It’s never an easy thing for an athlete to start thinking about the end of the line. Especially in combat sports, where the willingness to pay a fighter tends to long outlast their ability to fight. Guys stick around, many of them for a lot longer than they ideally should. That makes it somewhat of a surprise then, that Ian McCall sounds pretty willing to broach the subject of hanging up the gloves at the young age of 31.
It’s not like he doesn’t have a long career under his belt. Despite his relative youth, he’s been competing in MMA since 2002, and regularly since 2004. That puts him at the end of the normal MMA career lifespan, and it sounds like injuries are taking their toll. McCall appeared on MMAJunkie Radio recently to talk about his latest road to recovery:
“Well, tweleve weeks ago I had full shoulder surgery. They thought it was just a labrum tear, a flat tear of my labrum, but they went in and it was… I had totally torn my rotator cuff, I tore two labrums, and I tore my bicep tendon completely as well. And my bicep muscle, a little bit, but it wasn’t bad enough where I needed surgery on the muscle. So basically, I just… My whole shoulder was done. I threw my first punch last week, after basically three months, on the bag. It’s still slow and steady. I got stem cells out on it, so it feels good. The stem cell stuff works pretty well and I’m just waiting to get better.”
When he does heal up, it seems as though there’s very little question that McCall will return to fighting, and if he can, fight as often as possible:
“Three or four would be great. I mean, if I could get in… Let’s say 2016, if I could get three or four fights and be healthy, that would be amazing. I mean, if I could do like Donald Cerrone and fight six times, great. That would be fucking amazing. But, that’s a lot. Right now I have a saying that my mental coach, Vinny Shoreman, told me a while ago, is that ‘Time is a commodity that I do not have.’ I don’t have time on my side anymore, so I would fight every month if I could. If I’m healthy enought and I’m just zipping through people, knocking everybody out or whatever, I’ll fight six times. Great. I just, I need to get healthy and stay healthy.”
But, when pressed a little further about just what his return to competition would look like, McCall admitted that if things don’t go just right, he’s probably done:
“You never know. I’d like to say I’ll fight forever, but I’m not… And I’ve got a beautiful little daughter and a girlfriend that has a son and we love eachother and I want a family. And unlike most fighters, I have the brain and the… I don’t know. I understand business and I’ve set myself up in a way where after fighting, whether it’s fighting or not, or training or not, I’m gonna be successful. It’s just the way I’m programmed. And yeah, I guess I do have a foot out the door. I have to think that way, because I just see so many of my peers and so many of my friends and family members and they’re like, ‘When are you gonna… We love watching you… Are you done? Are you gonna give this up?’ It’s time to grow up, Peter Pan. The life that fighting should provide for us isn’t there financially. Sure, you know what? I get treated like a king when I go places. People think I’m cool, they think I’m famous. You know, I got to have fun and bang a bunch of model girls and famous women and all this other ridiculous stupid shit, but there’s no money there. Oh cool, I can get into any club or bar, or I can get free tickets to anything, but besides that, I don’t have anything.”
Hopefully the road to recovery see’s McCall healthy and back in competition before long, because it sounds like fans may not get to see too many more fights from “Uncle Creepy” down the road.
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