Mac Danzig Interview

By Ben Fowlkes

Recently, thanks to Crave Online, I got to interview Ultimate Fighter contestant Mac Danzig. After following his career the last few years and watching him on the show, I can’t really say I was surprised that he turned out to be a very articulate and interesting guy. Danzig seems to be about as well-adjusted and as sensible a fighter as I’ve ever interviewed.

Here’s an excerpt to show you what I’m talking about:

Crave Online: Matt Hughes seems to be coming off as kind of a jerk in this season. Do you think that’s accurate? What were your feelings on Hughes after the show?

Mac Danzig: It’s hard for me to judge Hughes. He was kind of up and down, like the rest of us. The entire experience was an emotional rollercoaster for all of us, even the coaches. I really didn’t like the way he handled his coaching when we started dealing with the losses, but I can’t judge him for that. He’s only human and everybody deals with stuff in their own way.

I mean, I flipped out on Blake and treated him poorly for no real reason, so there were times when I didn’t deal with stuff in the best way either. He may have let his rivalry with Matt Serra cloud his judgment and some of those practices were really negative and made me not want to be there. But he also has good sides to him and is very caring.

He wanted to win and he’s very competitive. Maybe he’s a better fighter than a coach. I guess that’s the best way I can say it. I still don’t really know him. The environment of the show was a synthetic environment. They call it “reality” because it wasn’t scripted, but it wasn’t real either. I have no vocabulary to explain how strange the whole experience was.

See what I mean? He’s even generous towards Matt Hughes. You can read the full interview at Crave Online.