Marcus McGhee Won't Squander His Opportunities

“That's a good point,” McGhee laughs. “I never thought about it like that, but extra suffering is always good as a man, so I definitely think it might add to that durability that we have in us over here at The Lab.”

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The latest bantamweight star to emerge from the Phoenix powerhouse squad, which includes Mario Bautista, Kyler Phillips and former champ Sean O’Malley, McGhee won’t have to worry about triple-digit temps this weekend, and if that’s not enough good news, he’s also facing his first-ranked foe and he’s doing it in Madison Square Garden.

“I’m super excited,” he said. “I wouldn't have believed that that was how it was all going to play out after not fighting since January, but it's definitely a blessing to be able to go to check that off my to-do list.”

“I definitely think so, and I think I could have still been successful without the type of mentality that I have, but I don't think it would've bore as much fruit in so many other aspects other than just stepping into that cage,” said McGhee. “I think it could have hindered the person I am. It could have hindered who I am for others if I had gotten that too early. Because again, sometimes you get blessings too early and you don't know how to deal with those blessings and then you squander them. I'm just so thankful that I never got the opportunity to squander them.”

It helps that for much of his career, McGhee was working, as well as fighting. That’s necessary on the regional circuit, but it doesn’t make it that any easier for the one trying to juggle two jobs, one that requires getting punched in the face, along with a personal life. So when that fighter eventually makes it to the point where he doesn’t have to be a juggler, he tends to appreciate the new normal more.

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“I definitely do,” he said. “I feel like when you go through certain things, they mold you and you get to feel all those emotions, as opposed to just seeing it on the outside and seeing somebody else go through it When you're day in and day out and you have to wake up at four o'clock in the morning to hit a four-mile run as fast as you can so that you can jump in the shower and get ready for work and be at work by six o'clock in the morning and then bust your butt, no break, no lunch until three o'clock so you could hit the gym at 3:30 and then go to six o'clock and then rush home to the kids. When you do that for years on end and feel all the emotions, sometimes good, sometimes bad, sometimes useless, sometimes great, I definitely think it gives you a whole new appreciation for the situation that I'm in now.”

And if we’re talking motivation, a world ranking is nice, a world title is even better, but maybe the driving force for someone like McGhee is to keep performing so he doesn’t have to go back to the old days. If he can hustle just as hard on one job as he did on two, well, everyone has seen the results, and he’s determined to keep on rolling, whether it’s in an empty warehouse or in the world’s most famous arena. But yeah, MSG is better.

“You can put me in a square box and I'm down to fight, but, at the same time, how many people have had the opportunity to fight in the most monumental fighting arena in the world,” he said. “That is pretty amazing. And to not look at that and be like, ‘Oh man, that's a blessing,’ would be kind of ungrateful to not accept that and be open-minded to the fact that that's happening. So yeah, we could fight in a cardboard box, but it's not a carboard box. It's the greatest arena, the greatest platform to fight on in the world, so I’m pretty excited about that.”