Engineer by Day, Mexican Viking by Night: Victor “Ragnar” Cisneros Headlines RUF 71

Victor Cisneros has two jobs and two names. During the week he is an engineer and a teacher who works with high school and university students in Toluca, Mexico. On Saturday, November 7, he is Ragnar, the headliner of RUF 71 at the Celebrity Theatre in Phoenix, facing Amari "The Insurance Salesman" Sengsavanh in the main event. We sat down with Victor for an MMA Stalker Fighter Conversation, days before fight week got loud. "I never have a game plan" Steven Boardman opened with an engineer's question: how does Victor engineer a victory over Amari? His answer was the opposite of a blueprint. "I never have a game plan. Just fight. I love fight," Victor said. "Please don't hug me. Just punch me, because I'm going to punch you, man." That is also how he describes his camp. Between a full-time job and training, he told us sleep was the hard part, but he got in "a lot of sparring" and didn't work from a plan. His favorite punch is the shot to the body, and he'd like the fight to last. "I want three rounds. I need to enjoy this." He knows the style he wants to avoid, too: a real fight "like Justin Gaethje," not "like Khabib or Islam." Grinding wrestling, in his words, is "boring for the people." Paying his own way to Colombia Victor's resume has a good story at the start. During the pandemic in 2020, a promotion in Colombia offered him a fight, with hotel and food covered but no flights. He paid his own airfare and his coaches' airfare out of what he'd earned working in Mexico. His mom told him he was crazy. He won in the first round. From Chiapas to Toluca Victor grew up in Chiapas. About seven years ago, after finishing his engineering degree, he moved to Toluca, near Mexico City, for a better job and better training. The MMA scene back home, he said, was small. He doesn't chase sponsors. "My big sponsor is my job," he told us. The university that employs him is the reason he can travel to fight and still come home to his classroom. His message to other fighters: you can study, hold a career, have a family and still fight. The coach who started it all In Toluca, one of the first people Victor met was Kazula, a former UFC fighter who became his head coach, manager and mentor for his first five or six fights. "He was a good manager in that time, a good mentor and a good friend," Victor said. "For that guy, in that time, I am the man I am right now." Victor versus Ragnar The nickname started with a joke. People in Mexico City called him a "chilango," and Kazula started calling him Ragnar. Victor had never seen the show. Then a ring announcer introduced him as "Victor Ragnar Cisneros," and the name stuck. After watching the series on Netflix, he decided he loved it. "I'm a Mexican Viking, man." Victor and Ragnar are not the same guy, he says. "Victor is a good kid. He doesn't like fight, he doesn't like violence. He's an engineer, he goes to the job every day, he works with kids… he's a good teacher. But Ragnar, man, he's a crazy man. He likes violence, blood and fight." The record and Pony Campos By his own account, Victor started his pro career with five straight wins, then lost two decisions in Miami at Combate Global. [Check his record against Combat Registry before publishing any numbers.] The fight he talks about most is Pony Campos, which he took in his home state of Chiapas. It was a hard year: a week after his second Miami loss, his grandfather died. He walked into the Campos fight angry. "I just needed one punch and finish the fight." He says it took 45 seconds. Calling his shot Asked how Saturday ends, Victor got specific about the mood, if not the method. His hands are up, there's blood on both faces, and both fighters are tired. It will be his first time in Phoenix and his first look at the Celebrity Theatre, a theatre-in-the-round where the cage sits on a stage surrounded 360 degrees by fans. "We need to be a big fight, man," he said. "This is it." He wrapped up with a message for Phoenix's Mexican community, in Spanish, and a promise that this is "Mexico versus USA" on the RUF stage. How to watch RUF 71 RUF 71 takes place Saturday, November 7, 2026 at the Celebrity Theatre in Phoenix, with Victor "Ragnar" Cisneros vs. Amari "The Insurance Salesman" Sengsavanh in the main event. Tickets and live stream info: rufnation.com Follow Victor: @ragnar_cisneros · Follow RUF Nation: @ruf.mma Read our conversation with his opponent, Amari Sengsavanh. Watch Interview