The Fight for Life: Mike Davis
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“Most people die out at twenty five...they hit their peak at life and now they’re just living day by day until finally they die of old age at seventy-five...They’re living a simple life of just wake up, work, sleep, wake up, work, sleep, and they’re dead inside. It’s different in the MMA world because, I wake up and literally fight to be alive, and when I win, it’s like I know I’m alive, and that is the best feeling in the world.”
This is the worldview of twenty-seven-year-old MMA Lightweight fighter Mike “Beast Boy” Davis. Born in Hudson, NY, he is on track to become a UFC champion with a short, but impressive career, with USA Today featuring him on their list of “20 Fighters Who Could Become Stars in the 2020’s.”
Davis’ latest and biggest fight was the night of October 12, 2019 against UFC competitor, Thomas Gifford. Taking the fight on only four days’ notice, Davis delivered one of the most brutal knockouts in the UFC. Davis first remembers his initial walkout: “Everybody was cheering, nobody knew who I was, but everyone wanted to reach out and touch my hands as I was walking down, and I couldn’t help resist but touch theirs back…it was like I was drawing their energy.” This energy helped fuel Davis’ already incredible skills years in the making.
“[I] just fought for [my] life,” Davis says about that night. When asked on his most memorable part of the fight, he says, “Avoiding all of his strikes only getting hit a few times…knowing that my body is fluid with my mind, everything focuses and moves as one and it opens my eyes to show me that I really am at the level I got and that I’m ready for the next challenge.” It was a brutal knockout, with competitors arguing that Davis’ countless, perfect strikes made it “not even a fight,” with Davis bouncing [Gifford’s] head like a pinball machine.” By the end, Gifford was slumped on his stool, bloody and cut, while Davis had nothing but a smile as the referee raised his arm in the center of the cage.
Despite his proud victories, Davis doesn’t let them create arrogance or ego. He recognizes the pressures in the cage other than winning, and although a deadly sport, he finds humor in the dynamic. “You’re there to entertain everybody and you don’t want to let everyone down or be the laughing stock, and get knocked out in the first five seconds or submitted in the first five seconds and then you’re a meme for the next five months,” he says with a laugh. But in the cage, he doesn’t “fight with emotion.” But watching him in his element, there is a clear confidence, joy, and a love for the fight. This gives him a great advantage over any opponent he faces. Not blinded by rage or crippled by fear. Rather he is executing the result of his hard work, and there is a sense of pride he finds in that, not just winning.
Davis wasn’t always a champion, or even a fighter. As a kid, he was opposed to confrontation, and suffered from anxiety and the cruelness of school kids. The summer after his sophomore year, he took action to make a change. Committing to two Insanity workouts a day, and biking 14 miles to the gym, he grew from 4’11 to 5’9 and gained thirty pounds by junior year. Davis remembers, “People left me alone…It was the best feeling of my life.”
During this time, Kevin Rooney, Mike Tyson’s coach, trained him in “peek-a-boo” style boxing, “the same kind that Tyson used.” Training in both boxing and wrestling simultaneously has made him adaptable to his opponents, whether the fight is on their feet or the floor, which is where his nickname “BeastBoy” originates. Describing Davis, his current, coach Pete White always says, “If the fight gets harder, Mike gets better. As the fight goes on, he gets smarter.” Davis recognizes the support and training of his team, including White. “He is like a father figure to me, Davis says. “He took me in like a son, and we’ve had fifteen fights together.”
After his last amateur fight against Jeremiah McDougall in February 2015, Davis took fighting “more seriously.” “I beat him by arm bar in the first round. And he was a big name. He was good. That was my tenth victory. I won a title over it. Then I turned pro.” But he credits the most of that time periods inspiration to the speech of hip hop preacher Eric Thomas who said, “‘When you want to succeed as bad as you want to breathe, then you’ll be successful.’ After I watched that video, I cried and then I took it seriously. I really thought that, if I put my heart into this, I can take it as far as the sport will give it to me.”
After that, Davis “climbed the leaderboards. “I was one of the most feared fighters in Florida,” he says. “Nobody would fight me for years. I had to resort to pro boxing because I couldn’t get a pro MMA fight.” So when the opportunity to make his UFC debut was against Gilbert Burns, top ten UFC competitor and three-time World Jitsu Champion in April 2019, he gladly accepted. Although it ended with submission by Davis, that fight put him in the spotlight.
Amid the crowd’s scream, large cameras, and blood smears, Davis sees beauty in the fight. “I’ve always thought of mixed martial arts as kind of like dancing where you and I are learning each other’s rhythm. I have to find a way to make myself stand out a little bit during my solo portion and that’s what the judges want to see…I’ve also seen it as a game of who can murder who, which sounds a little violent but it’s definitely how MMA should be looked at…It’s murder chess.”
Surprisingly, “Beast Boy” has a very mild and gentle nature outside of the cage and gym. When he’s not fighting, he’s home with his dog, riding his bike down the street, or trying to catch an iguana. “I’ve been trying to catch one ever since I moved to south Florida…I’m gonna catch one,” Davis laughs. Although representing Daytona, Davis does not consider it his home. “I consider wherever I feel happy “home” and it doesn’t need to be in a solid place or solidground, it can be with people I’m with at the moment, or it can be myself…It just feels good to be alive and striving every day.” Davis’ simple yet raw philosophy will be the very thing gets him to his highest achievement of “wrap[ping] that gold one around my waist, that gold belt.” He says, “I’m ready to see what that feels like.”
But the core of Davis’ career and drive is life itself, and the feeling of it. “Only one thing is certain, and that is I’m alive, and to be hit and to hit something makes me feel like I’m still here and I’m still breathing, and I know that for certain, whatever happens, I will walk out of the cage and I will live the next day.”
