Before Marcus McGhee became known as the MMA’s Marcus “The Maniac” McGhee, he was just a kid, trying to figure out a life that had come with more challenges and frustrations than he understood how to manage.
Along with his three siblings and his mom, McGhee moved around frequently during his childhood — the first big move sending them across the country from Detroit, Michigan to Phoenix, Arizona. Once in the desert, McGhee and his family lived in several areas of Phoenix, which meant a constant new start with new schools, new peers, new neighbors and…new fights.
The newness didn’t sit well with McGhee, who always felt like he had something to prove.
“I didn’t really like being told what to do. And I was angry,” he said. “I couldn’t help myself. I was just angry at the world because of my situation.”
That situation was one not everyone could understand. McGhee’s family moved after his dad was sent to prison. Not the kind of thing kids talk about on the playground or while skateboarding, which ended up being somewhat of a refuge for McGhee in the midst of emotional chaos.
“I got suspended and kicked out of school pretty regularly,” he said. “I wasn’t good with kids my own age.”
This put a lot of pressure on a hard-working mother trying her best to raise three boy’s to become men. And in his teens, McGhee found himself — on multiple occasions — without any place to stay, after being kicked out of his own home. It wasn’t until living with his grandparents and meeting the girl who would become his wife at the age of 15, he began to realize that life didn’t have to look like the one he was living. Thus starting the path to growing into the man we know him as today.
He learned that discipline could look like diligence instead of aggression and anger.
Years later, after countless hours spent in the gym and hundreds of days spent studying a sport that he realized would allow him to channel and take control of the anger he couldn’t appropriately manage as a kid, Marcus “Maniac” McGhee leaves it on the mat.
And he thanks God for the life experience he earned and the perspective he gained through the turmoil of his early years. It keeps him grounded, he believes, as an adult and as an MMA fighter. And it serves as the foundation for his approach to fatherhood.
“I was angry about everything I had to go through. But, as an adult, I get to say I have knowledge of all these different things and for that reason I have more gratitude and I stay the path because I know what falling off leads to,” McGhee said.