Before Saturday night, the highly hyped Siyar Bahadurzada was riding a seven-fight winning streak.
Plus, the former Shooto welterweight champion was looking at a title run if he scored an exciting main-card win against Korean star Dong Hyun Kim at UFC on Fuel 8.
Unfortunately, the “Blackzilian curse” struck again.
In case you’re not familiar with the term, the Blackzilians are an MMA super-camp based in Florida who host many UFC fighters, including former light heavyweight champion Rashad Evans.
But since the camp formed, it hasn’t really put together the best record.
In fact, the Blackzilians have lost more UFC bouts than they’ve won, with the most high-profile upsets coming from their two most prominent members—Evans and Alistair Overeem:
• Siyar Bahadurzada: 1-1
• Rashad Evans: 2-2
• Alistair Overeem: 0-1
• Michael Johnson: 4-2
• Vitor Belfort: 1-1
• Ryan Jimmo: 1-1
• Matt Mitrione: 0-1
• Thiago Silva: 0-0 (1 NC)
• Melvin Guillard: 1-3
• Abel Trujillo: 1-0
• Jorge Santiago: 0-2
• Miguel Torres: 1-1
Note: All records only include fights in the UFC, starting from the period when each fighter joined the Blackzilians.
What’s more damning is the fact that many of these fighters boasted winning streaks before joining the camp.
For example, Overeem has suffered the most from his transition to Florida, as he saw his five-year, 12-fight winning streak come to an end against Antonio Silva—who ironically left the Blackzilians when “The Demolition Man” came knocking last year.
Clearly, something’s amiss here.
Is this just a result of the UFC being a much tougher place to win than the MMA regional circuit, or are the Blackzilians‘ elite members somehow suffering from an unexplainable curse?
McKinley Noble is an MMA conspiracy theorist and tech writer. His work has appeared in GamePro, Macworld, PC World, 1UP, NVision, The Los Angeles Times, FightFans Radio, MMA Mania and Bleacher Report. Talk with him on Twitter.
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