If you’re a fight fan looking for a way to burn through some spare cash in August, you’ve got options. Between UFC 133 last weekend and UFC 134 later in the month, the committed MMA fan is likely to add a hundred bucks to the cable bill this month just…
If you’re a fight fan looking for a way to burn through some spare cash in August, you’ve got options. Between UFC 133 last weekend and UFC 134 later in the month, the committed MMA fan is likely to add a hundred bucks to the cable bill this month just to keep up with all the pay-per-view action.
All these men have two things in common: 1) they used to fight in the UFC, and 2) they don’t anymore. So how do you convince people to pay money to see them fight after the UFC has decided it can’t even use them on free cable TV fight cards anymore?
“I think people are looking for an alternative to UFC events these days as well, and I think this is a card, as a fan, that I want to see,” said Torry Crooks, one of the promoters behind Saturday night’s event in Albuquerque, N.M. “These are some of my heroes that are on this card. These are guys who have a chance of making their way back, or as we expand as a promotion, going on to bigger and better things with us.”
In other words, the one thing we know about these promoters is that they’re optimistic.
It’s a tough time to hit up fight fans for some cash. One week after UFC 133 and two weeks after Strikeforce: Fedor vs. Henderson, MMA Fight Pit is squeezing in on a rare open Saturday night, but it’s also doing so just one day after a Strikeforce: Challengers card on Showtime and one day before a free UFC card on Versus. Even if it is available for twenty bucks less than a UFC pay-per-view, the main selling point is still fighters who the UFC decided it could do without.
That makes for a tricky little marketing tango. The main reason most fans know these names is because of UFC exposure, but now that the UFC is done exposing them, how much value remains?
The answer changes as you go down the card. Alexander still has the appeal of a slugger who’s long on power and short on defense. With Pulver, there’s the sense we’re seeing the final act in a great career, and whether it’s going to be a tragedy or a redemption story is still unclear. Browning brings little more than the allure of chaos, and after coming in more than seven pounds over the 155-pound limit for his bout, he seems poised to deliver.
Put them all together and you do have something resembling a draw, but is it the kind of draw fight fans are really going to pay $30 for?
A few probably will. Maybe they’ll be the independently wealthy types, or maybe just teenagers indiscriminately running up their parents’ cable bill with no thought to the consequences. But if the last few years worth of would-be competitors to the UFC have taught us anything, it’s that it’s hard enough to sell tickets with UFC castoffs, but almost impossible to do well on pay-per-view with them.
Then again, maybe it depends on how you measure success.
MMA Fight Pit promoter Crooks said he was encouraged by the early response from fans, who in his opinion, “either want to see these guys win or they’re controversial characters and they want to see them get beat up. Either way, it’s a fight they want to watch. We’re not as expensive as the UFC on pay-per-view, and I think people are hungry for an alternative.”
And who knows, maybe he’s right. It’s just hard to imagine that fans have thirty bucks worth of hunger in them for this particular alternative, and on this particular Saturday night.
Filed under: UFCThe UFC Live cards may lack the firepower of the big shows, but a) they’re free, and b) they afford some great opportunities for up-and-comers and down-and-outers alike to show off their stuff at an event where the spotlight isn’t compl…
The UFC Live cards may lack the firepower of the big shows, but a) they’re free, and b) they afford some great opportunities for up-and-comers and down-and-outers alike to show off their stuff at an event where the spotlight isn’t completely hogged by superstars.
That also makes UFC on Versus 5 a last-chance go-round for several fighters on the roster, so it’s either win or go home when the UFC rolls into Milwaukee.
Who’s on the hot seat this time around, and who’s most likely to get scorched before the night is over? Find out below.
Dan Hardy (23-9, 1 NC; 4-3 UFC) Who he’s facing:Chris Lytle Why he’s in danger: Hardy managed to avoid the UFC’s informal three strikes policy based primarily on his popularity and his fighting style. If he was a bland, decision-prone wrestler with a buzz cut, he’d be long gone by now. But even the UFC would have trouble overlooking four straight losses, so Hardy needs to pull it together against Lytle. He’s a smart chap, so he knows that, which is why he called out Lytle to begin with. As much as he can’t afford to lose another one, he really can’t afford to get out-wrestled in another snoozer. In Lytle, he’s found an opponent who will probably choose not to exploit his weak takedown defense, opting instead to fling leather at one another’s faces until someone falls down. That’s exactly what Hardy needs right now. Of course, he also needs to be the one who doesn’t fall down. If you lose a hand-picked fight like this, then what hope is there for you? Odds of getting cut: 3-1. It’s a winnable fight for Hardy, and one that’ll probably produce enough fireworks to please the bosses. If he gets KO’d, however, he’s almost certainly done in the UFC…at least for now.
Duane Ludwig (20-11; 3-2 UFC) Who he’s facing:Amir Sadollah Why he’s in danger: His current run in the UFC started with two straight losses, followed by a somewhat lucky split decision win over Nick Osipczak at UFC 122. Lucky not because he didn’t deserve it, mind you, but rather because he was pretty clearly losing until Osipczak ran out of gas and tried to coast to the finish, allowing “Bang” to finish strong. With close to 90 fights on the books between MMA and kickboxing, Ludwig is a savvy, yet battered journeyman of combat sports. He’s been in some battles and has more miles on the odometer than most 33-year-old fighters. If he gets beat by Sadollah, the UFC might start to do the math on him and decide it doesn’t need another tailspinning welterweight who’s doing good to pull off a 1-3 run against four mid-level opponents. Then again, he’ll fight whoever you’ve got and he doesn’t cause trouble, and there’s something to be said for an employee like that. Odds of getting cut: Even. Without a memorable showing, a defeat here — which is likely, to say the least — probably results in Ludwig getting his walking papers.
Alex Caceres (5-3; 0-1 UFC) Who he’s facing:Jim Hettes Why he’s in danger: At least so far, Caceres seems more suited for reality TV than for the Octagon. He’s a character, and every season of TUF needs at least one of those. Once the show’s over, however, you’ve got to earn your keep with your fists. Caceres seemed out of his depth against Mackens Semerzier in his first UFC fight. On paper, he seems to be headed for another defeat against the undefeated submissions artist Hettes. It was the Bruce Leeroy gimmick and the glimmer of raw talent that got Caceres this far in the UFC, but that shine wears off quickly. We know Caceres has personality. Now he needs to show he has skills, as well. Odds of getting cut: 2-5. Caceres is still young, so maybe he could use the time to get some experience on the small circuit. My guess is he’s going to get that chance after Sunday.
Jason Reinhardt (20-2; 0-2 UFC) Who he’s facing:Edwin Figueroa Why he’s in danger: What does it tell you when a guy’s undefeated outside of the UFC and winless in it? Either he hasn’t fought the toughest competition in the local shows or else he gets a killer case of nerves inside the Octagon. Neither is a particularly good sign. In two UFC fights, Reinhardt has lasted a total of 2:02. It’s somewhat surprising that he didn’t get cut after being mauled by Tiequan Zhang at UFC 127, but his role in the curtain-jerker on a UFC Live show should definitely tell him that this is the last stop on the express train out of the organization. Only a win will keep the 41-year-old Reinhardt on the UFC roster, and his opponent is a 3-1 betting favorite. If Reinhardt’s going to turn out to be the UFC’s answer to Rudy, he’d better start on Sunday. Odds of getting cut: 1-5. Get a good look at him while you can, because Reinhardt is headed for the door.
Yes, Jens Pulver is still at it. Twelve years and 40 fights after his debut at the Bas Rutten Invitational 2, the former UFC lightweight champ is still getting in the cage, still trying to find some peace amid the chaos.
The question many people ask …
Yes, Jens Pulver is still at it. Twelve years and 40 fights after his debut at the Bas Rutten Invitational 2, the former UFC lightweight champ is still getting in the cage, still trying to find some peace amid the chaos.
The question many people ask the 36-year-old Pulver — and the question he’s been struggling with himself lately — is, why?
“It kind of dawned me a couple days ago,” he said Wednesday on a media conference call. “I thought I was doing it because it was fun, I love it, and that’s still part of it, but the reality is, I’m doing it now and giving it 100 percent the way I am…[because] when I walk away, I don’t want to walk away with any regrets. I don’t want to be 65, God willing, sitting in a chair on a deck in a rocking chair and wishing I would have gone out differently.”
In other words, he’s doing it so he can quit, but have it not feel so much quitting. He’s doing it so that he can feel good about how he’s doing, which in turn might allow him to feel good about stopping.
The only problem is, as long as a fighter feels good about how he’s doing, he isn’t likely to stop. He’ll probably just keep going, especially as long as he could use the money, which Pulver certainly could.
It makes you wonder what this happy ending for Pulver would look like at this point, and how he’d even know if he found it.
Things recently seemed like they were on the verge of turning around for him. After being dropped from the WEC following five straight losses and then adding a sixth on the small circuit, he won two in a row.
Sure, they weren’t big names or on big fight cards, but he got his hand raised again for the first time since 2007. Then he went to Kansas City for a fight in May and he lost again, this time via first round submission.
So much for that happy ending.
Now Pulver is back to take on former WEC bantamweight Coty Wheeler on a thirty-dollar pay-per-view card that’s littered with names fans used to know, but probably haven’t thought about all that much lately.
“Ironically, I spend more time remembering,” Pulver said. “…I watch interviews of mine from way back, especially when I had more confidence. I’m sitting there going, man, I remember that guy.”
The difference, Pulver said, is that now he doesn’t take several months off between fights, which means he doesn’t have to spend the bulk of his training camp “getting the fat off.” Physically, he’s not worn down, he said, and mentally, he’s no longer so burned out.
“I go with these guys that are my weight, and I’m right there with them. The problem is just trying to turn it on in the cage. I’ve become what I almost despised most or what I put down the most when I was a world champion, which was the gym fighter.”
In training, he said, he’s taking it to his younger, faster sparring partners. The broke-down old man looks pretty good then.
“It’s when the lights come on and the face in front of me is different” that he loses some of that pop, Pulver said.
“The mental side is what’s gotten the oldest. The physical skills are still there. I’ve got no injuries. …The mental side of me kind of got old, got tired, and that’s what I’m trying to fix more than anything. I don’t know how to adjust to that, because it’s new to me.”
Maybe it would be easier to deal with if it were a physical decline. Maybe then he could write it off as a natural and unavoidable consequence of age. The fact that he remains convinced that his problems are more mental than physical probably isn’t helping him find the strength to walk away.
As he put it: “I’m using this time to prepare myself to walk out the door of MMA, and when I do, I don’t want to have any regrets. Basically, my major reason why I’m fighting right now is I’m out there to send myself off the right way.”
Of course, that assumes that there is a right way, or that there’s any peace at all to be found in the last throes of a fighter’s career. It also assumes that you find that peace first, before you decide to leave, rather than after, when you don’t have any other choice.
Filed under: UFCThere’s nothing like a free Sunday night fight card from the UFC to take your mind off the impending doom of Monday morning and the current lack of good TV dramas on HBO.
As we settle in to enjoy another event on Versus, which necessa…
There’s nothing like a free Sunday night fight card from the UFC to take your mind off the impending doom of Monday morning and the current lack of good TV dramas on HBO.
As we settle in to enjoy another event on Versus, which necessarily includes a confused few minutes of searching for Versus on the cable TV dial, let’s look at how oddsmakers see the action going down in Milwaukee.
In his role as the guy you fight when you want to throw them bungalows and forget about the existence of takedowns altogether, Lytle has been pretty dependable. That’s good news for Hardy, who, after three straight losses, needs a win so bad he can feel it in his mohawk. We know Hardy can be outwrestled, but we also know Lytle isn’t likely to take that route. He’ll stand there and fling blows for as long as Hardy wants, regardless of whether it’s a good idea or not. We know Lytle is a skilled striker. What we have to wonder at this point is if he can stand up to Hardy’s power. The 36-year-old vet started to look his age a little bit in his last fight. He’s been eyeing retirement and a potential political run recently, while Hardy has no choice but to win. Kind of makes you think that the Brit might want/need this more. My pick: Hardy. Based on past experience, Lytle will probably let him off the hook by ignoring the glaring weakness in his takedown defense. From there, youth and speed rule the day.
We’re still figuring out just how well the top WEC lightweights stack up against the UFC regulars, but Henderson’s decision win over Mark Bocek was enough to tell us that he deserves to be taken seriously. However, there’s a big difference between edging out Bocek and hanging with Miller, who’s as underappreciated as any fighter in the UFC right now. The last time he lost a fight was to current top contender Gray Maynard, and that was in 2009. Since then he’s won seven straight, against quality opponents, and he’s finished more than half of them. Henderson is a decent striker with good grappling, but it’s hard to see where he holds significant advantages over Miller. This seems like Miller’s time to shine, and oddsmakers know it. My pick: Miller. At -175 (meaning you’d need to wager $175 to win $100), you’re better off saving it for a parlay pick. Just don’t count on Henderson to be your underdog savior.
There’s a lot to like about Oliveira, even though, after his blatantly illegal knee on Nik Lentz, his understanding of the unified rules of MMA may not be one of them. But while he looked impressive right up to that point, just as he did against Efrain Escudero last September, he’s facing a different kind of opponent in Cerrone. “Cowboy” is just straight-up mean. He took a disturbing amount of joy in leg-kicking Vagner Rocha until he could no longer stand, and when forced to use it, he’s also got a pretty good submissions game. Oliveira had a strong start to his UFC career, but we have to face the fact that he’s seeing a big jump up in competition lately, especially with Miller and now Cerrone, and we don’t know for sure yet whether he’s ready for it. My pick: Cerrone. It’s going to be a close one, and quite possibly the best fight on this card, but I think his experience and crowd/judge-pleasing style will make the difference.
This is one where oddsmakers seem to have zeroed in on the right guy, but are perhaps a little overly optimistic. On paper, Sadollah should beat Ludwig. But when you’re looking at an experienced kickboxer like “Bang” going up against a still pretty inexperienced fighter like Sadollah, I’m not sure I’d have the faith to go all the way to 3-1 on it. Yes, Sadollah looked impressive against DaMarques Johnson (who took the fight on very short notice) in March. And yes, his weakness is his wrestling, where Ludwig isn’t likely to take it. But any time you’re trading kicks and punches with a guy who has as many kickboxing bouts as Ludwig does, there’s always a chance for things to go wrong. My pick: Sadollah, though I could never get on board with these odds. In fact, Ludwig might even be worth small action if you’re sick of playing the lottery, where you so rarely get a decent fight for your money.
Quick picks:
– Jim Hettes (-400) over Alex Caceras (+300). I know, you loved him as Bruce Leeroy on TUF, but Hettes appears to have the submission game that Caceras lacks, so don’t get suckered in here.
– Jacob Volkmann (+105) over Danny Castillo (-135). Volkmann is not terribly fun to watch, and his trash talk on Obama comes off like an ill-conceived Mr. Bean sketch, but he’s got this.
The ‘For Entertainment Purposes Only’ Parlay: Hardy + Miller + Cerrone + Volkmann
Filed under: UFCIt’s hard for a UFC fighter not to feel a little conflicted when he gets a Fight of the Night bonus for a fight that he lost. On one hand, losing sucks. On the other hand, getting handed a wad of extra money doesn’t.
It’s hard for a UFC fighter not to feel a little conflicted when he gets a Fight of the Night bonus for a fight that he lost. On one hand, losing sucks. On the other hand, getting handed a wad of extra money doesn’t.
Just ask Jared Hamman, who’s pocketed the bonus cash in each of his last two UFC fights, though he only won one of them.
“Any time you get a big, fat paycheck like that, you’re like, thank you Lord,” Hamman told MMA Fighting. “But I would take the win over the Fight of the Night money any day.”
Perhaps what’s most remarkable about Hamman’s recent streak of bonuses is that both came in prelim bouts. The Fight of the Night check is more often handed out to main eventers, or least main card fighters, but his performances against Rodney Wallace and Kyle Kingsbury so impressed his boss that Hamman went home with the extra cash anyway.
Maybe that’s good news, considering that he’s booked for a bout with C.B. Dollaway on the prelim portion of Sunday night’s UFC Live event in Milwaukee.
The bout will be Hamman’s first since moving down to 185 pounds following the decision loss to Kingsbury at light heavyweight. The former Division III college football standout said he was motivated to make the drop after seeing how much size he was giving up to guys like Kingsbury, who typically walk around 25 or 30 pounds heavier than he does.
“When I got started in MMA, it was a hobby,” said Hamman. “I just fought at the weight I was at. Being a football player, I always tried to gain weight. Even in my fight camps I would try to maintain this weight gain, because I could always cut it really easily. But after this last fight with Kyle, man, he was humongous. I started looking around at these other 205-[pound]ers and they’re all huge. That’s when I started thinking about going down to 185.”
It helped that he was forced to take some time off to deal with an injury, Hamman said. It allowed him to do a practice cut to see how his body would respond, during which he tried to simulate the UFC experience as closely as possible.
“Weigh-ins are at four o’clock, you have so much time spent traveling to the event, all that, so I did that and I weighed in at four p.m. at 186 [pounds]. Then the next day, on Saturday, I did a fight scenario. I did three five-minute rounds, and I felt great. From there I just decided to go for it.”
Now Hamman — who usually clocks in at around 215 pounds — will move down in weight to face Dollaway, who’s coming off a knockout loss to Mark Munoz in March. And while a lot gets made of Dollaway’s history as an All-American wrestler, Hamman said he isn’t particularly worried that the bout will turn into a slow grind where no one has the potential to scoop up any bonus cash.
“Even though he has a wrestling background, I think the guy likes to fight. He likes to stand and throw punches and kicks and everything. He obviously also likes to do submissions and wrestling, but I think he’s a fighter. I like to fight guys who aren’t boring, who will come forward and fight me, and the UFC has done a good job of matching me up with guys who like to fight, and I enjoy that. I think this will be another one.”
For Hamman, the move down in weight was less about looking for easier prey, he said, than taking the next step toward being a total professional. Cutting weight, adhering to a strict diet — it’s all part of finding out just how far he can go with his career inside the cage, he explained.
“This was just a hobby before. I love to scrap, to get in there and fight. And to me, I’m grateful that I get to do it at this level. But some things put it in perspective. Like my wife got into a car accident the other week — and she’s fine, not hurt or anything — but it could have gone a lot worse. It reminded me, you’re not always guaranteed to get that next heartbeat. You’re not guaranteed to get that next fight. I’ve tried to hold that in my mind. It makes me take every fight and just go for it.”
On Sunday night in Milwaukee, the internet would have you believe that bantamweight Joseph Benavidez will be participating in his 17th professional bout at UFC Live: Hardy vs. Lytle. The Internet would also have you believe that his first professional fight was against Brandon Shelton in June of 2006.
The Internet is wrong.
Then again, maybe it depends on what your definition of ‘professional’ is. If you mean professional in terms of the overall quality and credibility of the event, some vaguely official quality that separates the serious promoters from the amateurs, then okay, the Shelton fight might have been it.
But if you mean professional in the sense that it was a fight for which a fighter was paid (and to the man who is or is not going home with money in his pocket, this distinction often matters a great deal), then no way.
For that definition of professional, and for the very humble beginning of Benavidez’s MMA career, you’ve got to go all the way back to 2005 in Silver City, N.M., and into a slightly terrifying bar called the Brown Derby.
“It’s this place where it’s actually kind of scary to go in there by yourself,” Benavidez recalled. “And then they just put a boxing ring in the middle of the bar, which only made it scarier.”
Benavidez might never have ended up there that night had he not had a job as a screen printer in Las Cruces, N.M. It was a good job and he liked it, mostly because he could make his own clever T-shirts when the mood struck him. But one day a man came in looking to make some posters advertising a kickboxing event, and Benavidez started asking him about it.
“He looked at me and was like, ‘Hey, aren’t you that wrestler?'” I was literally bouncing his head off the ground — boom, boom, boom — and his corner threw in the towel. — Joseph Benavidez
In Las Cruces, Benavidez was that wrestler. He’d won a state championship in high school, which was the kind of thing people in a relatively small town tended to remember. The man asked Benavidez if he’d be willing to help out his teenage son, who’d been kickboxing for a while but wanted to move into MMA. First he needed someone who could help him with his wrestling, and who better than a former state champ?
It sounded like fun to Benavidez, but after two months of training with this rag-tag MMA club, he decided he’d like to find out whether he could win an actual fight. He was beating all his training partners, and he’d seen the sport on TV, so how hard could it be?
“I figured that if I was fighting guys around my size and from around my area and my state, and I was the best wrestler in my state, that at the very least I could out-wrestle them,” Benavidez said. “Even if I didn’t know a whole lot else, I had that.”
Benavidez asked around and, sure enough, someone was putting together a night of MMA fights down at the Brown Derby in Silver City. It wasn’t the kind of deal where they offered you an opponent and you could accept or decline. Instead it was the kind of deal where you were either in or you were out. And if you were in, it meant you showed up an hour before fight time and got a look at your opponent for the first time across a crowded bar.
No weigh-ins. No rules meeting. No sanctioning. Not even a locker room to warm up in.
“I get there, and I’m the first fight, so I’m warming up in the bar,” said Benavidez. “There’s people around me drinking beers. There’s this old drunk Mexican dude in my face, telling me what to do. And this is probably 20 minutes before I’m going to go out, and he’s totally drunk, trying to give me advice and tell me what to do. It was bizarre.”
It probably didn’t help matters that, instead of normal fight trunks, Benavidez was wearing a pair of underwear he’d bought at Target. That was a trademark of his all the way until he entered the WEC, he said. Even in his fight at Dream.5 in Japan he came in sporting the Target underwear.
“I just thought they looked so good, no one would know,” he said.
When the event was finally ready to get started, Benavidez and his opponent, who at least looked to be around his size, were called into the ring. There were chairs set up at ringside, but the bar patrons quickly ignored them in favor of crowding as close to the action as they could get.
“The people just ended up hanging off the ring like it was Lionheart, the [Jean-Claude] Van Damme movie. There’s no security, nothing like that, so they’re just all up on the ring.”
Once the fight started, Benavidez wasted no time. He threw a leg kick, went for a takedown, then stood over his grounded opponent and started hammering him with elbows to the head.
“I was literally bouncing his head off the ground — boom, boom, boom — and his corner threw in the towel.”
The whole thing took maybe a minute and a half. One of Benavidez’s teammates acted as the referee — not that he was actually called to do any officiating other than peel Benavidez off the guy once the towel flew into the ring.
“So I’m happy, I got my first win. Then some cops come in. They’d been watching the whole thing, and they went up to whoever was in charge and said, okay, you guys can keep doing this, but all the fighters from here on out have to wear headgear.”
Apparently the police were a little taken aback by the brutality of Benavidez’s fight. When the fighters complained that no one in MMA wore headgear, the cops gave them the choice of gearing up or getting shut down.
“All my teammates were pissed at me then, because they had to do MMA with headgear after my fight,” said Benavidez. “I thought it was pretty funny and unique. It just showed how bush league the whole thing was. Like, oh no, that was too hard and too violent. Wear headgear and it’s okay. I guess the drunk people cornering me was totally fine, though.”
Bush league or not, when the night was over Benavidez left the Brown Derby with two hundred dollars in his pocket. Considering that he was pulling in around a thousand bucks a month at his screen printing job, it was a nice boost to his regular income. It also had him thinking about how far he might be able to take this thing with a little more practice. I had a little ‘Lionheart’ moment of my own where I was like, man, I’m a prizefighter now. — Joseph Benavidez
“It felt good and it gave me some confidence, like I could do this. I had a little Lionheart moment of my own where I was like, man, I’m a prizefighter now. I’m getting money to beat people up.”
It wasn’t more than two or three weeks later that Benavidez had his second fight, then his third and his fourth. By the time he fought Shelton in what the internet records identify as his debut, he’d already had five bouts.
“So I actually have five fights that aren’t on my record, which kind of sucks because it would look a lot cooler if I was 19-2 than 14-2,” he said. “They just weren’t documented, and honestly, some of them probably shouldn’t be.”
Things didn’t start to get serious for Benavidez’s MMA career until he went to visit a friend in Sacramento in November of 2006. They bought tickets to UFC 65, where they watched Georges St. Pierre take the welterweight title from Matt Hughes.
For Benavidez, it was a glimpse of what the big time really looked like, though he didn’t know if a 135-pounder like himself could ever even dream of getting there. The UFC had only recently reopened its doors to 155-pounders. Below that, the best you could hope for was the lesser-known WEC, and even that seemed far away.
Before he left Sacramento and returned home to New Mexico, Benavidez made it his mission to seek out the then-WEC featherweight champ Urijah Faber, who he’d heard ran a gym in the area. If Faber could make a living as a smaller mixed martial artist, then maybe he was someone who could help, or at the very least, give Benavidez some idea of where he stood as far as skill level.
So he looked in the phone book for Faber’s gym, but couldn’t find it.
“I went into the first gym that I found and basically beat up everybody, all the instructors, whoever. Those guys told me, hey, we got nothing for you. You need to go get with Urijah and his guys.”
When Benavidez explained that this was exactly what he’d been trying to do, they gave him Faber’s contact info. By then, however, it seemed too late. He had a 7 a.m. flight back to New Mexico in the morning. He was out of time, and he hadn’t even managed to lay eyes on Faber.
But when Benavidez showed up to the airport in the morning, he became the rare traveler to regard it as good news when he saw that his flight was cancelled. He took the opportunity to stay three more days in Sacramento, which allowed him the chance to finally get on the mat with Faber.
“I definitely think it was fate,” he said. “I went in and we had a roll, and Urijah basically told me, ‘You need to come out here and get serious about this. You’ve got a lot of talent, so stop wasting time.’ That was pretty much it.”
After that, Benavidez returned home only to get his things and head for California. He was about to start a new life in MMA. From here on out, all the fights would be for real, with no doubt as to what counted and what didn’t. From this point on, he was definitely a professional. Even if he was still fighting in underwear he bought at Target.
On Sunday night in Milwaukee, the internet would have you believe that bantamweight Joseph Benavidez will be participating in his 17th professional bout at UFC Live: Hardy vs. Lytle. The Internet would also have you believe that his first professional fight was against Brandon Shelton in June of 2006.
The Internet is wrong.
Then again, maybe it depends on what your definition of ‘professional’ is. If you mean professional in terms of the overall quality and credibility of the event, some vaguely official quality that separates the serious promoters from the amateurs, then okay, the Shelton fight might have been it.
But if you mean professional in the sense that it was a fight for which a fighter was paid (and to the man who is or is not going home with money in his pocket, this distinction often matters a great deal), then no way.
For that definition of professional, and for the very humble beginning of Benavidez’s MMA career, you’ve got to go all the way back to 2005 in Silver City, N.M., and into a slightly terrifying bar called the Brown Derby.
“It’s this place where it’s actually kind of scary to go in there by yourself,” Benavidez recalled. “And then they just put a boxing ring in the middle of the bar, which only made it scarier.”
Benavidez might never have ended up there that night had he not had a job as a screen printer in Las Cruces, N.M. It was a good job and he liked it, mostly because he could make his own clever T-shirts when the mood struck him. But one day a man came in looking to make some posters advertising a kickboxing event, and Benavidez started asking him about it.
“He looked at me and was like, ‘Hey, aren’t you that wrestler?'” I was literally bouncing his head off the ground — boom, boom, boom — and his corner threw in the towel. — Joseph Benavidez
In Las Cruces, Benavidez was that wrestler. He’d won a state championship in high school, which was the kind of thing people in a relatively small town tended to remember. The man asked Benavidez if he’d be willing to help out his teenage son, who’d been kickboxing for a while but wanted to move into MMA. First he needed someone who could help him with his wrestling, and who better than a former state champ?
It sounded like fun to Benavidez, but after two months of training with this rag-tag MMA club, he decided he’d like to find out whether he could win an actual fight. He was beating all his training partners, and he’d seen the sport on TV, so how hard could it be?
“I figured that if I was fighting guys around my size and from around my area and my state, and I was the best wrestler in my state, that at the very least I could out-wrestle them,” Benavidez said. “Even if I didn’t know a whole lot else, I had that.”
Benavidez asked around and, sure enough, someone was putting together a night of MMA fights down at the Brown Derby in Silver City. It wasn’t the kind of deal where they offered you an opponent and you could accept or decline. Instead it was the kind of deal where you were either in or you were out. And if you were in, it meant you showed up an hour before fight time and got a look at your opponent for the first time across a crowded bar.
No weigh-ins. No rules meeting. No sanctioning. Not even a locker room to warm up in.
“I get there, and I’m the first fight, so I’m warming up in the bar,” said Benavidez. “There’s people around me drinking beers. There’s this old drunk Mexican dude in my face, telling me what to do. And this is probably 20 minutes before I’m going to go out, and he’s totally drunk, trying to give me advice and tell me what to do. It was bizarre.”
It probably didn’t help matters that, instead of normal fight trunks, Benavidez was wearing a pair of underwear he’d bought at Target. That was a trademark of his all the way until he entered the WEC, he said. Even in his fight at Dream.5 in Japan he came in sporting the Target underwear.
“I just thought they looked so good, no one would know,” he said.
When the event was finally ready to get started, Benavidez and his opponent, who at least looked to be around his size, were called into the ring. There were chairs set up at ringside, but the bar patrons quickly ignored them in favor of crowding as close to the action as they could get.
“The people just ended up hanging off the ring like it was Lionheart, the [Jean-Claude] Van Damme movie. There’s no security, nothing like that, so they’re just all up on the ring.”
Once the fight started, Benavidez wasted no time. He threw a leg kick, went for a takedown, then stood over his grounded opponent and started hammering him with elbows to the head.
“I was literally bouncing his head off the ground — boom, boom, boom — and his corner threw in the towel.”
The whole thing took maybe a minute and a half. One of Benavidez’s teammates acted as the referee — not that he was actually called to do any officiating other than peel Benavidez off the guy once the towel flew into the ring.
“So I’m happy, I got my first win. Then some cops come in. They’d been watching the whole thing, and they went up to whoever was in charge and said, okay, you guys can keep doing this, but all the fighters from here on out have to wear headgear.”
Apparently the police were a little taken aback by the brutality of Benavidez’s fight. When the fighters complained that no one in MMA wore headgear, the cops gave them the choice of gearing up or getting shut down.
“All my teammates were pissed at me then, because they had to do MMA with headgear after my fight,” said Benavidez. “I thought it was pretty funny and unique. It just showed how bush league the whole thing was. Like, oh no, that was too hard and too violent. Wear headgear and it’s okay. I guess the drunk people cornering me was totally fine, though.”
Bush league or not, when the night was over Benavidez left the Brown Derby with two hundred dollars in his pocket. Considering that he was pulling in around a thousand bucks a month at his screen printing job, it was a nice boost to his regular income. It also had him thinking about how far he might be able to take this thing with a little more practice. I had a little ‘Lionheart’ moment of my own where I was like, man, I’m a prizefighter now. — Joseph Benavidez
“It felt good and it gave me some confidence, like I could do this. I had a little Lionheart moment of my own where I was like, man, I’m a prizefighter now. I’m getting money to beat people up.”
It wasn’t more than two or three weeks later that Benavidez had his second fight, then his third and his fourth. By the time he fought Shelton in what the internet records identify as his debut, he’d already had five bouts.
“So I actually have five fights that aren’t on my record, which kind of sucks because it would look a lot cooler if I was 19-2 than 14-2,” he said. “They just weren’t documented, and honestly, some of them probably shouldn’t be.”
Things didn’t start to get serious for Benavidez’s MMA career until he went to visit a friend in Sacramento in November of 2006. They bought tickets to UFC 65, where they watched Georges St. Pierre take the welterweight title from Matt Hughes.
For Benavidez, it was a glimpse of what the big time really looked like, though he didn’t know if a 135-pounder like himself could ever even dream of getting there. The UFC had only recently reopened its doors to 155-pounders. Below that, the best you could hope for was the lesser-known WEC, and even that seemed far away.
Before he left Sacramento and returned home to New Mexico, Benavidez made it his mission to seek out the then-WEC featherweight champ Urijah Faber, who he’d heard ran a gym in the area. If Faber could make a living as a smaller mixed martial artist, then maybe he was someone who could help, or at the very least, give Benavidez some idea of where he stood as far as skill level.
So he looked in the phone book for Faber’s gym, but couldn’t find it.
“I went into the first gym that I found and basically beat up everybody, all the instructors, whoever. Those guys told me, hey, we got nothing for you. You need to go get with Urijah and his guys.”
When Benavidez explained that this was exactly what he’d been trying to do, they gave him Faber’s contact info. By then, however, it seemed too late. He had a 7 a.m. flight back to New Mexico in the morning. He was out of time, and he hadn’t even managed to lay eyes on Faber.
But when Benavidez showed up to the airport in the morning, he became the rare traveler to regard it as good news when he saw that his flight was cancelled. He took the opportunity to stay three more days in Sacramento, which allowed him the chance to finally get on the mat with Faber.
“I definitely think it was fate,” he said. “I went in and we had a roll, and Urijah basically told me, ‘You need to come out here and get serious about this. You’ve got a lot of talent, so stop wasting time.’ That was pretty much it.”
After that, Benavidez returned home only to get his things and head for California. He was about to start a new life in MMA. From here on out, all the fights would be for real, with no doubt as to what counted and what didn’t. From this point on, he was definitely a professional. Even if he was still fighting in underwear he bought at Target.
If you’re a fight fan looking for a way to burn through some spare cash in August, you’ve got options. Between UFC 133 last weekend and UFC 134 later in the month, the committed MMA fan is likely to add a hundred bucks to the cable bill this month just to keep up with all the pay-per-view action.
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