411 MMA Interviews: Marcus Davis
Posted by Jeffrey Harris on 11.18.2009
Marcus Davis checks in with 411mania for an exclusive interview before his fight with Ben Saunders. Davis speaks on his true feelings for Dan Hardy, his UFC career, and much more.
Marcus Davis (21-6 MMA; 8-3 UFC) is set to take on Ben Saunders (7-1-2 MMA; 3-1 UFC) this Saturday in a welterweight showdown November 21 at UFC 106. Davis bouts will be one of the fights on the preliminary card guaranteed to be broadcast live and free on Spike TV before the main PPV card goes on the air. Coming off a split decision loss to UFC welterweight title contender, Dan Hardy, at UFC 99, Davis is anxious to prove that he's revamped his game and to have another exciting fight. The Maine native was in Las Vegas, taking a break from his weight cutting and final preparations for his bout on Saturday to speak with 411mania for an exclusive interview:
Jeffrey Harris: So how has training been going and where are you right now?
Marcus Davis: Right now I'm Vegas, here just doing the final stuff leading up to the event; interviews, video shoots, photo shoots, and stuff like that. Training camp couldn't have gone better. It was the best training camp that I've ever had in my entire professional career. I have no injuries and camp was as smooth as possible and I'm excited to show the Marcus Davis 2.0 version, the revamped version of where I was before. I think in this fight you'll see I've been able to bring back some things from the past that I had that I kind of walked away from for a while and concentrated on other things so much because of how complex the MMA game is and try to develop and add more skills while now I think they've all come together and I'm going to show it Saturday night.
JH: What weight are you at now and are you doing your weight cutting?
MD: Right now I'm at 183 lbs so that's not bad at all. I'm 12 lbs away. Normally, I'm at this time 185, so it's not going to be an issue at all. My weight is perfect. It's right where it needs to be for this time at this day . . . I've never not made weight in my professional career.
JH: It seems to be happening a lot lately where some guys at welterweight and other weight classes seem to not be getting the science of weight cutting down. Why do you think that is?
MD: Well, I mean for a lot these guys, they're just fighting way, way above where they should be, you know? A lot of these are just too big to try and make 170 and so they're killing themselves to do it just to have that extra whatever. That extra maybe weight, size, strength, whatever that advantage that their chasing. They're just too big for the division.
JH: Since your fight this weekend will be on the Spike TV UFC 106 prelims broadcast, potentially more viewers could be watching your fight with Ben Saunders than the people that are actually watching the PPV. So does that spice things up or raise the stakes a little bit in your mind to be impressive in this fight and win impressively?
MD: Yeah. It's always great when my fights can be showed on TV, on live cable access TV rather than PPV. I'm going to have a much broader ranged audience and it could be potential sponsors or whoever watching the fight looking at each individual fighter saying who do you like to pick up next and what not. Plus, the sponsors I have right now have to be thrilled with the fact that I'm going to be reaching out to a lot more people with their gear on me.
JH: You are coming off of a loss to Dan Hardy. Ben Saunders is coming off of a loss to Mike Swick. Do you have any thoughts on Ben Saunders? Have you looked at his fights and how do you think you match up with him?
MD: Well, I think Ben is a really good guy. We're definitely friendly with each other. This is not some kind of grudge match or anything even close to that. I respect him as a person. As a fighter, he's an honorable guy, but Saturday night, there can only be one winner and that's got to be me. And as far as how I match up with him, I think I match up really well. I think that his advantages are height and reach. He's got that decent Muay Thai clinch, and his awkwardness which is that he can fight right and left handed. Outside of that, I think I beat him on all the other points. I mean, my striking is much more powerful. I'm going to be unbelievably faster than him. People aren't going to believe how I'm going to be compared to how I have been in the past. And I think that the big thing here is that the speed of my hands and my footwork will negate his reach advantage. Reach is only good when you have good timing, but with my footwork that I've had back in my boxing days and I've shown every now and then here in the UFC, it's really going to make the difference in this fight.
JH: It's been an interesting year for you. You started out the year with that tremendous fight with Chris Lytle at UFC 93 in Ireland, the homeland of your family. Then you went to Germany and you had that close fight with Dan Hardy, you lost by split decision. And now you're back in the US all in the same year, I think this is your first fight in the US in like --
MD: Two years.
JH: So what's that like to be hopping to Ireland, to Germany, and now back in the US after all this time?
MD: Feels great. I mean, I'm traveling, I get to see the world, and I'm excited to fight back in the US. It's been a while. I'll go back over there the next time that they go, I'm sure I'll be invited over there. And that's what I'll do. I'll go over there. That's what I do. That's my job. My job is to get on the plane and go where ever the UFC tells me to go and try to beat guys up. That's my job and I love it.
JH: How amazing was it to be fighting Dan Hardy in Germany, and the German fans are chanting "USA" for you?
MD: Yeah man, it's awesome. Any time you can go anywhere, and for me, to go overseas and go where ever, I'm always the road warrior guy, you know? There's never really been a fight in Maine or really in New England. I mean obviously it's been a long time since they went to Connecticut. So, I'm always the bad guy on the road, so anytime I get embraced and fans cheer for me far away from home, it's nice.
JH: A very short while ago, Maine formed an MMA authority, so MMA is now legal and can be regulated in Maine where they can hopefully start having events there in 2010.
MD: Yeah, I was actually a huge part of that. I'm the one that went and spoke on the bill. I went to the state house and spoke in front of all the representatives to get the bill through. So, I was there and I was supposed to be actually in the office when the governor when he signed it, but due to a real busy schedule, and getting ready for fights and stuff like that, I wasn't able to. But, I'm really pumped about that. It's awesome that we got it legalized and passed through, and I'm looking forward possibly fighting in front of my hometown fans and when I'm done fighting, possibly promoting fights up there.
"I would love to bury the hatchet. I'd like to bury it right in his freaking head."
JH: I remember after you won your fight with Paul Kelly, you were very outspoken about making it known you wanted to fight in Ireland. So if all goes well with Ben Saunders, maybe you can hint to Dana and Joe you want to fight in Maine next year? MD: Oh I have. I've told everybody here that's what I'd like to do before I hang up the gloves, I got to fight in not only where my family's from, but where I was brought up.
JH: After your loss to Dan Hardy, Hardy was able to use that win in order to springboard himself into welterweight title contendership. Now that he's beaten Mike Swick, it looks like he has a shot at facing Georges St. Pierre for the title. Do you have any thoughts on that? Have you buried the hatchet with Dan Hardy, or would you still like to fight him again in the near future?
MD: I would love to bury the hatchet. I'd like to bury it right in his freaking head. That's where I'd like to bury the hatchet. But what's great about this is that if he fights GSP, GSP is just going to slaughter that kid. That kid is tailor, tailor made for Georges St. Pierre. So, Georges St. Pierre will take him down with ease and will just ground and pound the living bejesus out of that kid. And then he sends him back to the gate, and that's where I'll be waiting, at that gate. So that fight will happen again. Davis/Hardy will happen again and I'm looking forward to it. That's the fight that I want and I got to get through Ben Saunders and whoever else they put in my way while he's dealing with Georges St. Pierre, actually while Georges St. Pierre deals with him. And then I'll be biting at the bit trying to get that fight.
JH: Not to look past Ben Saunders, but how would you feel about a rematch with Mike Swick? I know you mentioned once that you were not 100% for your fight with Swick.
MD: Right.
JH: And you were on a huge winning streak going into that fight. Would you like to fight Swick again?
MD: Sure. That's what we do. We're fighters, and whatever the UFC says, "Hey. This is the fight we're looking at," that's what you do. Those are the fights you take. Any time you also get the opportunity to get -- to redeem yourself after having lost, that's also a huge opportunity, so there's that Swick fight there. Now that they've got Phil Baroni, the internet and the amount of e-mails that I get from people who just say that they want to see me fight Phil Baroni, they want to see us just stand up and bang it out, I get that all the time. So that's another one. I know the guys on MMA.tv have been putting together a petition a while ago that said petition to have Marcus Davis fight Phil Baroni or something like that because they wanted it rather than the Amir Sadollah fight. So I don't know. We'll just see whatever the UFC says after this fight, we'll see what happens, that's where I'll go.
JH: I'm a pro-wrestling fan, and one of the greatest things I've ever seen was seeing Samoa Joe train with you for his match with Kurt Angle at TNA Lockdown 2008.
MD: Great.
JH: Seeing you be Joe's second, that was amazing television and that was some of the best work TNA's ever done. What did you think of Samoa Joe and getting involved a little bit in the sports entertainment world?
MD: It was fun. I enjoyed it. I had a lot of fun. All the guys from TNA are all great. I actually saw them, they were doing a show out in England when I was there one time, and I hooked up with them at the airport so it was kind of cool. Samoa Joe is awesome. He's really funny. The guy is just a comedian and I hung out with him, and actually the night with him and Kurt Angle at the Lockdown PPV we were all hanging out in the cafeteria eating and talking and stuff when we went out and did that so it was awesome. They were all good guys.
JH: Did you see Frank Trigg causing trouble over there too?
MD: Yeah, Frank Trigg and I were together most of the time too. Frank and I are good buddies. He's funny. I actually went out in Vegas and went to do his show with the guys, the radio show out there. They're all good people. I like all those guys a lot.
JH: Going back to your time on The Ultimate Fighter series, you didn't have a lot of great success on that show.
MD: Right.
JH: On the show, you kind of gave the impression that maybe it was time for you to retire and hang it up. What kept you going and what made you ultimately decide to stay at it in MMA?
MD: I felt as though as I was an old dog trying to learn new tricks. It was going to be too hard. It's going to be too much. With the support of my kids and my family telling me to go for it, the support of who turned out to be one of my best friends, my head coach Garth Crane . . . Jorge Gurgel pushed me saying, "Hey dude, you can't quit. You can't do that. You've got to stay in it." So I had a lot of support from everybody that was close to me telling me to do it and just put my whole heart in it. So that's what I did. I actually flew out and stayed with Jorge for a while, worked on my ground game. Jorge worked with me for the fights with Forrest Petz, Shonie Carter. I trained only actually with Jorge Gurgel for the Pete Spratt fight, so he's here with me right now. He's actually sitting in the bed next to me, in a separate bed next to me *laughs* (Jorge Gurgel can be heard laughing and noting that it's a separate bed in the background).
JH: I remember seeing a previous interview with you, where you mentioned that after being divorced twice you mentioned having just bought a second house and paying off your daughter's college tuition. So I'm not trying to make any assumptions about your salary or anything, but I imagine with you having said that you do OK for yourself fighting in the UFC and MMA?
MD: Oh yeah. Life is good. I have four kids, and I've got a nice, beautiful home. My daughter still hasn't had to take on a lone. She's second year college, paid for everything, bought her a car, give her a monthly stipend. I also pay for my other three children who live with me. They go to a private school. I'm doing it all for them, you know? The money I've got from fighting has been able to put them in a great position to succeed in life and they get all the toys. Nice clothes. They've got the big TVs and all the video games. We've got the giant trampoline and all that crap, *laughs* we've got tents and ball pits and everything at my house man. It's like an amusement park. It's all for them.
"I have no injuries and camp was as smooth as possible and I'm excited to show the Marcus Davis 2.0 version, the revamped version of where I was before."
JH: A lot of fans seem to mouth off and act like they really know what fighters are paid and what they should be paid. I think the fighters and their managers and their agents should worry about that.
MD: Yeah, exactly. I'm very happy with what I'm compensated, and I'm very happy with the life that I have and the UFC has been nothing but good to me, you know, they take care of their fighters. When you have fighters that are making ridiculous amounts of money and then saying they're not making that money or for whatever reasons, I don't know what to say to that. They're the ones that got to look at themselves and say, "How much is enough?" I mean how much do you really, really need to have a good, decent life and make your family happy? I'm happy with my life.
JH: What do you like to do in your spare time away from fighting and training?
MD: I enjoy playing with my kids and stuff. I enjoy doing stuff with them. With my son, we like to go to movies together. He's a big game guy so we have those Xbox 360's and the PS3's and stuff all through our house so we connect with that. We'll play some games together. We like to do lots of outdoor activity stuff like going to -- during the summers I rented a condo out on the lake and we took the kids and stayed out there for a week and did a lot of stuff outdoors. And then I rented another condo down on Old Orchard Beach and stayed on the beach and we went to all the water slides and did all that stuff. So we're a regular family. I don't have any big things that I do like some guys are hunters or whatever they do to stay busy. I'm already busy man. When I'm not fighting or running my gyms, I have two gyms, when I'm not doing that stuff or working with my fighters, I'm just spending my time with my kids. I'm getting quality time with my children and stuff and that's what I like to do.
JH: Do you like to play as yourself in UFC Undisputed?
MD: I haven't yet. We put the game in and then I watched it a little bit. And my son was telling me -- at first my son played with me and was beating everybody with me, and then he made his own character and he tells me every day when he's beating me up, so that's just the nature of things I guess. So we don't play that one. When it's he and I, we play like first person shooter games, like that kind of stuff. We played that Left 4 Dead, not the new one but the other one a little while back, ODST, the Halo and all that stuff. We've been playing that stuff, and now we got you know, the new . . . not Medal of Honor . . . help me out here . . .
JH: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare?
MD: Call of Duty, yeah yeah yeah, so we played Modern Warfare the last time it came out and now we're going to start doing that and the new Left 4 dead, we'll play that too.
JH: Has Jakks talked to you yet about making your action figure?
MD: No, I haven't heard anything about that.
JH: I think you deserve your own action figure with all you've done in the UFC and all your experience and all your great fights, you need to get your own action figure sooner or later. Now that you got a video game appearance, you need an action figure.
MD: Yeah that would be awesome man because now, like you said, I've been able to fight on PPV. I've been able to fight on TV. I've been able to be on a reality show. I've been on a video game. I was on TNA wrestling. I've got my own Topps baseball cards. So I guess the natural progression now is that I need the Marcus Davis "Irish Hand Grenade" action figure with like judo handgrip or the karate handgrip or whatever. It'd be awesome.
JH: After the Dan Hardy fight, some fans were critical saying you should've at least shook his hand. Do you feel maybe did you go too far not doing that, or did you do the right thing after that fight?
MD: No. There was no way I was going shake his hand after that fight. I did in the back room when he came into my dressing room, I shook his hand. There was no way I was going to shake his hand on public TV just because of all that douche bag did, you know the things that he said. He crossed a line and he knows he did. He knows he took it too far, and anybody that disagrees is a moron because when you have somebody out there that's putting those kind of things out there, the photos and doing that crap and making the comments that he made knowing that I have small children, knowing that my kids all go to a Christian school, is not cool. I haven't let it go. I'm not going to let it go, and I'm just going to use that as motivation and my focus is getting that fight again. And guaranteed, *guaranteed*, the next time I fight him it's not going to look anything like that last fight.
JH: So who have you been training with for this fight and who is getting you ready for this fight?
MD: Well, at home when I'm in Bangor, I was working with Garth Crane. He's my strength, conditioning, and wrestling coach and been working with me on all my speed training, developed me, got me ready to go back down to Sityondtong and down there I had Mark Dellagrotte putting the plan together, working on the pads, telling me, coaching me what I should be doing. Jorge Gurgel working with me on the ground, he watched--knows Ben Saunders style on the ground and he gave me some offensive and defensive techniques to use on the ground, worked with him a lot. Kevin Kearns again and all the team of Sityondtong, you know all the guys that we got down there: Rick Hahn, a judo Olympian who is now an undefeated fighter, I was working with him; Greg Rebello, people will know that name seeing because there's a rumor that he got picked up on some kind of reality TV show; there's a lot of really tough, good guys down there and I have a lot of -- it's a Muay Thai camp -- so I have these tall guys trying to use the Thai clinch and stuff like that while we're sparring and it was a really successful camp.
JH: For the Chris Lytle fight, you guys said you wanted to just stand up and bang and throw the whole time and not go for takedowns. Do you have an idea where you want to take Ben Saunders for this fight without giving up your plan or anything?
MD: Yeah, you know I'm looking at keeping this fight standing and finishing it on my feet. That's what I want to do. I want to just go out there and I just want to beat him up. I think that when we hit the ground, he has more opportunity of holding on to me and doing like what he did to Swick at the beginning of their fight, kind of just hanging on and making it a boring. I don't want a boring fight. I want to go out there and want to see some fireworks and I want to finish it in impressive fashion.
JH: Having been married twice, do you think about maybe ever getting married again or are you more focused on fighting and your kids right now?
MD: I'm more focused on my fighting. Right now, you know, honestly I have no interest in ever getting married or anything like that. I just want to deal with my career and watch my kids succeed and if I'm 40-something and want to get married again, maybe I will, but I've already done it twice, wasn't really my thing, I'm not so good at being a husband I guess so I'll stick to being a fighter. I'm a better fighter than I was a husband.
*Jorge Gurgel says something in the background.*
MD: Jorgie says that I'm a good friend too.
JH: Not to put a deadline on it, how much longer do you see yourself fighting?
MD: I'm going to fight as long as my body holds up. If I start becoming retarded and I can't move the same way, then it's time to hang it up. But right now isn't really the time for me to even be thinking about it or talk about it because I'm just getting better. I mean, it's not like I'm taking a step back at all. I'm constantly getting better, and the guy that's now going to fight for the title, going to fight the champion of this division, basically screwed or was able to screw me in a decision. So, why should I give it up now or even think about that? I think now is the time for me really put my nose to the grinder, improve in the areas I want to improve on, and keep developing the already set skills that I have and make another mad dog run for this.
JH: Are there any sponsors or people you would like to thank?
MD: The only people I want to thank are everyone in the team helping me get ready: Garth Crane, Jorge Gurgel, Mark DellaGrotte always, Kevin Kearns; my manager Joe Cavallaro and then my agent, Dean Albrecht; everybody for being behind me and helping me get through this camp the way it has gone.
JH: Thank you so much and good luck with your fight.
MD: Thanks man, I appreciate it.
Thank you to Marcus Davis for taking the time to speak with us. Remember to check out 411mania.com/mma for our exclusive live play-by-play coverage of UFC 106 which will be the best and quickest live PPV coverage of the event on the web. Also, you can find us easier by bookmarking us to your favorite places or saving us as your homepage to get your quickest fix on MMA, wrestling, boxing, videogames, movies, entertainment, and politics. You can also follow 411mania on Twitter:
