Marcus (The Irish Hand Grenade) Davis has been racking up the Air Miles. Luckily for him, it's on the UFC's dime.

Saturday night in Birmingham, England, Davis will appear in his fifth straight fight in the U.K. when he takes on Englishman Paul Kelly to round out the main card of UFC 89 (live on all Sportsnet channels and in HD at 3 p.m. ET / noon PT).

It's fair to say he's gotten used to the routine.

"I'm all acclimated and ready to go," Davis, who makes his home in Bangor, Maine, said on Wednesday. "I left home at seven o'clock at night … and I get here and it's seven in the morning. It's a big difference. You take a little bit of a nap and then make sure you stay awake the rest of the night and fall asleep the time you would normally. And hopefully you get back on schedule within that day."

One thing the 35-year-old Davis (14-4) had not been used to was losing. In his most recent fight in London in June, fellow welterweight contender Mike Swick snapped Davis's 11-fight win streak. It's a fight he wants to quickly put out of his mind. And not just because you never want to dwell on a defeat. Mostly because it wasn't really him fighting. More like, half of him.

"Three weeks before that fight I tore out all the connective tissue between my tricep, my (posterior deltoid) and my lat," Davis explained. "I had cortisone injections for it. But because I kept training with those tears I developed an infringement in the front of my shoulder in my bursa sac. It just swelled right up to about 100 times the size it was supposed to be."

Davis saw a doctor a few days before the fight and had his bursa drained. But his shoulder injury re-aggravated the bursa and it filled back up. The day of the weigh-in he went to an orthopedic doctor in the U.K. to drain it again. Same story.

"I went into the fight basically with one arm. I was kind of in half body, unable to do what I needed to do to perform."

Davis, whose strength is in striking, couldn't apply his normal game plan and Swick, whose nickname is Quick for good reason, took advantage, bloodying Davis late before winning a unanimous decision.

Still, Davis said didn't consider withdrawing from the bout. That was also true for the three bruising rounds as he went the distance.

"I don't pull out of fights," Davis said. "I don't get paid necessarily to win. I get paid to show up, and I get paid to fight and that's what I did."

Davis has taken a different approach in preparing for this fight to ensure he doesn't re-aggravate any injury. In his previous bout, he had about 10 weeks in which he spent a lot of time lifting weights and trying to get bigger and stronger, which is how he ruined my shoulder. This camp was built around speed and agility.

For about six weeks, he worked with fitness trainer Kevin Kearns in Boston. And he also spent time with his regular strength and conditioning coach Garth Crane when he was home in Bangor.

Davis, who weighed in at 169 pounds on Friday, insists he's perfectly healthy for this one. Well, almost.

"Really the small little bumps and bruises are the same things I've carried in all my fights before this one."

Davis, who stands five-foot-eight, feels he has come a long way since he got his start in mixed martial arts in 2003. As with many UFC fighters, the turning point was The Ultimate Fighter. But not in the way one might think.

"The biggest experience that changed my career was going on the show and learning that in order for me to be a mixed martial arts fighter, I had to ditch the whole sprawler and brawler thing (where) I just tried to box," Davis recalled. "Now I'm a mixed martial arts fighter. I have more submissions on my record than I do KOs and TKOs. I've come full circle."

Davis' manager was instrumental in making that transition. After he lost to Melvin Guillard in the finale of TUF Season 2, he ended up just working on grappling for about five months, with no striking at all.

When he was finally ready to get back into cage, his manager booked him fights with strikers. But not so that he would strike with them; rather, so that he would take them down and use his new skills to submit them. Six months later he was back in the UFC and won his first of six straight in the Octagon.

"I got comfortable with being in the cage and fighting on the ground and I developed my game from there. It was time for me to learn and I did that."

Right now the jiu-jitsu purple belt trains at Sityodtong in Somerville, Mass., under the tutelage of BJJ and Muay Thai coach Mark Dellagrotte, whose team also includes Kenny Florian, Jorge Gurgel and Canadian Patrick Cote, who is preparing to challenge middleweight champion Anderson Silva. Davis spent the majority of his training in this camp working on sweeps standing up and submissions on the ground.

"The only thing stopping me from getting my brown belt in jiu-jitsu is a couple of minor things. But I've been able to accomplish a lot in the last few years as far as my ground game goes."

As Davis hopes to start a new double-digit win streak in MMA, he'll be in tough against Kelly, who's unbeaten in seven career fights, though this will be just the Brit's second in the UFC after beating fellow countryman Paul Taylor in January.

Davis also beat Taylor just over a year ago in London, so he's also had experience fighting guys in front of their fans. He dismisses any notion of a home-crowd advantage.

"I've never fought in my own town, I've always been the bad guy," Davis insisted. "Unless they open up the Octagon and let some of his fans come in and fight for him it would be different fight. But if they lock that door and it's just him and I, he's in trouble."

Davis believes the key against Kelly will be using his speed and working angles.

"Kind of like what I did in boxing to give the illusion that I'm standing in front of him, but I won't be and I'll catch him reaching in," Davis said. "If he does happen to take me to the ground which I don't think will happen … I'll just submit him on the ground. His only way of winning is either me being stupid and standing right in front of him or (him) keeping me pinned on the ground like a wet blanket."

Davis, who is considered near the top 10 in welterweights in the world and certainly in the UFC, hopes to solidify that position. And he doesn't want to be considered a "gatekeeper" for the division.

"There's probably seven or eight guys who should be ahead of me and are ahead of me," Davis said. "I'm going to have to end up fighting a guy who's real tough in the next one or two fights. Maybe that's what I'll have in store: another step up in competition."

Whoever he gets next, The Irish Hand Grenade hopes he'll be across the pond again for a sixth in a row.

"I'm looking forward the most to coming back here and fighting in Ireland in January," said the New England native.

NOTES: All 22 fighters for UFC 89 made weight without any trouble on Friday. Kelly, like Davis, weighed in at 169 pounds. Fighting in the main event, Michael Bisping hit the scale on the number at 185 while Chris Leben was at 186. ... Taylor is also fighting on the main card against another welterweight contender in Chris Lytle. They each weighed in at 170. ... According to reports, Bisping, a Liverpool native, will be one of the two opposing coaches for The Ultimate Fighter: U.S. vs. U.K. The ninth season will feature fighters from each country, with Bisping the coach for England as expected.