Author: Miguel Torres

What a difference 10 years can make. That is the age difference between me and my next opponent, Michael McDonald, and I can safely say I’m happier at 31 than I was at 21. I’m significantly better, too.

Case in point; my last UFC victory over Nick Pace in November. The Pace win was a good one for me, because it highlighted just where I’m at right now in my development and also showed how I have improved over the years.

When I was cutting weight for the fight, I received a phone call and was told Pace would be six pounds over at the scales, which is never the sort of information you want to hear while shedding weight of your own. Anyway, I had a think about the situation and then realized I’d be going up against a guy weighing between 155 and 160 pounds come fight time. I came to the conclusion that he had deliberately come in heavy and would look to try and land his big right hand as early as possible.

Knowing this, I had to resist the urge to go out and fight crazy on raw emotion, and instead settle down and fight with my brains. Pace desperately wanted me to revert to my old ways and start swinging for the fences, but I wasn’t going to give him the easy route to victory. I had to fight smart, use my superior skills and experience and beat him everywhere the fight went. Which I did.

A few years ago I may have fought Pace with emotion and been so annoyed with him missing weight that I left my brains in the changing room and walked into a big right hand. That was the way I thought about stuff back when I was a kid. It was all emotion. All machismo and heart. I’ve had to adjust and mature in recent times, though, because I’ve come to realize you need way more than just skills and raw emotion to succeed at the very top of this sport.

I try not to feel anger and never seek out revenge. More importantly, I try not to look to much into my past results and instead prefer to focus on the future. I’ve achieved a lot of things in this sport – stuff I’m proud to have achieved – but have also slipped up when I know I shouldn’t have. That’s just the nature of this sport, though, and also the nature of life. You’re always going to have to take the rough with the smooth and, so long as you learn from it, you can look forward to what the future may bring.

My future centers on a 21-year-old opponent called Michael McDonald, who I will face on April 21st at UFC 145. He doesn’t care about my past successes or failings, as none of that will matter when the time comes to step into the Octagon and compete. We will both be given three rounds in which to show our dominance and superiority and then the next day will begin. Mixed martial arts is all about capitalizing on that short period of time and using everything you can – including training, rehearsing and past experiences – to project the best version of yourself you can find.

I remember being 21 years of age and I remember a lot of recklessness and hotheadedness that came with it. I’m 31 now, a full ten years older than my opponent, and can safely say I’m twice the fighter I was a decade ago. I’m wiser, stronger – physically and mentally – and am able to appreciate victories a whole lot more. I’ve learned from my mistakes and used them to improve and further my skills. Michael McDonald is 21 and has only lost one of his 15 professional fights. He hasn’t had to rally back from adversity the way I have and he hasn’t had to look at himself in the mirror and do some serious soul-searching.

One day that will come, though, and I plan on providing McDonald with a substantial slice of adversity come April 21.

Twitter @MiguelTorresMMA.

Bantamweight star Miguel Torres fights Michael McDonald on Sat., April 21st at UFC 145. UFC 145 is live on pay-per-view.

This fight on April 21st against Michael McDonald means a lot to me for several reasons. Of course, it offers me the chance to get another win in the UFC, move a step closer to the world title and continue my recent run of form. More than any of that, though, it feels great to be fighting again because, for a short while last year, my future in the UFC looked uncertain.

As most of you will be aware, I said something insensitive on Twitter and duly suffered the consequences. I was initially told I would no longer be able to fight in the UFC and that my time with the world’s top mixed martial arts organization was over. As you can expect, this hurt a great deal and resulted in a huge amount of regret on my part.

Looking back, what happened was a mistake, and one I desperately wish I could erase. I said something stupid, I was very insensitive, and I paid the price. Thankfully, at least I’m now aware of just how powerful my words can be and, as a result, will never approach social media in such a carefree manner again.

To be honest, I’ve always hated social media and have never liked the idea of being involved with Facebook or Twitter. In fact, I only became involved in that world because I felt obligated to do so as every athlete is involved. It was never a personal ambition of mine to splash my thoughts, feelings and movements across the world wide web for everybody to see.

I have a certain style and personality, and have now come to realize that it’s not for everybody. Twitter highlights the fact that some people out there like you and support you which is great, and others hate you and can’t wait to see you lose. I’m not sure whether that’s the kind of feedback anybody wants to read or hear, but it certainly gives you a new perspective on things. It makes you realize that you’re not infallible and, no matter what you do in your professional life, there will always be people that dislike you for some reason.

The idea of being cut from the UFC and frozen out was something that scared me a great deal. Fighting is my life – it is all I think about on a daily basis – and the UFC gave me the opportunity to showcase my skills on the biggest stage possible, against the best competition available. You can’t take something like that for granted, or take your eye off the ball and jeopardize it.

That whole episode made me realize how important mixed martial arts is in my life. I want to always be involved in MMA. Obviously, I’m aware that I won’t be able to fight for the rest of my life, but there will always be something I want to do, be it training others or working as an analyst. I’d love to do a lot of both in the future. I’ve been involved in mixed martial arts for 14 years now, and like to think, I’ve seen pretty much everything this sport can offer. I’ve experienced both the highs and lows, inside and outside the ring, and am still living to tell the tale.

For now, though, I’m happy competing and still have a lot I want to achieve in the game. Fighting is not a burden or a chore for me. There is nothing else I’d rather be doing. When fighting and training becomes a burden, that’s when it’s time to get out. I haven’t reached that point yet, and don’t see it happening any time soon.

Fighting is ingrained in my psyche, it’s part of my DNA. As a young boy, I used to watch a lot of boxing with my father and that was what first inspired me to fight. It wasn’t so much the fight itself that intrigued me, but more my father’s reaction to it. I would sit and watch how emotional he got during a fight, and it left a lasting impression on me.

We’d watch a guy like the great boxer Julio Cesar Chavez walk to the ring and my father would look on with pride and admiration, almost welling up with emotion. Watching guys like Chavez meant the world to him. He loved those Mexican greats like they were part of his family. I’d never seen my father show so much emotion and pride. After I saw how he reacted to these guys on screen, I knew I had to make him proud and become an extension of that great Mexican fighting legacy.

Twitter @MiguelTorresMMA.

Bantamweight star Miguel Torres fights Michael McDonald on Sat., April 21st at UFC 145. UFC 145 is live on pay-per-view.

By the time you get round to reading this, I will have arrived in Montreal, Canada ahead of the final portion of my training camp. The travelling, from Indiana to Florida and then to Montreal, is all geared towards one thing – defeating my next opponent, Michael McDonald, on April 21st at UFC 145.

Thankfully, despite many flights, I never, ever suffer from jet lag, because the first thing I do when I land is hit the gym and break a sweat, so my body quickly acclimatises. I’ll spend an hour or two in the gym, work up a nice sweat, get a good meal in just before bed and then sleep just as I would when at home. I’ll then sleep right through the night and wake up as if I’m still back in Indiana. No jet lag whatsoever, I promise you. I should write a book on this stuff.

I love Montreal. It’s an awesome place. The only thing that gets me down from time to time is the cold. That’s one thing I could do without while staying here. Still, I’ve traveled to a lot of countries during my 14-year mixed martial arts career, and I can safely say Montreal boasts some of the best women and the best food. The only thing it seems to lack is Mexican food – which is a great benefit to my diet, truth be told – and a bit more heat. If they could sort those two things out, it would be as close to a perfect city as you can get.

I’ve been training for the past six weeks now. The first two weeks were spent at my gym in Indiana – working on pre-conditioning and just getting in shape – and after that I went across to Florida to train with the Blackzilians Team and work with Mike Van Arsdale and the rest of the guys. I’ve been training out of there for the past three weeks and I’m now ready to begin the final chunk of camp in Montreal at the TriStar gym.

It’s exciting to start this final stage, as I really get a kick out of working with Firas Zahabi and the TriStar crew. Firas took me in at a low point during my career and I owe him a lot for doing that. While others might have turned a blind eye, he revamped me and helped bring me back to where I was supposed to be. Not only that, he allowed me to stay at his house when I first hooked up with the TriStar gym.

There are also a ton of training partners waiting for me in Montreal. We’ve got Ivan Menjivar, John Makdessi and Yves Jabouin, as well as a ton of other guys, amateur and pro, that will help push me to the limit in the next few weeks.

Interestingly, although I tend to split training between separate camps, my two coaches both have the same ideas and attitude towards my career. They know the emphasis is placed on dominating my opponent, never letting up and doing all I can to get that win.

We all share this same mentality going into a fight, and that makes for a really good synergy. It’s quite funny actually, because I’ll often go from camp to camp and find myself being critiqued on exactly the same thing by two different coaches. We’re talking real subtle stuff here, as well. Maybe I should have got the hint first time around and made the alteration before coach number two spotted it. Regardless, it’s great to be working with coaches that are both on the same page and both completely dedicated to bringing me back to where I want to be – on top of the bantamweight division.

The reason for ending my camp in Montreal is simple really – it’s far easier to make weight out here. I don’t have the comfort of home foods in Montreal. It’s tough to find tacos out here. The good thing about Florida, on the other hand, is that there is a heavy focus on wrestling, which used to be one of my main weaknesses a couple of years ago. Van Arsdale has me working on wrestling every day in Florida, and that kind of repetition and attention to detail has been a Godsend for me.

My striking has also come on leaps and bounds due to working with Henry Hooft. He trains some of the best strikers in the world and is an awesome striker in his own right. Henry also has a philosophy on striking and a pressure style that falls right in line with what I’ve been trying to do in the fourteen years I’ve been involved with this sport. I couldn’t be happier with where I’m at now, both in terms of wrestling and striking.

In all honesty, the only problem I have with training is the fact it takes me away from my daughter. It kills me to have to leave her and know I won’t be seeing her face for weeks on end. I miss taking her to school and picking her up afterwards, then asking her how her day went. When I’m home, she’s with me all day, every day, and that simply isn’t the case when I’m away training. You go from one extreme to the other, and it takes some adjusting to.

It’s a sacrifice I have to make, though. The money I get from fighting goes towards her future, and the belts I win in this sport act as mementos I can proudly show her when she gets older. I can tell her, ‘This is why daddy had to spend so long away from home – this is what he won’…

I love reading your tweets, hit me up @MiguelTorresMMA.

Bantamweight star Miguel Torres fights Michael McDonald on Sat., April 21st at UFC 145. UFC 145 is live on Pay-Per-View.