Rory MacDonald not only cashes in big, he becomes the example of how

Don’t be thrown off by the dead pan, Rory MacDonald lives for excitement. That’s one of the reasons he bolted the UFC, because of just how boring and basic it was. The roster over there has slowly been converted into automatons in Reebok gear. Very Rollerball. MacDonald craves freedom in his cage, and so he’s going to fight in Bellator, where the money is better (for him) and the matchmakers shoot from the hip. He can wear what he wants on his trunks, whether it’s the Tire Barn or Nike or his own blood. He can walk out to whatever music he wants, no approval process, and there will be pyrotechnics warming his back.No longer will it be Carlos Condit and Robbie Lawler in front of him. The new names are Andrey Koreshkov and Michael Page. Steadily, Scott Coker is whipping up a nice little welterweight division, and MacDonald is instantly its most crucial piece. Or he will be, whenever he debuts in like a year from now, after his nose has had a chance to properly recalcify.And it’s pretty significant.If 2016 is the year of fighter awareness (USADA, unions, what things are worth), MacDonald just showed what the dawning age of free agency can mean. He’ll be making a hell of a lot more money per fight with Viacom, something like five times more. He’s a fighter who gambled on himself in his prime and, even after losing to Stephen Thompson in his last fight, cashed in. From the basic standpoint of his profession — prizefighting — he really couldn’t have done better. But it’s significant, too, because this is one that the UFC had wanted to keep. This is when it gets interesting, at a moment in time when the UFC …

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