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| DYNAMITE, KID |
FSM staff |
The one-dimensional boxer on TUF2 is on an 11-fight win streak. Meet "The Irish Hand Grenade" Marcus Davis!
FSM: You’ve got a real test waiting for you on 7 June in the shape of Mike “Quick” Swick. How has training camp been going?
MD: Training’s been going awesome. For this fight, 12 weeks out I started doing heavy weightlifting to put the weight on. I upped my calories to about 4,500 and started doing kind of extreme lifting, so when I went into fight camp I would have a lot of muscle mass on me to lean out.
Because of Mike Swick being a natural 185-pound fighter, I got myself up to about 192 and the strongest I’ve ever been, the whole time I’ve been in MMA. The last workout we did on the bench, I did 275 for 12 [reps], 315 for 8 and 350 for 4, which is quite a bit – I don’t even know if there’s another welterweight out there that can do it. So I’m going into this camp serious, because this is going to be my best test yet in the UFC.
FSM: Mike had a very lacklustre showing in his last fight (a three-round snoozefest against Josh Burkman in January) so he’s looking to make a statement against you. Does that change anything from your perspective?
MD: Well, I don’t wanna just win – I want to go out there and win in absolutely devastating fashion. I’m looking at this fight like this: Swick had a poor performance in his last fight and he needs to go out there and prove something. So he’s going to try to bring it to me, and there’s no doubt that every time I'm fighting, I go after the guy.
So this is a real good situation for me because if Swick stands and just trades punches with me, he’s gonna lose. He’s not gonna knock me out – he’s not as strong as I am, he doesn’t have the power I have, and if he’s actually faster than me, it’s not by much. And speed is only relative to good timing anyway – and I have great timing. I mean, guys try to kick me and I just land punches. So that’s the way I’m looking at this. I’ve got to let it all hang out and I’ve gotta show that I belong in the top ten of the UFC.
FSM: You want to win in devastating fashion, but you’ve won your last 11 fights, eight of them first-round finishes, and your last fight against Jess Liaudin was a one-minute knockout. How do you get more devastating than that?
MD: I just keep getting better – I keep adding more tools. I’m a work in progress and Mark DellaGrotte, my coach, always says to everybody, “You have not seen the best Marcus yet.” I just keep getting better and better, and the perfect example is what I just said – this is the biggest and strongest I’ve ever been, and also the most complete I’ve ever been, going into a fight.
I’m constantly getting better, not only as a fighter but also physically and, you know, just as a person. So these guys have been having a harder time even staying in there with me – the longest fight I’ve had in a year was with Pete Spratt, where I went to the second round. And that was because he was good at protecting his neck when I took his back for about three minutes in the first round.
But that’s not the way this fight’s gonna go. If Swick tries to take me to the ground, he’s not gonna get me there – what’ll happen is he’ll end up on his back. And the worst place he can be is with me on top. My Ju Jitsu coaches say on top, I’m a brown/black belt, and on bottom I’m a purple/brown belt. So if he wants me on top, he’s in for a rude awakening.
FSM: The evolution of your game has been profound, from the one-dimensional striker on TUF2 to a guy who wins over half his fights by submission. But your base is boxing and you had an impressive run as a professional boxer (earning a 17-1-2 record). Why did you give up a very promising boxing career to try your hand at MMA?
MD: I just loved MMA from the second I saw it. And I’d been burned so many times in boxing – people ripping me off, fights falling out, not getting what I should have gotten – that I got burned out on it. And I decided, when I saw MMA, that this is going to be the next big thing; this is where it’s heading.
It’s gonna be history repeating itself, coming back to the days of the gladiator – and I look at myself as a gladiator. So I wanted to get involved in it, but I did it at the beginning with the wrong mindset. I went into it thinking I was just gonna be a striker who would avoid the ground the whole time. I didn’t embrace the ground until after the last episode of The Ultimate Fighter; since then, I haven’t lost a fight.
Now I’ve dedicated myself to the ground and I’ve gone from knowing virtually nothing to, in the last two years, getting to about a purple belt or brown belt status. That’s in terms of my BJJ, but I’ve also been wrestling a lot – and the guy that works with me on my wrestling is a former Canadian Olympic alternate. So I’m always working on my takedowns, my defence, my positioning – every aspect of grappling.
FSM: With that old “striker first” mindset, did you ever consider going the K-1 route, doing pure kickboxing as opposed to all-out MMA?
MD: Yeah, I played around with K-1 a little bit, but it’s not what I wanted – it’s not “real”. I’m looking for fighting that’s illegal (laughs) – that’s its purest form. So the best way for me to fight in the purest form and express myself as a fighter is in mixed martial arts, and not go to jail. And I don’t mean that I’m a street thug, or I like to street fight; I’m saying that I like testing myself against another man.
It’s the most competitive, primal way to really see – what are you made of? What is your breaking point? What are you capable of? How far are you willing to take it? And this sport, right now, is the way I can do that. And the only thing I wish is that they combined more of the Pride rules and the Unified Rules, so that we could have the stomps and the knees to the head on the ground. Let it all hang out.
FSM: It’s a brave fighter that wants the stomps and soccer kicks brought back into play.
MD: Yeah, man, I want that! Wrestling is boring. Who wants to watch two guys lay on top of each other and nothing happens? When you get a good wrestler and a good ground technician, it can be a boring fight to watch because the guy that’s on his back is real good at defending, and the guy that’s on top isn’t real good at passing. So they stay there and the fight gets stood back up, then what happens? The wrestler shoots, he takes the guy back down, he lays on top of him again – and that’s not what I want.
I want people to smash me in the face, and I want to smash people in the face. I wanna be pounding people on the ground. I want people trying to take me down and kicking them in the head. Like I said, that’s making it more pure – more like real combat.
FSM: You’re every bit the fighting Irishman!
MD: (Laughs) Well I’m a mutt, there no doubt about it. I’m made up about 50 per cent Irish, a quarter Welsh and a quarter Scot. But I relate to the Irish side of my family because that’s who I grew up with. I wasn’t around my father’s side of the family a whole lot as a child. My father was absent in my life – he was there maybe once a month when I was a kid, and now he’s not even involved in my life.
The family I grew up with and that I relate to came over from Ireland – they had a boarding home, and the other side actually had a potato farm. And they were all fighters! My grandfather was a very successful boxer – he retired having never lost a professional boxing match.
I used to sit in a gazebo as a kid with a bunch of these old guys around my grandfather, and they would talk about all the great fights he was in. And I’d sit there and take it all in and absorb it, and my grandfather didn’t say a word – only one time did he say something, when they were talking about the guy that gave him his best fight ever, and all he said was, “Yeah, that guy was tough as hell.”
So I grew up with that, and I just wanted to fight so bad. My mom said that I was punching before I was walking! I’ve always been like that, I was always the kid that was ready to scrap.
FSM: If there’s one guy from the States that truly loves fighting in the UK, it’s you. You’ve been on the last four British UFC cards – what is it about competing here that you love so much?
MD: I’ll tell you exactly what it is. The first time I got over to the UK, I’m walking around and I’m looking at the people around me, and they’re smiling. And I’m thinking, “What the hell’s wrong with all these people?” A couple of days later, I’m walking around smiling, I’m happy, and I love it over there because there’s a different feel.
The fans are the most appreciative fans – they’ll be screaming at me, “You’re gonna get knocked out, I hate you, blah blah blah.” But the minute afterwards they come over and they shake my hand and they go, “I was rooting against you but, you know what, that was great, thanks for putting it all on the line.” That was awesome, whereas here in the US a lot of times, they’re going, “I hate you, you suck!” Then you go out and fight, and you come back and they’re going, “Well, you still suck.”
When I come back from the UK I’m still smiling, and women here are holding their purses, guys are clutching their wallets, and they’re like I was before – “What’s wrong with this guy?” It’s just a different feel, and I love going over there – that’s why I told the UFC, I’m gonna buy a frigging house over there, because I really love it.
I’m proud to be an American, don’t get me wrong. And I’m proud of my ancestors, which is why I give the tribute to them – especially here in America where we have this MTV Generation crap going on, where everybody wants to be some kind of rapper or thug or whatever. Kids should remember that people sacrificed to get you here – your ancestors brought you here so that you could have a better life.
And I recognise that and I’m thankful for it. But at the same time, I like going over to the UK and I like fighting there because the energy is different, the people are different and for the first time, for me, I’m at home. That’s where I fight. Mike Swick, that’s not his home – he’s going into my house. And nobody goes into my house and beats me up. So I’m taking this seriously. I never want to lose, but I am not losing in the UK. Not happening.
FSM: Do you know where you’re going to buy a house over here?
MD: I really haven’t decided yet. It won’t be right in London, because holy crap is it expensive over there! I really like Newcastle, and obviously I like Belfast as well, but I haven’t gone to Southern Ireland yet, so I’d like to go there and check things out. I’m really open about it right now, but I want it really bad. I just got a brand new home here in Bangor, Maine, and maybe I’ll go to Bangor, Ireland! I don’t know – wherever I can make my home over there, I’d love to do it.
FSM: At the end of your time on TUF2, you said: “I gave myself the ultimatum of either beating Joe, or giving up fighting… I’m kinda glad that I’m moving onto other things.” What changed after you left the show, both in your life and in your approach to fighting?
MD: Well, when I left The Ultimate Fighter that day, when I lost to Joe Stevenson, I went back home and I was injured. I had a real bad shoulder because when Joe picked me up and slammed me, my shoulder and my clavicle dislocated and I had that injury for about nine months. But the UFC said they still wanted me to fight on the Finale.
I was injured but I said, you know what, I’m still gonna go out there and I’m just gonna do the Finale fight against Melvin Guillard. After that fight, I talked to my kids and my family and told them I was thinking about retiring. They asked me what I was going to do and I didn’t really know – I said maybe I’d go back to the office job or go back to running bars again, which isn’t very conducive to being a family man.
But my kids and my mom and the rest of my family were like, if you want to do this, and this is where your heart is, then maybe you should just do whatever it’s gonna take to be successful at it. So I sat there and thought about it for literally a couple of weeks. And just inside my own head, whenever I was thinking “Okay, I quit,” I would immediately have an empty feeling inside. That’s when I realised that this really is what I want to do.
So I babied that bad shoulder and I grappled non-stop, learning how to move without using that side of my body at all, really. I worked about six months with Jorge Gurgel and those guys, just to get comfortable on my back. Then I started training with Mark DellaGrotte and just focused on the grappling aspect, the wrestling aspect, working on my ground and pound, and generally learning some tricks.
Then we started focusing on my Thai boxing and my kicks, knees and elbows. So now I’m a more complete fighter, I understand the game, I’ve got good submission defence, and I’ve shown that I can submit guys, too – I’ve got more submissions on my record than KOs. So I’m an MMA fighter now – I’m not a boxer, I’m not a kickboxer; I’m a mixed martial artist.
FSM: Are there any fights you’d like to go back and do-over, as Marcus the MMA fighter rather than Marcus the boxer? Fights you look back on and think, “Man, if only I’d had this in my arsenal…”
MD: I would like to go back and do all 8 fights – well, actually it was 12 fights, total – that I had before the 11-fight win streak. Because if I went back to those 12, I’d be that much better at this point – if I knew what I know now in my first fight, I’d be World Champion right now. And I’d be undefeated! (Laughs) At some point, maybe I’ll avenge some of those losses. Who knows?
I mean, the only guy that’s really in my division right now that I lost to is Thiago Alves. And I’m friends with Thiago now, but we’re both in the top ten right now so that fight’s probably gonna happen. I lost a split decision to him by one point, and I was the boxer, he was the Thai boxer and a BJJ blue belt. That was five years ago, and I’ve had this transformation in the last two-and-a-half years.
So who knows what’s gonna happen? After I win this Mike Swick fight in devastating fashion, I have no choice but to fight the best that are out there. And every time, I’m gonna try to beat these guys as quickly and efficiently as possible.
FSM: There’s been a lot of noise about a boxing match between Anderson Silva and Roy Jones Jr. As someone who’s been successful in both the cage and the boxing ring, what’s your take on that fight?
MD: (Laughs) Listen, it’s a boxing match – Roy Jones Jr is gonna walk all over him. It’s a boxing match! He has no chance in hell. He might be saying that he wants to do it because he’s never been in there and hasn’t done it, but if he goes into a boxing match with a boxer and tries to box him, he’s going to lose. The odds of him winning are astronomical – there’s just no way for Anderson Silva to win that fight.
But if they allow knees, I’ll pick Anderson! Because boxers always clinch – we know that boxers get into that tie-up and hold each other, so the fight would be over. But it’s not gonna be like that – Roy Jones Jr would never agree to allow Anderson Silva to throw knees. It’s not gonna happen, because that fight would end in one round. So if it’s a boxing match, it’s Roy Jones Jr. But add one element – whether it’s knees or kicks – it’s gonna be Anderson Silva.
FSM: Usually we hear MMA guys saying, “These boxers think they can waltz into the cage, but they have no idea what it takes to have an MMA fight.” Now here’s an MMA guy thinking he can just walk into a boxing ring, and it’s the same thing – you’ve got to respect that these guys do something completely different, and posses skills that are night and day to yours.
MD: That’s exactly true. It’s like someone saying, “I’m a 6’10’ professional football player, but because I’m really tall I can play against little tiny Michael Jordan and beat him at basketball.” It’s just not gonna happen! It’s the same with me – could I go in and play basketball and beat Michael Jordan? No, of course not. But if we play basketball with no fouls, he’s a dead man…
For the rest of this feature, check out issue 28 of FSM – available at WH Smith and all good retailers. (For US readers we are now carried at Borders and Barnes & Noble, so check for local availability or click here to subscribe.)
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