MMA fighter Mac Danzig is, by any standard, a unique sort of person.  The vegan pro fighter is one of the most experienced contestants on the current incarnation of Spike TV’s The Ultimate Fighter.  At times appearing angry and misanthropic, and then at others a lover of nature and insects, he’s nothing if not intriguing.

CraveOnline: Thanks for taking the time to talk with me, Mac.  I know a lot of people probably want a piece of you right now.

CraveOnline: I’m sure it must be pretty hectic.  Did you anticipate that being on The Ultimate Fighter would change your life this much, this quickly?

I’m a pretty private person, but I did this for my career.  It was a step in the right direction.  I’m glad I did it, but I’m not the kind of person who indulges in the type of attention that comes with this.  I just like fighting and training and I was trying to put myself in a spot to help my career.  I anticipated that it would change my life, but I didn’t really know how much it would change things.

Mac Danzig: I feel bad that I reacted that way.  It was just a negative way of looking at things.  The problem was that it was hard to maintain a positive attitude on that show.  There were some good guys there, but I was also surrounded by guys who I wouldn’t normally choose to be around.  Some of them, I don’t even know what they were there for.  Maybe they were just there to be on TV and screw around and try to fight.

There were definitely times when I wondered, what am I doing here?  But I had friends who helped keep my mind right.  You could see it in one other guy on (Matt) Serra’s team, George Sotiropoulos.  He was in a similar position to me.  He was very serious and wanted to work hard and he had these guys who expected him to be an alarm clock for them.  I didn’t know that stuff was going on at the time, but when I saw the episode I knew how he felt.  There are always guys who are serious and guys who aren’t.  The guys who aren’t just get in the way.

Mac Danzig: I was a little more worried about it at first.  I think the worst part is over for me, but you never know what they’ll show and what they won’t.  They’ve already chosen not to show quite a few things that I thought for sure they would.  On one hand I’m a little concerned about it, but on the other hand what’s done is done and they’re going to show it or they’re not.

I get an advance copy of each episode one day before it airs so I can do a little write-up, like a blog I’m doing for Spike TV.  Even if I might have done some things I’m not proud of, I know who I am.  I can’t help what other people are going to think of me now.

Mac Danzig: I have misanthropic tendencies.  That’s just part of my personality.  Just about anybody has said, at one time or another, ‘Man, I can’t stand people.’  But I actually kind of do feel that way.

CraveOnline: The show kind of dwelled on you being a vegan and loving animals, even insects.  Your personality seems pretty atypical for a fighter.  How did you get into this line of work?

I liked the idea of the training and of dedicating myself to this one thing.  It’s one-on-one competition and I really like that.  You’re not reliant on anyone else.  That’s what appealed to me from the beginning.  It’s just you out there.

Mac Danzig: When I first moved to California to train full-time, I was on a good winning streak and I felt like I was probably seven or eight wins away from getting into a good organization.  But things don’t always work out the way you plan.  I didn’t have good management and I took some bad fights I shouldn’t have.  I had situations where I trained full-time, twice a day for six months, and then I wouldn’t end up getting a fight.

I got wrapped up in the King of the Cage organization when I was first starting and I was dumb and signed a contract with them because I didn’t know any better.  That contract really held me back when the UFC and IFL and other legitimate organizations were interested in me.

CraveOnline: Seeing the show now and getting a sense of how things were on the other team, do you ever wish you could have been on Matt Serra’s team?  Did you get a chance to learn from him at all while you were there?

I never really got to train with Serra or anybody on his team after that first day of evaluations.  After that we were never in the gym at the same time for anything other than the fights or the weigh-ins.  But even though our team had a losing streak I would much rather have been around the guys we had than some of the guys they had.  It’s better to be on a team that has to deal with some losses than a team that has three or four complete imbeciles.

Mac Danzig: It’s hard for me to judge Hughes.  He was kind of up and down, like the rest of us.  The entire experience was an emotional rollercoaster for all of us, even the coaches.  I really didn’t like the way he handled his coaching when we started dealing with the losses, but I can’t judge him for that.  He’s only human and everybody deals with stuff in their own way.

He wanted to win and he’s very competitive.  Maybe he’s a better fighter than a coach.  I guess that’s the best way I can say it.  I still don’t really know him.  The environment of the show was a synthetic environment.  They call it “reality” because it wasn’t scripted, but it wasn’t real either.  I have no vocabulary to explain how strange the whole experience was.

Mac Danzig: Hey, no problem, man.  I just want to say that no matter what happens I’m here to stay.  Wins and losses will always happen, but I’m here for the long haul.  I finally have a chance to make a living out of this and I’m going for it because I’m tired of being poor.