Depending on how long you have been watching mixed martial arts, you may know the name of heavyweight Jon Madsen from his stint in the UFC.
After starting his career with three straight victories, he was selected to appear on The Ultimate Fighter 10 and made it to the quarterfinals of the reality show.
His official UFC debut came at the live finale in December of 2009 and won four fights in a row in the UFC. His fifth fight in the promotion came at UFC Fight Night 24 and was defeated by Mike Russow.
Following the fight, Madsen was released from the promotion and this was a surprise to the mixed martial arts community. The release came as a surprise to Madsen as well and he actually found out about his release via an email sent to him from the UFC.
“After my fight, I took about ten days and went on a little vacation,” Madsen told TheMMAReport.com. “My phone ended up getting wet and I was actually fired by email. I never got a phone call and I got an email from them saying they were releasing me. I was pretty shocked. I knew it was not my best performance against Russow. I did not have much of a camp and a lot of things added up to that bad performance of mine. It would have been nice to get at least ‘hey we are going to give you one more chance, bring it or you are going to be cut.’ It would have been nice to hear that I guess.”
Following the defeat to Russow, he would not take a fight for nearly three years as he defeated Matt Foster by knockout in 48-seconds at PCFN 7 in March. Many people wondered why Madsen was away from competing for so long.
“I was away from the sport, but my mind was always watching and seeing what is going on,” Madsen explained. “I got married and was trying to adjust to the working mans world. Obviously, it wasn’t quite the adjustment that I was ready for and it brought me back into fighting.”
When he was in the UFC, he trained at Team DeathClutch, which was the team based around Brock Lesnar. That team is no longer around and Madsen is now training at Factory X Muay Thai in Colorado under Marc Montoya. Madsen likes working with Montoya because of his personality.
“I really liked his personality,” Madsen said. “He is a straight forward person. He is really calm and I do not like people that beat around the bush and he is definitely not like that. It was a good fit right away with him. The training has been great. We are getting everything ready to roll and I will be ready to peak here in December.”
Madsen will be stepping back into the cage on December 19th at Titan FC 32 and will meet Dave Herman for the Titan FC heavyweight title. This fight was initially scheduled to take place earlier this month, but the fight card was postponed by the promotion. Madsen admitted that he was disappointed by the date change, but after talking to Titan FC officials, he understood why the date change was the best thing to do.
“Right away, I was a little disappointed because it takes a lot of time and effort to get your camp going and to have you peaking at the right time,” he said. “We were schedule to peak on November 20th and so it kind of frustrated me a little bit. After the phone call and understanding why they are moving it, obviously it will be better for the fans. It gave me a little more time to prepare and not going to hurt me in the long run. It will end up being a good thing probably but at first, I was a little disgruntled, not to happy about it.”
Since the change in ownership with Titan FC, the promotion has been a tremendous place for fighters to go that want to get to the UFC. Madsen is working towards getting back to the UFC, but he knows that it all starts with his fight against Herman.
“I would like to get through this fight and hopefully get a call from the UFC. Get back to the big show and where everybody is watching. That is where I want to be.”