Chuck Mindenhall from UFC.com writes about Maine native, Marcus Davis, a fighter who has been very successful versus UK fighters in their home arenas:
When Britain can’t beat Marcus Davis, that’s when “Britain Adopts Marcus Davis.” Or at least that’s what the UK Sun’s headline read after Marcus Davis KO’d Liverpool’s Jason Tan in Belfast, Ireland, at UFC 72, submitted Walsall’s Paul Taylor in UFC 75 at the O2 Arena, and knocked out London-based Jess Liaudin at UFC 80 in Newcastle. This Saturday, Davis will hop the pond for the fourth time in as many fights to take on Mike “Quick” Swick at UFC 85 in London, in what has finally become friendly confines for the Maine native.
“Swick’s going into my backyard,” Davis says, “because I’ve already been there, I’ve fought there—I’m very comfortable there. Not that I’m thinking that’s going to affect him. I mean, it’s never affected me to go into anyone’s back yard, and I’ve done it a lot. I’ve always been the bad guy. I fought on a Marine base [against Shonie Carter] and he was a Marine. I fought Pete Spratt in Houston, he was from Houston. I fought Paul Taylor in London, he was from England. I’ve always fought guys in their hometowns, and I’ve always beaten them. But Swick’s going over there, and he’s going to be the outsider.”
Whether or not his adopted hometown fans will come to his aid, one thing that seems inevitable is that pairing Mike “Quick” Swick and Marcus “The Irish Hand Grenade” Davis will make for a super-charged war with plenty of immediate action. In all three of the aforementioned overseas fights, Davis won in the first round. In 2007 alone, Davis stole the show by earning four post-fight bonuses for knockout, submission and fight of the night. Of his eleven straight victories dating back to April of 2006, only two of those fights have gone the distance, and eight of them never made it past the opening round. In other words, Davis works fast. One might say faster than Quick, lately.
And there’s also this: though he’s one of the best strikers in the game, he ain’t a boxer any more, either. Improbably, at least for anybody who believes you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, more than half of Davis’ recent wins have come via submissions. The boxer with the pugilist’s brow who once dubbed himself the Nostradamus of MMA because he saw the potential of the sport and risked “going penniless” to be a part of it, has learned discipline. Joe Stevenson taught Davis that the sprawl and brawl approach wasn’t enough in MMA, and after rehabbing a separated AC joint suffered in that 2005 bout, the 34-year-old Davis reinvented himself completely. Well, almost completely.
“Back then, I just avoided the takedown as much as I could and I just knocked guys out standing up. But the problem with that is that when you’re afraid to go to the ground, you can’t commit to those punches because you don’t want to get close enough. After The Ultimate Fighter show, what I learned was that if I was going to fight in MMA, I needed to become an MMA fighter. I actually spent six months just doing nothing but Jiu-Jitsu, no striking. I didn’t hit anything for about six months, not one punch, and that was hard for me to do.”
How hard? Well, considering that Davis had fought in over 100 boxing, kickboxing, K-1 and MMA fights before his baptism in ground warfare, not striking was probably like asking Lakers star Kobe Bryant not to shoot. But then again, nothing is quite as it seems with Davis, who has made a career out of turning the tables on fate. One need only to look at back to UFC 75 for the Cliffs Notes, to see the beating he was taking at the hands of Paul Taylor before coming over the Brit like a hallucination and submitting him via armbar. But if it weren’t for his the insistence of his loved ones, Davis may have walked away from MMA in the wake of TUF 2, when it seemed he was washed up and not cut out of the right cloth.
“I talked to my mother and my family when I decided to retire, and they said ‘you can’t do anything else because you’re a fighter, and no matter what you’ve got to be involved in the fight game.’ It was something I had to think about for a while and I came to the realization, you know what—I don’t want to do anything else. I want to fight and I want to fight until I physically can’t do it anymore. And that’s what I’m going to do.”
If his training for Swick is any indication, Davis might hang around for a long time. While training in Lynnfield, Massachusetts, at one point he tipped the scales at 193 pounds “of muscle,” and was benching 355lbs, while squatting 400lbs.
“I know everybody says the same crap, but this is by far the strongest I’ve ever been. The last time I sparred with Jorge Rivera, all Jorge could say, over and over, was ‘I can’t believe how friggin’ strong you are—I’ve never even met 205s that are as strong as you are.’ This is the strongest I’ve been.”
Against Swick, Davis will be counting on his resiliency and the same blue-flame intensity that has bolted him through the ranks as a contender. Though he acknowledges that Swick has fast hands, power and submission skills—those trademark “swickotines”—he suspects his power will win out.
“What I’m doing is, I’m betting that my chin holds up to what he has to dish out on me, and that his chin doesn’t hold up to what I can throw. If Mike is at all faster than me, it’s by just a little little bit. It’s not like he’s way faster than I am. He looked really fast and quick when he fought 185 pounders. He didn’t look very fast when he fought Josh Burkman. I’m much faster than Josh Burkman as far as my hands go. And I’m telling you, I’m going to be stronger than him . . . with him coming down to 170 and me being a natural 170-pound fighter, I’m going to be stronger, I’m going to hit harder and I’ve got the more pure technique as far as the hands go.”
But perhaps the next best thing to winning for Davis (and the single greatest thing from a spectator’s standpoint) is that he put on a memorable—nay, legendary—fight. It doesn’t have to be about belts and titles; it just has to be about two guys giving it their all.
“I always say this, I want to have the best fight—a fight that people will remember as one of the greatest fights ever. You know, like Hagler/Hearns, something like that, where people will say, ‘that was one of the best fights I ever saw in my life.’”
With two explosive fighters like these squaring off in front of his surrogate home fans, this could be the one.
Tags: Marcus Davis, UFC 85
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