“I’m blaming this guy for putting my daughter in the intensive care unit.” No, these are not the deranged ramblings of a man disconnected from reality. This was how UFC fighter Nathaniel Wood got in the frame of mind to do his job when his newborn, with a hole in her heart, was fighting for her life.
“I’m very good at using my weaknesses to my strengths,” he tells The Independent, reflecting on the switch he had to flip to prepare for a bout against Daniel Pineda in July of last year. “My daughter was only a couple of months born and she was in an intensive care unit, had a lot of health complications. So I flipped it and took it out on him. I said to myself that whole fight camp that he’s the reason she’s dealing with this.”
The overtones of such a statement were not lost on Wood, an otherwise charming South London boy who was born and bred in Morden. “It sounds a bit horrible, sounds a bit 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 firstborn, Arla, went on to win their respective battles in the weeks that followed.
Over a year has passed since that distressing episode. The 32-year-old, now a father of two, finds himself in the final preparations of his next fight, pitted against Jose Delgado at UFC 321 on Saturday. But it’s life outside of the cage that means everything to Wood, who beams at the opportunity to speak about his young family.
“The family’s good,” he says. “I’ve got another daughter in the house, I’ve got two under and two (years old), and she’s great. Arla has a hole in her heart, so she will need an operation at some point. But at the moment, the doctors have said, ‘look, go away and let her get as big as she can’ as the bigger she is, the better the operation. But she’s the happiest little girl you’ll ever meet. You would not think there’s a thing wrong with her. She’s happy, she smiles, she just looks like the healthiest little baby in the world. We’re all absolutely blessed.”
Becoming a dad, among other things, has changed Wood’s outlook on how he competes. The Londoner has previously spoken candidly about his struggles with anxiety and OCD, but with fatherhood comes a whole new level of responsibility.
“I can’t afford to die,” Wood says. “I used to ride motorbikes and not worry so much about my health. Now I’m like, man, I need to look after this little girl. I want to see her grow up, be the best dad that I can be. And I do not wany my little girl to see dad become a punchbag.
“I’m not going to mention names, but there’s a lot of UFC fighters – currently or that have just retired – where people are saying ‘retire man, what are you doing?’ Getting knocked out left, right and centre. I don’t want that. I don’t want the sport to retire me. I want to retire with my health, with my marbles intact and spend the rest of my life watching my girls grow up.”
The knowledge that he’s not “invincible” plays on the mind of Wood now more than ever – but mental blocks in fighting are nothing new to him.
“I think with the OCD and anxiety, I definitely think darker about it,” Wood admits. “Even in my last fights, the thoughts of getting hurt, for some reason my OCD said ‘you could get a brain bleed in this one’. Don’t ask me why I told myself that. But now on fight week, I’m sitting there worrying about brain bleeds and my brain’s not stopped obsessing over it.
“It’s very consuming and it’s a very dark way to look at it but unfortunately it’s the cards I’ve been dealt with. I’ve got this illness if you like, and unfortunately I sometimes can’t get these things out of my head. I just have to get on with it as best as I can.”
The way Wood thinks does come in handy every now and again. “I’m very good at using my dark OCD, anxiety and pain to fuel me into being the best fighter that I can be,” he says, citing how the obsessive nature of his brain helped him find a way of zoning in on the Pineda test when Arla was in ICU.
But it’s his evolving mentality that has also changed what he considers the end goal in the UFC.
Two years ago, Wood was meant to blow off his feud with fellow British featherweight Lerone Murphy, only for injury to cancel the bout. Murphy now stares down the barrel of a title shot at 145lbs, while Wood – who is 5-1 since moving up from bantamweight – is still looking to break the top 15.
Wood still wants to become a champion. He still believes he can beat Murphy. However, the man formerly known as “The Prospect” acknowledges he is not that anymore. Now going by the nickname of “The Last Kingsman” – a moniker he landed on primarily because it “sounded cool” – Wood doesn’t really care if he achieves the dream harboured by his 16-year-old self to win UFC gold. His priority is to leave the sport with his health.
“If you said to me ‘can you fight for the UFC belt tomorrow?’, I’d say ‘yeah, come one, let’s do it!’ But I’m not really bothered about it anymore,” he confesses. “All I care about is my girls, make as much money as I can in this sport whilst I’m in it – which obviously would be (from becoming) UFC champion – but that’s obviously a few steps away yet.
“I just want to make them proud, man. My girls can’t understand yet that dad’s a fighter, but I want them to look back and go, ‘wow, our dad was one of the best fighters on the planet’. If I can beat number one, amazing. But if not, cool, not a problem.”
Nathaniel Wood takes on Jose Delgado on the undercard of UFC: 321 Aspinall vs Gane live on Saturday 25th October at the Etihad Arena in Abu Dhabi. To find out more about how to watch the fight on TNT Sports Box Office click the link here
