Michael McDonald has a new home and he wouldn’t have it any other way.
McDonald was once a ranked Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) bantamweight. “Mayday” hasn’t seen professional mixed martial arts (MMA) action since July 2016. He was knocked out by John Lineker in the first round.
Back in January, McDonald expressed discontent with the UFC because he could no longer afford to fight under the promotion. McDonald was later granted his release from the UFC and signed with Bellator shortly after.
Speaking with MMAFighting.com, “Mayday” went more in-depth on what went wrong at the end of his UFC run:
“There’s no way around it, and it’s part of the game. It’s my job and I can’t do my job if I don’t negotiate how much I’m going to get paid for the job, or what exactly what I’m going to do. It’s understandable. I think me doing woodworking has really taught me a lot about business — from me being the head guy and basically running the whole company — to understand how this process works. There are some clients in woodworking, I walk into their store or house and within five minutes, I say, I think you’re going to have to find someone else. Then I have other people I can go in, I can talk to and everything works perfect, and we’re good doing business, and we have an understanding. I think that’s just what it was with the UFC. I wasn’t okay with how I felt the business was going, the lack of communication. And so, morally, I didn’t feel like I wanted to stay.”
