‘I fight for joy, I sing from pain’: Indigenous mixed martial artist Timber Bigfoot can express himself with an uppercut and a song

FORT ST. JOHN, B.C. — It’s a dreary, rainy afternoon in Fort St. John as Timber Bigfoot sips his cup of tea in a local Tim Horton’s.

The 31-year-old gives off an intimidating aura at first glance, complete with piercings, heavy tattoos, goatee, and a stare that would make even the most experienced fighter feel slightly uncomfortable at a weigh-in.

However, there’s a lot more depth to Timber Bigfoot, with stories of heartbreak, trauma, substance abuse and more.

He has Indigenous roots from both parents: through his father, he has Chipewyan and European, and through his mother, Bigfoot has Dane-zaa roots. 

A member of Prophet River First Nation (PRFN), Bigfoot is currently in training for a kickboxing match at June’s Xtreme Fighting Challenge 12 in Grande Prairie.

The encounter on June 13th will be his first since a bare-knuckle contest in Lethbridge last fall.

According to Bigfoot, his biological father had a noted amateur boxing career and once trained with Sugar Ray Leonard.

“He travelled all over the place,” said Bigfoot to Energeticcity.ca. “He had an unbelievable amount of amateur fights, and then he got into pro fighting.”

The story then ends with his father being dragged into a life of substance abuse. Growing up, Bigfoot says his mother, Connie Bigfoot, wanted to keep him away from that life.

“My mother grew up very poor and went through an abusive lifestyle with my grandparents,” said Bigfoot. “They were alcoholics at the time when she was younger.  She wanted to break that chain. She didn’t want that to continue.”

Being raised “off the grid” by his own admission, Bigfoot said his mother’s parents decided to stop drinking cold turkey after his mother had run away as a teenager and issued an ultimatum to them to get clean or lose contact.

“She ran away,” said Bigfoot. “She was on the run. She hitchhiked from B.C. into Alberta. She never wanted to see my grandparents again. She wanted to get away from that abuse. They promised they wouldn’t drink again and kept that promise.”

His childhood was spent in communities such as Bamfield on West Vancouver Island, Dawson Creek, Fort St. John, the Pink Mountain Ranch and the grounds of Halfway River First Nation.

Bigfoot’s mother taught him the Indigenous way of life, teaching him to fish, hunt, and live off the land in remote communities. Despite what it might seem, Timber said he was content with the life he lived.

“People always ask me about [not having a father,]” recalls Bigfoot. “I’ve never ever in my life been like, ‘Oh man, I wish I had a dad.’ We lived out in Bamfield for five years on $800 a month. Maybe looking from the outside, you would be able to see it. I was never able to see it. To me, I had everything.”

Describing himself as a “physical” child, his mother bought him a heavy bag when he was eight.

“She taught me how to box,” said Bigfoot. “ I was the kind of kid who, when my cousins do something, I didn’t cry. I ran up, and I punched them. So she got me into boxing.”

As the rain falls outside, he is even more candid about his life, describing getting his first tattoos at just 14 years old, and even encounters of molestation, the first as a child when he was living at Pink Mountain Ranch.

Bigfoot even experienced an inappropriate relationship with a woman in her 20s when he was just 16.

“My grandparents came there one time with one of my uncles,” said Bigfoot. “He was adopted into our family. He had some different issues mentally, and so he tried to get away with doing things with me.”

“My mother always told me when I was little that if anybody ever says they want to play a game with you, come and ask me for permission first.  [My uncle] said that exact word, he was playing. I ran outside while my mother and my grandparents were around the campfire. I described what he was doing, and my mom lost her [expletive].”

As he grew, Bigfoot said countless hours in front of a heavy bag “allowed” him to have control of something. 

“My mother always told me: ‘don’t hurt people,’” said Bigfoot. 

His first exposure to mixed martial arts came at 13, when he watched the Ultimate Fighting Championship’s (UFC) UFC 81 in 2008. 

He said he was already an avid World Wrestling Entertainment fan and wanted to see former UFC heavyweight champion Brock Lesnar in his debut against Frank Mir.

“When I [saw] Brock Lesnar going into UFC, I’m like, oh, this is cool.” recalls Bigfoot. “Then when it started, I seen guys like Chuck Liddell and Tito Ortiz. I was like ‘I want to do this one day.’ My family started laughing. They asked ‘you think you’re tough, huh?’”

He went into the former Iron Rhino gym, then run by Clint Parker, and began training.  

By this time, the then-14-year-old Timber had a beard, tattoos and long hair. With those present, Parker didn’t think his new charge was a teenager; he threw him in the cage against adult fighters to train him.

It presented an awkward moment when his mom came to pick him up from the gym.

“It’s funny because [Parker] always tells the story,” said Bigfoot. “My mother comes in and he always says, this beautiful lady walks in and she’s like, ‘Oh, I’m here picking [up] my son.’ Clint is like, ‘There’s no kids here, like what do you mean, your son?’” 

“She said ‘Timber’. [Parker] asked ‘how old is he?’ When my mom said 14, he said he felt so bad.”

He had a few bouts in MMA, the last of which was in 2015. Bigfoot took a hiatus after a broken jaw in his last contest.

“I learned very quickly that even if you can take a hard punch, you can’t take a hard punch when your mouth is open,” said Bigfoot. “I learned very quickly to always bite down [on] my mouth guard for the rest of my life.”

“I got punched and I got rocked. I was like, what the heck, and I got punched again. I fell to the ground…[At the end of the round] I couldn’t open my mouth. They stopped the fight.”

The sabbatical from the sport was lengthened after a long-term back injury, the Covid pandemic halting public events, and the initial end of a long-term relationship back in 2022.

“She was cheating and doing all the different things, and she liked to drink and party and have more fun,” said Bigfoot. “I don’t, I want to have children, I want to have a wife, I want to be respected and appreciated for who I am, what I offer in a relationship.”

While they tried to make things work off-and-on for a couple of years, Bigfoot said it ultimately reached its conclusion in 2025, just a month before he was scheduled to have his first fight of the year.

“I did three workouts before that fight,” Bigfoot recalls. “I was not in shape, I was walking around at 298 pounds. I was told ‘we got you a fight.’ My mindset was ‘as long as I do okay, I’ll keep fighting. If I lose badly, I’ll never fight again.”

He won the fight against Jeremiah Nichols in the first round by technical knockout. Even so, depression was never far from his mind.

Bigfoot found a way to channel that pain away from the cage: singing. A multi-year winner of PRFN’s talent show at its Treaty Days, and is a regular fixture at weekend karaoke nights in Fort St. John.

 He said his musical influence came from a familiar place: his mother.

Bigfoot describes her as having “an unhealthy amount of cassette tapes,” and he began writing and singing at 11 years old.

Bigfoot describes his fighting exploits as joyful, and his singing and songwriting as arising from anguish and pain.

“She wanted to teach me how to two-step,” said Bigfoot. “I really got to be a really good dancer. But one day, she came inside, and I told her, ‘I can sing.’ She thought it was funny, but then I showed her the song I wrote.”

He claims to have even sung at weddings on Vancouver Island, and says the pain in his life inspires him to write songs.

While he doesn’t play instruments, he said he’d like to learn to play the piano or even the cello.

Ultimately, Bigfoot says being a PRFN representative and showcasing his talents to his community are the biggest joys of his life.

He says his mother, stepfather, and elders, among others, are looking forward to his kickboxing match.

“I got my music and my fighting backward,” said Bigfoot. “I fight because it brings me happiness and peace. My music is how I release my pain and my emotions. I go to the casino here, typically on Saturdays all the time, I come, and I do karaoke.”

“People are always like, let me go sing a happy song. I’m like, I don’t sing happy songs, I’m not happy when I sing, I sing to release pain.”

Timber Bigfoot will be on the main card at Xtreme Fighting Challenge 12, happening on Saturday, June 13th, at the Evaskevich Hall in the TARA Energy Services Centre at Evergreen Park in Grande Prairie.