Back in January, after a scheduled matchup between Stipe Miocic and Fabricio Werdum was postponed due to a Werdum injury, the Brazilian UFC heavyweight champ threw a little shade in the direction of the American challenger.
“I will fight against you [Stipe Miocic] anytime after my recovery. I think you are a great fire fighter,” his tweet to Miocic read.
Turns out his tweet was one word too long.
Miocic does work as a part-time firefighter/paramedic with the Oakwood Village and Valley View, Ohio, fire departments, but he was already a top-five heavyweight. Now he can say he’s the best, adding a new line to his resume as the UFC heavyweight champion.
It is a stunning result, simply based on the fact Miocic has never committed his life solely to training for MMA. There have been others in the modern era with jobs that have challenged for the belt—Brock Lesnar’s onetime rival Shane Carwin comes to mind—but no one else in this kind of situation has won the belt.
Part of the reason is that MMA is so multi-layered and complex that you can spend all day training the various disciplines, from muay thai to boxing to wrestling to jiu-jitsu. And all that comes before the stamina training and strength exercises.
You can literally spend a lifetime absorbing some of these lessons.
Miocic, however, did it on his own terms, taking one of the most roundabout routes ever to a major MMA championship.
Miocic (15-2) had a background in amateur wrestling, competing at Cleveland State University and qualifying for the 2003 NCAA Division I Wrestling Championships. However, the next year, Miocic left the team to pursue his baseball interests.
If a team had drafted him—and according to Bloody Elbow, there was interest from some teams—MMA may have never drawn Miocic.
Instead, he eventually found himself with a mean competitive streak but no outlet, and turned to MMA.
He debuted professionally in 2010, and within 20 months, was in the UFC.
This is a man who is not chronologically young—he is now 33 years old—but he is young in the game, a fresh and still somewhat raw talent who has more potential to unearth.
On Saturday night in Arena da Baixada in Curitibia, Brazil, before 45,000 screaming Brazilians rooting on Werdum, Miocic seemed as though he even surprised himself. As Werdum advanced wildly midway through the first round, Miocic backpedaled before planting his back foot and landed a short right that put Werdum down and out. As Miocic rushed in for some ground strikes, ref Dan Miragliotta immediately waved off the fight, and Miocic jumped the Octagon cage, into the waiting arms of his cornermen, all the while shouting, “I’m the world champion! I’m the world champion!” As if he was convincing himself by saying it out loud.
“He’s a lot quicker than I thought,” Miocic told the UFC on FOX crew after the fight. “I hit him with some shots, and he didn’t like it too much, and then I caught him with the right hand. I do have power. Some people don’t think I do, but I do.”
It’s not that people doubted his power; it’s that they’re still figuring out who Miocic is and what he brings into the octagon.
True, he had not showed one-punch knockout power before Saturday night, but he had illustrated the effective use of the same counter right that put Werdum’s lights out.
Everything else was slowly being unveiled, layers peeled away and used as needed to add flavor to the recipe.
There was no better time to show this other ingredient.
For the last decade, the top of the world MMA heavyweight division has been a merry-go-round, with the same familiar names coming and going and no new ones able to truly break through.
The division had gotten so stale that there had only been three heavyweight title bouts since October 2013, and one of them was an interim title bout.
For years, the division has been dominated by three names: Cain Velasquez, Junior dos Santos and Werdum.
In fact, there hasn’t been a UFC heavyweight championship fight without one of those three involved since UFC 116 in July 2010, when Brock Lesnar successfully defended the title in a win over Shane Carwin.
Ironically, Miocic was never the first option to face Werdum. Originally, the UFC heavyweight champ was penciled in against Velasquez in a rematch of the UFC 188 bout in which Werdum captured the belt.
However, the often-injured Velasquez bowed out with another injury, this time to his back, and Miocic slid into the open slot.
As the fight approached however, it seemed as though Werdum, who is known for his relaxed attitude, was a little too loose.
In fact, he spent his own time and money creating and distributing masks with his face on them, and then, moments after the Friday weigh-in, complaining that the masks had been banned from the arena.
Most expected the fight to be the continuation of a late-career renaissance that had ranked among the great reclamation projects in MMA history. For the longest time, Werdum was considered talented but inconsistent, at one point struggling through a 5-4 stretch.
It was only after he was knocked out by Junior Dos Santos in October 2008 that he received a wakeup call, adding emphasis to his striking attack to go with his world-class ground game. The hard work rounded out his approach, and with opponents unable to take advantage of a clear deficiency, he quickly surged.
While he’d been favored against Miocic, the road back will be difficult. Werdum is 38, and it’s fair to question whether the downward slide is underway.
At 33, Miocic isn’t a kid, but he has much less mileage on him, and much more momentum to ride.
On Saturday night, ESPN aired a documentary titled “Believeland” about the many disappointments in the Cleveland sports scene. The city hadn’t had a major sports championship since the Browns won the 1964 NFL title. Hours later, Miocic was shouting the city’s name above the silence of 45,000 quiet Brazilians.
It was a statement in every way. The blue-collar, part-time firefighter and paramedic hasn’t just broken a curse or a divisional veteran stranglehold. He did more than that. For now, he is the best heavyweight in the world.
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