May 6, 2018 … the RIZIN Fighting Federation is in Fukuoka, Japan for their 12th event. The featured attraction pit one of the country’s brightest stars against an unsung MMA pioneer. For Ian McCall, his stunning nine-second knockout loss acted as the flipping of a switch – not only for his consciousness but his life as a whole.
From 2002 to 2018, the man famously known as “Uncle Creepy” fought around the world and did so at the highest level. As good as he was throughout his career, there will always be that thought of how things could have been different had certain key factors been altered along the way.
Retirement for many professional athletes is the hardest of pills to swallow. Unfortunately for McCall, that phrase had a literal meaning for the vast majority of his life. Having encountered drugs as early as age 8 with marijuana, it would carry on and progress from there to such degrees that saw peaked with a near-fatal overdose. When reflecting on that reality, McCall compares that to seeing his only child, his 8-year-old daughter, and being perplexed by the differences of each of their early lives.
“I started taking drugs at a young age, plant medicine, I guess – dabbled in everything and was addicted to painkillers for 20 years,” McCall told MyMMANews, “From 14, where I was getting it from friends or smuggling them across the border from Mexico. At 14, I was like, ‘I can’t get in trouble, I’m 14,’ so I just taped them to my legs. Steroids, pills, just sh*t I could sell to the f*cking kids at my school. I was addicted for so long and I couldn’t break it. And psychedelics is what helped me through that. I mean, that’s what got me off it. I can’t even dip anymore. If I try and dip I get sick, I can’t even imagine what would happen if I took an oxycontin or fentanyl, I would probably die.”
Admittedly “a mess” when entering the UFC in 2012, the now age 35 Costa Mesa, California native finds himself loving life as post-MMA he’s become a psychedelic integration coach.
Continued: A Troubled Path to a Great Escape: The Ian McCall story
