Vaughn Anderson poses in his office in Chengdu, China, on Saturday, February 6, 2016. Canadian Vaughn (Blud) Anderson, a former fighter, is a talent scout and matchmaker in China for the Asian-based MMA promotion One Championship. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO - One Championship

Canada's influence on mixed martial arts extends farther than former champion Georges St-Pierre or title contender Rory MacDonald.

Some 11,500 kilometres from their Montreal base is Chengdu, China. Known as the hometown of the panda bear, it is also the adopted home of Canadian Vaughn (Blud) Anderson, a former fighter who is a talent scout and matchmaker in China for the Asian-based MMA promotion One Championship.

You need a globe to figure out the 37-year-old Anderson's life journey.

"I don't know if there's a box that I fit into," said Anderson. "And that's something I've just become comfortable accepting — that I'm not this or I'm not that."

Anderson is an MMA flag-bearer, travelling around China doing seminars, searching out fighters and helping them flesh out their martial art skills.

One Championship has already held four shows in China and plans another nine this year alone.

"The curve of interest in MMA in China is really coming along," said Anderson. "When I first began fighting myself in China, there was like five shows a year. And now just a few years later, at times there's more than five shows in a weekend.

"But with the population as big as it is, that still is just a drop in the ocean."

He still has to explain what MMA is to some people, but says that too is changing. While the UFC, One Championship and local shows are televised, Anderson says most Chinese fans watch the sport via the Internet.

Born in Manila to Canadian parents of British descent, Anderson was five when he moved to Beijing with his family after his father left his job with the Asian Development Bank to become a Canadian diplomat.

About 18 months later, they moved back to Canada with Anderson living in Edmonton, Toronto, Ottawa and Barrie, Ont. He went on to study business management at college in Ottawa — which he calls his Canadian home when asked — and work for a fibre-optics company. He lasted for a year and a half before deciding there was more to life.

"I wanted to travel, I wanted to go back to Asia and see where I was from. And get all of the things that I wanted to do in life out of my system and then come back and surrender to this adult life.

"But I came to Asia and I never left."

Taiwan was his first stop in 2001 and it was there that he met medical student Warren Wang, who had studied jiu-jitsu in California. Anderson agreed to become his student — they remain good friends — and so began his martial arts journey.

There was a time when he was unimpressed watching MMA fighters tap out on TV. But that changed the first time he was at the wrong end of an armbar and triangle choke. He became fascinated with "the art and the details" of jiu-jitsu.

Convinced to enter a local MMA event, he survived his nerves and ended up winning.

"It was such a great feeling ... That pressure makes you become something else. it make you become a different person. And you can only be that person under that certain circumstances."

It did little for his bank account, however. He made the equivalent of US$30 and got a DVD of the event thrown in for good measure.

He spent seven years in Taiwan, improving on the little Mandarin he had studied as a child. He taught English to help pay the bills, between two-a-day training sessions.

"I didn't have a lot of money but I made ends meet. And then I would fight. And gradually the salary increased."

As he improved as a fighter, he added coaching to the resume and eventually gave up teaching to focus on his sport. He picked up a fair bit of ink along the way, with his torso a colourful canvas.

Anderson, who had his first pro bout in January 2004, went 17-3-0 as a fighter — mostly in Asia where MMA could be a wild frontier.

A welterweight (170 pounds), Anderson sometimes found himself fighting much bigger men — often without any notice of the weight discrepancy. In November 2004, he found himself facing a sumo-sized heavyweight in blackface named ShinWei Tzeng in a Taiwan shopping mall.

It did not go well for the big man and Anderson was given the nickname "Blud" for the beating he administered.

Anderson was unbeaten for six years (11-0-1) before losing a Bellator bout to the fighter known as War Machine in September 2013. He lost his last bout to former Dream champion Marius Zaromskis, a decorated fighter he had long admired, in Bellator in May 2014.

He quit because he felt he had accomplished what he wanted to do as a fighter. His body was also paying a terrible price.

He says he has broken nine bones training or fighting — six in his hand and his left arm twice.

"Having a dominant hand in a cast for months at a time is really agonizing," said the left-handed Anderson, who still has two plates in his left hand and cannot make a fist properly.

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News from © The Canadian Press, 2016