Benidorm's champion 'opening gate' for MMA in Spain

Costello van Steenis laughs heartily when asked what it was like to learn mixed martial arts around Benidorm. "Why do you think my English is so good? " he jokes.

"There's a lot of English people there, they make a big show of it and they're the number one drinkers that's for sure - but they're really funny. " Benidorm is a city on the Mediterranean coast famous for its British holiday-goers, with around 830,000 visiting in 2024. Van Steenis was born in the Netherlands but moved to Altea, a town about 20 minutes drive away from Benidorm, as a youngster.

It was there he fell in love with MMA by watching fighters such as American pair Rashad Evans and Jon Jones, before training and competing in a number of local amateur fights around Benidorm where he would compete up to three times per night. While Van Steenis was winning most of these fights, aged 20, the city's party scene offered a distraction to his future ambitions in the sport. After a discussion with his father about wanting to take MMA more seriously, he decided the only way to further his career would be to move back to the Netherlands.

"That's one of the reasons I moved away. Spain has beautiful weather, beautiful people, a lot of distractions and a lot of partying," says Van Steenis. "You want to have your focus and the people around you [in Benidorm] don't have their focus, but that's what you need.