Rory MacDonald: I Needed To Lose Because I Didn’t Enjoy Fighting

UFC Welterweight Rory MacDonald was almost gifted the future of the UFC 170-pound division. It has long been thought that eventually Georges St. Pierre would step down to make way for his good friend and training partner “Ares,” whose title reign was inevitable.

But then Robbie Lawler came along.

Smashing MacDonald at UFC 167 with his power striking, “Ruthless” pulled the rug out from underneath MacDonald’s hype. The previously number three-ranked MacDonald didn’t fall far in terms of rankings, only moving down one spot to number four, but he is miles away from a title contention right now.

If he had beaten Lawler handily, many would have proclaimed that it was “Ares” time. But that didn’t happen and now MacDonald is forced to go back to the drawing board. The young fighter appeared on Monday’s edition of “The MMA Hour” to discuss how he feels following the disheartening loss:

“I think overall pretty positively. At the end of the day, walking out of the Octagon, not getting my hand raised, I think it was a good thing. I think I needed it, you know? I was thinking to myself, ‘I really needed to get in a fight like that and come up short.’ I needed it, I felt like my last two fights this year I came to the Octagon with a different mental approach. I didn’t enjoy them. This year I didn’t enjoy fighting. I needed to lose; I needed to get into a hard fight. I’m very motivated, more than ever now. I’m very hungry. I feel like I have that fire back.”

Sounds like MacDonald has a good attitude about the situation Perhaps a loss to a surging fighter like Lawler will indeed do him more good in the long run. He did appear to be coasting earlier this year against Jake Ellenberger at UFC on Fox 8 in July, and it showed. Although he won a very lackluster decision, MacDonald got almost as much criticism as Ellenberger, who did next to nothing.

“Ares” is posed to come back strong, albeit with a longer road to climb this time. He may have lost his focus and let his mind stray, something that obviously leads to bad things in the Octagon.

However, MacDonald is willing to admit what he did wrong and move on in a constructive direction. Ariel Helwani asked him if he was playing it safe in his fights this year, to which MacDonald replied:

“I just don’t think I was interested. I felt like, you know, my Ellenberger fight; I think I fought a really good fight. I was technically on point, I was sharp and watching the fight I wasn’t disappointed. But I didn’t have fun at the end of the day. And that’s what I do this for. I want to express myself when I’m out there, you know, like an artist painting a picture. It’s basically about expressing yourself and I don’t think I did that in these last two fights this year.”

MacDonald is brutally honest with his own self-assessment, something that should serve him well in addressing what needs to be fixed. There’s no doubt that MacDonald has the skills to contend with the best Welterweights in the world. Apparently it was just a matter of regaining the passion he had lost.

But it won’t be easy. The UFC 170-pound division is arguably the most stacked in all of MMA right now, and the title picture is extremely cloudy with St. Pierre’s next move far from solidified. MacDonald has the chance to right the ship; he’s got to harness his motivation to fight.

Will “Ares” inch his way back towards a UFC 170-pound title shot anytime soon?

Outer Photo: Jayne Kamin-Oncea for USA TODAY Sports