Living in New York City, I mistake at least a dozen hipsters for Rory MacDonald every single day. I can’t frequent a local coffee shop without thinking a UFC welterweight is shopping for skinny jeans on his Macbook Pro while sipping his latte. After taking a deeper look, it’s obvious that they’re not UFC fighters, just hipsters. To my disappointment, I take my coffee to go, only to see another hipster skateboarding down the street, and he looks like Rory MacDonald too. Perhaps I’m just not that stylish, or I just have an unyielding desire to maintain breathing room between denim and my legs. Whatever it is, I’m just not as cool as Rory MacDonald. After all, he’s one of the best welterweights in the UFC. If not for a controversial stoppage late in the third round of his fight with Carlos Condit, a fight he was clearly controlling, he might still be undefeated in his young UFC career.
While we know he’s scheduled to fight BJ Penn at UFC on FOX 5 next, we know very little about what inspired his recent fashion taste. Turns out, the answer was hidden in plain sight. In a post fight interview with Ariel Helwani last year, Mike Ricci was hanging out behind the scenes and Rory MacDonald gave the TUF contestant credit for putting together his wardrobe, and subsequent swag. Rory also predicted that Mike Ricci’s UFC career was looming just around the corner. Props to these Canadian teammates for showing the remainder of the UFC how to disguise themselves as math teachers when they’re not in a cage looking to hurt someone.