Every fight for Donald Cerrone means a road trip and a damn good time
Donald Cerrone's pre-fight preparation is a little different from that of your average UFC fighter. He spends very little time fine-tuning his skills in the days leading up to stepping into the Octagon. He spends quite a bit of hours having the time of his life.
Last week, Cerrone and five others -- four cornermen and his girlfriend -- hopped into his massive, 44-foot RV to make the 1,989-mile trip from Albuquerque, N.M., to Atlantic City, N.J. There would be plenty of stops and shenanigans along the way.
It's not so much that Cerrone doesn't like to fly. Piling into the RV with his friends is just a hell of a lot more fun.
"Road-tripping is a serious chance to f*** off the whole way," Cerrone told FOX Sports.
"Cowboy" did get some work in on the road at UFC Gym in St. Louis ahead of his bout Wednesday against Jim Miller at UFC Fight Night in Atlantic City (FOX Sports 1, 9 p.m.). Also in St. Louis? Cerrone and his buddies hit up the Anheuser Busch brewery and a Six Flags amusement park, and they mowed down a fire hydrant while getting out of a parking space at 6 a.m. Cerrone was driving at the time and the back of his RV is "trashed," but hey -- it makes for a good story.
"We were just laughing," Cerrone said. "It was f***ing hilarious. It doesn’t mess up my morale or anything."
The only thing that really does is someone or something getting in the way of Cerrone's good time. That doesn’t happen very often.
The RV is like a mobile homage to being a man. The fridge is stocked with Budweiser. There's an alligator head just hanging out. And then the guns. Of course, there are guns. There's a pistol in the back, another one up front and multiple rifles, so the road-trippers can stop and shoot clay pigeons along the way.
Donald Cerrone lands a head kick on Adriano Martins back in January.
"If someone wants to ambush us, they're in trouble," Cerrone said. "We're like Waco on wheels."
Cerrone doesn't head right home after his fights, either. He goes into vacation mode. After he beat Edson Barboza by submission in April in Orlando, Fla., the RV headed down to the Florida Keys for some partying and then back up to Georgia for turkey hunting. After the New Jersey show, Cerrone and company will visit New York City briefly -- " a day in New York is about all I can handle" -- and then move on to a NASCAR race in Indianapolis.
During fight week, Cerrone doesn't stay in the fighter hotel. He sleeps in his RV out in the parking lot. He has a Tempur-Pedic bed in there and just chills.
"What am I going to do, just sit in a hotel room and think about a dude?" Cerrone said.
Introspection just isn't Cerrone's style. As he likes to say, fighting is what he does and not who he is. Who is Donald "Cowboy" Cerrone? The kind of guy who does what he wants when he wants to do it. Conventional isn't really in his nature, especially in that RV.
"If we pass by a skydiving thing, I'm gonna get off and f***ing skydive," Cerrone said.
Would you expect anything less?
