A ‘Proper’ Introduction

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 in the UFC 129 main event 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.”