By now, “respect” must feel like a pretty foreign concept to Ryan Bader.
The 32-year-old Nevada native and former Ultimate Fighter reality-show winner is chest-deep in a five-fight win streak. Most recently, he’s amassed victories over former champion Rashad Evans, longtime contender Phil Davis and highly touted prospect Ovince St. Preux while ascending to the No. 4 spot on the UFC’s official light heavyweight rankings.
Yet Bader still doesn’t top anybody’s must-see list.
He’s still not the guy fans are clamoring to have fight for the title—and it might never be that way.
But when Bader meets Anthony Johnson on Saturday in the main event of UFC on Fox 18, he’ll have a fairly simple mission statement: Go out there and do something that makes it impossible for the fans to deny him any longer.
The 205-pound division remains very much in flux as we await Jon Jones’ in-ring return. There is simply no matchmaking option other than to have Jones fight Daniel Cormier sometime early this year over the title he never lost.
Once that nice little piece of business is finally settled, Bader could be the next No. 1 contender by sheer process of elimination. All he has to do is make an impressive showing this weekend.
And honestly? We’re fresh off seeing Johnson lose a fight to a guy with a similar skill set as Bader.
The heavy-handed former welterweight, middleweight and occasional heavyweight may still strike fear in most hearts, but he lost his opportunity at the light heavyweight title last May against Cormier.
Johnson almost knocked the former Olympic wrestler out in the early going of their fight at UFC 187—just as he has seven of his last 10 opponents while posting a 9-1 record—but he couldn’t hang with Cormier over the long haul. The same blueprint could arguably work for Bader, if he can weather Johnson’s early storm and drag him into a lengthy war of attrition.
Or, if he can shock the world …
That would be something, wouldn’t it?
If Bader can move past Johnson in impressive fashion, it’ll be impossible to continue ignoring him in the light heavyweight title hunt. Still, he recently told MMA Junkie Radio he won’t start shouting for his championship opportunity. He plans to play it cool, as reported by Junkie’s Steven Morracco:
I don’t want to come off fake. You see these guys now that are trying to take the Conor McGregor approach when they’re just not good at it, and they’ve been respectful their whole career, and then all of a sudden they try this, and everybody sees through it. You look like an idiot. I don’t want to be that guy.
Maybe he speaks a bit from experience here.
When Bader tried to confront Cormier at the UFC 187 post-fight press conference last year, it was met with mostly groans. The two exchanged heated words, but it felt forced. Even if the beef between them was organic, it just wasn’t what fans wanted to see from two normally mild-mannered fighters.
That incident alone made it clear that Bader isn’t going to talk his way out of our existing notions of him. They’re already too solidly formed. He’s going to have to fight his way out.
Ironically, most of Bader’s problem comes from his sheer longevity. He’s been in the UFC since 2008, and after 17 fights in the Octagon, we figure we’ve pretty much seen the best of him. He lost once to Jones in 2011, then lost a stunner to Tito Ortiz at UFC 132 and his reputation never fully recovered.
Add in knockout losses to Lyoto Machida and Glover Teixeira in 2012 and ’13 respectively, and you start to get the picture.
Even when Bader is winning, it hasn’t felt that impressive. Nine of his 13 UFC wins have come by decision, and that includes all five during his current stretch. The list of opponents he’s stopped in the Octagon isn’t exactly imposing, either: Vladimir Matyushenko, Jason Brilz, Keith Jardine and Vinny Magalhaes.
It all adds up to make Bader what stockbrokers might call a “value stock.” He’s still a nice little commodity, but we don’t expect him to suddenly post 50 percent annual gains.
And that’s kind of a problem when you’re trying to be the best in the world.
After so many years and so many fights, it’s not going to be easy for Bader to change our minds about him.
This fight may represent one of his last chances.
Meanwhile, Johnson’s mandate is basically to hang around and continue being a viable—and terrifying—contender.
It’s no secret that the UFC would still like to set up a bout between Johnson and Jones. That’s what they were angling for in the first place early last year, before Jones was stripped of his title and suspended on the heels of a hit-and-run accident in his hometown of Albuquerque, New Mexico.
With Jones now back after a slap on the wrist from the courts, Johnson could shape up as his last big test at 205 pounds before an eventual move to heavyweight.
After beating Cormier once already at UFC 182, Jones will be a big favorite over the current champ whenever their rematch is made. The same is true for Johnson this weekend, as he’s going off as more than a 3-1 pick over Bader, according to Odds Shark.
So, really, just a couple of fairly minor dominoes have to fall for Johnson to find himself fighting for a UFC title again. That’s not a bad outcome for a guy who has been plagued by out-of-the-cage problems since he returned to the UFC in 2014.
Johnson knows he and Bader are after the same prize but considers himself to be further up the food chain.
“[Bader] feels like he should be the next in line for a title shot, but at the same time, I think you have to beat somebody in the top three to say something like that,” he told Fox Sports’ Damon Martin this week. “I fought Alexander [Gustafsson] and he was No. 2 and I beat him to make sure I was legit to be a title contender. I feel everybody should go that route.”
Johnson shapes up as that kind of test for Bader. If “Rumble” can do to him what he did to Gustafsson and what he’s done to the lion’s share of his recent opponents, it signals just a continuation of the status quo.
It’s Bader here with the most to prove. If he can pull a shocker against Johnson, we’ll have no choice but to consider him the division’s top contender, no matter what happens when Jones and Cormier finally meet.
Who knows, maybe we’ll even grant him a bit more of our respect.
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