Melvin Guillard’s talent, charisma, and highlight reel knockouts meant nothing now, as he sat in a cell in the Harris County Jail in Houston last September after violating his probation on a 2007 drug charge. Forget his UFC career for the moment; it was his life that needed fixing, and finally, he realized it.
“I might have cried every night for the first two and a half months,” said Guillard. “I cried myself to sleep, saying I hate myself for putting myself in this position.”
“Getting high, was it really worth it?” he thought.
“All those parties I went to, was it really worth it now that I’m sitting here behind bars?”
Following two and a half months in jail, Guillard was moved to a rehabilitation facility. It was there that he made the transformation from talented cautionary tale back to potential lightweight contender.
“I needed it for myself,” he said, “and I felt like I needed to do something more. If I didn’t do rehab, I felt like I could have slipped back into that lifestyle.”
The six months away put Guillard’s fighting career on hold after a two fight winning streak that included a spectacular 36 second knockout of Dennis Siver at UFC 86 last July, but more importantly, it took him away from his wife, Tache, a strain on any marriage to be sure, but the Guillards survived it, no doubt in part to the strength of Guillard’s new bride.
“I sacrificed leaving my wife, and that was the hardest part,” he said. “But she came and saw me every day, we talked every day, and I told her I’ll never put her through this again.”
He pauses, before continuing.
“I haven’t had anybody next to me that loves me the way she does in a long time. I don’t even go out to parties anymore. I go to training, my wife comes with me and trains with me. She’s my best friend, and if I have my wife in my corner, there’s no way I can fall back into that lifestyle.”
And after a tumultuous few years that has seen Guillard fight through Hurricane Katrina in his native New Orleans, the death of his father, a suspension after testing positive for cocaine after his loss to Joe Stevenson in 2007, and the daily rigors of the MMA life, he sounds like he’s at peace – at last.
“It gave me time to make peace with myself and think ‘I can’t do this again,’” said Guillard of his stint in jail and rehab. “It’s just been heartbreaking for the last three to four years, and it’s just been real hard on me. With that being said, I’ve been sober for 16 months now, but it’s still one day at a time.”
Released in January, Guillard still goes to AA meetings and recently graduated from a mandatory three month drug class. And as far as his fighting career is concerned, he’s been training since his release and will be back in the Octagon this Saturday against Gleison Tibau.
“Tibau is a good jiu-jitsu guy, but I went back to just straight wrestling – defending takedowns - and I’ve been wrestling with college-level wrestlers,” said Guillard. “I’m not that good on the ground in jiu-jitsu, but I have been doing my jits to keep myself from being submitted, and most of all, I’ve been focusing on my wrestling, because as soon as I touch the mat, I’m trying to explode right back up. I’m not trying to lay there and rest, because the minute I lay there, I’m letting him get more position. And my cardio is good enough to get off that mat and put this guy away. I have all the tools I need for this fight, I’m very confident, I just want to get back in the UFC, and after this fight I want to fight Tyson Griffin or Frankie Edgar. I want to fight the contenders so hopefully a year from now I can fight BJ Penn if he’s still the champion. That’s my goal right now.”
A pretty lofty one, eh?
“I’m not even saying I’m a better fighter than BJ, but I’m a good enough fighter to where I can take BJ out,” he said. “I have a puncher’s chance. My jits is not better than BJ’s, not even close, but if I keep my wrestling one hundred percent, which is my main background, and keep him from putting me on the mat, guys can’t submit me.”
Given Guillard’s athleticism and frightening one punch power, it would be foolish to count him out of any fight. And if he’s putting in the time in the gym to improve the weak points of his game, his potential is limitless. It’s mentally where he’s made the greatest strides though.
“Being sober for 16 months in the world is the greatest feeling in the world just by itself, and it gave me time to see the difference in my training habits, my eating habits,” he said. “All I do is eat, sleep, and train again. That’s how it used to be before I was in the UFC. When it happened, I was just so overwhelmed that I was there that I kinda flew off track a little bit. I was training hard enough to get by, but I could have been doing better. Now I’m back on track and I feel great. I feel invincible again.”
Guillard likens his mental state to the one he had when he was 18 years old, fighting on the local circuit and staying hungry in search of a UFC contract. And despite all his ups and downs, he’s still got one, and he doesn’t want to let go of it.
“The UFC is everything to me and without being in the UFC, there’s no reason to do this,” said Guillard. “I started when I was 16, and my whole goal in life was to become a UFC fighter – that was my dream. And there’s no point in having a dream if you’re not 100 percent doing it, and if you’re going to get kicked out of it, it’s not worth it. I needed to take that initiative, not only for me, but to show (UFC President) Dana (White) that I do care about my job and being in the UFC.”
Sometimes it takes almost losing everything to realize what you have. But at 26, Guillard has realized the error of his old ways and what he has in front of him if he just stays on the straight and narrow. As he explains, he needed a little time away from the world to do it.
“Being locked down isn’t anything I’d ever want to go through again,” he said. “That was always my biggest fear. It wasn’t dying; my biggest fear was always being locked up for a long period of time. And when I got locked up, it’s that tough love, but it works. You can’t bring me to jail for a traffic ticket right now. (Laughs) If I get a traffic ticket, I’m paying it.”
But it was his grandfather who put everything in the proper perspective.
“For the past few years, you’ve been acting like a kid,” he told his grandson. “Now you became a man.”
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