THE NICE FIGHTER
Since he jump-started the wrestling team at HSC, Mike Malott ’09 has reached the top level of UFC combat
By Bruce McDougall Portraits by Mike Ford
JUST AFTER ENTERING GRADE 9 AT HSC, Mike Malott ’09, attended a presentation at the school by a martial artist. After demonstrating some basic moves, the guest asked the students to perform them as well. When he saw how readily Mike had taken to the exercise, he complimented him on his prowess. “He said I was a natural,” Mike recalls, “although he probably said that to all the kids.”
Sincere or not, the martial artist’s encouragement added fuel to the fire of Mike’s desire to become an accomplished fighter. “It gave me that little bit of delusion you need to go for it.”
He’d already begun to practise the sport. “I saw it on TV one day,” he says. “It called to me. By the beginning of Grade 9, I knew I wanted to do it. Six months later I was going to a gym.”
Working out twice a week at a mixed martial arts (MMA) club in Waterdown, where he lived with his parents, brother and two sisters, Mike practised religiously, learning kickboxing, ju-jitsu wrestling and striking. His goal was to participate someday in the Ultimate Fighting Championships (UFC). He also wanted to compensate at the time for his small stature. “I was the smallest kid in the class,” he says. “I felt pretty angry. I guess I had a case of small-man syndrome. One day, I told myself, I’m gonna be able to fight and no one’s gonna beat me.”
Before this happened, though, Mike still had a long road ahead of him. At five-foot-four and 94 pounds, he was indeed shorter and lighter than his classmates, although he was also athletic. “He was just this small little guy who wanted to muscle up,” says his friend Brett Duncan ’08, who was a year ahead of Mike at HSC.
Mike’s parents didn’t allow him to watch extreme fighting on TV, but he used to smuggle DVDs of UFC fights into his house and watch them after his parents went to bed. “Other kids my age were hiding Playboys under their beds,” he says. “I was hiding UFC DVDs that I got from Blockbuster.”
Mike didn’t just entertain himself when he watched his
movies. He studied the fighters, memorizing their moves so he could imitate them later at the gym.
As Mike advanced through HSC, friends like Brett recognized his passion for wrestling and other martial arts. “MMA was my entire identity in high school,” Mike says.
Curious about this sport that had absorbed their friend’s interest, Brett and a few others joined Mike at his gym in Waterdown and began taking classes twice a week. “At first it was just Mike whipping our butts,” Brett says. “He was extremely good.”
By Grade 12, Mike was not only practising MMA four times a week, he was participating in sports at HSC as well, including volleyball, hockey and rugby. When other boys began asking him about wrestling, he thought the school should get more involved in the sport. “In my time, there was no wrestling team at the school,” he says. “So one day I rolled out the mats and talked to Ms. Mancini and Mr. Neibert about forming one.”
“He basically founded wrestling at HSC,” adds Brett.
Since then, HSC’s wrestling team has distinguished itself in inter-collegiate competitions, including a gold-medal performance at the 2019 Ontario provincial championships by Amaan Gulacha ’22. Mike returns every year to visit HSC and last year attended a wrestling tournament in which the school’s team was participating.
After graduating from HSC, Mike enrolled in a bachelor of commerce program at Dalhousie University in Halifax. While he was pursuing his degree, he was also rising steadily up the ranks of MMA fighters.
Licensed to participate in professional MMA competitions, he won his first three bouts against more experienced fighters, earning $300 for each victory. In the meantime, he continued to practise every day at a high-level gym in the city called Titan’s.
“I went to the gym more than I went to my classes,” he laughs. “I like to say that I got my BA at Dalhousie and my MA at Titan.”
After completing his studies in 2013, Mike moved home to Waterdown, where he continued to prepare himself for more professional fights. A few months later, he suffered the only loss of his career against Hakeem Dawodu in the World Series of Fighting 14, in Edmonton, a match that was televised to a North American audience.
By the time of his next bout, in San Jose, California, a draw against a French fighter named Ousmane Thomas Diagne, Mike had saved his money and moved to Sacramento,
California, to join a club called Team Alpha Male.
A leading school in North America for teaching MMA, particularly to lighter classes of fighter, the club has produced three UFC champions. It has also gained a reputation for its supportive environment. When one of his coaches noticed his obsession with practising, the coach said, “That’s Mike. Trying to get it proper.” One of his teammates said, “That’s a great name.” After that, he became known as Proper Mike Malott. “It’s better when someone else gives you a nickname,” Mike says.
Mike stayed in Sacramento for seven years, supporting himself initially by working in a store that sold pre-cooked meals. “There weren’t too many customers,” he says, “so I could sit all day and watch fights.”
After winning his next fight after 36 seconds of the first round, Mike didn’t fight again for the next four years. Despite his accomplishments, he preferred to focus on ju-jitsu while continuing to work as a coach. “I also became a corner man,” he says, assisting fighters during their bouts, offering advice on their strategies and tending to their cuts and injuries.
In that capacity, Mike says, “I had a lot of say in the way fighters performed. In the process, I picked up a lot of new tricks. I cornered more than 100 MMA fights.”
Mike was happy as a coach, but he was still in his midtwenties, and other people wanted him to resume his fighting career while he was in his prime. “His coaches could see his talent,” says Brett. “They tried to convince him to go back.”
In 2020, they succeeded. Still fighting in a category just below the Ultimate Fighting Championship, Mike recorded two consecutive victories, one in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, the other in Las Vegas, where his fight was the main event. By 2022, he was ready to make his debut at the highest level of professional ultimate fighting. His opponent was Mickey Gall, who had fought at the UFC level for more than six years and
had seven wins under his belt.
With his father and his sister Kathryn, currently in Grade 12 at HSC, in the audience in Jacksonville, Florida, along with Brett Duncan and several other friends, and as more than a million viewers watched on ESPN, Mike decked Gall with a left hook at 3:41 of the first round to win his first UFC fight. Although he was one of the lowest-paid fighters in the UFC, he offered his $10,000 in prize money to the daughter of Joey Rodriguez, his boxing coach for eight years, to help with the cost of cancer treatments for Rodriguez’s daughter and encouraged fans at the event to contribute, as well.
“This sport has changed my life,” he said after the match. “It took my anger and gave me focus and gave me drive.”
After that, he had three fights set for 2023 under the terms of his UFC contract. In February, he defeated fellow Canadian Yohan Lainesse in Las Vegas in the first round.
If you met Mike on the street, you’d hardly guess that he was involved in what he admits is “a violent sport, a cutthroat sport, a brutal sport.”
“He’s not a jerk,” says Brett, who lives in Burlington and works in sales for a technology company. “He’s not trying to be an alpha male. He loves the sport. Not many fighters are like that.
“When he’s with us, he’s the nicest, most quiet-spoken human on the planet.”
“It took my anger and gave me focus and gave me drive.”Above: Mike claims victory against Mickey Gall at his UFC 273 debut.
