When he was 8 years old, Dat Nguyen followed his mother and his brothers and sisters who left Vietnam to Hawaii, USA. He and his family had a good time when he first came to America.
“I still remember the difficulties that my family went through.” Dat Nguyen answered with RingTV. “My mother struggled to wholesale in the market to take care of her children every meal. My sister and I were too small, and her older sister could only help with the children. There were days when we didn't have enough food. Every time I thought about that time, I wanted to cry and motivate me to work harder. I decided to succeed in this American soil.”
No effort is useless. With outstanding efforts, Dat Nguyen quickly won high rankings at the Children's Olympic Championship at the 8th grade. Thanks to that achievement, he was awarded scholarships to North Michigan University and practiced boxing at the US Olympic Training Center.
In early 2004, Dat Nguyen switched to professional boxing and had the first victory over Ernest Scott right in the first half. From 2004 to 2007, Dat Nguyen Gian 11 won in a row until he lost to the match against Gregorio Torres.
But in 2009, Dat Nguyen's boxing career began to show signs of going down after the place where he was practicing was Batty McGirt Gym closed. Dat Nguyen lost his practice and manager. From this point, he was forced to practice and open the boxing gym to maintain his career.
“This is a very difficult time. My wife and I often argue about closing the gym. The reason is that it does not create any income.
Due to lack of training conditions, Dat Nguyen won two defeats before Luis Del Valle in 2011 and Jayson Ticklez in 2013. After the two failures, he was almost no longer noticed by the organizers. “They don't want to sign a contract with me. They don't want to sign a contract with a Vietnamese puncher.” Dat Nguyen said angrily.
In 2015, Dat Nguyen contacted his former classmate, Travis Kauffman – former WBA World Championship. Kauffman asked him to return to the arena at an event organized by Kauffman's father. Dat Nguyen's opponent is a puncher from Mexico – Gustavo Molina.
But the difficulty is that Dat Nguyen cannot afford to hire coaches to prepare for this match. He asked a student named Derrick Ferguson, a DJ who was practicing boxing in his gym to hold the pad. “I don't have a Pad coach. I have to ask my students to take care of the staff on the corner of the radio.”
In a miraculous way, Dat Nguyen won after 6 rounds with Molina. By 2017, the Knock out of the Miguel Flores puncher in the 7th half. He should have been on the list of boxers who would compete for the world championship after this victory. However, I did not understand why Dat Nguyen was abandoned by the boxing boss once again. Although the boss had previously promised to bring Dat Nguyen to million dollars.
“The boss told me that the great opportunity was coming to me. Hopefully I would confront names like Leo Santa Cruz or Frampton. They earn millions of dollars in every match. I just hope to be paid a better amount of money.” Dat Nguyen added.
Despite his achievements with 20 wins and 3 losses, the boxing village still did not take him seriously. Because he could not continue his martial arts career, he and his wife opened a Vietnamese restaurant named Miss Saigon in Vero Beach town, Florida to live stable day by day.
It seemed that the dream of the arena ended for Dat Nguyen, but the Feldman boss appeared and proposed a bare boxing match at the Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship (BKFC).
With the foundation available from Boxing, Dat Nguyen quickly resonated in this stage. On February 5, 2021 in Miami, Dat Nguyen became the new king of BKFC Bantamweight after the victory over former Johnny Bedford.
Becoming the champion of the BKFC tournament helped his martial arts career to the top. But that has not made Dat Nguyen satisfied. This Vietnamese -original puncher also decided to dance two weight classes because he wanted to become a legend of the tournament with two championship belts in two different weight classes.
Currently Dat Nguyen has officially become a star in the stage. He began to receive many different funding. It can be said that he is a evidence for the success of Vietnamese people through the arena in a foreign land. And now he no longer plays for money but also because he wants to glorify Vietnamese people.