When Sara McMann stepped into the Octagon to face Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) women's bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey at UFC 170 back in February of 2014, it marked the first time that two Olympic medalists would square off inside the Octagon.
Behind the scenes, however, something a bit more special was happening that very few were aware of.
McMann's father, who is battling lymphoma, was well enough to watch his little girl compete for her first-ever mixed martial arts (MMA) title. And he was able to do that thanks to Sara's decision to accept the bout against "Rowdy" and not decline it, something she seriously considered as she was an emotional wreck due to seeing her dad in the condition he was in.
It was McMann's choice to accept the title fight against Rousey that finally convinced her father to go through chemotherapy, something he had previously declined as he was content with letting cancer take its course. But he wasn't about to miss out on the opportunity to see his daughter take part in the biggest fight of her life.
McMann explained how it all went down during a recent appearance on The MMA Hour (via MMA Fighting):
"He chose not to do chemotherapy, so he was just choosing that he was going to live with the cancer until it killed him... and the cancer that had come back was very aggressive. He'd gone months of deciding that he wasn't going to go through chemotherapy and he wasn't going to live. The fight happened, and it was basically presented to me as, if you don't take this fight you may never get a chance to fight Ronda, that she may go into movies and this might be the only opportunity. I was really struggling with it, because I hadn't been training. Things were really hard for me emotionally. I'm a huge daddy's girl, so it was really hard for me. But when I accepted the fight, he was the first person I told about it. And he decided because of [the title fight], he was going to go through chemotherapy because he didn't want to die before he got to see me fight."
For McMann, half the battle was getting her mind right for a championship bout while going through a very rough patch, as she says knowing that every time she visited her dad could have very well been the last time she saw him. Naturally, it was hard to deal with.
"We had hospice nurses coming to our house. Every time that I drove up there I was very aware that that was the last time that I was probably going to see my dad. He cut it so unbelievably close to death that it's ridiculous. I needed something. I've trained my whole life. Training is a coping mechanism for me. I knew I needed to prepare for something. I needed to be in a practice room. Not practicing made it hard to deal with my dad."
McMann also went on to reveal that her dad's illness forced her to pull out of her proposed fight against Sarah Kaufman back in late 2013.
Sara lost to Ronda via first-round knockout (recap) but she, as well as the rest of her family, won an even bigger prize, as her father's cancer is now in remission. And even though he is still suffering from the aftereffects, McMann -- the self-admitted "daddy's girl" -- is just happy she gets to spend more time with her father.
And that is more valuable than a world title any day of the week, because her decision to accept the bout, regardless of the outcome, proved to be a winning one.
McMann will return to the Octagon and attempt to make it two wins in a row, as she battles Miesha Tate at tonight's (Sat. Jan. 31, 2015) UFC 183 event in Las Vegas, Nevada.
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