It was one of those nights to remember. More than 55,000
spectators, enough to populate a small suburb, poured into the
Rogers Centre to see
Ultimate Fighting Championship welterweight titleholder
Georges
St. Pierre defend his undisputed crown against
Jake Shields
on April 30, 2011 in Toronto. They came from near and far, every
creed, race and color. The electricity they generated inside that
cavernous marvel of bygone technology—unrivaled since Joe Carter’s
three-run, walk-off homer disappeared behind the left field fence
and sent the Blue Jays to their second consecutive World Series
championship nearly two decades earlier—seemed to provide the venue
with a heartbeat all its own.
Exactly two weeks removed from his professional MMA debut, a then
19-year-old
Mike Malott
took his seat in the nosebleed section as part of what remains the
largest crowd ever to witness a mixed martial arts event in North
America. He was forever changed.
“My dad got us tickets,” Malott said at the pre-fight media day for
UFC 297. “Getting to feel how that arena felt, feeling what 60,000
people in a live arena feel like, and seeing guys from this area
walk to the cage and watching them walk out and I’m like, ‘That’s
that guy right down there.’ I’m way up in the upper deck so they’re
pretty small down there, but I can see them. I see them physically
walking to the cage, and I can watch them fight right there. It was
extremely inspirational: ‘Look, man. If these guys from this area
can do this, so can I.’”
Some 13 years later, Malott, who hung a St. Pierre poster on his
bedroom wall as a kid, finds himself on the verge of a Top 15
ranking in the same UFC welterweight division “Rush” twice ruled.
Now days away from his most significant test to date, the
32-year-old has fixed his sights on
Neil Magny
and their featured
UFC 297 attraction this Saturday at Scotiabank Arena in
Toronto, not all that far from where he was raised.
“I feel absolutely amazing,” Malott said. “There’s obviously a lot
of crossover between this fight week and previous fight weeks, but
it stands out as a very different fight week in a couple obvious
ways. I live down the street. My parents live down the street, like
40 minutes away, so I’m staying at my parents’ house pretty much
all fight week and driving in in the mornings, having dinner and
coffee at my parents’ house and getting to do our nightly workouts
at one of my home gyms. I’ve got all my coaches with me. They’re
sleeping in their own beds.
“You get that feeling of walking into the hotel where you get
engaged and you feel the switch kind of turn on, where there’s like
20 high-level cage fighters staying in the same hotel and it’s a
little bit tense,” he added. “You walk into a little bit of the
lion’s den and there’s a little bit of that ‘Hey, are people going
to be cool? Are we going to get in each other’s faces.’ There’s a
little bit of that tension, and you know something big is about to
happen. I get to feel that and feel the energy, then shut it off
and go home and reset for the next day. It’s a really nice
feeling.”
The showdown with Magny represents the Canadian’s first real chance
to break into a higher competitive tax bracket at the sport’s
highest level. He enters the Octagon on the strength of six
consecutive finishes, five of them inside one round. Malott
recognizes the challenge—and opportunity—in front of him.
“I think it’s the most juice for the squeeze in the division,” he
said. “I’ve made a career of finishing tough, durable guys. You
look at my last five fights, all at welterweight. I beat all five
of those men in ways that they’ve never lost before. I’ve fought
tough guys my whole career and made a career out of doing things to
people they think can’t be done to them. I see [the] No. 13
[ranking]. That’s what I see [when I look at Magny]. I see an
opportunity for me to beat this guy, stop this guy, and get a
number beside my name. Once I’ve got that number beside my name,
I’m on the ladder and I can start my climb.”
Magny has long been viewed as the gatekeeper to the stars at 170
pounds. He holds the divisional record for career victories with 21
and has spent more time inside the Octagon than any other
welterweight in UFC history at six hours, 32 minutes and 34
seconds. The
Elevation Fight Team mainstay has alternated wins and losses in
each of his past five appearances but has not suffered back-to-back
defeats in more than a decade.
“I respect the guy,” Malott said. “He’s a solid fighter. It doesn’t
really matter to me. The way I see it is moving forward, every guy
I should be fighting the rest of my career should be the toughest
guy I’ve ever fought. The tests are just going to keep getting
bigger, and I’m going to keep rising above them.”
While Malott spent his formative years in the UFC operating out of
Team Alpha Male in Sacramento, California, he recently returned
to Canada to re-establish his roots and sharpen his skills closer
to home. Nevertheless, time spent with fighters like
Urijah
Faber,
Andre Fili
and
Josh
Emmett spurred undeniable growth in “Proper Mike” when it
mattered most.
“I miss those guys. I love those guys,” he said. “I’m in a new
chapter in my life, living and training back home in Canada. It’s
something I’ve been wanting for years. I loved my time with Alpha
Male, and I hope to go down and see those guys again soon. It’s a
room full of killers, and the experiences I got from that room,
from training with those guys, from traveling the world cornering
and coaching and fighting with those guys [gave me] memories I’ll
carry on for the rest of my life.”
With an impressive 10-1-1 record in tow and all 10 of his victories
having resulted in finishes, Malott steps into a brighter spotlight
as a substantial favorite, an entire country behind him. He hopes
to disappoint those who expect him to shrink in the moment. Gone is
the teenager who watched St. Pierre ply his masterful trade in
front of thousands of his fellow Canadians, replaced by a man who
would like nothing more than to travel down the trail the
pound-for-pound great blazed for him.
“This is privilege, not pressure,” Malott said. “I’ve been wanting
to do this my whole life. This is something I’ve spent the last 20
years preparing to do and visualizing and, in my mind, manifesting.
I was just a kid from Waterdown, Ontario, who started training
karate and taekwondo at 14 and was like, ‘I’m going to find a way
to fight in the UFC. This is what we have in town right now, and
I’m going to do everything I can and I’m not going to lose focus of
this goal. I’m making this happen.’
“I feel empowered by this,” he added. “I feel energized. I don’t
feel like there’s anything holding me back. I feel like there’s
only things lifting me up.”