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UFC 113: Marcus Davis finds himself in a win-or-go-home situation
By Zach Arnold | May 5, 2010
Quietly, Marcus Davis is fighting on this weekend’s UFC 113 Montreal card — and his job is perhaps on the line, too.
Publicly, an accurate reason stated for why his job might be on the line has to do with his fight record in his last five UFC fights: loss against Mike Swick (decision), win against Paul Kelly (submission), win against Chris Lytle (decision), loss against Dan Hardy (decision), and loss against Ben Saunders (KO).
“It definitely weighs heavily on me,” Davis said in an interview with Sherdog last week. “You just don’t know if you’re going to keep your job or not and you know there are guys that have lost a lot of fights and continue to keep their jobs, you know, but… you know guys like Clay Guida for a while there, man, he was losing so many fights but you know he’s an exciting fighter and he puts on good shows and people like to watch him fight. Same thing, you know, Chris Lytle, my buddy Chris, he went on some string but you know Chris lets it all hang out, he bangs it out, so there are guys that keep their job who are that way but you just don’t know with the UFC. Sometimes UFC will just sit a fighter down and say, “You know, listen, we got to release you for a little while. Go out and win some fights and we’ll bring you back.” So you know I don’t want that to happen so I got to go out there and I don’t just got to win but I got to win big and show that you know I want to stay you know employed especially nowadays with the way it is now.”
His big test this weekend on the UFC 113 under card is against veteran fighter Jonathan Goulet, who hasn’t fought in the last 16 months. Let Mr. Davis give you a short preview of coming attractions.
“I’ve worked out with Jonathan Goulet before and I’m not basing anything on that workout and obviously on paper that’s the way it looks and in my head that’s the way it looks but I’m not taking any chances and I don’t think it takes rocket science to think of what you know my fight plan’s going to be and what his fight plan’s going to be and yeah, this fight could be very well be over quickly or it could end up being a long, tedious fight. You know I’m hoping for a quick fight.”
He better hope for a quick fight and he better hope that he is on the winning end of it as well. Goulet is fighting in his backyard in Montreal and the atmosphere is going to be very strong in his favor. As Davis admitted in the Sherdog interview, he has issues sometimes with over thinking and being too hesitant in the cage.
“It’s got to be one of those [fights] where I don’t wait, I can’t wait for him to do something, I got to go out there and I got to make sure to take control of that Octagon immediately and I dictate the pace that I make him fight my fight and I don’t want to get wrapped up and you know what he’s doing and what the crowd’s doing because obviously they’re going to be screaming, ‘Kill the Irish guy!’ or ‘Kill the American!’
“I’m not going to base, I can’t, if I base everything off of what I think Jonathan’s going to do and I go in there and I wait for it to happen and it doesn’t happen, then I’m seeing all the opportunities to capitalize or create opportunity for myself and I think that fighters tend to do it and when fighters go in and they say oh the guy’s going to shoot and they wait for him to shoot, they lose the opportunity to you know punch a hole in the guy, so that’s not what I’m going to do. I’m going to go out there, I’m going to react to the situation at hand, and you know like I keep saying this fight’s going to be about me using footwork, sharp shooting, and throwing hard, heavy heavy punches and then you know if I get him hurt, jump on him and take him out or it’s going to be you him continuously trying to shoot and take me down and kind of grinding out a long fight like that with me just defending take-downs and him trying to keep on my back, trying to cut me.
“I got to be aggressive and I got to be first. In the case of like fighting a Dan Hardy, you got to be aggressive and got to be first whereas I did that, I completely went after and tried to close the distance and I think it was a wrong decision on the Saunders fight so that wouldn’t have been a fight that I shouldn’t have done that, I should have made him, moved around, made him come to me and then had done the in-and-out and my angles and stuff to carry that fight longer. So, yeah, it always depends on who you’re fighting and in this fight with Jonathan Goulet from what I’ve seen and what I’ve watched, he’s usually pretty aggressive and he comes out and he comes out pretty much like open to be hit because he’s just kind of a little wild and is throwing everything that he’s got to try to take him out and I’ve got to be there to make sure that when he does that, I’m there to expose the opportunity to hit him with a hard shot so he ends up walking into it. He’s either going to do that or he’s going to come after me like he did with Luke Cummo or like I thought he was going to do with Duane Ludwig and just come across the ring and shoot immediately and try to take me down on the ground, which actually is kind of like when we did in our sparring. When I sparred with him, which was once again it was right before the Swick fight, it was a while before that, I might have hit him once or twice and then from there on all he kept doing is trying to take me down and he wasn’t successful at it back then, either. I don’t know what’s going on in this head, I don’t know what his plan is, I don’t know if he’s thinking ‘OK, well, we’re going to go out and I’m going to see what happens striking’ or if he realizes that might be a big mistake.
“I can’t hesitate. I got to go out there and immediately establish control of this fight and show him that you know that he’s in a fight, a fight for his life.”
In many ways, Marcus Davis is a big talker and a big character. That’s great for the fight game, since colorful personalities make for great television. He does tend to dramatize things a little bit too much, occasionally.
“In the (Chris) Lytle fight I did hesitate and wait around a lot in the first round because I didn’t think I was going to have… when we went to that fight, Mark Dellagrotte I mean after the fight, that fight, we actually broke down in tears… and it was because he admitted to me that both of us too thought that you know when I walking down to the Octagon that I walking down for a execution. He was with me you know the 24 hours before where I was bed-ridden and I was running to the bathroom and I was anemic and dehydrated and we had the EMTs in my room and then we had a doctor in my room and he just said, you know, he just thought I was going to go out there and get crucified so that first round when I made it through and I sat down on the stool I said you know what, I can do this, I actually feel like I can keep fighting. I was worried that I was not going to have the energy or anything to do that, so, but you know I paid for it in the first round, I was hesitant and then I took over the next two rounds…”
While his free-speaking ways sometimes provides unintentional comedy and lionized stories of confidence, it’s also gotten Marcus Davis in a lot of trouble. While his record in his last five UFC fights is so-so, a real reason his job is in potential jeopardy is due to his mouth. After losing to Dan Hardy by split decision almost a year ago, Davis has been stewing over the loss. He hates Dan Hardy with a passion and Dan Hardy found it amazingly easy to tweak him online, including having Underground Forum members make mock gay magazine pictorials featuring the Irish Hand Grenade’s face on him. Hardy figured out that Davis was a big mark for himself and toyed with his mentally. Gamesmanship is one thing, but everybody knows that Dan Hardy likes to joke around and be a clown occasionally. It’s proved him great so far in his career. So, there really was no excuse for Marcus Davis to get all bent out-of-shape about losing to Dan Hardy.
There was especially no excuse when Davis made crude remarks about Hardy on his Twitter account eight months after the fight happened. Remember this?
@BIGfield948 I hope Hardy dies of aids
Dark&Bad taste-thought it was fitting aftr he did the gay photos towards me which is worse IMO this was words those pics are up for life
Would it have been better if I said hit by a car?
On these remarks alone, Davis likely should have lost his job. So, he got very lucky that his employers didn’t fire his ass. Not only were his remarks stupid and childish, but they were made right after the remarks Frank Mir made on Mark Madden’s radio show in which he said that he hoped that he could beat up Brock Lesnar and cause Lesnar to be the first fight to die do to “Octagon-related injuries.” Mir ended up being told to shut up before the Shane Carwin fight and lost his WEC commentating job. Mir admitted after losing to Carwin that he was distracted by the fallout from his comments on Madden’s radio show. Marcus Davis got off a bit easier — he’s got a chance to save his job if he fights well and beats Jonathan Goulet. But for all intents and purposes, it is a one-and-done situation for Mr. Davis in terms of keeping his job in the promotion. One loss and he’s in big trouble.
To his credit, Mr. Davis says that win or lose, he will continue fighting in Mixed Martial Arts even if it means it’s not in UFC.
“I would continue to fight. I’m not done yet, by any means… I was a pro-boxer and I did all that other stuff for years and years and years, but this MMA game you know everybody says you know that I’m a veteran because I got whatever, my 13th UFC appearance or whatever it is coming up, but… you know you got to look at it like this. I’ve still have only been doing MMA literally since I did the show, The Ultimate Fighter. I wasn’t even training in MMA. I was still a boxer in an MMA sport so I’m continuing to figure things out…”
At the time of his AIDS comment, I said the following:
“Congratulations to Marcus Davis for now permanently ensuring that whenever someone searches his name on the Internet that the phrase “AIDS” will pop up next to it on most of the top search entries in Google.” Type his name into Google and find out for yourself right now.
Not only does Marcus Davis need to re-shape his UFC fight record, but he also needs to re-shape his public image, too. Saturday night is a chance for him to try to push the reset button. If he doesn’t get the job done at UFC 113, he could be unemployed as early as next week.
Topics: Canada, Media, MMA, UFC, Zach Arnold | 4 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
Marcus Davis’s age and how he looked against Ben Saunders are definite reasons to let him go if he loses his next fight.
Guida and Lytle may have had two losses in a row, but they both followed up that streak with a win. Would they have been let go if they notched that third loss in a row? Maybe. But maybe not since both have earned multiple fight of the night honors. This is Davis’ fight to lose. Goulet is not a top level fighter.
I did google Marcus Davis and the AIDS comment started to show up on the second page.
Isn’t Marcus Davis a bit old to be much of an issue, wether he sneezes his nose or not.
I think Dana is Irish.
Davis may get unusual passes like an italian (baroni, Serra) on GP.
That sounds racist, but some things is is.