Like Red Ghosts
The epic title fight between Robbie Lawler and Rory MacDonald etched both men into combat sports history, but at what cost?
The bell sounds to end the fourth round, but the two men move forward rather than back. The champion and the challenger, both battered beyond recognition, refuse to retreat to their corners. In the mess they’ve made they appear like red ghosts of themselves. Time seems to slow as they stare, each man bloodied but not broken, their eyes holding some primal intent reserved for beasts in the wild. They know they’ll leave more of themselves in this cage than their blood that is already dry on the canvas floor. Only when the referee forces them back to their corners does their menacing glare break.
The champion, Robbie Lawler, sits on his his stool, a ghastly gash splitting his lip. “You’re a lion,” his coach yells as the cut-men work on his face. “You’re the champ!”
On the other side of the cage, Rory MacDonald’s face is distorted beneath a red mask of flowing blood. The cut-men do their best to stop his nose from leaking, but the blood returns the moment they lift their rags from his face. He’s twenty-five years old, but under the red mask he appears ageless, unrecognizable. “Five minutes and you win,” his coach tells him. “Five minutes and you win.”
The brief minute is over, and the coaches and cut-men and all but the referee are gone between the two fighters. The champion roars and flexes for the screaming crowd, his wounds of little concern to him. The word Gladiator is etched across his stomach, and no one in the arena questions its significance.
Rory gives a small nod from across the cage. He does not look away from Lawler, nor does he lend attention to his nose which continues to flow like a broken faucet.
Five minutes separate him from his life-long goal, the one thing he’s worked for since he was a child.
But five minutes is an eternity in some cages, and fights like these are not destined to be ended by a ticking clock. As the two men touch gloves before the last round, there is the sense that they would stay there beyond the final bell, until the battle is truly finished, until one stands while the other lays fallen. It is in these tiny moments that the beautiful dichotomy of prizefighting shines true: These two men have a great deal of respect for one another, as they understand each other like no one else can. Yet both men wish beyond all else to break the other, to put a violent end to the other’s dream.
A minute later, one of them breaks.
He entered the promotion at twenty years of age, and the mixed-martial-arts world could already envision the belt around his waist.
Rory was brought up through Tristar Gym in Montreal, home of then welterweight champion Georges St. Pierre. Moreover, MacDonald represented a new era of the sport. In the early days of MMA, the sport was made up of transitioning athletes from different worlds — the jiu-jitsu practitioner that learns to box, the kickboxer that learns enough defensive wrestling to keep the fight standing, the All-American wrestler that throws enough punches to convincingly shoot for a takedown. Rory MacDonald trained in mixed-martial-arts since the beginning.
His well-rounded skill-set reflected the encompassing nature of his training. He was as technical on the ground as he was on the feet, where his snapping jab drew comparisons to his Canadian predecessor St. Pierre.
He was thrown to the wolves early in his career, facing the dangerous Carlos Condit in only his second UFC bout. Condit handed Rory his first loss — battering him with ground-and-pound in the waning seconds of a fight that Rory had largely dominated.
“I sort of lost focus,” MacDonald would later say of the Condit fight in an appearance on Fight Network. “I started playing into my emotions rather than keeping a steady, level head.”
Since his first loss, much has been made of the level-headed, almost chilling emotionlessness of Rory MacDonald. While other fighters flex and curse and snarl like rabid dogs to give the appearance of dangerous men, the blank stare of MacDonald has earned him a reputation as one of the most intimidating figures in his division.
MacDonald rebounded from his first loss winning five fights in a row, including a one-sided thrashing of former welterweight champion B.J. Penn.
On November 16, 2013, Rory stepped into the cage to face another veteran, a journeyman of the sport with a reputation for vicious knockout victories and the occasional decision or submission loss. That man was Robbie Lawler, a workworn veteran in the midst of a career resurgence. For many fans at home it was simply one more test for Rory to pass on his way to the title. Few predicted Lawler’s victory, and none could foresee that the two men would face again, with Lawler as champion and Rory as challenger.
Lawler won a closely contested fight, sealing the victory by knocking Rory down with a right hand late in the third round. He would go on to contest for the belt twice, capturing the welterweight title on his second attempt.
“This loss was your fault,” MacDonald recalled telling himself after the first fight with Lawler. “Right away I owned up to it. I grew faster because of it.”
Rory’s growth was evident in his next string of performances. He faced three challengers that posed a myriad of threats: the jiu-jitsu legend Demian Maia, the explosive and heavy-handed wrestler Tyron Woodley, and the renowned kickboxer Tarec Saffiedine. He won all three contests convincingly, his knockout against Saffiedine putting a stamp on his long title run.
The next test for Rory was laid out clear. He would fight Lawler again.
The blood started early.
In the second round Lawler found a home for his straight left hand, and it is a punch that stings with the power of a much larger man. Under ten minutes into the fight, Rory’s nose was broken, and it leaked without reprieve.
Still he remained in the center of the cage, where he and Lawler traded shots. This was a more polished Robbie Lawler, a veteran who had grown into his role as champion, not the berserker brawler of his youth. He got the better of the exchanges, landing not more often but with more force, snapping Rory’s head back repeatedly with his left hand.
Fights of even the largest magnitude and impact consist of small moments. A slight movement in one direction, a single spurt of neglect, ducking left rather than dipping right, can turn tides and rewrite fates. Rory MacDonald, tasting his own blood as it invaded his breath with each inhale, kicked the champion late in the third round.
At first it seemed to be simply that, a kick. Another attack thrown by the losing contender and blocked by the winning champion. The commentators dismissed the kick as it appeared to strike Lawler’s shielding forearm.
And then the champion staggered, his legs rattling like windblown pines, a predator turned prey in a single moment.
Rory followed his stumbling opponent to the cage, and unleashed a desperate flurry of controlled violence — jabs, uppercuts, elbows, flying knees, all landing flush on the head of the dazed Lawler. Had the bell not sounded, the onslaught may have eventually been too great for the resilient champion to withstand.
Lawler wobbled to his corner, a nightmarish grin striking his soon-to-be-split lips. The one attribute that has remained in him from his boyish brawler days is the true pleasure he draws from pain, coming alive in chaos rather than control.
“You’re figuring him out,” Firas Zahabi told his pupil MacDonald in his corner.
The start of the fourth round seemed to verify Zahabi’s words. Another head kick backed Lawler against the fence and once again Rory hunted the finish. But he could not find it. Lawler circled away, and over the course of the fourth round he regained his wits. When the two men stared each other down at the round’s conclusion, a silent conversation was held in the cage’s center. Lawler, with his split lip and blood-stained chest — I’m right here. Come try and take my belt. Rory, through his red mask — I will.
The war ended not with a sudden explosion but a slow collapse. A minute into the final round, in that five-minute window where Lawler is at his most ruthless and relentless, he landed another left hand clean in the center of MacDonald’s face. There was a moment of stillness, of nothing, the punch a hard shot but seemingly superficial in its effect.
And then Rory reached up and held his shattered nose, and he crumbled to the floor. Lawler pounced on him but no follow-up shots were necessary, and the referee would step in soon after MacDonald’s fall. Rory was not unconscious, but the pain had become too great, consuming his mind and body and shutting him off.
After the fight, Rory tried to sit up as the referee and doctor attended to him. When the doctor held a rag to his shattered nose, the sudden rush of pain caused him to collapse again. It was a disturbing scene: a young man who entered the cage as a fresh-faced twenty-five-year-old, now broken and all but faceless, fighting not for victory but to regain control of his own body. In that moment it seemed almost cruel when the camera would linger on him, as if this was a moment of great and private tragedy of which we as viewers had not earned the right to witness. MacDonald left the arena to cheers and congratulations on a battle well fought. Such things mean little when the next stop is the hospital.
While many stood and applauded one of the finest fights of all time, showering the two men with praise for their warrior hearts, others wondered if Rory MacDonald would ever be the same.
A fighter’s age is rarely a relevant number when determining how long they have left. Now twenty-six, MacDonald has taken severe punishment in two stoppage losses, his first defeat at the hands of Carlos Condit and now his loss to Lawler.
Then there is the element that cannot be measured by medical examination — the status of a fighter’s mind and heart. Fights like that can change you, many have said, and MacDonald’s brutal battle with Lawler fits that statement better than any contest in the past.
Days after losing to Robbie Lawler at UFC 189, MacDonald broke his silence, making clear the status of his mind and heart.
“Thank you [Robbie Lawler],” he wrote. “This was the best time of my life, I’ll never forget this fight.” There was no dark sarcasm to his words. He meant them. There are some things a fighter is simply born with.
