Meet the ‘Man of Stone’

Joe "Homem de Pedra" Mac didn't know what his nickname meant.

A boxer since the age of five, Mac got the name when he began training with Brasa, a Brazilian jiu-jitsu camp in London. His physique and his aggression impressed his teammates. They named him accordingly.

"I didn't know what it meant," Mac says. "They called me it for months and months."

Eventually he learned how the words translated. His teammates had been calling him "Man of Stone."

"That's what they call me inside the gym, outside the gym -- that's my name," says Mac, who left fighting briefly to pursue a successful career in bodybuilding. Now the tattooed and intimidating fighter is back in MMA.

Mac first caught the eye of Cage Rage co-promoter Dave O'Donnell on the Cage Rage Contenders show. In his debut Mac hammered the talented Marvin Arnold Bleu for a first round TKO.

"I would have liked it to go on longer," Mac says. "But he wasn't doing anything to fight back. He just lay there holding his hands over his head. … As for punishment, he could have gone on for longer and taken more punishment."

The win prompted O'Donnell to offer Mac a shot on the Cage Rage main show. "Homem de Pedra" jumped at the chance to face the infamous "Bad Boy" of the U.K. scene, Jeremy Bailey.

At the Cage Rage 22 weigh-ins, Mac stared down Bailey with a malicious grin. Unfortunately for both fighters, however, the match was cancelled after Mac was attacked on the morning of the fight while walking his dogs in a local woodland.

"There was these two guys acting suspicious on a motorbike, whizzing up and down," Mac says. "We had a few words, and one of them got off. Basically I thought they were getting off the bike to nick the pups.

"One comes up to me. I knew it was going to be a fight straight away, so I hit the first one, put him down. Then the other one has come from the side and caught me. I didn't know how he caught me or what he caught me with. I thought he missed me with a punch. I turned around to fight him, and he's backed off, but he's got a knife … then the two guys have just run, jumped back on their motorbike and shot off."

Mac had been cut. A nasty gash was left on his face.

His first thought, however, was not to get medical attention but to inform O'Donnell that he would still be able to compete.

"I said I'd fight," Mac recalls. "I would have got in and tried to stop [Bailey] in the first couple of minutes if I could of. If not then, the cut would've stopped the fight. But obviously -- five stitches on the inside, seven stitches on the out -- they wouldn't let me for medical reasons."

Not wanting to miss out on the explosive matchup, Cage Rage has rescheduled the bout for December. Mac's elated. Once again he's eyeing the prospect of the high-profile fight.

"The fight I want is against Bailey because he's got a good name, and he's been around a long time," Mac says. "I'll stand with him because I come from a boxing background. If it did go to the floor, there's no way he'll be able to deal with me on the floor. It will be an interesting fight. I'm very confident it will go my way."