As was pointed out to UFC lightweight veteran Clay Guida during the UFC Austin media day on Wednesday, nearly everyone who spends an extended stint working one job goes through burnout.
That burnout, however, doesn’t appear to have hit Guida much. The 41-year old continues to compete at a high clip, and will take on Joaquim Silva in Austin, Texas this Saturday.
“My thing was, what is the alternative?” said Guida, with the UFC since 2007. “Do I want to go back to working as a carpenter? Do I want to go back to not a 9 to 5 job, but a 7 to 3 job, being up at 4, 4:30 in the morning?”
“The Carpenter,” who takes his nickname from his former trade, recalled “bitter cold” days in Illinois, where the compressor wouldn’t start, and hot midwest summers in Chicago where it would be “95 degrees, 105 degrees humidity, and you’re up on a roof, building a roof.”
“That was awesome at the time. In my early 20s, it’s a great way to make a living, it’s an honest living, it makes you tough, I love putting people in homes, I think it’s great. But I knew I was meant for something greater. I knew I was put on this Earth to compete, I just didn’t know what it was in.”
Guida found wrestling in high school, however, and jumped from there to fighting. Now, there’s a chance he could be ready for UFC 300, expected to arrive sometime around late March or early April of next year. Win or lose at UFC Austin, the timing certainly lines up, and Guida acknowledged that it would be a career milestone.
“Tell you what, the movie 300— I’ve always wanted to be part of that. But I think the next best thing would be fighting at UFC 300. We started at UFC 64. I don’t think there’s too many people that can say they’ve been through 200 Pay-Per-Views, not to mention all the Fight Nights, all the TUF finales, all the other events. That would be a milestone in our career.”
Zack Snyder’s 300 tells a fictionalized account of King Leonidas and 300 fellow Spartan warriors fighting Persian invaders in 480 B.C. It’s no wonder a fighter might see appeal in appearing in such a flick — but if all goes well, Guida may get to make history himself at UFC 300 next year.
