Joe Pyfer was homeless before a Penncrest High teacher helped him believe he could be a UFC star

Joe Pyfer didn’t get much sleep at Barrall Park — “You get spooked,” he said — but the bench in Media at least provided him a place to spend the night. He was 16 and homeless after escaping a father he described as both mentally and physically abusive.

Then a junior at Penncrest High School, Pyfer walked for miles each afternoon to pass the time until another day was finished. He ducked into Wawa for coffee to stay warm, sat alone in parks, and finally settled on that bench.

“I would just think about what the hell I was going to do with my life,” said Pyfer, who grew up in South Jersey before moving with his father to Delaware County after his parents divorced.

Pyfer dreamed of reaching the UFC — the pinnacle of mixed-martial arts — but that dream could not have felt further away in the fall of 2013 when he did not have a home. And then Pyfer met Will Harmon, a Penncrest teacher and assistant wrestling coach. Pyfer joined the wrestling team and spent his lunch period in Harmon’s classroom. They listened to music, played chess, and split the food that Harmon’s wife packed for the teacher.

“A ham and cheese sandwich with mustard,” Pyfer said. “I never had one of those before but that was banging. I loved it. It was the thickest sandwich you could think of.

“Those are the things you hold onto. The sandwich was so much more than a sandwich. It was a moment of kindness. This man will split what he has. He really cared. I could tell that he gave a crap about me. I wasn’t used to that. I think he understands now that it was so much more than a sandwich.”

UFC president Dana White implored the organization’s fighters two years ago to “Be Joe Pyfer” if they wanted to make it in the fight game.

Pyfer’s bout on Saturday night in Las Vegas against Jack Hermansson (23-8) is the main event of UFC Fight Night 236. The 27-year-old Pyfer (12-2) has won five straight bouts and is one of the UFC’s rising stars. The middleweight has quickly become a fighter fans want to see and all three of his UFC wins have come via stoppage. It’s been good to be Joe Pyfer.

“I paid my debts and I think that’s why things are coming the way they are,” Pyfer said. “I put my time in when I had nothing over and over and over again. There is no success without the journey.”

As everything seemed ready to take off, he suffered a career-threatening arm injury in August 2020. Pyfer was out for 16 months, battled depression as his dream faded, and returned with a KO victory to earn a contract from White. He made it to the UFC, realizing the dream he had when tried to sleep in Barrall Park.

“I would stay up,” Pyfer said. “I wouldn’t really sleep that much just because you’re outdoors and people walk by. You don’t really get too much rest sleeping there, so that’s why I was falling asleep in class. It was just a place for me to be able to stay and lay down.

“It was like a ‘It’ll work itself out” type of deal, and if it doesn’t, then I’d rather be out here than be home dealing with that guy.”

Pyfer spent a week on a metal bench by a baseball field before moving in with a wrestling teammate. Pyfer was new at Penncrest and the two bonded after Pyfer’s teammate was bullied with racial slurs and Pyfer stuck up for him. Pyfer had a place and he had Harmon, who first connected with Pyfer by simply encouraging him before an intrasquad match.

“I just said, ‘Joe you got this, you can do it.’ That’s all it was,” Harmon said. “I was just there for him. That’s all he needed to be successful in this life, for someone to acknowledge him and have his back.”

Harmon drove Pyfer to practice and stayed with him afterward, helping the once-homeless teen blossom into one of the region’s top wrestlers. And Pyfer slowly started to tell Harmon about what he left behind: a father Pyfer said often punched him and threatened to kill him.

“It was in like bits and pieces,” Harmon said. “A lot of the time, you would just get part of the story. He was a kid going through problems that no one should have to go through. He was dealing with adult situations as a 16-, 17-year-old kid and didn’t always know how to say that he needed help.”

They talked over chess, listened to 1980s bands like Milli Vanilli and When In Rome, and split those sandwiches.

“He loved this song, ‘I Got a Name,’ by Jim Croce,” Harmon said of the singer-songwriter from Upper Darby who died in a plane crash in 1973. “That was really important to him because that’s really all he had in this life: just his name. He wanted people to know who he was and not just for the bad things but create a new name, his own name.”

Pyfer always loved cars, making it easy to imagine his thrill after “spending every penny I had” to purchase a 2006 Ford Mustang GT. And it’s even easier to understand how he felt when the car was repossessed early in the morning after he returned home from bouncing at a West Chester bar.

“They were waiting for me to pull up at home,” Pyfer said. “I was a few months behind on the payment and the insurance lapsed. I couldn’t afford to pay. It was one of the most humbling, humiliating feelings.”

He asked Harmon to lend him some money and his old coach agreed to meet him in the living room of his Aston home. Harmon told Pyfer, who graduated from Penncrest in 2015, that he would lend him the cash to get his car back. But he told his former pupil that he would soon learn what kind of person Pyfer really was.

“I said ‘Joe, you’re either someone who pays back their debts and makes those debts right or you’ll just take the money and go on,’” Harmon said.

Harmon then told Pyfer he could move in as long as Pyfer fully committed himself to the dream he had since he was sleeping on that park bench. Pyfer agreed and moved in the next day. He stayed with Harmon for four years and his dream started to come into focus.

“My mom always said, ‘You never loan someone money that you expect to get back,’” Harmon said. “It’s something I lived by, so I never expected Joe to pay me back, but Joe turned out to be a class act. He paid back every cent. The rest is history.”

There are coffee shops closer to Harmon’s home, but Pyfer insisted every day to drive to a Starbucks in Media. Harmon finally found out why. Before they entered one day, Pyfer greeted a homeless man by name and asked if he wanted “the usual.” Pyfer came out with a cup of coffee and a warm chocolate-chip cookie.

“He said, ‘I just want the guy to feel normal for a second. I know what it’s like to be him,’” Harmon said. “A lot of us see Joe as this unbelievable fighter, but I get to see Joe as this unbelievable person who has grown tremendously over the years and really developed into something special.”

Pyfer’s punishing fists earned him the nickname “Bodybagz” and give him the potential to be a UFC champion. He trains everyday in Bridesburg with the city’s premier mixed-martial artists and is the fighter White wants others to be. Pyfer could soon be a star.

But he has not forgotten how it felt to be the kid who wandered around town all day before resting on that park bench and wondering how his life would turn out.

A teacher cheered him on, played him in chess, turned on Milli Vanilli, and offered him a sandwich. Harmon made Pyfer feel normal for a second. And that’s all he ever needed.

“I get emotional when I think about it just because that man came at the right point, when I needed him most in my life, and he didn’t hesitate to step up to the plate on multiple occasions,” Pyfer said. “He’s the reason I’ve become who I am and why I’ve been allowed to become who I am. He stepped up to the plate when I didn’t have a real male role model. To see what a true definition of what a man is, someone who takes the lead and takes charge, and gives hope to a younger child like myself at the time.”

“I don’t say this lightly, but without him I would have never made it to the UFC. That is a fact.”