The last time we saw Rory MacDonald in the octagon he was sitting cross-legged on the mat, dripping blood onto his own calves with a piece of white gauze stuck to one of the newly opened holes in his face.

He struggled to hold his head up. He struggled to remain sitting. Eventually, he gave up on both endeavors and let gravity take over. Might as well. He’d earned a rest.

It did not appear to be a great time for him, though MacDonald would insist later that he enjoyed the fight. It was, at the very least, a valuable learning experience, as much for what came after as for what happened during.

The moment itself was all pain and blood and disappointment. He’d just lost his bid for the UFC welterweight title after 21 punishing minutes in the cage with one of MMA’s all-time best punishers, UFC champion Robbie Lawler. He’d had his nose broken early and then rudely and repeatedly punched thereafter. He spent the latter portion of the fight wiping troubling amounts of blood from his face.

When Lawler landed the decisive blow early in the fifth, MacDonald reached up to touch his nose like he was checking to see if it was still there. An instant later, his legs failed him. The ref moved in soon after that, and after the ref came the doctor with the gauze and the questions, and after that came the hospital and the rest of his life as the guy who almost beat Lawler for the title in one of the greatest MMA fights ever seen.

That was slightly less than a year ago. His fight against Stephen Thompson at UFC Fight Night 89 in Ottawa on Saturday will be the first time he’s fought since then, and it finds him in a very different place, with very different stakes.

It’s funny how getting your face broken for the enrichment of your employers can change your whole perspective. After his grueling fight with Lawler, MacDonald decided that the UFC wasn’t as appreciative of his sacrifices as he’d hoped, and now he finds himself one fight from free agency.

This is usually when a non-title fight suddenly takes on a whole new set of implications. Not only does winning or losing often play a role in determining staying or going, it also shapes the whole narrative around that decision. If you’re a seasoned fan, you know how it will go from here. You could almost write the script yourself.

If MacDonald loses this fight and still can’t see eye-to-eye with the UFC on the subject of his overall worth, UFC President Dana White is likely to play him out with a familiar tune about MacDonald’s general career trajectory.

The UFC wants fighters who are on their way up, not down. It wants fighters with championship bouts in their futures, not their pasts.

Winning, especially against a surging talent like Thompson, changes the equation somewhat. It forces the UFC to consider not only what further use it could make of MacDonald, but also what use a competitor like Bellator might find for a 26-year-old welterweight whose only career losses are to two of the best fighters in the division.

And see, that’s the other thing that makes MacDonald’s situation so interesting. There’s a very real possibility that, even after all he’s been through in a decade of fighting professionally, a guy his age might still have plenty more to give.

Of course, it’s also possible that you don’t put on performances like the one MacDonald did against Lawler without giving something up that you can never get back again.

Heading into this fight, it’s not hard to imagine the appraising eye of UFC executives assessing not only what MacDonald has now, but what he might have left for the future. That’s why this fight is so important for him.

It’s not just a question of winning or losing, but of proving that his best years aren’t behind him. And, even if that’s true, it’s a lot to accomplish with one night’s work.

There’s also got to be some part of MacDonald that wonders about the answer to this very same question. He’s been fighting since he was a teenager. He’s spent more than half his career in the UFC. He seems to have only recently come to the conclusion that it’s up to him to get as much as he can from this sport before it decides it’s had its fill of him.

That’s an awful lot of living and learning to get done before your 27th birthday. When the lessons are as painful as the ones he got from that last Lawler fight, you couldn’t blame him for wondering how much more learning he can stand.

Better to be the one who does the teaching this time. Let someone else have the benefit of all that wonderful knowledge.

For more on UFC Fight Night 89, check out the UFC Rumors section of the site.