Long before he was Australia’s newest UFC fighter, Stewart Nicoll stood watching from a beach as his father disappeared, maybe forever, in a dugout canoe.

Barefoot, as he recalls it, “and bawling”.

Even now, some 25 years on, Nicoll can still see the old man slowly moving away from that sliver of Solomon Islands beachfront which, just quietly, was already playing the role of family hideout.

“Because dangerous people,” he says, “were after us, chasing revenge …”

UFC 305 LIVE FROM PERTH: DU PLESSIS VS ADESANYA | SUN 18 AUG 12PM AEST | Order Now with Main Event on Kayo Sports. Main Event on Kayo Sports and Foxtel is the exclusive home of UFC Pay-Per-View.

Call it an image Nicoll, now 29 – and on an undefeated tear stretching six years and eight professional fights – will carry during his walk to the Octagon at UFC 305, this Sunday.

When apart from becoming the nation’s newest UFC fighter, this now Redcliffe local will continue his own yarn all chaos, violence, warring militia, old school justice, street fighting uncles, Max Holloway sparring sessions, even island hopping via dodgy aircraft and dugout canoes.

Most of which, Nicoll admits, exists as something of a blur.

“Because my memory,” grins the man set to make his hyped Octagon debut against Mexican tough Jesus Aguilar, “it isn’t that great.

“I’m forgetting things all the time.

“But that image of dad leaving? Man, it’s seared onto my brain.

“As if it happened yesterday.”

Yet in truth, the event occurred way back in 2000.

When Nicoll was still only six.

A happy, oblivious schoolboy living in the Solomon Islands with mum Suzanne, a local, also dad, Stewart — an Aussie who had initially shifted there to work refrigeration, before getting a gig at the country’s popular brewery.

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Ask the fighter about the country in which he was born and raised, and he remembers only good times.

“Like maybe I was asleep for the other stuff,” he laughs.

Yet know that other stuff, it included two years of escalating political and ethnic turmoil within the Solomons that, eventually, and unsurprisingly, saw the nation erupt into a chaos involving abductions, torture, rape, killings and the fleeing of some 3000 people.

Among them, Nicoll’s family.

“There were riots, houses being burned,” the UFC flyweight recalls. “At one point they even released all these prisoners and armed them with guns.

“It was crazy.

“And dangerous for us.

“During all the chaos, there were apparently people after our family.

“Seeking revenge or something.

“At the time I was six, oblivious to it all.

“But in the years since I’ve learned that someone from my (wider) family had apparently done something so then our family had to suffer as a consequence.

“It was ritual stuff.

“An eye for an eye.

“It was all getting too dangerous on the mainland, so we fled.

“Started island hopping.

“Initially, we got aboard this little plane – a really dodgy thing – just to get to the island my grandmother is from.

“From there, dad left in the canoe and eventually we all got a flight to Brisbane.”

While the family initially settled in Redcliffe, they then returned to the Islands in 2003 – and a stay of another three years — before eventually returning to Queensland and what, for Nicoll, was a move into high school trialing all sports.

“I played soccer, basketball, table tennis, even some rugby league,” he recalls, grinning.

“I was always undersized so just threw my body at people … sacrificed myself really.

“I didn’t lack in the crazy department.”

Nor, apparently, did the two uncles living downstairs in the family home.

One, a Solomon Islands boxer who was forever working the backyard heavy bag; while the other was a famed streetfighter from a country, and time, which meant knowing less Philly Shell and more ‘machete defence’.

“And just being around them, watching them hit the bags at home, or doing cartwheels and flips in the backyard, I was immediately intrigued,” Nicoll says.

UFC 305 LIVE FROM PERTH: DU PLESSIS VS ADESANYA | SUN 18 AUG 12PM AEST | Order Now with Main Event on Kayo Sports. Main Event on Kayo Sports and Foxtel is the exclusive home of UFC Pay-Per-View.

Same deal when one of them produced a DVD of legendary Russian heavyweight Fedor Emelianenko beating Hong Man Choi.

Recalling the fight today, Nicoll still remembers his eyes lighting up at how much smaller Fedor looked against a man so much taller, and weighing some 60kg heavier.

“And then watching him defeat that seven foot giant,” he says, “immediately I fell in love.

“Straight away I started watching more and more of Fedor’s fights.

“And despite being undersized for his division, he just kept winning. In spectacular fashion, too.

“So I knew straight away this sport was the real deal, and that I needed to study it.

“Apart from the self defence aspect, it just all seemed so beautiful to me.”

And so the story continued to build for this fella who, despite boasting no amateur career – unless you include fighting his younger brothers on a backyard trampoline – would be sparring no less than then UFC featherweight king Max Holloway before even his professional debut.

“Which came about really quickly,” he says of the 2018 submission win on a Brisbane show run by Russian promotion, ACB.

“I actually signed the contract while headed to the airport for a holiday in Hawaii.

“So while over there, I decided to train at Max’s gym. He was still UFC champion at the time and his entire team were so lovely and welcoming.

“I even got to do a round with Max which was crazy.

“Then I came home, had my first fight and gone from there …”

But as for his wildest preparation?

“Fight six,” he says, referencing a 2023 finish of Guam’s Scott Eclavea.

“Week of the fight, my wife Olivia gave birth to twins.

“We were already doing house renovations, and then I was with her at the hospital water loading — looking like a complete idiot drinking from the camel pack.

“During the births, our second baby also came out feet first, so there was all this chaos and panic, and then we’re all off to the operating room.

“(Laughs) My wife gave birth Wednesday, I cut weight Thursday, made weight Friday. I felt awful physically but got the win.”

Same as, now, Nicoll also has two wonderfully healthy twins, Quinn and Banx, to go with the couple’s third child, Sonny, 3.

“So more chaos,” he grins, “although it’s getting easier as we go”.

And as for Sunday?

Well, first, the fighter says he can’t wait to get some of the UFC fight gear with his name splashed across it.

“Because I’m actually Stewart Nicoll the fourth,” he says of a name stretching all the way back to his great grandfather. “So I want to give some of the gear to dad.”

And inside the cage?

“I really think my style is going to prove a problem for people,” Nicoll says of his hyped UFC debut.

“There’s not many guys, maybe a handful, who can really grapple and dominate on the ground, TKO guys on the ground.

“Obviously I have to go earn my stripes, get a feel for the bright lights, but I play a different game to most and I think that can be a problem for anyone in the division.”