Author: Ben Fowlkes

After a brief hiatus, the Twitter Mailbag is back and ready to answer all your questions on topics as diverse as Hector Lombard’s chances for wearing UFC gold, to Brock Lesnar’s Hall of Fame worthiness, to what you should ask for if you want to wet your whistle in Germany.

Got a question of your own? Look me up at @BenFowlkesMMA on the old Twitter device and then fire away. In the meantime, let’s get this TMB started right, shall we?

Dan Brooks @Combat_Blog
Why is Nick Diaz suing the NSAC? Could that possibly work out well for him?

In short, Nick Diaz is suing the Nevada State Athletic Commission because they won’t let him fight, and yet won’t give him a chance to make his case that he should be able to fight. As you’ll no doubt recall, he was suspended after testing positive for marijuana following his decision loss to Carlos Condit at UFC 143. That was over two months ago, but, according to Diaz’s lawsuit, “the NSAC has still not convened a hearing. Nor has a hearing been scheduled. Accordingly, the NSAC’s application of NRS 233B.l27 and/or NRS 467.117 is an unconstitutional deprivation of Diaz’s due process rights.”

Now, can that possibly work out well for him, you ask? I have no idea, but at least it’s an encouraging sign. Let’s stop for a second and just appreciate the fact that Diaz has a lawyer who is actually pursuing this thing. That would have been unimaginable a couple years ago, when the most complicated legal maneuvering he was capable of was no-showing a drug test that he knew he would fail. Now that he’s back in the UFC, he’s got a Vegas heavyweight handling his business, filing affidavits that, somewhat hilariously, quote an alternate universe Diaz as saying: “The summary suspension against me, made without any consideration of the merits of the Complaint, is the only reason I am aware of that a rematch against Mr Condit has not been scheduled. If the summary suspension is set aside, I would be prepared to compete against Mr. Condit or against any other opponent deemed suitable immediately.”

First of all, imagine Diaz using a word like ‘suitable’ in conversation. Imagine him referring to the guy who peppered him with “little baby leg kicks” as “Mr. Condit.” It’s like trying to picture Donald Cerrone in a bowler rather than a cowboy hat: so impossibly wrong, it’s hilarious.

But second, imagine what would have happened if Diaz would have been left to his own devices here. This is the guy who retired after a decision didn’t go his way. You think it was his idea to get attorney Ross Goodman in on this? I’m guessing no. I’m guessing that, if it were left up to Diaz, he would have filed a writ of ‘Eff your mother’ and called it a day. That he didn’t — that he, in fact, enlisted the help of a professional who could at least put some pressure on the NSAC — is a good sign. I’m not sure if it means he’ll be back in the cage against Mr. Condit any time soon, but at least it gives us reason to hope that he’s not done yet. For now, I’ll take it.

Jason Rule @JasonRule
TMB? You covered Schaub a bit in your Hurt Business series. After his most recent KO where does he go? 205, back to Grudge?

Who says he needs to go anywhere? Obviously it’s not a great career move (or, you know, brain move) to keep getting knocked out, but let’s not be so quick to hit the eject button on the guy. Schaub’s a talented fighter, and he was looking good against Rothwell, at least right up until he decided to plant his feet and play Rock-em, Sock-em Robots with Big Ben. Rothwell’s chin allows him to play that game. Schaub’s doesn’t. Is that a problem that’s going to be solved by moving to light heavyweight, assuming Schaub could even get down to 205 pounds without donating a kidney? I doubt it. Plenty of light heavyweights can swat, and in that division Schaub loses the speed advantage he currently enjoys at heavyweight. Maybe the answer is simply using that speed advantage a little more, and brawling a little less. Schaub is a big, athletic guy who does a lot of things well. It just seems like taking blows to the head is not one of those things. I don’t know if you can build a better chin in the gym, but you can get better at preventing people from testing it.

Noel Luperon @NoelLuperon
how many Ariel Helwani’s does it take to change a light bulb?

Just one, but it takes him three hours.

Luke Williamson @ltw0303
Doesnt @ufc almost have to bring King Mo back? If for any other reason to give Jones another contender after Hendo? #mailbag

I broached this topic with UFC president Dana White after the recent event in Stockholm. While he still wasn’t terribly pleased with Lawal, he didn’t rule out the possibility of the former Strikeforce champ getting back in Zuffa’s good graces. White said he respected Lawal for reaching out to Nevada commissioner Pat Lundvall to apologize for his remarks on Twitter, and said we’d now have to wait and “see how this whole thing goes down.” It’s not exactly an enthusiastic endorsement, but it’s not a hard no either. Personally, I think Lawal is too good a fighter not to be in the UFC. Whether he’s a legitimate challenger for Jon Jones is yet to be determined, but I hope we get the chance to see for ourselves.

Maggie Hendricks @maggiehendricks
If you could match up any fiction writers (alive or dead) who, why, and who wins?

Depends what kind of fight I’m in the mood for. If I want an all-out slobberknocker between two departed great ones, I match up John Steinbeck against William Faulkner. If I want something a little more tactical between two living gems, I go with Amy Hempel vs. Maile Meloy. If I want a satisfying squash match that would fit right in on a New Year’s Eve card in Tokyo, I let Ernest Hemingway punch a hole in Jonathan Safran Foer’s face. Now that I think about it, I can’t imagine a time when I wouldn’t be in the mood for that last one.

Justin @JBod
In hindsight, will Rampage be remembered more as a great personality or fighter?

A little of both, though I’m not sure ‘great’ is the word I’d use to describe his fighting career or his personality. Instead, I might go with ‘fascinating.’ Or even ‘enigmatic.’ Inside the cage and out, he’s always been memorable, and at times extremely frustrating. Was he a great fighter? Maybe once, and maybe he still is in brief flashes, but as Dana White recently pointed out, he never quite became the fighter he could have been. He never seemed as interested in it as we were. He wanted to make movies, to be showered with praise and never, ever called out on his often absurd behavior in public. He wanted to be champ, then he wanted to quit MMA altogether, and then he wanted to go fight outside the UFC. He changed his mind a lot, in other words, and his career trajectory looks like that of a man who couldn’t decide on what he wanted to do long enough to fully commit to doing it. That’s how I think we’ll remember Jackson when he’s gone: interesting, entertaining, and all over the place.

Terry Shillito @TerryShillito
#twittermailbag I don’t think we’ve heard your take on MMA in the olympics. Should it be in? Do they copy boxing? Etc.

The UFC knows it would be a great feather in its cap to get MMA into the Olympics, but I don’t think many fans realize that it wouldn’t be as fun in practice as it is in theory. Look at Olympic boxing, for instance. Between the head gear and the limited rounds, it’s so different from pro boxing that it’s practically a different sport altogether. The same would probably be true for MMA, since few fighters would want to take elbows to the head without getting a paycheck at the end of the night. Could it become an interesting way for amateur MMA fighters to make a name for themselves before going pro? Maybe. But if you think you’re going to see Anderson Silva and Chael Sonnen go five rounds with a gold medal on the line, you’re kidding yourself.

_ajP @_ajp
With the NFL draft upon on us, if you were the UFC, who would your #1 pick be from outside the org to come to UFC and why?

Does Strikeforce count as an outside organization? If so, with the first pick in the 2012 purely fictional UFC draft, I select Gilbert Melendez, lightweight, of San Francisco, California. With my second pick, I select Luke Rockhold, middleweight, of San Jose, California. With my third pick, I trade some of next year’s picks to get the duo of Daniel Cormier and Josh Barnett. I don’t even care who wins that fight, both of them deserve to be in the UFC. And besides, I plan to resign as fictional GM of the UFC after this season, so let the next guy worry about all the fictional draft picks I gave up. Sucker.

A Fragile Smile @AFragileSmile
do you think Brock Lesnar is UFC HOF worthy?

Nope. Assuming he stays retired from MMA (and I think he will), he’s a 5-3 fighter with a career that lasted just a little over four years. Granted, he became UFC heavyweight champ in that time, and he brought a lot of mainstream attention to the sport, but that still doesn’t make him one of the all-time greats. It makes him a useful PR tool and an interesting guy to have around, at least for a little while. Shouldn’t a Hall of Famer be more than that? Shouldn’t he be one of MMA’s best, and not just one of the sport’s most popular?

I think so, but then again, MMA doesn’t have a Hall of Fame right now — the UFC does. The UFC decides who gets in and who stays out, and it makes those decisions all on its own, and for its own reasons. That’s its prerogative as a private organization, but we shouldn’t confuse it for the real thing. It’s not the same as what happens in Cooperstown or Canton, so we shouldn’t put too much stock in it either way. Some day soon, I hope, MMA will have a real Hall of Fame. In the meantime, the discussion surrounding the UFC’s HOF doesn’t mean a whole lot.

Matt Giesbrecht @MattGiesbrecht
What season on TUF is your favourite and why?

Without a doubt, it’s season four: “The Comeback.” What’s not to love there? You had Shonie Carter putting bling stones on everything, Matt Serra being the most obnoxiously effective (effectively obnoxious?) cornerman in the world, plus a little Chris Lytle and Jorge Rivera thrown in for good measure. All that, plus it was the season where Georges St-Pierre learned to be a pimp from the man who dressed like that because he did the damn thing. Sorry, but it’s going to take more than some tired locker room pranks to top that.

Dylan Lippincott @dylanlip
What’s next for rashad? Does he rematch machida? At 32 how much time is left.

I wouldn’t mind seeing another Evans-Machida fight, if only because I’d like to know if one of MMA’s most gruesome-looking knockouts could possibly be replicated. And besides, what else is either one of them supposed to do right now? But even if Evans won that rematch with Machida we’d find ourselves right back at more or less the same point, wondering what’s next. I don’t think the clock is running out on Evans just yet. His style should give him a little more longevity than the brawlers of the MMA world typically enjoy, and it’s not like he’s been pushed into a premature old age by a bunch of bad beatings. It’s just that, as long as Evans and Jon Jones are in the same weight class, it seems unlikely that he’ll ever fight for UFC gold again.

That’s why, if he thinks he can manage it, now’s the time for Evans to move down to middleweight and take his chances. The cut will only get harder as he gets older, and there isn’t much left at light heavyweight except some just-for-the-hell-of-it bouts against others who are in the same position. That’s not a bad way to get paid for a little while, but it’s not much of a long-term strategy. If Evans wants a shot at being champ again, he’s either got to drop weight classes or else hang around and hope that Jones moves up to heavyweight while they’re both still young. Eventually, Jones will probably make that move. But if you’re Evans, how long are you willing to wait? And why do you want to, if you have it in your power to lose a few pounds and be a contender right away?

James @lightbluesheep
Best beer (or beverage) on your recent European trip? #mailbag

While in Hamburg I had a delicious local beer by the name of Astra that I highly recommend if you ever get out that way. If you make it to Frankfurt, you’ve got to try the Apfelwein. If you go to Sweden, however, just do what the Swedes do and travel to Denmark for good, reasonably priced drinks. Your wallet will thank you.

Deadpanda @DeadpandaCP
Does 5’9 Lombard honestly stand a chance of getting UFC gold when he’s an Umpa Lumpa standing next to 6’2 Silva? #reachmatters

First of all, how much longer do you think Anderson Silva is going to hang around in this sport? A year, maybe two? The man is 37 years old and closing in on what might be his last meaningful title defense. While he probably could keep fighting on into his 40s, it doesn’t seem like he necessarily wants to.

But I digress. Your question was about Hector Lombard, and whether a relatively short middleweight can find success in the UFC’s 185-pound division. It’s true that he’s going to be giving up some height and reach against guys like Brian Stann, Chael Sonnen, or Yushin Okami, all of whom are big dudes. Then again, Lombard’s dealt with that before. What he hasn’t done is taken on any of the division’s elite fighters. Not yet. Lombard’s got a great record on paper, but who’s the best fighter he’s beaten? He’s spent the last several years throttling guys who either weren’t good enough for the UFC or weren’t good enough to stay in the UFC. That makes it tough to know what he’s really capable of, though he is an exciting fighter and a fun addition to a division that could use a little fresh blood. All I’m saying is, let’s see him beat a credible contender in the UFC before we start matching him up against the champ in our heads. Let’s also not assume that we know who the champ will be a year or so from now.

The easiest way for me to end this is to admit that very little turned out the way I planned. Because I was dumb or naive or both, I thought I’d spend a year following a fight gym, beginning in January and ending in December, and by the end of it something would become clear to me. I thought the stories of all these lives and careers would somehow open and close according to the calendar, and by the time it was all over I’d be able to present them as fully formed, complete narratives. I wonder now what I was thinking.

People’s lives almost never work this way, and the life of a fight gym is, in many ways, as complex and incomprehensible as the life of a person. The story is messy and complicated. A lot depends not only on what you see but where you’re standing and what else happens to be going through your mind when you see it.

Even after you’ve seen what you came to see, then there is the problem of telling people about it. Here we are at the end of this series, and there’s so much I still haven’t told you.

For instance, I never got to tell you about Duane Ludwig, a UFC welterweight and one of the Grudge gym’s true old-school hardasses. The first time I saw Ludwig in the gym, I almost mistook him for a Mormon missionary. He showed up one weekday morning in a short-sleeved collared shirt and tie, exchanging department store slacks for Muay Thai trunks just in time for a little mitt work with head trainer Trevor Wittman. He’d come to the gym straight from his new baby’s baptism, he explained once his workout was over. The new baby was the reason he kept fighting hurt, Wittman told me after Ludwig had finished a training session punctuated with multiple painful pauses. Clearly, he wasn’t feeling great, and yet he couldn’t afford to sit home and let his injuries heal while his bank account dwindled. A familiar story, and one that Ludwig lived without complaint, even when he had to fight Amir Sadollah with a neck so badly injured he couldn’t even spar during his training camp. He won the fight anyway, then had surgery (the UFC’s fighter insurance covered it) and soon enough he was back in the gym, this time in a T-shirt and jeans, leaning up against the ring with a cup of coffee in his hand during one Saturday morning sparring session, yelling at his teammates to “Stop taking it easy; it’s time to fight now, mother—-ers!”

(Duane Ludwig gives a little encouragement to his teammates. Photo by Ben Fowlkes, MMA Fighting)

I also never told you about Justin Salas, the Grudge lightweight who got the skin on the bottom of his foot burned off by an overheated mat at a local MMA event in Denver to start the year, then spent much of the rest of 2011 in a frustrating purgatory as he tried to find a fight big enough to get him noticed by the UFC. Salas’ struggle was representative of what many up-and-coming fighters go through when they get stuck between the minor leagues of MMA and the big show of the UFC. When you’re good enough to beat most people in your division outside the big show, and yet not famous enough to make it worth the risk of losing to you, fights suddenly become tough to come by. Salas fought just twice in 2011 — a decision victory over Rob Emerson in the foot-burning incident in January, then a decision over Joe Ellenberger in October — but he was a fixture in the gym during all the long, fightless months in between. One thing I could always count on when I walked through the doors at Grudge is that Salas would be there, training as if he had a fight in two weeks, even though he spent most of his year waiting and hoping.

Then there are the little moments, the snapshots of life in the fight game that come into focus for a few minutes at a time. Like when Wittman and Nate Marquardt spent a post-workout stretching session trading oddly lighthearted stories about the dangers out getting hit in the head for a living. Wittman, of course, told about Verno Phillips, who would not only ask the same questions over and over after a fight, but would occasionally even start hitting on women at the post-fight celebration, forgetting that his wife was only a few feet away.

This prompted Marquardt to recall a story about Japanese fighter Akihiro Gono, who, he said, got rocked so badly during a fight that he returned to his corner at the end of the round unsure of where or even who he was. According to Marquardt, Gono later recounted the strange look on his coaches’ faces when he sat down on the stool and asked, in all seriousness, “Am I here to fight? Am I a fighter?”

They went back and forth this way for a long time, like men will do when they get to trading and comparing stories. One anecdote after another about the funny things people say and do after suffering minor brain trauma in the ring. As if that world wasn’t also their world. As if the risks were something for other people to worry about, but never them.

And then there are the moments that, months later, you still aren’t sure what to do with. Like the day one of Grudge’s own came home from the wars after being blown up by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan. Wittman and a few others gathered around as he shuffled inside and sat down on the tattered sofa in the gym’s front room for an impromptu reunion. His wife stood nearby holding their six-month-old baby as he told his old training partners the story of a deployment so violently unlucky it was noteworthy even by military standards.

“He’s been feeling pretty negative about a lot of things lately,” his wife said to Wittman, as if imploring the coach to give one of his pep talks. But this wasn’t like losing a fight or getting dropped from the UFC. This was a whole different realm of bad. He suffered a traumatic brain injury in the blast, the soldier explained. He had burns up his arms. When he came to in the dirt several yards from his exploded vehicle, the first thing he asked the fellow soldiers who came to his aid was whether he and his manhood were still acquainted. They were, his comrades told him, and one can imagine the relief that must have washed over him in the seconds before he moved on to worrying about everything else.

Days later, Wittman was still shaken by this encounter. The eager young fighter who went away to war and the wounded veteran who came home were in no way the same person. Sitting there on that couch, the soldier had talked almost optimistically about the possibility of doctors amputating one of his damaged fingers, because at least then he might be able to make a fist again. Then he might be able to return to the gym and hit the bag a little, he said, and the idea alone seemed to lift his spirits ever so slightly.

Sure, Wittman had told him, nodding along and trying to seize on the positive. You never know what you might be capable of with a little time, some physical therapy. But later, when thinking back on it, Wittman would find himself at a loss. Even with his relentless positivity, how do you begin to cheer up someone whose best-case scenario now begins with losing a finger? How do you even make sense of a world that takes healthy young men and blows them up along the side of a dirt road in a foreign land? What were you supposed to say to make this one better?

(Trevor Wittman works the mitts with Ludwig. Photo by Ben Fowlkes, MMA Fighting)

Wittman had his own struggles to deal with that year. After being released by the Alchemist Management team and effectively severing his working relationship with both Marquardt and Brendan Schaub — two of his biggest, most profitable fighters — the financial health of the gym became his chief concern. He was no longer getting a percentage of big fight purses, no longer getting a regular check in the mail from the Alchemist clothing line. Just a few months ago there had been talk of opening a whole chain of Grudge gyms. The next thing he knew Wittman was cashing in coins just to pay his utility bill.

But in some ways this reversal of fortunes was a good thing for Wittman, and for the Grudge gym. Beginning in the summer of 2011 and into that fall, Wittman went from pouring all his attention into a few top guys to spreading it out more evenly within the gym. He cornered some Grudge representatives at a local Fight to Win event in Denver — something he almost never did before — and made changes to the practice schedule in an attempt to promote greater team unity.

Before, the team had split training sessions between lightweights (welterweight fighters and below) and heavyweights (middleweights and above). The star power on the team was disproportionately tilted in favor of the heavyweight half, meaning the lightweights often got less attention from the gym’s cadre of coaches. No more of that, Wittman decreed, and from then on the team practiced together, as one unit.

One Saturday morning I watched as Wittman lined all the Grudge fighters up against the wall before sparring and lectured them on the importance of being there for one another. Whenever a Grudge team member fought, he said, whether it was in the UFC or on a local card down the street, he wanted everyone showing their support, even if it was just via text message.

“And don’t just text him if he wins,” Wittman added. “I hate that s–t. If he loses, you pick him up. That’s when he needs you.”

Perhaps out of pure financial necessity, Wittman also began paying more attention to attracting and retaining paying members — even the kind who would likely never, ever fight outside the gym. He made it a personal mission, he said, to make the gym into a financial success, if not for him than for his brother, who was the official owner of the Grudge Training Center. By the time 2011 came to a close, the gym might have had fewer UFC stars carrying the flag on pay-per-view fight nights, but it certainly had a healthier, more unified team behind closed doors.

Which is not to say that Grudge became one big, happy family without a few casualties along the way. By the end of the year, Wittman had parted ways with a number of his staff, and he was never known as a man who parted ways on the best of terms. Gone was front desk fixture Jen Berg, who had a bitter split with Wittman that ended acrimoniously on both sides. Gone was Ricky Vasquez, who managed the careers of many lower-level Grudge fighters until a dispute over money turned ugly in a hurry, as such disputes tend to do. Even boxing coach Fareed Samad found himself on the outs with Wittman after a fairly innocent tweet attempting to cheer Ludwig up after a loss to Josh Neer in January of 2012.

As for Wittman and his fighters, the relationship with Schaub eventually improved after the loss to Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira in Brazil. The relationship with Marquardt mostly didn’t, which seemed just fine by both men. Shane Carwin spent much of the year out of action with injuries, but whether he was on the mats or not he always seemed to hover above the fray, as if he simply didn’t have time for these petty squabbles.

Grudge light heavyweight Eliot Marshall managed to hold on to his UFC contract after the loss to Luiz Cane, thanks in no small part to his manager, Alchemist’s Lex McMahon, who was quick to remind UFC officials that Marshall had done them a favor by stepping up to take the bout on short notice. But then Marshall lost a heartbreaker of a decision to Brandon Vera in October, and though it was perhaps the best performance of his UFC career, he was cut soon after.

Marshall had vowed to retire from MMA if the UFC cut him a second time, since the organization almost never granted third chances to fighters who’d already been cast off twice. At first I doubted he’d stick to this promise if it came down to it, but it seems like he has, at least so far. He hasn’t fought since the Vera loss, and claims he has no desire to. As he explained to me once, with a young son at home who was growing up far too quickly, he couldn’t justify missing any more important moments in his child’s life just so he could fight for a couple grand on some Indian casino fight card somewhere in as part of a desperate attempt to hold on to a dream that had most likely slipped through his fingers already. He’d begun to think about it while he was still in the UFC, he said. He’d come home exhausted from training, wanting to do nothing but lay on the couch until it was time to go back to the gym, but then he’d open his eyes and his son would be standing there, wanting to play, wanting his father’s attention. How could he say no to that? How could he explain to a toddler that daddy needs to save his energy for beating people up?

“Being a fighter doesn’t define me,” he said when I pressed him on whether he could really give this up so easily. “Being a father and a husband defines me. My life will go on after this.”

It struck me as an incredibly healthy attitude for a fighter to have, and yet one incompatible with success in a business like MMA. How could you reach the top and stay there if it didn’t mean absolutely everything to you, the way it almost certainly would to the people you’d be locked in a cage with on Saturday night? And yet, if it did mean everything to you, what kind of life was that? How could you know for sure whether all those sacrifices — the time away from your family, the time spent hurt and tired and sore and cranky — were really worth it?

The conclusion I eventually arrived at was: if you’re the type of person to seriously consider the question, you already have your answer. If it even seems like a choice to you, it’s probably best to go do something else. Because that guy who’s going to be standing across from you when the moment of truth comes? He doesn’t have a plan B. He is not considering any other career path or wishing he was home playing with his kids. He wants only to hurt you. He wants it more than he’s ever wanted anything, and if you don’t feel the same about him then you’re in the wrong place.

It’s a hell of a way to make a living, when you think about it in those terms, and yet it is not a job. A job demands some things — things like time and energy and a little bit of focus — but this is so much more than that. This business will take everything you have, and even if you’re willing to give that there’s no guarantee that it will give back. You spend weeks and months laboring out of sight, only to show up on fight night and take your shirt off before an arena full of people who have all been looking forward to seeing what will become of you. You will give them someone’s pain — yours or the other guy’s, maybe a little bit of both — and in return they will give you money and something resembling love.

Is it a fair trade? Tough to say. Sometimes the exchange rate seems more favorable than others, but either way it’s the only deal you’re going to get, so you take it. You take it for as long as it’s offered, or for as long as you can stand it. Whichever comes first. Whenever it comes.

UFC 145 in Atlanta is now just hours away, so let us tick away the time with a few last questions, concerns, comments and predictions. Here are eight of them, presented in no meaningful order.

I. It must be almost fight time, because there is absolutely nothing new to say about the Jon Jones vs. Rashad Evans bout. More and more, I wonder if this is the true sign of a big time fight. If the night of the event rolls around and you don’t feel completely sick of the same storylines, the same questions and same answers, then it must not be a fight that really matters. If it were, our media-saturated sports culture would have talked it to death already, as we have with Jones-Evans. The fighters know it. They couldn’t even fake it convincingly during the pre-fight press conference this week. All the talk has been “almost therapeutic” according to Jones, but there’s a reason therapy isn’t considered a spectator sport. Was it always this way? Were people this sick of hearing about the “Thrilla in Manilla” by the the time the fight finally rolled around? How about the Punic Wars? Surely by the third one even some Carthaginians must have wished they’d just burn the damn place down and get it over with already. The Jones-Evans saga of friendship and teamwork and rivalry and betrayal might have been too enticing for its own good. Like a hit pop song that drops just in time for summer, this is a story that was destined to get told over and over again, blaring out of every car stereo at every stoplight until we couldn’t stand it anymore. At least in MMA (unlike pop music) we have a built-in end point to that particular brand of madness, and we’re almost there. Nothing left to do now but shut up and wait, and at least one of those is optional.

II. A brief story about Greg Jackson, told to illustrate a point. An agent who shall remain nameless once told me a little tale about a Jackson’s MMA fighter who shall remain nameless. This fighter was offered a fight in the UFC that this agent thought was a bad idea. Not only was it a difficult style match-up, it was also one of those pairings that’s short on positives and long on negatives for one of the two fighters. The agent advised against taking it, he said, but the fighter wouldn’t hear of it. So the agent called up Jackson and told him what the UFC had in mind. Okay, Jackson said. We’ll start looking at tape and working on a game plan. Here’s where the agent asked Jackson for his honest opinion. Did he think this was a smart fight for this guy to take at this point in his career? Oh no, Jackson is said to have responded. He didn’t like the match-up at all. Seemed like a very bad idea, actually. “That’s when I realized that Greg doesn’t really worry about that side of things at all,” the agent told me. In other words, he became a fight trainer because he wanted to be a fight trainer — not because he wanted to be some sort of MMA mogul. I bring this up now because of all the emails and tweets I’ve been getting that paint Jackson as ruthless capitalist who purposely undercut Evans in favor of a more profitable relationship with Jones. I know the internet loves a conspiracy theory, but anyone who actually knows Jackson knows that he’s the rare figure in this sport who really is as honest and forthright as he appears to be. That’s why he opts to stay out of the murky waters of fighter management and career manipulation altogether. If anything, he stayed too far out of it while this Jones-Evans thing was building under his roof. The only thing you can really fault him for here is his naive belief that grown men could sort stuff out for themselves. Obviously they couldn’t, which is how we arrived at this bitter conclusion. Is that Jackson’s fault? He says it is, but I don’t know. All I can tell you is that if you think he did this on purpose, you give him far too much credit for long-term planning.

III. A moment of silence for the fighters on the undercard. Usually the top couple bouts on the main card stand at least a chance of sharing the spotlight with the main event. Not this time. Not even close. Granted, the UFC saw it coming and saved most of its secondary star power for subsequent events, which was probably the smart move. Jones and Evans are the ones selling the tickets and pay-per-views here, and we all know it. There are still plenty of interesting fights on the undercard, but good luck getting them noticed with this hype storm around the main event.

IV. As long as we’re on the subject of the undercard, take a gander over at Rory MacDonald, who some oddsmakers have pegged as a 6-1 favorite over Che Mills. You might remember Mills from his 40-second TKO of Chris Cope in his Octagon debut back at UFC 138. An impressive showing, certainly, but against a guy who seemed to exist in the UFC only to give others an opportunity for an impressive showing. Now he takes on MacDonald, who seemed to be on his way up the ranks after wins over Nate Diaz and Mike Pyle. Now he gets Mills, who’s an exciting talent, but not necessarily a logical next step after wins over two established UFC fighters like Diaz and Pyle. That creates a tricky situation for MacDonald. Up until now he’s been the up-and-comer trying to knock off contenders one at a time, but this opponent will be trying to get a little of MacDonald’s hype to rub off on him. You don’t gain much that you didn’t already have if you win a fight like that, but you sure do lose a lot if you find yourself on the wrong end of an upset. On paper it looks like a showcase fight for MacDonald, and maybe it is. There are just a lot of ways for that to go wrong, and only one way for it to go right.

V. How confident is Brendan Schaub in his ability to take one and give one back after his loss to Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira? In this match-up against Ben Rothwell, Schaub is probably the quicker, more athletic fighter. But the same was true against Big Nog, at least until Schaub got clipped on the chin. What Rothwell brings to the table is power. He can take a lot of punishment, and while his skills tend to diminish the more he gets worn down and beaten up on, he rarely goes away easily. Schaub, meanwhile, has been knocked cold a couple of times in his much shorter career. That’s not to say his chin is suspect, but you do have to wonder how good he’s feeling about his own ability to withstand a blow. If he’s hesitant to exchange with Rothwell, look for it to cost him in a hurry. It he comes out firing, at least we’ll know his confidence is solid. He just has to hope his chin is too.

VI. Toughest fight to call? Without a doubt, it’s Miguel Torres vs. Michael McDonald. Experience vs. youth. Veteran savvy vs. raw talent. McDonald has a full head of steam after his quick KO of Alex Soto, but he’s never faced anyone with the ability or the big fight experience of Torres. Is McDonald really as good as advertised? Does Torres‘ decade-plus in the fight game really count for as much as he thinks? These two questions are equally difficult to answer, which explains why this fight — at least according to oddsmakers — is the closest match-up on the card. Beware, you riverboat gamblers. Anyone who tells you he knows exactly what’s going to happen here is either lying to you or to himself.

VII. We’re about to find out just how much wonder Stephen Thompson really has in his bag of tricks. The matchmaking here feels like something out of a Patrick Swayze movie. The lifelong martial artist who’s all fancy kicks and Pokemon moves takes on the snarling hard-ass who looks like he might only swap out his chewing tobacco for his mouthpiece when the referee makes him. Brown has been joking all week about the Thompson mystique, as if he’s some sort of ninja who might materialize next to you in an elevator. It’s fun to play with that notion, but how much truth is there to the idea of Thompson as a karate whiz kid? He scored a superb knockout in his UFC debut, but just as with his kickboxing career, it’s tough to tell what role the quality of his opponent played. Brown is a tough fighter — not to mention a desperate one at this point in his career — but he’s also someone who makes his share of mistakes. If Thompson can make it out of the first two minutes, Brown is bound to give him some type of opening. You just wonder what it will look like, and if “Wonderboy” can make it count for something.

VIII. One last thing about Jones-Evans, then I swear I’ll let it go. For the past 13 months of his life, Jones has ended every triumph with Evans staring him in the face, often literally. His former teammate has hovered in the air above the greatest nights in Jones’ young career like a storm cloud that just won’t pass. It’s been a source of frustration and aggravation for Jones, but all he could do was wait. If he is victorious against Evans on Saturday night, and if he does so in a fashion that effectively puts the matter to rest once and for all, what then? How will he feel when he turns from this one and sees no more Evans staring back at him? Will he be relieved that it’s finally over, and he’s once again alone at the top? Or will he feel something else, like the emptiness that comes with the end of a challenge he didn’t realize he depended on so much until it was no longer there? Maybe. Or maybe not. Maybe I should take my own advice on this one, and shut up and wait. Matter of fact, yeah. Let’s do that instead.

UFC 145 brings a welcome end to the pay-per-view famine with a big time title fight between light heavyweight champ Jon Jones and challenger Rashad Evans, but they aren’t the only ones with plenty on the line in Atlanta.

For a look at which fighters need a win in the worst way — along with a few wild guesses regarding their chances of getting it — we turn to the Cut List.

Ben Rothwell (31-8, 1-2 UFC)
Who he’s facing: Brendan Schaub
Why he’s in danger: Sandwiching a lackluster win between two defeats is a good way to find yourself in a bad spot with the UFC. Then again, Rothwell’s two losses come against very respectable opposition. He was stopped by Cain Velasquez in his debut (shortly before Velasquez became heavyweight champ), and then decisioned Gilbert Yvel on an injured knee before losing a messy one to Mark Hunt upon his return last September. Given the recent career revival that helped spawn the #RallyForMarkHunt movement, you’d think a loss to that man wouldn’t look so bad on the resume. But Rothwell didn’t just lose. He lost and looked bad doing it. He also did so at a time when the UFC was about to get an infusion of heavyweight talent. With all the big boys coming over from Strikeforce, the UFC doesn’t need just any heavyweight who can fill out a fight card anymore. It needs quality heavyweights, and Rothwell still needs to prove to the UFC that he is one.
Outlook: Cautiously optimistic. Rothwell is about a 2-1 underdog against the smaller, quicker Schaub, and he’s probably not as good of an all-around athlete. At the same time, Rothwell has power, and Schaub has been KO’d twice. If Rothwell can stay in this and stay out of desperation mode, he’s got a decent chance. If he can even just look sharp in defeat, it might earn him one more shot to prove he belongs here.

Mark Hominick (20-10, 3-2 UFC)
Who he’s facing: Eddie Yagin
Why he’s in danger: Hominick has now lost two in a row in the UFC, which automatically puts him on the hot seat. But before we do all the usual hand-wringing about the dreaded three-fight skid, let’s admit that both those losses come with asterisks next to them, making this situation not quite as dire as it looks on paper. For starters, there’s the loss to UFC featherweight champ Jose Aldo. He ended that title fight with a head that looked like it was trying to hatch a baby condor, but he also ended on a high note. He showed a lot of heart in defeat, and he showed he could help draw a crowd in Canada. His subsequent loss to Chan Sung Jung (also in Canada) was, if not a straight-up fluke, then at least somewhat fluke-ish. He left himself open and it cost him immediately, but it’s hard not to feel like that was just one dumb mistake rather than the sign of a more serious decline in skills. That brings us to this fight with Yagin, which oddsmakers have pegged Hominick a 6-1 favorite to win. Good news, right? Except that, if he somehow loses this fight, then it might really be time to worry. That’s the problem with losing two straight and then getting an opponent who seems almost made for you to beat up on. If you screw that one up, it looks way worse than losing a decision to the champ.
Outlook: Bright. I don’t see Hominick losing to Yagin, who has never beat anyone on this level before. Even if he does, I don’t see the UFC freaking out over it. I see the UFC giving him at least one more fight, then freaking out if he loses that one.

Matt Brown (13-11, 6-5 UFC)
Who he’s facing: Stephen Thompson
Why he’s in danger: It just wouldn’t be an installment of The Cut List without Brown, now would it? “The Immortal” has spent the last two years hanging on by his fingernails in the UFC. He lost three straight, then won one right when he needed it most. Then he lost again and got a gimme match-up with Chris Cope, who he polished off inside of two rounds. You might think that would put some distance between Brown and the chopping block, but I’m not so sure. We’re still talking about a guy who is 2-4 in his last six fights. Can he really afford to get beat up by the Karate Kid here and drop to 2-5? Does the UFC like “guys who war” quite that much? Granted, Brown tends to be a fairly exciting fighter. He’s hard-nosed and aggressive — often he aggresses his way right into submissions, in fact — and you can see why the UFC likes having him around. At the same time, the UFC does not want to be in the business of mediocrity. If Brown can’t prove that he’s anything more than the Johnny Lawrence to Thompson’s Daniel LaRusso, what else is the UFC supposed to do with him at this point?
Outlook: Grim. My money’s on Thompson to win this fight and knock Brown down a few more pegs. Granted, I’ve predicted the demise of Brown’s UFC career before and he’s still hanging around. But there are fighters with better than .500 records who’ve been cut from the UFC for one ill-timed loss. Brown’s a survivor, but you can only cling to the edge of the cliff for so long before someone comes along and stomps on your fingers.

Mac Danzig (20-9-1, 4-5 UFC) and Efrain Escudero (18-4, 3-3 UFC)
Who they’re facing: each other
Why they’re in danger: This feels like one of those fights where the UFC pairs up two guys who are both on the bubble and asks them to decide among themselves who’s worth paying attention to. Both are Ultimate Fighter winners who did not live up to their initial promise, and both are coming off losses that put them in precarious positions. Danzig got a brief resurgence after knocking out Joe Stevenson in between two losses to Matt Wiman. The first of those defeats was a result of referee error; the second was a result of Wiman being just a little bit better in their Fight of the Night battle. For all Danzig’s experience and potential, he never seemed to make the leap to the next level, which has to be disappointing to both Danzig and the UFC. We could say a lot of the same things about Escudero, who’s already been cut once and who lost a snoozer of a decision to Jakob Volkmann in his first fight back. The snoozer part wasn’t his fault (we are talking about Volkmann, after all) but a loss is a loss. You think the UFC would re-hire a guy, watch as he loses two in a row upon his return, then offer him up a third? Maybe, but he’d have to make a major impression even in defeat.
Outlook: Sadly pessimistic, and that goes for both men. With Danzig and Escudero, it seems like there must be some reason they didn’t become the fighters they were supposed to be. Did we overestimate their potential? Does winning TUF just not mean very much at all once it’s over? I don’t know. While I’d love to see both these guys put a solid winning streak together, someone’s got to lose here. Whoever it is will be facing a bleak future afterward, while the winner will have earned himself only a temporary stay.

Jon Jones has had enough of hearing about how he ruined the team. The UFC light heavyweight champ has had enough of Rashad Evans going off in interviews about this cocky kid who came to Albuquerque and drove a wedge between Evans and his coaches at Greg Jackson’s gym. He’s had enough of Evans acting like he was the perfect teammate, pulling people aside for heart-to-heart talks intent on maintaining team unity. That might make for a pleasant story, Jones said in a recent phone interview, but it isn’t the whole truth.

“There were people at Greg Jackson’s gym that he never even said hi to,” Jones said of Evans. He may mourn the loss of the original team now — what Evans refers to as the “Jackson Five” — but when he was there he was only interested in hanging out with “the elites,” according to Jones.

“He’s never gone to a team dinner,” said Jones. “He never went out and said, ‘Hey, let me buy these other guys a drink because I can afford it.’ It was not like that. He just had [Donald] ‘Cowboy’ [Cerrone], and basically the guys who had money in the bank and could hang with him, dress with him, and look good standing next to him at the club. That’s not a team member.”

To hear Jones tell it, this is a big reason why the Jackson’s MMA coaching apparatus — especially Jackson himself and striking coach Mike Winkeljohn — have stuck with the champ leading up to his fight with his former teammate at UFC 145 on April 21. It’s because “I’m a true team member, not just one of those stars,” Jones said. “That’s why they love me like a brother.”

In the lead-up to the fight we’ve heard a lot about the time Jones and Evans spent in the gym together. Both men are guilty of telling the sparring tales that usually stay behind closed doors, and Evans has insisted that it’s what he learned while on the mats with Jones that will give him an edge in the fight.

But that door swings both ways, Jones pointed out, and what Evans seems to be forgetting is that when he left Albuquerque, he left his original MMA mentors behind.

“I have the coaches that taught him how to fight,” said Jones. “They taught him the guard passes he uses, the ground-and-pound system that he uses, the punches that he used to throw and the combinations. I mean, it almost seems not fair sometimes.”

On Evans’ end, the split with the Jackson’s MMA team was a bitter one. He declared himself “done” with Jackson and his gym after accepting the fight with Jones following a very public falling out, and he’s since claimed that Jackson’s willingness to corner Jones against a former student “speaks volumes about his character.”

Comments like that haven’t gone unnoticed by Jones or his coaches, and that’s given the training for this fight a very different feel, according to the champ.

“He always talks down about Greg Jackson now and he always talks crap about our team, by saying our team was just commercial and we’re overrated. But all those insults have really made it almost personal for our coaches. We know his psychology. We know what makes him tired. We know everything about him. He’s in trouble.”

It’s the same with their sparring sessions, Jones said. Evans thinks he figured out how to beat Jones during those days in the gym together? That’s fine. Jones learned a thing or two from them as well.

“What people don’t realize is, Rashad says, ‘I trained with Jon and I have his number.’ But that’s a crazy thing for him to say, because I trained with him, and one thing all my fans know is that I’m not just a good fighter, I’m also a smart fighter. If he truly believes that I don’t remember every training practice we ever had, what I landed and what I did well against him, he surely must remember that. He should be nervous. I’ve done great against fighters I’ve never trained with before. I mean, I fought [Lyoto] Machida when I’d never fought a karate fighter before, and I beat him in a karate match. So Rashad thinking that the time we spent together wasn’t extremely beneficial to me, I think he’s crazy.”

The personal back-and-forth has already given this fight a different flavor. Jones admitted he had a hard time getting up for his title defense against Machida, but going against Evans is a different story since he’s “glad people think that this is the guy who’s going to beat me. That gets me pumped up.”

But beyond being an intense rivalry, it’s also a fight that may come to define both men once it’s over. For Evans, it could easily be the last real shot at UFC gold. For Jones, it’s a chance to further solidify himself as a UFC great for the modern era. He’s already the youngest champ in UFC history — an honor he described as “kind of cool” — but in many ways, he said, “I feel like I really haven’t done anything. Not compared to Matt Hughes, guys like that. I haven’t done anything. I think there’s more, and I’d be sad if I didn’t achieve more.”

He’s already knocked off several former champs in dominant fashion, but this will mark the first time he has to face a former friend and teammate. Is he psychologically strong enough for that, many fans wonder. Can he use Evans’ words as motivation without letting them get to him? Can he separate Evans the opponent from Evans the person?

“I look at Rashad as someone who wants to embarrass me on national television,” said Jones. “That alone inspires me to get my butt up early in the morning and late at night and train harder than him. Because who wants to get knocked out and have that on everyone’s DVR? I don’t.”

The UFC Swedish debut was an unqualified success in every way that matters. It benefitted from an educated, enthusiastic crowd, as well as a night of great performances by fighters from all over the world.

Now that UFC on FUEL TV 2 is in the books, let’s take a look back at the biggest winners, losers, and everything in between.

Biggest Winner: Alexander Gustafsson
Sweden’s star gave the home crowd 15 solid minutes of action on Saturday night. He also gave the rest of us an extended look at his striking game, which is solid, though not exactly devastating. Gustafsson was as relaxed and confident as we’ve ever seen him, and he even flashed some Dominick Cruz-esque footwork at times. I don’t think a decision win over Thiago Silva puts him next in line for the light heavyweight title, but it does get him into the conversation. Physical similarities aside, he’s a totally different fighter from Jon Jones. The question isn’t whether he can become Jones, it’s whether he can beat him. At the moment, I have to say no, but he’s still a work in progress. This win proved he can go the distance and take a punch when he has to. It also proved he’s nothing short of a superstar in his home country. If he does eventually get a title shot, that card would sell out The Globe faster than an ABBA reunion concert.

Biggest Loser: Alessio Sakara
That’s two in a row for “Legionarius,” and his fourth loss in the UFC via TKO. You hate to say it about such a nice guy, but what kind of future is there for a striker who can’t take a punch any better than that? Not that I think getting hit by Stann is supposed to be fun, but the shots that ended the fight probably shouldn’t have. Sakara’s chin has looked suspect in the past, and that’s a problem that typically only gets worse with time. I’m sure the UFC would love to have him around for an eventual event in Italy, so I wouldn’t expect him to get dropped from the roster for that loss. Still, he seems like he’s just hanging on now. If he can’t get one in the win column very soon, he’s in trouble.

Most Impressive in Defeat: Magnus Cedenblad
For one round, he was a beast. He came very close to putting Francis Carmont away with a rear-naked choke, and in the process he might have spent too much physical and emotional energy. The big Swede looked drained to start the second, and Carmont made him pay. Obviously, no one wants to get submitted in their UFC debut, but there were some bright spots in that loss for Cedenblad. He seems physically capable of competing at this level. His mistakes were the kind that can be fixed with experience, which is better than simply being outclassed. If he can fight a little smarter, he can hang around in the UFC. He just has to do it soon. Few people get a third chance if they lose their first two.

Least Impressive in Victory: Cyrille Diabate
“The Snake” won a snoozer of a decision over Tom DeBlass, who seemed to run out of gas after taking the fight on short notice. If that’s the best Diabate can do against a guy who clearly wasn’t in fighting shape, it does not bode well for his future in the UFC. The good news is that he showed off some ground skills, and even turned the tables with a takedown of his own. The bad news is that he didn’t do much else. It’s still better to win a fight like that than to lose it, but not by much. Diabate just squeaked by against a guy who probably considered it a minor victory just to last three full rounds. That’s not one he’ll want to include on his highlight reel.

Too Fast For Analysis: Siyar Bahadurzada
If he’s right about his hand being broken before the fight, then it’s a good thing he had to use it only sparingly in his 42-second knockout of Paulo Thiago. One uppercut was enough to put Thiago into the land of wind of ghosts, but the fight was over before we got much of a chance to see what Bahadurzada has in his bag of tricks. He has power. That much we do know after Saturday night. The rest we’ll have to wait on. He said in the post-fight press conference that he’s saving his bonus money for his dream car: a Maserati. It’s going to take a few more bonus-worthy knockouts before that becomes a reality, and he knows it. Consider yourself warned, UFC welterweights.

Classiest Move of the Night: Brian Stann
His self-stoppage in the Sakara fight made me wonder if Stann has his eye on a future career as a referee, or maybe a diplomat. Stann is a genuinely decent person with an uncommon degree of self-awareness and empathy. Covering MMA day in and day out, it’s difficult at times not to get cynical about the world you’re writing about. Then you meet someone like Stann, who turns out to be every bit as remarkable as he looks on paper, and you remember that there are still some good guys in this sport. He may never be a champion or a headliner on some major pay-per-view, but it doesn’t matter. As long as he’s around, he’s a credit to MMA in ways both big and small.

Least Classy Move of the Night: James Head
What reason could there possibly be to shove a guy after you’ve just submitted him? It’s over, you won, end of story. If anything, he’s the one who should be frustrated to the point of doing something dumb. I understand that perhaps Head got worked up by being in hostile territory, but that’s no excuse to act like a jerk. Please Americans, when abroad, let’s all try to do a little image rehabilitation. Don’t cut in line. Don’t be loud and obnoxious. And definitely don’t be the most unsportsmanlike competitor on a foreign fight card. Europeans already assume we’re jerks. We don’t have to go out of our way to tell them they’re right.

Best All-Around Performance: British fighters
England went a perfect 3-0 at ‘UFC Sweden,’ with victories by Brad Pickett, John Maguire, and Jason Young. Pickett earned his second straight Fight of the Night bonus with a submission of Damacio Page, and Maguire got to show off a little “gypsy-jitsu” with an armbar of DaMarques Johnson. Young was the only one of three not to earn a finish or a bonus, but he did thoroughly out-wrestle his American opponent, so maybe we’ll have to revise that conventional wisdom about the Brits suffering from a lack of mat skills. And what are Pickett and Page going to do with their bonus checks from the UFC, you ask? Pickett plans to perhaps finally buy a car, which he says he’s put off since he puts all his money back into his training. Maguire, in true gypsy fashion, said he plans to “buy [his] mum a caravan.” And yes, I think he was being totally serious, which is awesome. If I were them, I just wouldn’t spend too much of that money before they get back to the U.K. The Swedes have themselves a nice country, but those taxes are brutal.