Since November of last year up until around 13 weeks ago, Tamdan McCrory was a typical 21-year old, going to school and enjoying the freedom that goes along with life as a college student.
And as he finished his final semester at SUNY-Cortland in upstate New York, he hoisted his last brew, went to his graduation the next day to receive his degree (a BS in Kinesiology with a concentration in Fitness Development and a minor in Exercise Science) and then took a deep breath.
“The next day I started training,” said McCrory, the 10-1 welterweight prospect who put his career on hold after a hard-fought, but ultimately losing, effort against Akihiro Gono at UFC 78 to finish college. It wasn’t the typical move you would see, but it was a wise one.
“I graduated because it was the smart thing to do, but I also made my family happy, which is good,” he said. “They know where I’m at and they’re supportive of what I’m doing now. It (fighting) wasn’t the most well-received when I started doing it, but my parents have seen such a change in my life and in me as a person, and they’re really proud of me and really supportive. I’m not opposed to going back to school, but I’m gonna enjoy my youth and see what I can do in this fight game now. Life’s a long journey and I’ve got plenty of years left.”
It’s why he took the break, even though he had been on a whirlwind ride since his pro debut in 2006, winning ten straight fights and making plenty of fans with his exciting UFC win over Pete Spratt in June of 2007. And though the momentum in his career was going strong, even with the loss to Gono, it may have been the constant grind of training and fighting 11 times in a year and a half that made him step back and re-assess things.
“I started my career and was just steamrolling and training hard for a year and a half straight,” he said. “I was always competing, I did 11 fights in a year and a half, and I was kind of relieved to take that break. I spent the whole holiday season partying and enjoying myself. Plus, I’ve been running my business with Erik Charles, teaching and training guys, and then I got the biggest stressor out of the way, and that was going to school. Now I’ve got all the time in the world to handle my business with training and fighting, and I’m getting it done.”
That wasn’t the case last November, when school, fighting, and issues with his now former camp came to a head at the worst possible time.
“At that time in my life, a lot of things weren’t going the way I wanted them to,” he admits. “Gono was such a top guy that I needed to be on top of my game, and trying to balance school and everything else I was going through – I was having problems with the team I was with at the time, a lot of things were falling apart around me, and I didn’t feel the way I wanted to feel going into that fight. And I’m not making any excuses – I made mistakes in that fight and it could have happened either way, but my point is that my mind was in other spots and I had too much going on to really handle things the way I should have and I think it carried over into the fight.”
McCrory started strong against the Japanese veteran, landing jaw-rattling haymakers that may have stopped lesser foes. But as the fight wore on, Gono weathered the storm and started to take control, eventually submitting McCrory with an armbar in the second round.
“I think I spent too much time chasing,” said McCrory. “I knew better, but I was just in the mindset of ‘man, just get this fight over with and knock this guy’s block off already.’ I guess patience is a virtue I don’t really have sometimes. I knew sooner or later that experience was gonna catch up to me and he’s obviously far more experienced than me. He’s a great fighter and he got me. There’s no shame in what happened, I think I fought well, but I just got caught.”
It was a lesson well-learned for the young ‘Barn Cat’, who will return to the Octagon this Saturday to take on fellow New Yorker Luke Cummo.
“I know he’s got decent standup and has been around for a while,” said McCrory of his foe. “We’re both primarily strikers, so it’s gonna be an interesting matchup and it’s obviously gonna be an exciting fight. I don’t plan on taking this fight anywhere it doesn’t need to be. I’ll start the fight on the feet and I’ll end it there before it has to go anywhere else. But that’s something that he’ll have to sweat. I’m not really worried about the ground game or the wrestling aspect of it; he’s not gonna take me down and I definitely have the wrestling credentials over him, so I have a lot of advantages in this fight and hopefully we’ll make the pay-per-view telecast.”
And if the fight does wind up on pay-per-view, McCrory promises that fight fans will be very interested in how far he’s come since the last time he fought.
“I had a bit of a man spurt, so I got a little bit bigger, stronger, and faster,” he said. “I made some switches to my camp and I’m training with the right people now, everybody’s in my corner, and I’ve got people pushing me to get better. This is the hardest I’ve ever trained, and I’m ready to get in there and remind the fans of what I can do.”
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