Mac Danzig won TUF 6 and achieved every fighter’s dream – a UFC contract. But as the saying goes, be careful what you wish for – as the pressure increased, it squeezed the fun out of the game. And as awareness of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy grew, Danzig, a single father of a young daughter, grew concerned that he would not mentally be there for her, and retired.
Now he is 35, and the day begins at 6:00 am as he gets her ready for school. Then he works with fighters four times, in three gyms, and hopes at the end of the day he has gas money,
Instead of staying in it because I love the competition, I was staying in it because I needed to support my kid, and I didn’t really feel same love for the art anymore, said Danzig to Trent Reinsmith for MMAjunkie. I was just getting through it.
When you have this little person that you care so much for, I can’t be putting myself through that any more. So, with that in mind, and the problems that I dealt with as far as concussions, I said I don’t want to be in a situation where I’m a mess at a fairly young age, and what I mean by that is in my 50s or 60s.
I’m certainly not set for life. I was broke going into my last fight, and then my last fight was just enough to cover the debt that I found myself in. One month after my last fight, I was having to find work. I’m not a material person. I’m very good with my money, and I’ve had to be because I haven’t made anything.
Little has changed. Danzig is training fighters for a a small percentage of a purse that is itself too small to live on.
These guys can barely afford to be members of the gym, let alone pay me a percentage, said Danzig. Say I tell them, ‘Pay me 10 percent of your purse.’ That’s going to be like $50. I’m supposed to train a guy for eight weeks for $50?
It’s rough. It’s not easy, and I still don’t know what I’m going to do.
The UFC doesn’t owe me a job, but I kind of thought I had more to offer the organization since I’m not your average fighter – I can write, I’m a good photographer – and I thought I would be a good fit, but that’s not how it went down. I basically got handed off to a human resources person that didn’t really know anything about me and didn’t understand what I could bring to the table, and it was really off-putting.
Danzig is one of the plaintiffs in the class action suit against the UFC.
We need to stand up and do it in a dignified manner, and the fighters need a voice, said Danzig. I feel like this class action suit is the beginning of that. It’s not about, ‘F— the UFC.’ It’s about, ‘Let’s all get equal treatment.’ You can’t have an event without the fighters. You can be these amazing business people with this awesome production company and these awesome people who work hard and market it, but if you don’t have fighters, you don’t have anything.
It was arduous, and it was very emotionally and physically painful. I’m proud of what I was able to accomplish, and I don’t feel that sport owes me any more or any less. I was able to make something out of nothing, which not a lot of people get to do, and hopefully I’m going to be able to look back on that and use that as motivation for when I decide what I really want to tackle in the next chapter of my life.”
