“Cain Velasquez injured, out of upcoming fight.”
It is something like a broken record at this point, isn’t it? Have there actually been more headlines announcing a Velasquez injury than headlines talking about successful fights? That can’t be right.
Can it?
Back before he even entered the UFC, Velasquez was being anointed in some circles as a monster heavyweight and future champion with endless cardio, outstanding collegiate wrestling and great and powerful striking.
We all heard the tales of how American Kickboxing Academy had this Kraken of a heavyweight stored away up in San Jose, California, and how Crazy Bob Cook couldn’t find anyone dumb enough to step in the cage or ring on local shows against Velasquez. He just needed experience, they said, but the problem was that he was already so terrifying, so mythical, that nobody was willing to get in there and take a beating from him just to collect $500 or so after the fact.
The stories make some sense, I guess. Velasquez signed to the UFC at 2-0 back in 2008, and back then, nobody signed to the UFC at 2-0. They used to have some standards, and even getting Velasquez into the UFC at 2-0 was difficult for Cook and Javier Mendez. But what other options did they have?
Nobody else wanted to fight Velasquez on the indie fighting circuit. He was too awesome. And maybe they were right, after all; Velasquez ripped through the UFC’s best big men in two years, capturing the heavyweight championship by sending the man-beast Brock Lesnar flailing about the Octagon like an overstuffed break dancer.
But that was then, and this is now, and now is a sad time. Again.
Velasquez’s latest injury, this time of a sciatic nature, forced him out of his UFC 196 rematch with Fabricio Werdum. Since that October night in 2010 when he battered Lesnar and gave him a permanent new facial scar, Velasquez has fought just six times. Six times in over five years. And those six fights were against the same three opponents: Junior dos Santos (three times), Antonio Silva (twice) and Werdum (once).
Six fights. Three opponents. And all of those wasted opportunities for Velasquez to catch up to and surpass Fedor Emelianenko, the greatest heavyweight in the history of this sport. If Velasquez’s career ended today, his biggest legacy would be one of regret, one giant “what if.” We wouldn’t be talking about all of the amazing things he did or how he turned heavyweight title fights into his own personal playground.
Instead, we’d be talking about how Velasquez just wasn’t able to stay healthy and how unfortunate it was that an athlete with so much potential was turned away and resigned to be a footnote just because his body would not cooperate.
There is always a point after every Velasquez injury where we wonder if perhaps the training at AKA is too hard, but we’re long past being able to place sole blame on his training regime. Yes, the men and women at AKA undergo extraordinarily difficult training, and yes, that does often lead to a higher injury rate than many other gyms experience. Yes, there is room to grow and change with the times, to reduce the risks associated with that type of training.
But none of those can really be blamed for all of Velasquez’s injuries. A few of them, sure. But Velasquez has gone down so many times now that there has to be something else at work, some sinister force that just doesn’t want him to succeed. And I know it’ll sound just a tad bit silly, and I am not what you’d call a person who believes in the supernatural, but doesn’t it feel like there’s some sort of curse at work here? That’s the only real way I can explain it, no matter how ridiculous it may sound. This guy is just cursed.
Velasquez said he’ll get the injury taken care of and that he’ll be back to, eventually, challenge Werdum (or Stipe Miocic, his replacement against Werdum at UFC 196) for the heavyweight championship that he believes belongs entirely to him. But the problem is that we’ve been conditioned by history at this point to believe that the chances of Velasquez actually making it back and making it to fight night are slim to none. The real surprise comes when Velasquez actually makes it to a fight with no injuries.
And you know what the real kicker is? Velasquez has been healthy since last summer. He waited patiently for his rematch while Werdum did, well, whatever it was he was doing. Nobody really gave a good explanation for why it took seven months for the rematch to be booked when it could’ve happened in the fall, other than maybe Werdum was playing some sort of mind game with the former champion.
But isn’t that the way things are for Velasquez? Nothing ever seems to go his way, and it’s unfortunate, because there is probably still a good amount of greatness there, waiting to be tapped into. It’s just that we’ll be surprised if we ever see it actually happen.
Jeremy Botter covers mixed martial arts for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter.
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