After much urging to see him train, Marcus (The Irish Hand Grenade) Davis took nine-year-old daughter Alexis to the gym he owns in Brewer, Maine.
The 36-year-old welterweight had a tough day planned at Team Irish Mixed Martial Arts. Thirty minutes of sparring with no breaks, while fresh fighters came at him every two and half minutes. Come 20 minutes, an exhausted Davis was on the ground and taking some punishment.
When the session ended, his daughter ran over to ask if her dad was OK. Davis sat her down and explained why he puts himself in harm's way for a paycheque.
"I said 'I just want you to understand that the reason why I do this now, and I'll continue to do it, is so that your life is better than my life was, that you can have the things and the chances to do great things that I never thought I was going to get,"' Davis recalled in an interview with The Canadian Press.
"'And I got lucky and God's made sure that I've been able to do this, but it's for you. It's so that you can do the things that you like to do and that's why Daddy gets punched in the head. It's for you.'
"And she totally understood and is appreciative of it."
On Saturday night, Davis will stick his head out again as he takes on Canadian Jonathan (The Road Warrior) Goulet on the undercard of UFC 113 at the Bell Centre (available on pay-per-view).
Light-heavyweight champion Lyota (The Dragon) Machida takes on fellow Brazilian Mauricio (Shogun) Rua in the main event in a rematch of the UFC 104 fight controversially won by Machida last October.
Davis (21-7) is one of the UFC's blue-collar fighters. Small for a welterweight at five foot 10, he nevertheless has an 8-4 record in the UFC since graduating from Season 2 of "The Ultimate Fighter."
A former pro boxer, Davis morphed into a mixed martial arts fighter by turning a video camera on himself in the garage as he worked out and then studying the tape to see what he was doing wrong. As a cage fighter, he ran off 11 straight wins, including six in a row in the UFC, from April 2006 to June 2008 when he was beaten by Mike (Quick) Swick.
On Saturday night, both Davis and Goulet need a win.
Davis is coming off losses to Ben (Killa B) Saunders and Dan (The Outlaw) Hardy while the injury-plagued Goulet (22-10 with one no contest) has been on the shelf since December 2008 when he was knocked out in 33 seconds by Swick.
"I've got to look at it like this as my last fight in the UFC if I don't win," said Davis, a father of four. "So I've got to go out there and I've got to perform. . . . I've got to turn heads and make people excited to watch me fight."
Davis knows the UFC is sensitive about fighters failing to do just that in the wake of middleweight champion Anderson Silva's lackadaisical display in a win over Demian Maia at UFC 112 in Abu Dhabi.
Davis believes he does bring the goods when he fights.
"I go out there and I let it hang out and either I'm getting beat up or I'm winning. But I go out there and I perform for the UFC, for the people that watch, people that are paying money to watch a fight, they know if I'm out there, I'm going to be bleeding. That's one thing that they know.
Added Davis: "All I can say is the day that I quit will be the day that I win and people boo."
Davis is a 6-1 favourite to beat Goulet according to one Las Vegas bookie.
Davis has some demons to chase in the meantime.
Hardy got into his head before their UFC 99 showdown last June, ridiculing Davis' attachment to his Irish heritage. And at six foot three, Saunders was always going to be a bad matchup at UFC 106 last November.
Davis acknowledges he did not help matters with his game plan for either fight.
An emotionally charged Davis chased Hardy, whose bread and butter is counter-punching. And thinking the super-sized Saunders would be sapped by the weight cut, Davis opted to turn the fight into a brawl. He was cut seconds into the fight and eventually put away three minutes 24 seconds into the first round.
"Fights that I've always tried to turn into a brawl are the ones that I've kind of come out at the shit end of the stick," Davis conceded.
Davis does better when he hangs back and uses his boxing skills to attack onrushing opponents.
Sometimes he is his own worst enemy, however. He can repeat mistakes. He concedes that he has dropped weightlifting from his training regimen several times, because he tends to lose when he does it, only to go back to it like a former smoker lighting up (he has sworn off the weight room for the Goulet fight).
A proud man, Davis returned to Maine after the Saunders loss to lick his wounds. But family and friends have helped put things in perspective.
"Yeah, it's there in the back of mind, I think about it, it's upsetting and stuff," he said of the recent defeats. "But it gets a little easier every day and every sparring session when you're doing better and better. And the better I get, the more I'm able to go 'You know what, that's the past, now let's look forward to the future."'
Davis also has other life yardsticks than fighting.
"My UFC fights are really really important to me, they're important to me because it's how I take care of my family, they're important to me because I am a fighter and I have a lot of passion for what I do," he said. "But that's not the only thing that defines me.
"When I die I don't want people to remember me like 'He was a great fighter' and all that. That's not all I want them to say. I would much rather have them say 'You know that was a guy that really cared for his family and made sure that his kids did better than he did and was a good friend and did what he could do for others.' Not just that he was a tough guy or a badass. That stuff doesn't matter when you're gone. That's like instant gratification, it's not a lifetime of people remembering you."
Davis continues to learn in and out of the cage. Hardy's antics before their fight have all but left scars -- Davis was particularly riled that the British fighter encouraged fans to Photoshop pictures of him. Some were funny, others were distasteful or downright cruel.
Davis' rage spilled over earlier this year. Signed up for a Twitter account by the UFC, Davis responded to a fan query about Hardy by tweeting: "I hope Dan Hardy dies of AIDS."
Davis apologized. He also said that it was meant as joke and, as a novice Twitter user, that he didn't realize that it would go to anyone but the person who asked the question.
"I legitimately am sorry," he said.
Bad blood clearly continues to boil, however.
"For the rest of my life, if you go to Google and you type in Marcus Davis, before you're done typing in Marcus Davis, the first one that's going drop down underneath is going to say Marcus Davis Photoshop. ... Those pictures are on the Internet for my kids for the rest of my life. Those will never go away.
"And nobody's talking about that. They all think it's funny. Everybody thinks that's funny that he did that. Nobody from the UFC called him and told him to cut the shit out, nobody did anything about him doing that to me. He gets a shot at a title shot and everybody now is attacking me? A guy that's a honest hard-working father who loves his sport and treats everybody that he fights with respect, and everybody wants to beat up on me because I did say a joke.
"But even through all that, I'm saying if it hurt his family, and if that upset anybody in any way or somebody that actually does have HIV or anything and that bothers them, then I am really sorry that I said that, but I did not mean it to explode into something that it did. I thought it was just a private thing and I thought it was funny and apparently it was not funny and I'm sorry if I hurt anybody's feelings."
(Marcus Davis Photoshop actually comes up as the third option provided by Google during a search).
Davis says he is ready for Goulet, despite a recent trend back to suffering facial cuts. After losing to Swick in June 2008, he had facial surgery to remove scar tissue and smooth bones in a bid to avoid cuts.
It worked, for a while.
He likes the Goulet matchup, if no other reason that Goulet is about the same size despite being listed as 6-1 by the UFC. Davis has sparred with Goulet in the past and says he's not even six feet.
"I think Jonathan Goulet is a very tough guy," he said. "He's one of those guys, he's either hot or he's cold. He comes in and he's either on the money or he's just off. He's not like super at one thing, he's just decent at everything. He's a decent striker, he's a decent grappler. It's an interesting matchup, I'm not taking him lightly that's for sure."
Davis spent time training in his beloved Ireland before the fight and is contemplating buying property there.
He also visited Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia with fellow fighters Rashad Evans, Forrest Griffin and Gabriel Gonzaga for a Spike TV show. The fighters spent close to a week training with the marines and giving them some close combat tips of their own.
"It was pretty awesome," said Davis. "You really start to appreciate the sacrifices and the training and everything that they do to try to protect our country. It brings you back to reality, because you kind of get desensitized by everything you see in the media here in the United States. All the time, they're talking about war, war, war, war, war. And you just don't make connections to it.
"But when I was there, it hit me pretty deep to hear all the stories and to see what they would go through. A great experience."
And another life lesson.
