He said:
“You step up to the weight. First of all, you can’t fake it. You cannot talk your way through nothing. There is no talk. All you can do is you can do it or you can’t.”
But beyond the records and displaying his strength, powerlifting gave Mann something far more durable.
Standing alone under a loaded bar has a way of either breaking you or building something unshakeable inside. For the Arkansas native, it built the latter.
The 29-year-old reflected:
“Walking up, getting under that bar, it’s you and that weight, and one wrong move, and you could break both knees. Anything could go wrong. So, yeah, I would say it’s helped me gain belief in myself.”
The Strength That Never Left
Powerlifting lasted three years. In his final competition, Mann locked in 1,820 pounds: squatting 700 pounds, bench pressing 450 pounds, and deadlifting 670 pounds.
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However, the drinking that ran alongside it – a couple of nights a week, enough to be hungover and still move heavy weight the next morning – was a compromise MMA was never going to tolerate.
When the troubled youngster finally walked through the doors of The LC in Walnut Ridge and discovered the confidence to tackle MMA, he knew immediately that he had to change his ways:
“I’m a fighter, man. I was born for this. Since I found MMA, I haven’t drank. I don’t know when the last time I drank alcohol was. Like, I’m content. I don’t even go out. I’m so at peace.”
But the strength – the foundational, bone-deep strength built through years of loading bars and breaking records in small Arkansas gyms – never went anywhere. It simply found a new home.
Mann brought the same brute force into his wrestling, striking, and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu sessions. He polished his arsenal in every department, and when skills alone weren’t enough, that raw strength helped him overcome obstacles.
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He said:
“Every bit of powerlifting has helped me. Any of the guys, whenever I train with somebody new, whoever it is, that’s the first thing they say: ‘Oh my God, how are you so strong?’
“I just loved it, man. Powerlifting brought something out of me. I wanted to be the strongest, and it helped me gain that belief that has translated seamlessly into MMA.”
Mann turned that base into a 6-0 professional MMA record before earning his shot on the global stage. At ONE Fight Night 39 this past January, he extended his undefeated run with a first-round TKO of Isi “Doxz” Fitikefu.
The strength built in those Arkansas gyms remains the bedrock of everything he does inside the squared circle: the pressure, the grappling, and the refusal to be moved or controlled by anyone who steps across from him.
At ONE Fight Night 42, Dzhabrailov will be the next to discover just how deep that foundation runs.
