Jason MacDonald Turns the Page at LinesMaker

Turn the Page. For fans of Bob Seger and Metal­lica, it’s just a great song from the archives. For Jason Mac­Don­ald, it became a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the life he was lead­ing as an up and com­ing mixed mar­tial arts fighter.

“I was out there bust­ing my ass try­ing to fight my way into the UFC, and many times I was out on the road, in some­body else’s town, some­body else’s arena, and fight­ing for every­thing I could get,” he recalled. “It kinda felt that it (the song) was always a good descrip­tion of what I was out there doing. Here I am, on the road again.”

It was a road filled with ups and downs and try­ing to jug­gle fight­ing with his fam­ily life and his job as a cor­rec­tions offi­cer at Bow­den Insti­tu­tion in Alberta. It’s the kind of jour­ney that can break those not strong enough men­tally and phys­i­cally to deal with it, but Mac­Don­ald, a pro since 1999, sol­diered on, even while com­pet­ing in venues far removed from the big shows he hoped to one day fight in.

“My first cou­ple fights were in gyms where they took the spar­ring ring and set up some chairs around it, and that was back in the early days when the sport really was evolv­ing and search­ing for an iden­tity,” he said, but in Octo­ber of 2006, seven years into his career, he got his shot as the foil for The Ulti­mate Fighter sea­son three final­ist Ed Herman.

Mac­Don­ald sub­mit­ted Her­man at 2:43 of the first round. Two months later he did the same thing to another TUF alum, Chris Leben, and he was off and run­ning. All told, Mac­Don­ald fought ten times in the UFC Octa­gon from 2006 to 2009, but after los­ing three of four bouts against Demian Maia, Wil­son Gou­veia, and Nate Quarry, he was released from the organization.

He was 33 years old and forced to start over. He lost his first post-UFC bout to Travis Lut­ter six months after the Quarry fight, but then he ran off three wins on the Cana­dian cir­cuit against qual­ity oppo­si­tion, and he was brought back to the Octa­gon to face prospect John Salter at UFC 113 in May of 2010.

Yet 2:42 into the bout, a freak fall by Mac­Don­ald caused him to break his left fibula and tibia and tear lig­a­ments as well. It was a loss on his record, his 14th, but more dev­as­tat­ing was that he might have fought his last fight. The tim­ing was hor­ri­ble as well, as Jan­u­ary of 2011 was his dead­line for return­ing back to his for­mer day job after a five year leave of absence.

“I was dis­ap­pointed that I had fought so hard to get back to the UFC and then to come away with a badly injured ankle and a loss on my record, I was extremely dis­ap­pointed,” said Mac­Don­ald. “When you’re not healthy phys­i­cally, you’ve got a lot of time to sit around and do some soul search­ing, and I was cer­tainly ask­ing myself that ques­tion – at 35 years of age, do I get healthy and put in the work and take another run at this thing, or do I take a step back, say ‘hey, it’s been a good run’ and call it a wrap?”

The ques­tions engulfed his days, but slowly, good news began to creep back into his life.

First, if he decided to return to active duty as a fighter, he would get another shot in the UFC.

“That was huge,” he said. “Obvi­ously after suf­fer­ing the injury, if the UFC chose to let me go, it would have been a lot harder for me to get moti­vated to return to fight­ing and start that long jour­ney back to the UFC. At the end of the day, I’m a pro­fes­sional fighter, and I don’t think anybody’s say­ing ‘okay, I’m happy just fight­ing in the minor leagues.’ Everybody’s aspir­ing to be at the top of the game and to be in the UFC, and I’m no different.”

Next, his war­den extended his leave of absence by a year, giv­ing Mac­Don­ald more time to pur­sue his fight­ing dreams. And finally, he began to become Jason Mac­Don­ald again, phys­i­cally and mentally.

“I started to get off the crutches and even­tu­ally out of the cast, and I started walk­ing on my own, run­ning and then back to work­ing out. And slowly I got back into mixed mar­tial arts train­ing, and you start to get health­ier men­tally as well, and start to get your con­fi­dence back and start believ­ing in your­self again. Then you start to watch fights and get excited and get those but­ter­flies in your stom­ach, and those are the things that told me that I was still very much a fighter and very much a com­peti­tor and that the fire was still burn­ing inside me.”

He was back. But there was a catch.

“I put a stip­u­la­tion in there that if return­ing to fight­ing meant that every morn­ing I had to wake up and really strug­gle to get mov­ing and really deal with a lot of pain and dis­com­fort, I wasn’t will­ing to make that sac­ri­fice,” said Mac­Don­ald, a mar­ried father of four. “I wasn’t going to hand­i­cap the rest of my life just to chase the dreams of what I wanted to do in fighting.”

A Decem­ber 2010 bout was scrapped, but when it was announced that the UFC was going to Toronto to put on an event at Rogers Cen­tre on April 30th, Mac­Don­ald was on the card, fac­ing fel­low vet­eran Ryan Jensen.

And “Turn the Page” led him into the Octa­gon for the biggest fight of his career.

“It brought back a lot of good mem­o­ries and a lot of hard-fought vic­to­ries of some of my first UFC fights,” said Mac­Don­ald. “I wanted to get back to what was work­ing and what was familiar.”

But who could pre­pare for more than 55,000 fans roar­ing and cheer­ing for you? Even a cou­ple days after the event, Mac­Don­ald still strug­gles to find words to describe it.

“It all hap­pened so fast,” he said. “I don’t know if I can really put words to the atmos­phere that was there Sat­ur­day night. I never in a mil­lion years thought that I ever would be fight­ing or that mixed mar­tial arts in gen­eral would be on that type of stage. Even going into the Bell Cen­tre in Mon­treal, where the three biggest fights were prior to this, there seems to be an end to the peo­ple. (Laughs) At some point you can look and see where the peo­ple end. But on Sat­ur­day night, it was a never end­ing sea of peo­ple. Every­where you looked, as high as you could look and in every direc­tion you looked, there were thou­sands and thou­sands of peo­ple. And there were big screens, taller than some of the are­nas we’ve fought in (Laughs), and it really was amazing.”

Once Mac­Don­ald stepped into the Octa­gon though, noth­ing mat­tered but Jensen, and in a stir­ring return to form, he sub­mit­ted his oppo­nent with a tri­an­gle choke in just 97 seconds.

“The one thing I told myself was that I fight best when I’m enjoy­ing myself, I’m relaxed, and I’m hav­ing a good time. I said regard­less of what hap­pens out there tonight, I’m going to enjoy this moment. So from the moment they started my music to walk out, I was enjoy­ing myself. I had a smile on my face and I was relaxed. Then I got to the Octa­gon, and when that door closes and Bruce Buffer takes over, it really is busi­ness as usual. I felt com­fort­able, and I knew that I was bet­ter than Ryan Jensen. I knew that I had faced bet­ter com­pe­ti­tion than Ryan Jensen, and if I stayed focused and fought my fight, I would come away with a good vic­tory. Of course you can’t pre­dict it hap­pen­ing that fast, but it went as planned.”

Now Mac­Don­ald can lit­er­ally turn the page and get on with the next chap­ter of his fight­ing story.

“At this point in my career, I’m tak­ing it fight by fight,” he said. “I’m real­is­tic with where I’m at in my career and I’m not a title con­tender right now, but all of a sud­den after this fight, I can kinda switch gears from fight­ing for my job and piece together some solid wins and try to make myself rel­e­vant again in the division.”

 

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