He has plenty of money in the bank, a stunning actress/model on his arm and looked very comfortable relaxing on a four-day Bermuda vacation in a Point Share house-sit.

But if ever a man earns his money, Tiki Ghosn is he.

The unassuming 29-year-old ? with his trademark dyed, striped goatee ? is a professional Ultimate Fighter, a sport which truly lives up to its name.

On 14 occasions, Ghosn has stepped out into a cage to fight another man in an encounter in which the rules are simply: no eye-gouging, no biting, no punching to the back of the head or back, no kicking the opponent on the ground, apart from to his legs, but other than that, you can do pretty much what you want to people ? and he does.

There?s kicking, there?s punching, there?s wrestling, there?s choking, there?s broken noses, dislocated shoulders, plenty of blood, plenty of wince-inducing injuries and men too proud to submit, choosing instead to pass out rather than admit defeat.

Ghosn has won nine of his fights and handed out some pretty brutal beatings over the years.

?I do this for three reasons,? said Ghosn, with a smile that in movies would be described as evil.

?I do it because its fun, I do it because of the money and I do because I love sports.

?This really is the ultimate test, it is competition at its most raw.

?Every man in the universe likes sport and likes competition and this is the truest form of competition.

?If you get two men together and you want to decide who is the best, you wouldn?t see who could throw a rock furthest, you?d let them fight it out.

?Fighting is the purest way of deciding a champion and ultimate fighting is the purest form of fighting ? I love it.?

And even before the California resident began to explain his childhood, you could almost predict what he was going to say.

Born to a Greek mother and Lebanese father, he had a tough time as a kid ? the sort of fight-sprinkled upbringing that breeds champions in later life.

?I was a small kid and I got picked on a lot,? said Ghosn, on his first visit to Bermuda to stay with a friend who?s cousin lives here.

?It was reaching the stage where I had enough and I decided I had to fight back or it was never going to stop ? so I did.

?I was always getting in fights and that?s where I learnt a lot about myself and how I was going to have to go through life.?

American football was his main sport growing up, he played corner for his High School team and wasn?t a bad player.

And it was when he was doing his cross-training that he stumbled upon what was later to evolve into a well-paid professional career that was going to allow him to see the world, reach a level of fame that sees him stopped regularly in the street and come up against some of the biggest, nastiest and most violent professional athletes in the world.

?I was looking to so some cross-training and I came across kick-boxing,? he recalled.

?As soon as I started doing it, I realised I had found my calling. I really enjoyed it and trained hard. And from there I began working on some Brazilian jujitsu and that?s when I realised I could do Ultimate Fighting.

?I realised I am a man with a lot of anger inside of me and I knew that I could do a sport like this.?

Like the rest of his generation, he had witnessed the evolution of this new brand of all-action fighting, a cross-discipline sport that threw wrestlers, boxers, martial arts experts and even sumo stars into a cage for a fight, maybe not quite to the death, but certainly to the limits of human endurance.

?When I first saw it, it made me queasy,? he said.

?Some of the stuff you saw, and the injuries, were really gross. But the more I watched it, the more I realised I wanted a piece of it.?

Real opportunitines first presented themselves while at High School, when he was offered the chance to fight in one of the many underground bouts that took place at that time. The illegal fights are the breeding ground for the next generation of pros and he was excited by the prospect.

Told he was taking on a white wrestler, Ghosn trained hard and was excited about the eight-minute, single round bout, even if some of his school friends expressed some serious doubts about the sense of such a battle.

When he turned up at Saddleback College gymnasium, waiting for him wasn?t a white wrestler, but a Japanese man named Genki Sudo, one of the top fighters in the world.

And then it dawned on Ghosn exactly what was happening: ?I?m the meat. I?m the meat they are throwing to this guy.?

Although the bout was meant to be an open hand affair, the fists were clenched within seconds and the two men rained blows on each other.

Somehow Ghosn not only survived his eight minutes, but actually won the fight, opening doors and getting offers that would see him eventually make it into the pro world.

?The adrenaline rush of being in the ring like that was awesome,? he said with the sort of enthusiasm that one wouldn?t normally associate with having your head kicked, punched, kneed and elbowed by a large samurai fighter.

?I knew that this was for me.?

Even though the fight game was for him, it wasn?t for his mother.

?She wouldn?t even watch me play football so you can imagine what she thought about the fighting!? he continued.

?I try and sneak in pictures, I?ll be showing her snaps from my holiday and then throw in a fight picture. She doesn?t like it, that?s for sure.?

Doug Evans was the first opponent for Ghosn, whose career began in 1999 with a victory by guillotine choke submission. Fights can be won by decision, knockouts, technical knockouts, stopped by doctors and by submission, sometimes armlock, but normally by a choke.

?There are two forms of choke,? Ghosn continued with that evil glint in his eye returning.

?One that works on cutting off the air supply, the other cutting off the arteries. When you are in a choke, you try and fight your way out of it and you try and go for as long as you can before you tap out and submit.

?You basically wait until you are seeing stars and beginning to black out before you will concede, although some guys are so determined to keep going that they will black out.

?You can turn someone into a human pretzel and they will still keep going.?

Over the next five years he fought another dozen times before having break in 2004 following a bulldog choke submission to Chris Lytle.

?I took a two-year break to build up my business,? continued Ghosn, anything but your typical meathead fighter despite his aggression in the ring or cage.

?I had a bit of a fight (not in the fisticuffs sense) with the guy who ran the gym I was using, so I thought I?d just set up my own.

?The last couple of years I have been concentrating on that, and we get a lot of the top guys training there.?

Many of the bigger names in the sport fight out of his gym with one in particular a close associate.

Ghosn is great friends with Tito Ortiz, possibly the biggest name in the sport.

Although Ortiz was offered the chance to come down to Bermuda for a holiday, he refused ? the big man is not ready to return to the Island that brings back so many tough memories for him.

On honeymoon here a few years ago, a scooter-riding Ortiz suffered from that typical American problem of getting confused about which side of the road to ride on and ended up hitting a bus.

Although he escaped relatively unscathed, his wife ended up breaking her back and he won?t be coming back anytime soon.

But it wasn?t long before Ghosn was back in the cage again. ?After two years out I realised I really missed fighting,? continued Ghosn, who reckons he can fight four times a year, although some of the money-hungry will go at it once a month.

?It was good to back into it earlier this year although it didn?t end well.?

In ?World Extreme Cagefighing 19?, Ghosn?s bout with Pat Healy was stopped in the third round after he dislocated his left shoulder in a flurry of punches.

Although he was able to pop it back in, the fight was awarded to his opponent ? something he is now appealing as a medical stoppage for a self-inflicted injury after more than 75 percent of the fight should send it to the scorecards, at which point Ghosn would have won.

For now he is rehabbing the shoulder, mulling over contracts and thinking about who to take on next ? although his long-term career and perhaps what to do next are not on his radar for now.

?I am a fighter still and I am thinking about fighting,? continued Ghosn, who sat ringside for Teresa Perozzi?s world title bout on Saturday night at Clearwater and described her as ?a great brawler?.

?I?m not thinking about how many years I have left. An athlete peaks between 26 and 34 and I am going to keep fighting for as long as I can still do it.

?I love what I do and I don?t want to think about anything else.?