Marcus Davis, dubbed "The Irish Hand Grenade", has a big upcoming fight versus Pete Spratt (a The Ultimate Fighter alumnus).  The two will face-off this Saturday, April 7, at UFC 69: Shootout.  Marcus Davis has had a long career, fighting in all sorts of venues (boxing, K-1, kickboxing, MMA), and will take that veteran presence into his fight against Spratt.  Marcus recently took the time to stop by and talk with us at BuddyTV about his career and his upcoming fight.

Below you will find a partial transcript of the interview.  For the full interview, listen to the full MP3 audio, which you can also find below.


BuddyTV: Marcus, I have to ask you this before we get into some of the other questions: how did you get the name “The Irish Hand Grenade?”

Marcus: I got the name Irish Hand Grenade…well, it was about 15 years ago when I turned pro in boxing, so I’m definitely dating myself here.  When I had signed a professional boxing contract I had moved to Boston Massachusetts and I was training out of a boxing gym in Somerville.  There was an elderly gentleman that used to come in and just watch the sparring.  Every time we had sparring he would come in, sit down, and watch and he would make comments on everything.  Everyday he saw me he would say, “You are the Irish Hand Grenade,” and I would ask him, “Who is the Irish Hand Grenade?”  He would say, “This guy who used to fight in the 40's,” or whatever, and he goes, “You look like him and you fight like him.”  I guess he was a southpaw too, he just said over and over again that I reminded him a lot of him and then my handlers, me being Irish, the people who were handling me at the time were also Irishmen.  One night I went to a fight, I was fighting and I got announced as The Irish Hand Grenade and I went to my manager and I said, “What was that all about?” and he goes, “Hey I liked it.  I ran with it and we’re gonna’ stick with it.”  So ever since then it stuck with me and I really like it, you know, I enjoy it.  It’s kind of like a different persona.  When I’m at home I’m dad, I’m Marcus, but when I’m fighting, then I’m The Irish Hand Grenade.


How are you physically right now?  Are you healthy and ready to fight against Pete Spratt?

Yes I am.  I’m absolutely, you know, psyched for this fight.  This is going to be a great fight and the injury that I had with Shonie (Carter), after the Shonie fight when I knocked him down, I actually, my entire thumb came off my hand.  It became dislocated from my wrist and the bone slipped down the side of my wrist, but I got it reset and it has healed.  So I’m going into this fight right now at this point pretty much injury free, a little soreness here and there from just training so hard, but injury free and I’m ready to go.


Has the injury hindered you from training to your full potential?

Not now it isn’t.  It did at the very beginning of training camp, which obviously was about 10 weeks ago.  When I first started training it stuck with me for about the first, I don’t know, 4 weeks or 3 weeks of the training camp, but the last 2 weeks, so at about week 5 in, I’ve been fine.  I’ve been able to do everything full motion, wrist control is going good and absolutely no problems at all striking with it. 


You kind of touched on your win over Shonie Carter earlier; what did you come away with from that fight?

I walked away with that fight, you know, it felt good to be able to go in there with a guy that had, had so many fights, that was a veteran of MMA.  Now I’m a fight veteran, I mean I’ve fought you know, boxing and kick boxing, I’ve fought K-1 and MMA.  I’ve done, if it’s fighting, I’ve pretty much done it.  But I don’t have the exposure that he does as a MMA.  It was good to go in there and pretty much totally own him and dismantle him and with just one weapon, which was the jab basically.  I mean I was knocking him down with jabs, I was hurting him with just my jabs and that was it.  You know I walked away with a lot more confidence too, you know every win.  The fight before that when I fought Forrest Petz, that was a more, a fight that I was more nervous for than the Shonie fight.  The Shonie fight I was pretty comfortable about it.  I knew what I had to do and I had a pretty good plan going into the Shonie fight.  I basically came away from that fight knowing that I’m a better well rounded fighter than I was before.  I was able to take him down.  I got the take down, which everybody was saying he was going to throw me around in there, because that’s what he does; he throws guys and then he becomes a wet blanket on them.  He never threw me, never took me down, I took him down, I had the mount, I took his back and on the stand up every time we clenched, I was the one that was landing knees and punches and on the outside I was owning him with punches and some kicks.  So I came away with a lot more confidence.   

(Interview conducted by Royce Yuen and Bardia Mehrabian)

(Image Courtesy of MMAFIGHTGUIDE.com)