THE CANADIAN PRESS
Rob MacDonald has quit his job, left friends and family and moved to an unfamiliar city in another country. And he couldn’t be happier.
The former Toronto police officer has relocated to Salt Lake City to pursue his mixed martial arts fighting career. The first test of his new circumstances comes March 29 when he takes on California light-heavyweight Hector (Sick Dog) Ramirez at Hardcore Championship Fighting’s Crow’s Nest card in Gatineau, Que.
"It’s really the best time of my life, for a lot of reasons," MacDonald told The Canadian Press. "I’ve got everything now that I’ve been looking for."
But it hasn’t been easy. MacDonald has battled injuries, divorce and the death of his father. And he struggled to make it as an elite athlete while working long, unpredictable, draining shifts as a police officer.
"It’s been a long hard journey," MacDonald conceded.
The 29-year-old fighter known as Maximus handed in his Toronto police gun and badge in late January to take up a position with Gym Jones, an elite gym in Utah that helped the cast of the film "300" get buff.
While at peace with his decision to quit, he speaks proudly of his police work. "It taught me a lot about being a good person and it really helped me grow up as a man as well."
But policing and training at an elite level just didn’t mix.
"You know people don’t give the cops in Toronto enough credit," he said. "A lot of guys work really really really hard. You give up a big part of your life. It takes its toll on your family, it takes a toll on your life, your nutrition, your health, everything. Working that hard in a job like that it’s very hard to be No. 1 (as an athlete)."
The chiselled six-foot-three 230-pounder — who cuts down to 205 to fight — says all the elements are now in place to succeed in MMA.
"Now it’s time to make a run at this. I’m the first person to admit I guess I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life… . I’ve been hard-headed. I’ve been ignorant. I’ve been stubborn. I’ve made every mistake there is to make as a person, as a boyfriend, as a friend, as a son, as a brother. I’ve done things wrong.
"Anyone who’s going to tell you they’re perfect is not. I don’t want to talk to a person like that."
MacDonald is 5-2 as a fighter, including 1-2 in the UFC. Like many, his road to the UFC came through "The Ultimate Fighter" reality TV show.
He quit his job with Peel Regional Police to appear on the show, which aired in 2005. MacDonald exited on the third episode, a loser to Brad Imes. To make matters worse, he was portrayed as a whiner in the final edit.
As it turned out, MacDonald was fighting with an injury. He left Las Vegas with a surgically repaired shoulder, no job and $40,000 in school debts.
He gradually rebuilt his life, rehabbing the shoulder, signing on with Toronto police and continuing to fight in the UFC, with losses to Jason Lambert and Eric Schafer sandwiched around a win over Kris Rotharmel.
His last UFC outing was the Schafer loss, a first-round submission at UFC 62 in August 2006. MacDonald admits his preparation for the fight was not ideal, given the demands in his time with the police. A member of an anti-gang/violence unit, MacDonald was hard at work during the Caribana festival.
Fighting at the same time "just wasn’t a smart thing to do," he said. "There was too much on my plate."
A bad relationship didn’t help in the leadup to the Schafer bout. "My head just wasn’t into that fight. And I took it anyway and it turned out bad for me."
On a more positive note, MacDonald said the loss woke him up to the need to work on his jiu-jitsu. "I guess I had a false sense of security after I armbarred Kris Rotharmel."
He spent the next 18 months working on his jiu-jitsu with Toronto coach and mentor Shah Franco. While he did some work on his standup, he essentially put wrestling on the backburner while trying to reinvent himself as a fighter. MacDonald could always throw kicks and punches, but he had a problem closing the distance to his opponent and transitioning to those strikes.
Confident in his ground progress, MacDonald returned to the cage last December to face Ring of Fire light-heavyweight champion Eliot Marshall, a jiu-jitsu black belt under Renzo Gracie who has won the Pan American championships, captured medals at the BJJ World Championships and has nine Grappler’s Quest Championships.
"I thought that was be a good test for me in terms of `OK this is a guy that traditionally I’ve had a hard time with.’ I got submitted by Jason Lambert, I got submitted by Eric Schafer. Let’s fight another great jits (jiu-jitsu) guy and see how far I’ve come."
Adding to the test was the fact the fight was in Marshall’s backyard, at altitude in Broomfield, Colo.
MacDonald used his standup successfully against Marshall, closing the distance, getting into a clinch and then throwing him down. The fight ended when he avoided a leg takedown and administered a knee to the head and uppercut.
"It went really well. It’s probably the best fight I’ve ever had," said MacDonald, who is quick to share the success with his inner circle of friends and trainers.
."When I won that title, they all came in the ring with me. We all kind of celebrate together. That’s the best feeling you can ever ask for right there… . A lot of people look at MMA as an individual sport, it really isn’t. … When you do something in MMA, it’s not just you, you’re an extension of your trainer, your friends, your family, your girlfriend, your support network.
"I don’t have a lot of money. I don’t know how to pay back the people who have put so much work into me," he added. "And the way I guess as a fighter that you pay people back is by performing back."
But MacDonald is also realistic about the result in a sport where anything can happen.
"Eliot’s a great great fighter. I don’t know if we fought again, I don’t know if I could duplicate what I did to him."
MacDonald points to being mentally prepared — and a sense of confidence by virtue of having upgraded his ground game. No longer worried about doing something that might end up with him being on his ground, MacDonald says his whole game has improved.
He will need all of that and more against Ramirez, a hard-nosed fighter who lost to Forrest Griffin at UFC 72 and James Irvin at UFC 65.
MacDonald believes he has the edge in Franco and Toronto boxing coach Brian Bynoe, sports psychologist Brian Cain and the crew at Gym Jones, led by founders Mark and Lisa Twight. He is dividing his time between Toronto and Salt Lake City in preparing for the Ramirez fight.
He made the Gym Jones connection after meeting Lisa Twight through a friend, who was an assistant movie director. Twight was training two of the actors. Interested in jiu-jitsu, she wanted to come to a club in Toronto and MacDonald was her link.
The two started training together.
"I didn’t think my conditioning needed any work," MacDonald said. "It was an eye-opening experience with her. I mean after our first workout I couldn’t walk for five days. I couldn’t train. I was destroyed, just destroyed physically. That kind of taught me that there’s a whole world out there that I guess I was ignorant to.
"Everyone gets set in their patterns and becomes ignorant. I’m really lucky at 29 that I’ve discovered all this now while there’s still time to turn it around. She really opened my eyes to a lot of new things, a lot of new training methodologies and really to my potential."
MacDonald says he continues to benefit from working alongside Twight and husband Mark, a noted extreme mountaineer.
"I’m leaner, more muscular, faster, more explosive, stronger."
Psychologist Cain says MacDonald is also mentally tougher.
"Rob is a very gifted athlete. A lot of athletes … they think what is mental toughness and they all think mental toughness is working harder. Well mental toughness is not working harder, it’s working smarter and it’s about identifying well how did I lose confidence, when I lose a fight, do I learn why I lost the fight and what I need to do to be better the next time … Rob has now found out how to do those things."
March 29 will help tell the tale.
