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“I blame this man for putting my daughter in the intensive care unit.” No, these are not the deranged ramblings of a person disconnected from reality. was like this ufc Fighter Nathaniel Wood felt the mental need to do his job while his newborn baby, with a hole in the heart, was fighting for her life.
“I’m very good at using my weaknesses as my strengths,” he explains. IndependentLast July, he had to flip a switch in preparation for his fight against Daniel Pineda. “My daughter was just born a few months ago and she was in the intensive care unit, she had a lot of health complications. So I turned her around and it took its toll on her. I told myself throughout the whole fight that this is why she’s dealing with this.”
The tone of such statements did not sit well with Wood, who was otherwise an attractive south London boy, born and brought up in Morden. “It sounds a little horrible, sounds a little harsh, but I’m going to use it to my advantage. You best believe I trained like there was no tomorrow – imagine training with those intentions.”
Both Wood and his first son, Arla, won their respective battles in the weeks that followed.
More than a year has passed since that tragic incident. The 32-year-old, now a father of two, finds himself in the final preparations for his next fight against Jose Delgado. Saturday at UFC 321But life outside the cage means everything to Wood, who relishes the opportunity to speak about his young family.
“The family is good,” he says. “I’ve got another daughter at home, two little ones and a two-year-old, and she’s great. Arla has a hole in her heart, so she’s going to need an operation at some point. But right now, the doctors have said, ‘Look, go away and let her grow as big as she can’ because the bigger she gets, the better the operation will go. But she’s the happiest little girl you’ll ever meet. You wouldn’t think that with her. Something is wrong. She’s happy, she smiles, she looks just like the healthiest little baby in the world. We are all absolutely blessed.”
Becoming a father has, among other things, changed Wood’s perspective on how to compete. The Londoner has previously spoken openly about his struggles with anxiety ocdBut with becoming a father comes a whole new level of responsibility.
“I can’t afford to die,” says Wood. “I used to ride motorbikes and not worry so much about my health. Now I’m like, man, I need to take care of this little girl. I want to see her grow up, be the best dad I can be. And I don’t want my little girl to see her dad become a punchbag.
“I’m not going to mention names, but there are a lot of UFC fighters – currently or who have just retired – where people are saying ‘Retire man, what are you doing?’ Falling out left, right and centre. I don’t want that. I don’t want the game to retire me. “I want to retire with my health intact and my strength intact and spend the rest of my life watching my girls grow up.”
The knowledge that he’s not “invincible” is on Wood’s mind now more than ever – but mental obstacles in fights are nothing new to him.
“I think with OCD and anxiety, I definitely think deeply about it,” Wood admits. “Even in my last fight there were thoughts of getting hurt, for some reason my OCD said ‘you could get a brain bleed in this.’
“It’s very expensive and a very bleak way of looking at it, but unfortunately these are the cards I’ve been dealt. I’ve got this disease, if you like, and unfortunately I sometimes can’t get these things out of my mind. I just have to get on with it as best I can.”
Wood’s way of thinking comes in handy from time to time. “I’m very good at using my dark OCD, anxiety, and pain to help me become the best fighter I can be,” he says, explaining how the obsessive nature of his brain helped him find a way to zone out in the Pineda trial when Arla was in the ICU.
But it’s his evolving mindset that has also changed his ultimate goal in the UFC.
Two years ago, Wood was scheduled to end his feud with fellow British featherweight Leron Murphy, but the bout was canceled due to injury. Murphy now looks for 145-pound title shotWhile Wood – who is 5-1 since moving up from bantamweight – is still trying to crack the top 15.
Wood still wants to be champion. He still believes he can defeat Murphy. However, the man formerly known as “The Prospect” admits that he is no longer the same. Now nicknamed “The Last Kingsman” – a nickname he chose mainly because it “sounded cool” – Wood doesn’t really care if he achieves his 16-year-old dream of winning UFC gold. His priority is to leave the game with health in mind.
“If you asked me ‘Can you fight for the UFC belt tomorrow?’, I would say ‘Yeah, come on, do it!’ But now I’m not really bothered about it,” he confesses. “I just care about my girls, as long as I’m in this sport, making as much money as I can – which would obviously be (by becoming UFC champion) – but that’s obviously a few steps away right now.
“I just want to make them proud, man. My girls don’t understand yet that dad is a fighter, but I want them to look back and say, ‘Wow, our dad was one of the best fighters on the planet.’ If I can beat number one, that’s amazing. But if not, great, no problem.”
Nathaniel Wood faces Jose Delgado on the undercard of UFC: 321 Aspinall vs. Gane on Saturday, October 25 live from the Etihad Arena in Abu Dhabi. Click the link to learn more about how to watch the fight on TNT Sports Box Office Here