1000 KICKS AND COPS VIDEO

Hello Fightplayers!
On Monday morning I trained Muay Thai with Michael ”The Pimp” Costa. We started warming up by jogging around the gym and then doing situps and jumping jacks. We warmed up in about fifteen minutes and then we went into training. He made me and everyone else in his class do onethousand kicks with the majority of them being directed above the hip. I have done this before, but he made sure that we put technique ,speed, and power into every kick and to do that all the way up until you last couple kicks is hard. I felt awesome for the whole week after that.

Work has been a little slow. I think all the media about Toyota has really gotten the people scared to buy. I haven’t sold one new car yet. All the cars that I have sold have been pre-owned. I know Toyota isn’t the only car manufacturer with a recall right now and it is funny that the media isn’t talking about other recalls right now.

(Video)

The other night there was a home invasion in the house next to me so when I was walking home I saw a half a dussin police cars parked infront of my home. Two guys had been arrested. While I was approaching my home with the camcorder out the police told me to back up and when I asked if I could go home they said no, I wasn’t aloud to go into my own home.

So instead of standing around I went for a walk in the neighborhood. When I got back I saw that someone was getting arrested in the same spot but on the other side of the street so of course I pull out my camera. Well this one police officer didn’t like that. He made me walk across W Washington and he yelled at me to put my camera on the trunk of his car which was all wet so when I didn’t do it fast enough he slammed his hand on the back of the truck as hard as he could and yelled at me like he was a ”Drill Seargent”. Then he says that he is searching me cause I look like a criminal because I’m in a high crime area. I follow all his orders and after about twenty minutes him and his partner let me go, but not before telling me that I shouldn’t be out filming stuff.

I go straight home and have a peanut butter and jelly sandwhich and then I walk down the steet to give some water to Jermaine and his family. When I get down there the same police officer had Jermaine’s brother ”Coco” standing infront of their vehicle while they were questioning him. When they saw me they started smiling which I thought was weird. They waved me over and when I came over and the same officer from earlier started getting really aggressive with me. At one point while he was questioning me, for the second time, he told me ”come over here” and one second later he said ”get a little closer and you are about to feel some pain”. He was really just harassing me. They had me out there for about a half an hour saying how they could arrest me if they wanted to and all this stuff. It ended up beeing a long night and I’m still pretty aggitated over how I was treated but you can’t fight the law cause the law will win haha;) In my last blogg I said that I really didn’t want to get on the police’s bad side and I’m not except for this one officer who is shown in the second video here.

On wednesday I’m flying back to ”Cali” for another drill weekend with the National Guard and we are going to be re-qualifying with our weapons. I’m the expert rifleman so when I go to war I’ll be the guy who takes the long shots but I’ll be using the M4. I’ll be doing all my training in Camp Roberts which by San Luis Obispo. Then I’ll be flying back to Las Vegas on Monday morning going straight to work as soon as I get here.

Thanks for reading and any thoughts or questions go in the comment box below, at the bottom of this page. I try to answer every question;)

By the way..
Go check out Keyvans Ringside, it is always interesting!
Take care everybody!

WANDERLEI BEAT BISPING DOWN! TWO VIDEOS FROM THE NEIGHBORHOOD..

This guy named Lawrence who lives at the end of C-street threatend to kill me with a hammer because I asked him to leave the homeless alone. I told him he is going to need more than a hammer so he gets his pitbull. He sent the dog to attack me and while it was running full speed towards me I started calling him towards me as I took a knee on the ground so that it wouldn’t see me as an enemy and it worked. The dog started licking me to death and we became good friends. The dogs name was ”Tyson” but I called him Eld which means fire in swedish because of his color. He is one of the nicest looking Pitbulls I’ve ever seen. ”Eld” has a single color coat that is orange with light brown eyes that really are beige. My brother, Max used to breed ”Pits” back in Sweden and me and my family have had all sorts of dogs growing up. So I know how to handle dogs in general. To make a long story short, the dog wouldn’t go back to his owner cause he beat it too much. I got a vid of him later for you fightplayers. After this incident I had to get to the gym for sparring.

Last week I got to meet two swedes who got in contact with me through my blogg here on fightplay.tv… Roger and Mia Landström, two very nice people from Sandviken, Sweden. They came out to Las Vegas to get married by ”Elvis”:) Roger is a great fighter. He has a fight coming up next month in Thai Boxing. Since Wanderlei was out of town getting ready to beat down Bisping there was no organization at the gym what so ever. People were sitting around and not training. When it came time for sparring pretty much everyone left the gym. The only two people who would spar was Jarred Hopkins from Wanderlei Silva’s new reality show and Roger Landström so we jumped in the octagon and I did about four rounds with Roger and only one with Jarred because he has too many injuries but he still manned up.

Mike Smith who is the boxing trainer at ”WFT” is very good and technical. He really tweaks the boxing to make it work better for mma. Mike used to be a trainer at Gleasons Boxing Gym in Brooklyn, New York so he is the real deal Holyfield haha:) I always feel better after training with him After sparring I drove home and packed some clothes for my drive to ”Cali”. The drive was about fourteen hours and it sucked, but I had to go to my military drill, and I had to get the nicer car back to my wife so she could drive the kids around safely.

For military training we practiced how long we could stay in one area and not do anything at all. It was pretty uneventful but next drill we will be doing some shooting. On saturday me and the wife went over to a friends house to watch Wanderlei beat down Bisping and hang out with some friends from Roseville, it was awesome!

The drive home was fun. After about nine hours of driving I hit snow right around Primm area.
I got to work at 1 pm and worked until 10 pm. When I got home there was some interesting stuff going on about 50 yards from my place so I pulled out the camera and filmed it. The police told me that they would hate to see me get in trouble if I stopped on the sidewalk so I just kept on going hahah… I definitely don’t want to be on their bad side.

Thank you all for reading and if you have questions or comments just leave them in the comment box below.

This was the first time I ran into some trouble in my neighborhood after jogging(Video)

I apologize for not writing in a while even though I had good reasons. I didn’t have access to a computer for about a week. The other reason is that I was too busy trying to make sure I can put food on the table for the family.

The first thing me and my family did including my wife’s mom, Lyubov, was to go to church with Wanderlei Silva and his family. We were invited to go to lunch by Wanderlei’s wife, Tea, but unfortunately we couldn’t go because Lyubov had to drive back to Concord, California right after church.
Wanderlei flew out of Las Vegas on thursday to get ready for his fight in Sydney, Australia against Bisping.
After spending a week at a timeshare in Las Vegas with my family I finally went home to my little apartment in north-west Las Vegas right off of D-street. The reason I didn’t have my family staying at my place was because I didn’t feel that it would be safe enough for them. We only had the timeshare until friday morning and her plane left on sunday so for the last two days I stayed with my wife and kids at the fighthouse. Wanderlei Silva has a house in south Las Vegas that is setup for people who want to come to Las Vegas and train at Wand Fight Team. It is only $15 a night per bed. During my family’s visit we went out to the strip and watched some of the free shows that they have outside the casinos. The coolest one was probably the one outside of Treasure Island where they had people dancing and swordfighting on a ship. The water fountains outside the Bellagio were pretty cool as well. Other than that I didn’t do too much except for work and spend quality time with my family.

The day after my family flew back to ”Cali” I went for a jog in the neighborhood cause I needed the excercise. After the jog I walked the neighbor hood since the sun was out and it was a perfect day weatherwise. I saw some empty houses that have been taken over by drugdealers and prostitutes so I decided to whip out the camera cause I get to see some crazy stuff out here sometimes and it is nice to be able to share some of what I see with others. While I was walking home and was just about to cross C-street to walk one more block to get to D-street where I live some guy pulled up and stopped his car in front of me and started acting a fool. I know you have seen the video at the top of this blogg so I don’t have to get into what happened. It kinda suprized me cause I hadn’t really had anyone come at me like that before out here even though I’ve been warned a thousand times by everyone who lives out here. I’m definitely going to try to get out of here as soon as my brother, Max moves down here. When he starts working we should have enough money to get out. Max has been working in Norway lately so he can afford to move down here.

As soon as Wanderlei gets back from Sydney, Australia after he beats Bisping I’m going to ask him if I can film when we sparr. It will be a treat to all you people who support me and I’m very thankful for that.
Right before he left he didnt really want to go with anyone who is southpaw, even though I got to, he thinks it could mess up his game and I totally agree that it could.
Ohh by the way,
”Rampage” Jackson was in a Nike commercial recently and this is huge for the sport of mma so this tells me that we are moving in the right direction!

Thank you all for reading and watching and if you have any questions or thoughts then just go ahead and leave them in the comment box below:)

Daniel Johan Mackie is back at work! Sparring Video and Fightplay Video

Sunday I ended up at church With Wanderlei, his wife Tea, Michelle Silva, Martha and her brother Paul. It was good. Good message that was preached. It was basically about how it is good to help people but not to over do it and burn yourself out. Give what u can give.. After church I went home and hanged out in the neighborhood and and gave out some PB-sandwiches to some people in need.

My water has been turned off because there was an outstanding balance that hasn’t been payed to the water company previous to me moving in, so I have had to go shower at Wand Fight Team. Hopefully it gets turned on soon cause I am not liking it haha:)

On Tuesday I started my first day of work at Desert Toyota in Las Vegas.
It was an awesome start and I made a lot of new friends. Jonathan Isfahan who is Iranian was very kind just like all other persians i know and helped me out and showed me the ropes around the dealership. He is a cool guy.

Jonathan Isfahan

I sold a Limited V8 Toyota 4Runner to two very nice customers who work as dealers at the Venetian and Harris Casino. I spent about eight hours with these guys and I now have two more friends in the Las Vegas area haha:)

My two new friends in Las Vegas!

Later on I went to Wand Fight Team to sparr. I got there around 7pm and went straight into the High Altitude Room to warm up. I only ran one mile since I was going to be sparring. When sparring came around I felt awesome. My timing, my footwork, my conditioning, my combinations, and my defense is all back. I’m back. I did some 99% sparring with Vitor and that guy has some power behind his strikes, even if you block a kick or punch you take some serious damage. He reminds me of Brazilian Mike Tyson if you can picture that. I got to do a little sparring with the boss Wanderlei Silva. I sparred with ”JJ” and I also sparred with a guy from Holland whos name is Hans Stringer. He is down at Wand Fight Team for a week and a half to get some good training in.

In the picture above you see ”JJ”, he is a good fighter and a cool guy.

Me and Hans Stringer from Holland after sparring.

Today I also sold a vehicle, a lifted all tricked out Toyota Tundra to a really cool guy in the Coast Guard. His Name is Chuck Miller. Thanks man. I want to invite anyone who reads this to come and train at Wand Fight Team….

Just as I was about to post this blogg Jermaine knocked on my window to tell me that his sister passed away tonight at age 49 so please keep her and her family in your prayers.

New video from the HooD! Matt Serra at the gym and tough training with Rafael Cordeiro..

Some of my readers wanted another video from my new neighborhood so I went a head and filmed some more and put together some clips for you all. Jermaine was sick last time I found him, he had foodpoisoning and didn’t really have anything motivating to say but I’ll make sure to get him at a better time.

I want to thank Benny Perez and The Church at South Las Vegas for helping with feeding the homeless. I also want to thank Tea Silva and Wanderlei Silva for initially inviting me to the church back in November for the first time. Here is a video of foodbags that I was given by the church to give to my homeless neighbors.

The last few days I have been training mostly ground stuff. I did do a Muay Thai class with Michael Costa and after that I did a class with Sidney Silva where we worked on takedowns and takedown defense up against the cage on wednesday. Me and Sidney went one round and I got one takedown on him, but at the end of the round with just few seconds to go he used his Judo on me and threw me over his back and ended up on top. It’s amazing how strong he is beeing that he is fighting at 155 lbs.
Thursday I did a Jiu Jitsu class with Sidney around 12pm. Then I ran/cycled in the High Altitude Room with Jarred Hopkins, we switched off between the bike and the treadmill for about 30 minutes. Got home around 2pm, took a little nap, ate, and ended up back at the gym at 7pm.

Matt Serra was in the octagon working on his ground game. He has a fight coming up pretty soon against Frank Trigg in UFC 109. I watched him roll until training started at 8pm with Rafael Cordeiro. Training was intense, we did a ton of drills. Rafael works you until you are exhausted. At the end of the class he had us do some mma sparring with focus on Ground and Pound. After the class was over just about everyone stopped training except for Wanderlei Silva, Me and this other guy who is nameless at the moment. Wanderlei did some mits with Rafael and I stayed and sparred for two five minute rounds against the nameless guy. Today I feel like I have been ran over by a truck. Most of my soreness is in my neck, back, and thighes. Tonight I’ll probably just go in to use the High Altitude Room for about an hour. I really want my stamina to be at a top level. I’d hate to lose a fight because of fatigue, that just makes one look lazy.
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Please write my wife some encouraging words in the comment box since she is having a difficult time being away from me. It is hard for me as well but she really needs it right now. She reads my blogg so please comment in english:)
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If anyone wants to help the homeless please contact me on facebook:)

Congratulations to my friend Farre on his highlight K.O. and Jermaine’s Words of Wisdom:Fight Mentality

I was the happiest guy the other day when I got to see my friend Farre K.O. a guy with an awesome elbow move. One of the coolest things about it was that I asked him the day before the fight to throw the elbow. I’ve seen it in action before and it worked really well for him, and what does he do, he throwes it and makes one of the best highlights I’ve ever seen. Here is the conversation between Me, Farre, and Keyvan before his fight:
Daniel Johan Mackie January 22 at 2:58pm
Tack mannen du skon som fan! Du har mitt nummer om du behover nat sa e d bara att ringa.

Farnam Mirzai January 22 at 7:44pm Reply
Tack Keyvan! Verkligen stort tack till dig. Både DJ o jag uppskattar det här från din sida verkligen ska du veta!
Samma sak med dig, bara höra av sig om det är något, det vet du!
Ska sova nu o sen skära ner sista 1,5 kg..Sen blir det vila o sova till 06:00 på söndag morgon då invägningen sker…Ska bli skönt o få d en avklarad o få äta mat o dricka mkt gott vatten :-)
Yalllllla, vi hörs bröder
piiiiiiiiz

Keyvan Zarea-Ganji January 23 at 4:17am Reply
@ DJ: Absolut mannen, det vet du. :-)
@ Farre: Jag uppskattar er uppskattning haha!
Kämpa bror, match imorgon. Ser fram emot att höra hur det går.

Daniel Johan Mackie January 23 at 4:27am
Jag vill se en av dina special armbagar som jag sag i linkoping:)

Farnam Mirzai January 24 at 10:05am Reply
DJ, din önskan är min lag ;-)

End of Facebook Message. For you non Swedish speaking people, the last sentence I wrote to Farre: I want to see one of your special elbows that I saw in Linkoping:)

His reply was: DJ, your wish is my law;-)

That just made my day:) The Highlight is here
and on Farnam Mirzai’s blogg, go check it out!

I havent gotten a chance to train the last two days. I flew back to California for two days to take care of some errands so I could get transferred to the Toyota store in Las Vegas. I got everything signed and I’m starting work there tomorrow. I also got a chance to put my Wand Fight Team sticker on both my cars and it looks awesome, I think it made the value of my cars appreciate at least $1000:)

The other night I was out walking down C street and I got stopped by the police. They told me not to walk down in that area cause it was the worst for drugs and murder in Las Vegas. They seemed really concerned and they were actually the nicest police I have ever met. They were huge Wanderlei Silva fans and we started talking about mma for about a half an hour. By the end of our conversation two other undercover cars and one regular car that had been following me rolled up and we took some pics together. Sorry about the quality but it was late and dark.

Everyone who reads my blogg now knows Jermaine. I’m gonna be putting up a video of him whenever I can find him and It’s going to be called Jermaine’s Words of Wisdom with a different topic everytime. Let me know what you think. If anyone has any fight clothes, t-shirts or shoes, or pants just laying around, please contact me cause I’d love to give them to Jermaine since he only has one outfit at the moment. It could be good PR for someones brand as well:) Here he is

Lycka Till Farre! Good Luck!

From now on I’m writing in english. The number one reason is because if I write in Swedish without the three last letters of the swedish alphabet it makes it really hard for the Swedes to understand what is written and pretty much everyone in Sweden can read english. The other reason is so my friends here in the states can read my blogg as well.

Farnam Mirzai is gonna fight tomorrow so please pray for him, I don’t care if you are Christian or Muslim or pray to buddha, just do it:)

If you are in Sweden then please go visit one of my best friends Evelina! She runs the Tshirt store in Norrkoping but she is from Linkoping. She is cool so go check out her store:) Here is a picture of us when she came to California to visit me:)

Today I got up early so I could respond to all the comments from my viewers on my blogg here on Fightplay.tv.
My first class today was MMA with Michael ”The Pimp” Costa. Check him out in this video!
Michael has become a good friend of mine since we shot the show ”Fighter Life” in November of 2009. He helps me a lot. We have stayed in touch through facebook until i moved down to Vegas. The class was awesome, Michael knows a lot. We did a lot of one on one drills and finished with some light sparring. Right after that I did a Jiu Jitsu class with Sidney Silva who is also a super nice guy and has an awesome family, his wife, Michelle, made all the delicious food during the recording of ”Fighter Life” and I stayed in touch with them as well.
This guy knows how to roll! Check him out!
Sidney knows his stuff on the ground. We worked on getting out of guillotine’s and also on locking them in. He showed us a really cool move where if you are about to lose your guillotine grip there is this awesome way to sweep the guy who is on top of you and end up getting the guilliotine when you end up on top. We rolled for the last 15 minutes of class so I was pretty exhausted.

After Sidney’s class I took another class with Michael which was Muay Thai. We worked on a lot of combos on the mits. Michael likes to show a couple different combinations and the he likes to put them all together at the end of the class into one huge combo with about 12 strikes and he’ll have us throw that combo twenty times, it gets pretty intense, I love it.
There is a Swedish girl on the Amateur Team who got on about a month ago who is really cool and her name is Gabriella Lakoczky and you can find her on Facebook:) She hooked me up with a protein shake in between classes which was awesome cause I really needed it. She was suppose to have a fight here pretty soon but she got dropped on her head during training recently and had to pull out cause she is still gets dizzy spells.

After training I drove home to the hood:) and when I got home I layed down and took a nice little nap.
At night I started to get a little bored so I decided to go for a walk in the neighborhood and at the same time return a tool to Jermaine that he forgot in my car the other day. I get to see some interesting weird stuff and some weird people around here.
In my last blogg I posted a video of my area and where I’ll be jogging and a lot of people seemed to like the video so I made another one tonight for you readers. Here it is:) Wow… I just checked my facebook and I now have fourteen friend requests and they are all from the rest of the people who blogg and write on fightplay.tv, it was pretty cool, I wonder if they planned that, they must have hahah:)

Ok here is the vid from tonight:)

Mitt nya omrade, jogging rundan, grannar, och video fran jobbet…

I bilden ovanfor sa ser ni mina nya grannar. Mannen i rott heter Joe Harrison och han e valdigt nice snubbe som offrade att ge mig gratis mat. Jag tog dock inte imot det eftersom det fanns folk som behovde det mer an mig. Mannen langst till vanster heter ”Mondo” och han kom forst upp till mig pa en cykel och var valdigt aggresiv och fragade ifall jag hade pengar och undrade varfor jag filmade, men efter att vi pratade en stund sa blev vi vanner och han sag till att folk inte mucka med mig hahah… Jag klippte ihop en liten video ifran mitt nya omrade, min jogging runda och nagra av grannarna. Jag filmade inte allt for att folk borjade skrika at mig for att jag hade kameran i deras omrade och jag ville inte ha problem, tydligen sa e det ”Bloods”  som e i omradet. Det e en riktig amator film, jag e verkligen inte Keyvan nar det kommer till redigering haha:) Det e inget speciellt, men ifall nan vill se vart jag bor sa kan ni titta pa den.

Sen satte jag upp en Video fran jobbet, nar jag jobbade for Subaru. Det visar hur dott det kan bli i bil branschen och vad man gor for att fa tiden att glida lite snabbare.Nu har jag kort sparring tva dagar i rad och ikvall blir det sparring igen och jag alskar verkligen att sparras! Sjalv sa tycker jag att det e det basta sattet att bli en bra fighter, att sla pa sack e bra for teknik och styrka och sa, men nar man e i ringen sa lar man sig mycket mer om fighting och Wanderlei har samma installning har jag markt:)

Har e bilder fran Wand Fight Team. Fran vanster sa e det Aaron som e kamera man som foljer allt pa gymmet, mig, och Jarred som ocksa e med i ”Fighter Life”.

Den andra bilden e pa mig och Michael Costa, han e schysstaste snubben och valdigt hjalpsam men har tyvarr en bruten hand och kan inte sparras pa ett tag.

Tack Fightplayers! Ifall nan har fragor sa kommer jag svara pa alla eftersom mitt internet e uppe nu:)

Public Enemy medlem ”Flavor Flav”

Forst vill jag tacka Keyvan for allt han skriver pa fightplay.tv for det e alltid bra. Och sen sa vill jag att alla ska kolla in artikeln han skrev om Farnam ”Farre” Mirzai”. Den blev riktigt bra och Farre kommer bli varldsmastare, det vet jag for han e en god van till mig. Skriv garna positiva kommentarer till Farre under den artikeln tack:)

Jag korde ungefar 500 miles till Las Vegas  ifran Concord,  California. Nar jag kom till staden precis innan Las Vegas sa stannade jag in pa Burgerking aven da att jag aldrig ater dar. Det roliga va att jag va tvungen att ga ut for att hamta min telefon laddare och da traffade jag pa ”Flavor Flav” fran rapp bandet Public Enemy! Haha Roligaste snubben, han e lite galen tror jag. Om ni sett han pa TV sa vet ni vad jag snackar om. Han vart lite galen pa mig for hans tjej som hette Maria borja ragga pa mig, fett skum situation hahaha.. Nar jag val kom fram till Las Vegas efter en 14 timmars tur sa akte jag direkt till min nya lagenhet och flyttade in. Jag hittade det billigaste stallet igenom craigslist.com och man far verkligen vad man betalar for. Jag bor i Las Vegas ghetto, och jag overdriver inte. Tur att det bara e temporart.  Omradet e sa daligt att nar jag ringde for att bestalla Pizza sa sa dom att dom inte aker ut till mitt omrade for att deras leverantorer blivit ranad for manga ganger hahah:)  Mina grannar e schyssta mot mig i alla fall. Jag ska satta upp lite bilder nar jag vagar ta ut kameran haha… Efter att jag flyttat in sa stack till en Toyota bilfirma och snackade med agaren och nu har jag ett jobb som jag borjar pa den 26 januari. Efter bilfirman sa stack jag till Wand Fight Team och skrev pa mitt kontrakt med dem. Nu har jag manager och och en bra marketing team. Dom vill bara ha 10% av vad jag kommer att tjana pa mina matcher men nar det kommer till sponsorer sa e det en anna femma men jag e nojd och tacksam att jag far arbeta med dom basta i branschen. Nar jag holl pa att signera mina papper sa kom Wanderlei Silva in och halsa pa mig o min fru Sasha. Han borjade skamta om mina klader jag hade pa mig for jag hade finklader, slips och hela koret hahah. Han ville att jag skulle borja trana direkt. Men Jag sa att jag va tvungen och ta hand om lite grejer forst och da sa han att jag masta komma in pa tisdag, som e idag for da e det sparring mellan 21:00 och 11:00. Just nu sa sitter jag pa Starbucks eftersom de har gratis wireless internet. Jag ber om ursakt men sa fort jag har skaffat internet i mitt hem sa kommer jag kunna skriva mer. Nu ska jag tagga och ta en tupplur och sen blir det sparring med Wanderlei Silva med fler:) Hade bra alla!

Fightplay välkomnar Daniel Johan Mackie – vår nya bloggare.

Förord: Keyvan här gott folk. Jag har valt att introducera vår nya bloggare Daniel Johan MacKie genom att göra en intervju. Han har redan hunnit bli ett välkänt ansikte här på Fightplay då han presenterats i två tidigare inlägg.

Luta er bakåt, lär känna familjefadern som har siktet inställt på UFC.

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K: DJ, berätta lite om dig själv till att börja med.
DJ: Jag heter Daniel Johan Pearl Mackie och är en MMA-fighter. Jag är född i Karlstad. Min far är från USA och min mor är svensk. Vi flyttade till Linköping när jag var 5 år gammal och det var där, några år senare, som jag blev intresserad av kampsporter. Linköping är mitt riktiga hem.
Jag har två bröder som heter Max och en yngre bror som heter Michael, borta i Norge har jag två halvsystrar också. Jag är gift och har två barn.

K: Berätta om den fighter du är, vilken viktklass, styrkor och eventuella svagheter?
DJ: Jag är nog en muay-thai fighter, det är den stilen jag har. Jag tempoväxlar, varvar aggressioner med ett inre lugn. Jag känner mig definitivt tryggast stående än på marken. Men jag jobbar för att förbättra min groundgame, vill vara allround. Min aktuella viktklass är 205 pounds (93 kilo). Men jag har funderat på att gå ner ytterligare en viktklass till 185 pounds (83 kilo).

K: Varför är du en fighter? Vad tilltalar dig?
DJ: För att jag älskar det. Jag tycker själv jag är duktig på det, en naturlig fallenhet för det. Men det ska hållas inom idrottens ramar, inte ute på gatan. Det som fascinerar mig är när man står där ansikte mot ansikte med någon annan, instinkterna talar och det är man mot man. Det är spännande och roligt!

K: Vad har du för relation till USA? Din far är ju amerikan, när flyttade du till andra sidan Atlanten?
DJ: Jag flyttade hit 2002 och innan dess var min far den enda länken till USA.

K: Vi går tillbaka i tiden DJ, hur kommer det sig att du började med kampsporter?
DJ: Redan när jag var en liten parvel var jag mycket intresserad av ”fighting” du vet. Den första kampsporten jag började med var Kung Fu. Jag var elva år gammal och så nyfiken. Men träningen tog inte bara plats där utan jag och min bror tränade en hel del redan i den åldern för oss själva. Jag tjänade mycket på att faktiskt visa honom det jag kunde. Ett år senare började jag träna boxning i Linköping. Då tränade jag bland annat med min vän Naim Terbunja (läs: duktig proffsboxare som etablerat sig väl i USA). Oj, det var verkligen länge sen.
Jag fokuserade på boxningen i två år. Efter den tiden var det faktiskt återigen mycket träning med min bror och en kille som heter Farnam Mirzai (läs: Farnam är en thaiboxare från Sverige som flyttat till Thailand för att fokusera på thaiboxningen heltid).
Vi tre slogs mer eller mindre, det var faktiskt så, säger DJ och skrattar. Han fortsätter:
Farnam hade tillgång till en lokal i Linköping där där en grupp fighters samlades och gick upp mot varann. Lite av en Fight Club-grej varje helg. Men det hela sköttes på rätt sätt. Det var som sparring. Det bästa var att vi filmade vad vi gjorde där nere och kunde då återkomma till det vi spelat in och se vad vi behövde förändra eller förbättra i vårt fightgame.

K: Ok. Så allt började med Kung Fu, du fortsatte sedan med boxning. Nu sysslar du med MMA. Hur kom MMA in i ditt liv?
DJ: Jag var 15 år gammal när jag började träna MMA. Jag hamnade väldigt ofta i bråk med nazister när jag var yngre. Många av mina vänner är utlänningar och kunde inte bara stå och titta på när de hamnade i trubbel eller fick stryk. Jag blev helt enkelt tvungen att förbättra på mina kunskaper för att inte hamna i underläge i sådana situationer.

K: Det här med Wand Fight Team då, hur upptäcktes du och kom med i dokusåpan Fighter Life?
DJ: Wanderlei Silva hade satt ut en videoblog och min manager hade sett den. Managern bad mig titta och jag fick reda på att uttagningarna var 14 nov 2009. Jag kommer inte glömma den dagen för mitt barns födelsedag är den 13 november. Jag var tvungen att åka 12 november och missade hans födelsedag.
Jag var med uttagningen, de kollade vår teknik, hur vi sköt för nedtagningar, slagreaktion och allt möjligt. Det de tittade mest på var sparringen. Jag sparrades mot 3-4 killar och tills slut sa Wanderlei att jag var antagen. Det var en skön känsla att stå och sparras mitt framför UFC-fighterns ögon.

K: Vad är det som gäller nu? Vad är aktuellt?
DJ: Wanderlei har sagt att han kan hjälpa mig att bygga upp en ordentlig karriär, allt som har med boendet i Las Vegas att göra till marknadsföring av mig som fighter. Jag kommer att träna heltid på Wand Fight Team och även jobba vid sidan om träningen. Målet är att inom ett år kunna fokusera bara på träningen och att inkomsten ska komma från matcher och sponsorer. Eventuellt gör jag min proffsdebut i mars månad. Jag berättar mer för alla läsare när jag vet exakt när och för vilken organisation det är.

K: När och varför skedde flytten till USA ursprungligen?
DJ: Jag flyttade en månad innan jag fyllde 18. Hela grejen med nazisterna spårade ur. Just för att jag inte backade undan. De jagade mig varje helg. Jag personligen kunde hantera det men de började bete sig hotfullt mot min familj. Jag ville inte att min familj skulle få fler problem, droppen var när de bombade min mors bil…

K: Jag har hört att du har en militärutbildning i USA. Kan du berätta mer om det?
DJ: Det är en del av armén. Jag har varit en del av National Guard i ett och ett halv år. National Guard är den största delen av den amerikanska styrkan som finns i Afghanistan och Irak. Den enhet jag är del av är bokad att åka till Afghanistan om två år. Blir det så att jag ska åka dit kommer jag bygga för att bli en tungviktare.

K: Vad gör du på fritiden då?
DJ: Ja du, har jag ens någon fritid? Jag jobbar, tränar eller tar hand om ungarna. Men jag älskar mitt liv. Jag är tacksam för allt jag har. Det jobbiga är att nu när jag flyttar till Las Vegas kommer jag flytta ensam ifrån familjen. Förhoppningsvis kommer de kunna flytta till mig inom ett år. Det kommer att vara en period med många prövningar. Men du vet Keyvan, för att nå vissa mål måste man ibland göra uppoffringar i livet. Jag kommer att träffa familjen en till två gånger i månaden.

K: Jag är med på vad du säger. Berätta för dina läsare, vad har du för favoritmusik? Favoritmat? Favoritfighter? Förebilder?
DJ: Jag tror inte jag har någon direkt favoritgenre. Jag lyssnar på det som låter bra i mina öron. Jag älskar pasta med nästan vad som helst. Det är gott vet du! Jag har flera favoritfighters. Den store favoriten är Wanderlei Silva. Men jag tycker om och stödjer David Bielkheden och Alexander Gustafsson också.
Min klara förebild är min far. Han är en stark människa. Tack vare att jag följt hans råd har saker och ting gått bra för mig. Sedan ser jag mycket upp till basketstjärnan Kobe Bryant, en idrottare som vet vad hårt arbete är.

K: Något du vill hälsa din nya publik här på Fightplay?
DJ: Jag ser emot att låta er ta del av min karriär som fighter. Jag kommer även att berätta för er hur mina dagar ser ut med allt vad det innebär med familjeliv och vardagen. Välkommen till mitt liv!

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Där har ni det gott folk, en presentation av vår nya bloggare. Vi välkomnar Daniel Johan MacKie till Fightplay och vill att ni tar tillfället i akt nu och ställer de frågor ni har via kommentarfältet! Det har varit ett sant nöje att ha timlånga samtal med DJ och sitta där sedan och gå vilse bland alla klipp han skickat.

Keyvan Zarea-Ganji för Fightplay

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En dag i Daniel Johan MacKies liv:

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Fightplay vs. Daniel Johan MacKie – det första mötet

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Promotionvideo för Fighter Life: