Josh Hill is fighting for a fight
The painful part of his life is supposed to come from the punches to the head, the kicks to the thighs and the occasional air-curtailing headlock. Not to mention the moments his face ends up buried in an another man’s sweaty armpit.
Simply getting those opportunities to absorb that abuse — and to give some of his own — isn’t supposed to be the challenge. Yet for Josh Hill, frustration is his biggest opponent these days.
“Ah, man,” he says. “To say the least.”
One of Canada’s top fighters has spent the past year trying to find a way back into the cage.
He was supposed to fight in February. That was for a bantamweight title in Russia. Mixed martial arts pays well over there, so he was happy to go back for a second time after winning his debut the previous August. Even better, they called in December and offered him a second fight.
The catch? That additional bout was up a weight class. And it was in just 10 days.
“I took it,” the Binbrook native says. “And three days in, I tore my pec.”
Tore is actually a gentle way of describing what happened. While sparring here in Hamilton, he pulled his opponent off the cage and ripped the muscle right off his shoulder bone. Stupidly — that’s his word — he kept going and finished the round. Turns out that wasn’t a good idea.
After surgery, he wasn’t cleared to fight until June. He rehabbed hard, found a fight for that month and was ready to go when it was cancelled. He wasn’t happy but he understands. It happens. Things got a little better when the match he’d had to cancel in February because of his injury was rescheduled for August.
“Then the money behind the Russian organization got arrested,” Hill says.
With that option now gone, he scrambled and found an opponent for September in Las Vegas, only to get a call the week before telling him it was off.
Having been in fighting shape for months now with no outlet to compete, he was getting antsy. Angry, really. So he was thrilled when another organization signed him to a bout for late October. Which was promptly delayed to November. Then bumped to December.
Is he confident he’ll even fight then? “I’m not at all,” he says. This wasn’t supposed to be this hard. When he was cast on the Ultimate Fighting Championship’s reality TV show five years ago, his career appeared ready to take off. It was supposed to be a massive launching pad to enormous things. But a loss there kept him from latching on with that organization. That hiccup seemed to stifle everything.
Once a hotbed, Ontario has become a wasteland for MMA. There are places in Alberta and
Quebec that still host cards but they often want to find bring guys in who are likely to lose. Local fighters coming out on top is good for business. Hill doesn’t fit that bill. Now 16-2 — his only two defeats have come at the hands of the same guy — he’s too good to be cannon fodder. As a result, he gets bypassed.
The frustration has almost caused him to quit. The only reason he didn’t is because he feels that at 31, he’s in his prime and would regret it later if he hung up the gloves. So he runs his own gym, does personal training and keeps himself ready.
Throw in a fiancée and a fourmonth-old daughter who he wants to see as much as he can, and balancing life and his sport isn’t easy. Especially when there’s no guarantee of any payoff at the end of the road.
“It’s really, really hard,” he says.
But he’ll keep at it and hope he hears a cage door click shut behind him one of these months. His opponent in Montreal — if it happens — isn’t a local guy but a 13-3 UFC veteran from France. Beat him and it’ll be difficult to not bring him back soon.
That’s what he wants. Just to be active. He figures he’s got a few good years left in the sport. He doesn’t want to spend them on the sidelines.
“I’m ready to go,” Hill says. “I’ve been that way since July.”