If you ever see middleweight contender Jason MacDonald’s trainer Mark Pavelich around, the first thing you’ll probably notice is his full head of dark hair. But if in the coming months you start seeing some grays popping in, blame his fighter, who will be back in action this Saturday night against Yushin Okami and undoubtedly looking for an early night.
“The one thing my trainer has always frowned upon in my style of fighting is that I have no patience,” laughs MacDonald. “Mark always says ‘you need to get some patience. You don’t always need to be pushing the pace or moving forward.’”
Of course, you won’t hear any complaints from fight fans about MacDonald’s aggressive style, which has led him to a 20-8 pro record that includes a 3-1 stint in the Octagon where none of his fights made it to the final bell.
“Sometimes that’s been to my advantage, and sometimes it’s been my downfall,” admits MacDonald, who’s only Octagon loss is to UFC 77’s headliner, former middleweight champ Rich Franklin. “Against Rich maybe I should have stood back and forced him to come to me and fight a little more instead of staying right on top of him the whole time. But that’s just who I am as a fighter, and I’m gonna go out there and carry that style into the Okami fight. If Okami’s not willing to pick up the pace and fight my pace of fight, then I’ll be looking to finish that fight in the first two rounds.”
And that’s the key right there in what should be an intriguing 185-pound matchup with serious title implications for the winner. Can MacDonald force Okami out of a comfort zone that sees the pride of Kanagawa get progressively more effective as the rounds go on and make him fight from the opening bell, or will it be Okami setting the pace and making a furious run in the latter half of the fight to win?
“Fortunately for me, it seems that throughout my fighting career that I seem to get better as the rounds go on,” said the eight year MMA veteran. “My intention is to fight a very fast-paced fight. I stay right in your face and I try to impose my aggressive style on you and make you make a mistake, at which time I usually capitalize on it. And this fight against Okami is really no different as far as the way I approach the fight. I’m gonna go out there and I’m gonna be the same aggressive fast-paced fighter that I always am, only this time I think it has even more of an advantage for me because Yushin Okami is the type of fighter that likes to start slow. I actually think that’s part of his game plan – he goes out there and forces you to fight at his pace, which is really slow for the first couple of rounds. Then he wears you down a little bit because he’s big and strong, and in the third round he pours it on and tends to finish his fights late. But it’s going to be a lot harder for Yushin Okami to force Jason MacDonald to fight at a slow pace than it is for me to be right in his face, fighting at a fast pace, and force him to either pick up the pace or succumb to that pace.”
For true fans of the sport, this is the kind of chess match that epitomizes mixed martial arts at its highest levels – here are two highly-skilled and trained athletes matching wits on an eight-sided chessboard. Who will make the other fight his fight? Who will break first? It’s bound to be great stuff, but what will happen during the first lull in the action as the fighters figure out their next move? Will the boos start? And if so, will that force either fighter into a tactical mistake in order to appease the crowd?
“That’s always a risk you run when you get into the ring, especially when you get guys with similar styles,” said MacDonald, “and to be perfectly honest, it’s very important for me to put on an exciting fight for the fans, but it’s not something I really worry about because this style I have of no patience, a real aggressive, in your face style, has always pleased the fans. They’ve always enjoyed watching me because I’m not one of those guys that tend to back up a lot or spend a lot of time feeling my opponent out. I tend to go right in there and go after it.”
Yet while MacDonald makes no bones about his plan to attack from the opening bell, normally aggressive fighters like Rich Franklin, Mike Swick, Rory Singer, and Alan Belcher have seen their styles taken back a notch by Okami in the past. “The Athlete” is unconcerned, saying, “I watched those fights and I actually see something completely different. I see that Rich Franklin won the fight because he was able to dictate the pace in the first two rounds. And at that point Okami came up and stole the third, but at that point it was too late.”
Some would say there was no pace in the first two rounds of Franklin-Okami, but I digress. What may be an issue though is Okami’s deceptive strength at close quarters, something MacDonald is aware of and that he addressed during training camp in Canada.
“I’ve heard those same rumors, and I wouldn’t say it’s so much a concern, but it’s definitely an area we’ve tried to prepare for,” said MacDonald, a native of New Glasgow, Nova Scotia. “The past couple of weeks I traveled up to Eastern Canada to train with one of the best, if not the best, light heavyweights in Canada, Roger Hollett, and they have a number of big guys at their training facility. So I spent the better part of the past two or three weeks training with guys that were 220 pounds and very strong. And not only that, but there were some jiu-jitsu brown belts there, so I brought in people to provide me with as much strength and resistance as I possibly could in preparing for this fight. I don’t see it being a big factor, but just in case it is, I prepared properly with big, strong guys. Just yesterday at my final training session, I had brought in a couple of judo black belts that were 225 pounds, and he comes from a judo background, so I definitely brought people into our camp to try and mimic his style and size and I hope that will be enough to dismiss any advantage he may have in strength.”
But what can Okami do in training to prepare for MacDonald’s seven and a half inch reach advantage? We know what MacDonald’s been doing to keep that advantage intact.
“I’m definitely looking to keep the fight standing as long as I can,” he said. “I’ve watched a number of Yushin’s fights, and I don’t get too focused on watching fights for hours and hours; I tend to watch a couple of fights to get an idea of what his tendencies are, and one thing I did notice standing is that he doesn’t throw a lot of left hands, which as a left handed fighter, that’s one of his great advantages against a right handed fighter. Rich (Franklin) has been very successful with that big straight left hand, and Yushin almost fights as a one-handed fighter. He throws a lot with his right hand and paws away at you, so I’ll certainly look to keep the fight standing and certainly use whatever reach advantage I have to my advantage.”
And if all his ducks fall in a row and he scores the victory, MacDonald may just be in line or a win away from a shot at the winner of Anderson Silva-Franklin II.
“I haven’t let that distract me,” said MacDonald. “I’m focused on going in there and beating Yushin Okami and taking whatever the UFC has for me next. But I certainly can’t deny that I’ve heard the rumors that the winner of Okami and myself is the number one contender for the title, and that’s fantastic. That adds an extra bonus, that I’m gonna go out there and put on a strong showing against Yushin Okami and continue to move up the ranks in the middleweight division.”
It’s a far cry from just over a year ago, when MacDonald entered the Octagon for the first time as the supposed sacrificial lamb for The Ultimate Fighter 3 finalist Ed Herman. MacDonald just took 2:43 to submit Herman, he followed it up with a second round submission of Chris Leben two months later, and he was off and running. He would get stopped by Franklin in his next fight at UFC 68 in March, but got back on the winning track with a second round TKO of another Ultimate Fighter alum, Rory Singer, earning himself the nickname of the TUF killer. But as the months have gone on, this hasn’t been MacDonald’s only claim to fame, and if you ask most fans of the sport about the 32-year old, he isn’t described as “the guy who beats the Ultimate Fighter guys,” but as a serious contender for the 185-pound crown.
“I think what really helped that along is the fact that I did beat Ed Herman and Chris Leben and had a decent showing against Rich, although it didn’t come out in my favor,” explained MacDonald. “But I think that as those other fighters that I beat started to develop as fighters themselves, like Ed Herman, it started to give more credibility to me. Likewise with Leben. He had a few ups and downs, but he got back on the right foot in this last fight, and as the quality of the opponents that I’ve beaten has gotten better and they’ve developed as fighters and established themselves in the division, it started establishing somewhat of a pecking order of who’s the top dog and where everybody kinda falls into place, and I think that really established where I fit into the mix, and people said ‘wait a second, he beat this guy and this guy, and this guy beat this guy,’ and all of a sudden, hang on, he really is one of the top contenders in this division.’ I think the middleweight division has had a rollercoaster of a year, and now that things are starting to settling in and everyone’s kinda finding their little groove, I think they’re saying Jason MacDonald is a legitimate contender in this division.”
Needless to say, it’s been quite a year for someone who toiled for seven years to finally make it into the organization, and who has no intentions of leaving anytime soon.
“This year has been a dream come true for me,” said MacDonald. “It’s been a real trip. I’ve gone from finally getting my shot in the UFC to standing across the ring from Rich Franklin in one of the bigger events of the year, and here I am closing out my year anniversary, stepping into the ring with the possibility of walking away from this fight as the number one contender for the title. Who could have asked for a better year? We have guys that have been great fighters in the UFC and have been pecking away at it for years now and who haven’t come as far as I have in one year, so it’s been a real special year for me and it really has been a dream come true. If I have nearly as good a year as I’ve had this past year, I think we’ll have this same conversation next year with me as middleweight champion.”
But first, he has to get by Yushin Okami.
“My intentions for this fight are to go out there and fight at 100 miles an hour, so I don’t think there’s going to be a fan out there who’s not pleased with my performance,” he said. “I’m going out there to fight Yushin Okami like it’s my last fight. I’m gonna leave it all in the ring as I always do, and my opinion is that I’ll be successful at the end of the day and have many more exciting fights in the UFC.”
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