SEATTLE — Many 16-year-old high school students aren’t sure what they’re going to do after graduation, let alone how they intend to spend the rest of their lives. Unlike his peers, Rory MacDonald has known what he wanted to be when he grew up from the time he was 14 years old.
That’s when MacDonald first walked into David Lea’s Toshido Mixed Martial Arts Academy in Kelowna, B.C.
“He was a real small kid when he started, totally unassuming,” recalls Lea of the now 23-year-old welterweight’s arrival at the gym. “But he was one of those kids where he was the first one to show up and the last one to leave, and that just never changed. That was kind of the beginning of our journey together.
“Within a few months, even at 14, he wanted to come and start training with the pro team, training with the adults, and they didn’t know what to do with him. Here was this 14-year-old kid who just kept showing up. I said, ‘Well, he wants to train.’ No one really took it too easy on him, eventually he started fighting back, and eventually everyone started running from him.”
MacDonald was 16 when he started his professional career. Seven years later, he’s considered the future of the UFC welterweight division and one of the brightest young talents in the sport. His record stands at 13-1, and he’s a day away from stepping into the cage with BJ Penn in a bout that has the MMA community buzzing.
It might come as a surprise to some that MacDonald seems unaffected by the hype and interest in his fight this weekend. While his showdown with Penn has been much discussed in the media, and stands as the fight people are most looking forward to on Saturday night, the 23-year-old refuses to get caught up in the moment.
After all, MacDonald has known he would end up in this position back for quite some time.
“Probably after my second fight — not in the UFC, just my second pro fight in general,” answered the measured and confident MacDonald when asked when he started to believe he could have a successful career as a professional mixed martial artist. “I felt the fight went really well, and by 16 years old I was already fighting at a really high skill level, and I had beaten someone with a lot more experience and a higher age than me; he was in his mid-20s.
“At that point, I was really happy with how the fight went, and I was pretty much sure I could do anything I really wanted in this sport if time allowed it.”
Some people mistakenly read responses like that as cockiness, and perceive MacDonald as egotistical, choosing to spin the answers he’s given in regards to his match-up with Penn as disrespectful comments of a young fighter looking to make his name off of the two-time former champion.
But there is a difference between being full of yourself and being intensely driven, knowing that you’ve committed every day for the last seven years to doing something special in this sport.
“If you’re going to do something, you might as well believe in it, and do something 100 per cent. I don’t have any doubts in my abilities or myself. I believe I can do something that’s never been done before in this sport, and that’s the goal.”
It’s that focus and drive that Lea says has separated MacDonald from the pack from the beginning, and will continue to help him as he works towards reaching his goal of being a UFC champion.
“Rory’s not the most talented guy that’s ever come through the gym. He has a lot of natural talent, but more importantly than that, he has all the work ethic and the right mentality to back it up,” Lea said. “That’s the key. Even at 16, he had better work ethic and more of a mature outlook on what it takes to be a high-level fighter than 99 per cent of the people I’ve ever met. That was what has really separated him.”
Lea laughs as he recalls the single-minded focus MacDonald had towards training and getting better when everyone else his age was busy being easily distracted.
“When Rory really sets his mind to something, nothing gets in his way. There are no excuses, there’s no BS, and no `I’ve got to take this girl out for her birthday dinner.’ He’s one of those guys where nothing comes before training. I’ve never had anyone else like that — that kind of dedication and focus on the task at hand, and that’s what really separated him. When he made up his mind that he was going to fight in the UFC, that was it. Nothing got in the way of that.”
MacDonald now lives in Montreal, and trains full-time at the Tristar Gym under the guidance of Firas Zahabi, who has been impressed by the way his young charge has continued to grow, both as a fighter and as a professional.
“I’ve seen him develop everywhere, but especially his boxing and his wrestling have really taken off,” offered the highly respected head coach. “He was a handful in jiu-jitsu, but he was still growing into his stand-up style. It takes time to find your style that you like to use standing; even the most experienced guys are always fine-tuning. He’s so young that he’s still finding and exploring his stand-up style, and I think at Tristar he started finding that a little more.
“But it’s not just techniques that he’s picking up,” Zahabi continued. “He’s still picking up a lot of new ways to do things, but also a lot of the pearls of wisdom about how to carry yourself, how to go about your business. Those things affect your performance in the gym, your performance on fight night, so I think he’s picking that up from the older guys and the guys that have been around, and trying to avoid the pitfalls they went through.”
Already positioned within arm’s reach of title contention, it would be easy for MacDonald to ease off the gas, embrace his burgeoning stardom, and be satisfied with what he’s accomplished. It has happened with talented fighters before him, and it will surely happen with talented fighters after him as well, but don’t bet on it happening with MacDonald because as far as he’s concerned, what we’ve seen so far is just the tip of the iceberg.
“I think I’ve got at least a few years before I hit my peak potential. I imagine having a long career, and in this sport, you can never really stop growing technically. I’m still very young, so I have a lot of maturing to do physically still, so I’m nowhere near my potential. It’s going to be an exciting next few years.”
