Danny Buteau had big goals in his amateur wrestling career to represent Team USA at the World Championships or even the Olympics.
The 2017 Oak Hill graduate from Litchfield who wrestled at Husson University reached the round of 16 at the 2022 USA Wrestling 65-kilogram (143-pound) last-chance freestyle tournament in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
“I wrestled my whole life, and I wanted to be a world champion,” Buteau said. “It’s a lot of wrestlers’ goals. I went to the last chance qualifiers — I believe it was in New Jersey — I want to say I went 5-2, 6-2 there, but I came up short there. I believe I had to win that to compete for the world (championship) team qualifiers. I didn’t place at that, and I sat down with my coaches and talked about what I wanted to do moving forward — it was time to move on from wrestling.”
Shortly after the last-chance tournament that happened in the middle of May, Buteau transitioned to mixed martial arts. Saturday at 7 p.m., he will be on the New England Fights’ NEF 58: Homeland card at The Colisée in Lewiston. He will take on Josue Sotero for NEF’s vacant amateur featherweight (145-pound) championship.
Danny Buteau poses Wednesday outside The Colisée in Lewiston, where he will be fighting for the NEF Featherweight Championship against Josue Sotero on Saturday night. Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal
Buteau is no stranger to winning championships in his wrestling career, as he was a four-time Class B state champion at Oak Hill. He won two 106-pound titles, a 120-pound title and a 132-pound state championship. He compiled 176 wins in his high school career, including 79 by pins.
While at Husson, Buteau became a national champion when he won the 141-pound title in the National Collegiate Wrestling Association championships — an event for schools without a varsity program — in Allen, Texas, in 2019.
The bout on Saturday comes nearly two years since Buteau began going down the MMA route.
“It will be two years of training — actually, it’s coming up on July 1 — where it will be two years of training for MMA, and I have been competing for about a year now,” Buteau said.
The gym Buteau was at for wrestling — Recon MMA & Fitness — also trained MMA fighters. The biggest difference between the two disciplines as far as getting ready for an event is the pacing.
“I feel like a big difference is the pace and the individual classes,” Buteau said. “Wrestling, for the most part, is go-go, grinding and stuff like that. Where I first started (with MMA), one of the first classes was grappling and everything slowed right down. That was a big difference, and the other big difference is you are training separately. We obviously have an MMA class where we are training on MMA, but I am taking kickboxing classes, just boxing classes, and grappling classes. So, there are these individual sports in MMA. So, I am taking all those classes.”
The training camp for this fight has been a little different with Recon MMA & Fitness moving its facilities from Westbrook to Portland. Buteau had to find other places to get his workouts in with his coaches.
Buteau is undefeated in his MMA career, going 4-0 in his first four fights. His first fight was on May 13, 2023, when he defeated Issac Therrien of Rumford with a rear naked choke. Four months later, Buteau defeated William Lagasse with an arm triangle choke. Buteau won two fights this past February, defeating Nick Eldridge by unanimous decision and recording a technical knockout in the fifth round against Fred Allen Sfeir.
Tapology.com ranks Buteau as the No. 1 featherweight in New England, No. 4 in the Northeast, and No. 46 in North America.
Buteau’s opponent on Saturday, Josue Sotero, is based out of Indiana and is 6-1 heading into the fight. He’s the 16th-ranked featherweight in the Midwest by Tapology.com and No. 35 in North America.
Patience will be key for Buteau during the scheduled five-round tilt.
“I feel like this kid is going to come like a house of fire in the first couple of minutes of the first round, minute in the second round, 30 seconds in the third, fourth and fifth,” Buteau said. “We are going to let that fire die down and take it to him. I think he’s used to people falling over for him when he gets a lot of pressure. That’s not going to happen, and the tides will turn fast. Yeah, that’s basically the game plan and I think he will break.”
With three of his first four fights being in Portland and the other in Manchester, New Hampshire, Buteau is excited to compete closer to home as NEF returns to The Colisée for the first time in five years.
“It’s going to be good; I am excited to be at The Colisée,” Buteau said. “I think I have seen one fight here, five or six years ago. Obviously, everybody knows about the Muhammad Ali fight that was here. It’s going to be good. I am going to have a lot of people here. It’s going to be a nice home crowd.”
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