Author: Chad Dundas

UFC Fight Night 35: Luke Rockhold KOs Costas Philippou, Gets Back on Message

Finally, here was the Luke Rockhold we’d all been waiting to see.
Nearly eight months after his UFC debut ended in disaster, Rockhold got back on message Wednesday night, blowing past Costas Philippou via first-round knockout before calling out t…

Finally, here was the Luke Rockhold we’d all been waiting to see.

Nearly eight months after his UFC debut ended in disaster, Rockhold got back on message Wednesday night, blowing past Costas Philippou via first-round knockout before calling out two of the middleweight division’s biggest names.

It was exactly the sort of performance fans expected from the former Strikeforce champion when the UFC absorbed the rival fight company at the beginning of 2013. Rockhold had won nine straight in the Strikeforce cage, and his combination of size, athleticism and natural charisma had him poised for breakout success.

Unfortunately, things started poorly for him in the Octagon. The UFC made Rockhold’s debut a cable TV main event on May 18, but Vitor Belfort summarily destroyed his momentum with a first-round head-kick knockout. Then a knee injury delayed his return.

By the time he re-entered the cage against Philippou this week, Rockhold’s fortunes seemed far less secure—at least for two minutes and 31 seconds.

That’s how long it took him to end Philippou’s night with a wicked kick to the midsection and reestablish himself as a force at 185 pounds. As Phillipou crumpled to the canvas at the base of the fence, Rockhold approached a cageside camera with a very simple message: “I want Belfort.”

He repeated his request for another opportunity against the current middleweight No. 1 contender when play-by-play announcer Jon Anik tracked him down in the Octagon for his post-fight interview. 

“I’m not here to be good, I’m here to be great,” Rockhold told Anik. “I want my rematch with Vitor, and I would like it here in the states. I’ll go through anybody I have to to get that, especially if it’s Micheal Bisping.”

After the night Rockhold had, the Bisping call-out seemed superfluous, but it was hard to blame him for being excited. He’d waited a long time for his first UFC win.

His resolve showed from the opening bell, as Rockhold patiently stalked Philippou around the cage before dropping him with a counter right hook one minute and 30 seconds into the opening stanza. Philippou recovered from that shot but accepted a series of knees and kicks to the body during the next 60 seconds, until Rockhold landed the one that put him down for good.

It was a 180-degree turnaround from his UFC debut, and even Rockhold seemed to recognize that.

“As long as I don’t rush things, I’m a lot better fighter,” he said to Anik. “You saw me tonight, I was a lot more reserved, waited for my opportunities.”

Opportunities will not be scarce for Rockhold in the coming months. This, despite the fact Belfort is already slated for the next 185-pound title shot, and Bisping has been publicly called out by Tim Kennedy.

Nonetheless, there’ll be no shortage of middleweight contenders for Rockhold to choose from. Lyoto Machida takes on Gegard Mousasi in the main event of next month’s Fight Night 36 and Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza fights Francis Carmont at the same show.

The winner of either could potentially make a good match for Rockhold, now that his star is on the rise again.

Read more MMA news on BleacherReport.com

Georges St-Pierre in Repose and the Emergence of MMA’s Most Unlikely Radical

If there’s one word that best describes the MMA career of Georges St-Pierre, it might well be “steady.”
Throughout his historic decade-long run in the UFC, St-Pierre was so dominant that he was routinely lambasted for being boring. During intervi…

If there’s one word that best describes the MMA career of Georges St-Pierre, it might well be “steady.”

Throughout his historic decade-long run in the UFC, St-Pierre was so dominant that he was routinely lambasted for being boring. During interviews, his composure bordered on contrivance. In a sport where professionalism is often the exception to the rule, he was the picture of etiquette.

In short, St-Pierre the MMA fighter was the last guy you’d expect to publicly air his grievances with the UFC—not without consulting his public-relations team first. If this week’s headlines are any indication, however, St-Pierre the recent retiree might be an altogether different kind of cat.

During an outburst that would seem totally out of character for the buttoned-up, company man we once knew, St-Pierre on Tuesday criticized the UFC for failing to back his push for expanded drug testing before his bout at UFC 167. He told the French-speaking media that the organization’s apathy on the subject “bothered (him) enormously,” and that it contributed to his decision to walk away from MMA.

“I tried to do something to change the sport,” St-Pierre said, as translated by MMA Fighting.com’s Ariel Helwani. “Unfortunately, there were other people, for different reasons, maybe for money, in fear of losing money, because if you canceled the fight because someone tested positive there are millions of dollars (lost).

“Also, the sport’s image … If you start testing everyone, how many will get caught? I don’t want to say in public because I don’t want to accuse anyone, but the sport’s image will be hurt.”

At this point it’s impossible to know if these statements were an isolated incident of the former champion blowing off steam, or if St-Pierre will mount an ongoing effort to clean up MMA.

If it’s the latter, then he has the potential to become an unlikely, but powerful, agent for change. Even if it’s the former, we shouldn’t underestimate what it means for this man—of all people—to say such things about the sport and the company he served for so long.

When he first announced his indefinite leave of absence from the UFC back in December, St-Pierre’s reasoning was shrouded in mystery. We heard about his undefined personal problems as well the toll his career was exacting on his body, mind and soul, but he and the UFC purposefully kept things pretty vague.

Now, as a clearer picture begins to emerge, it’s easy to see there was likely no single culprit that drove him from the sport. Rather, there were probably numerous smaller cracks in his armor and—perhaps—in his relationship with the promotion.

If we are to take him at his word, one of the issues that pestered St. Pierre was the company’s hands-off approach to drug testing, coupled with his own inability to do or say anything about it at the time.

On Tuesday, some of his choicer comments sounded downright radical, and constituted a substantial departure from the guy who had been one of the UFC’s staunch advocates and biggest pay-per-view draws.

“There’s one organization that has a monopoly, so the fighters don’t have much power,” St-Pierre said. “They can’t really talk because if one says what he thinks, he will get punished.”

While it’s sort of impossible to imagine GSP turning into MMA’s answer to Cesar Chavez, it’s also significant—and potentially damaging—for him to talk about his former employers in these terms. That he was willing to go even a step further, citing the prevalence of performance enhancers in MMA as one of the reasons why he needed a break, should be troubling to us all.

“No one wants to talk about (drugs in MMA), but I think we need to talk about it,” St-Pierre said. “It’s a problem. I wanted to remain diplomatic, but unfortunately there were people who weren’t ready to change things. I’m certain it’s a question of time. And maybe if things change one day, I’ll return.”

His initial offer to pay for extra testing before his fight with Johny Hendricks was short-circuited by public bickering and it led UFC President Dana White to say it made them “both look stupid.” Later, after St-Pierre capped his narrow decision victory over Hendricks by hinting at a quasi-retirement, White ripped him again at the post-fight press conference.

By the time the promotion organized a joint conference call to confirm his leave of absence a few weeks later, St-Pierre and White appeared to be back on the same page. In retrospect, maybe those run-ins with the UFC affected GSP more than he let on.

Toss this week’s comments on the fire along with the simmering controversy over testosterone replacement therapy and the idea the UFC will take more of its business overseas in the coming years, and it begins to paint a stark picture.

If St. Pierre is right, then the issue of drug testing in MMA needs a champion.

It’s hard to think of anyone better than him—a guy who spent years building his own credibility as a professional and one of the sport’s true gentlemen—to lead the charge.

Read more MMA news on BleacherReport.com

UFC Fight Night 35: Luke Rockhold Still Distancing Himself from Vitor Belfort KO

This isn’t about Vitor Belfort.
This is a story about Luke Rockhold, who on Wednesday night returns to the cage for the first time since May of last year, when Belfort spoiled his UFC debut via the sort of stunning first-round knockout that will …

This isn’t about Vitor Belfort.

This is a story about Luke Rockhold, who on Wednesday night returns to the cage for the first time since May of last year, when Belfort spoiled his UFC debut via the sort of stunning first-round knockout that will haunt highlight reels as long as they both shall live.

Because this is Rockhold’s story, not Belfort’s, we needn’t spend too much time rehashing the obvious. The KO of Rockhold was the one that really turned people’s heads during 2013, the one that cemented Belfort’s career resurgence and the one that spiked talk about his testosterone replacement therapy.

Nearly eight months later, we’re still not sure how much of that performance to credit to Belfort and how much to credit the doctors who rebuilt him in the image of an action figure.

Not that any of that matters to Rockhold.

Legitimate or not, the instant Belfort’s left leg collided with Rockhold’s face, it robbed him of the considerable momentum he’d built up during the previous four years. This week when he faces Constantinos Philippou at UFC Fight Night 35, it’ll be his first chance to get some of it back.

Amid the rapidly shifting landscape of the UFC middleweight division, he can’t afford to take that opportunity lightly.

In Philippou, Rockhold will get an opponent who is also in search of a little retribution. The 34-year-old native of Limassol, Cyprus had won five fights in a row prior to a disappointing decision loss to Francis Carmont at UFC 166. Like Rockhold, it was his only appearance during 2013.

Before that, Philippou had been hailed as one of the weight class’ most dangerous, exciting punchers. He had recently decamped from the Serra-Longo fight team (home of current champ Chris Weidman) to “advance his career to the next level,” according to manager Lex McMahon, per MMA Fighting.

In other words, Wednesday night’s fight between Rockhold and Philippou shapes up as an exciting matchup between two guys who are both looking to reclaim what they lost during the last year.

A win over Philippou would be a good step toward putting some much-needed daylight between Rockhold and Belfort’s leg. It would go a long way to proving that he is who we thought he was when fans and media deemed him one of the more interesting spoils of the UFC’s acquisition of Strikeforce.

A loss would put him further down the rabbit hole and could mean that he never recaptures his former glory.

Rockhold came to the Octagon with some notable fanfare, after crafting two successful defenses of the Strikeforce middleweight title that he took from Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza in late 2011. He had the skills and size to compete in the UFC 185-pound ranks and appeared to be coming into his own after an 11-fight career spent mostly with Zuffa’s biggest competitor.

There were delays, however. He ended his Strikeforce run in 2012 with a shoulder injury and didn’t make it to the UFC cage until late spring of the following year.

Then Belfort knocked him out, and a scheduled return bout against Tim Boetsch at UFC 166 was scrapped due to a knee injury suffered by Rockhold. Instead, Boetsch eked out a split-decision win over C.B. Dollaway.

As a result of those many machinations, Rockhold dropped off the radar for a while. He’s still the same guy he was when he was imported from Strikeforce. He’s still a big, rangy middleweight who’s just 29 years old and could be a candidate to break out in 2014.

It’s just that right now we think of him as the guy on the wrong end of Belfort’s Knockout of the Year-worthy kick.

So far, Rockhold has said most of the right things about that incident. If you read between the lines, you can tell that it bugs him that he got posterized by a guy who is legally taking steroids, but he says he’ll let fans and media be the final word on that.

Indeed, the latter stages of Belfort’s career will be judged by history.

But this story isn’t about him.

This is about Rockhold, who won’t have to wait for another chance to improve our judgment of him. He gets it on Wednesday night.

Read more MMA news on BleacherReport.com

Bold Predictions for 2014: Dundas and Snowden Foresee Futures of UFC Stars

Prognostication is typically a precision art.
When trying to peer into the future, it’s better to do it through a sniper’s scope than a wide-angle lens. Sometimes, though—particularly around the holidays—we soothsayers start fee…

Prognostication is typically a precision art.

When trying to peer into the future, it’s better to do it through a sniper’s scope than a wide-angle lens. Sometimes, though—particularly around the holidays—we soothsayers start feeling a little squirrely.

Why be content with boldly predicting what is going to happen at a single MMA show (like we normally do) when we could make a from-the-hip shotgun-blast at the entire next year?

2013 was wild, so what the devil are we to expect from 2014, anyway? Glad you asked. Here are our best guesses, as Bleacher Report MMA lead writers Chad Dundas (that’s me) and Jonathan Snowden make some bold predictions for the calendar year 2014.

What could possibly go wrong?

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UFC 169: Injury Has Rivals Dominick Cruz, Urijah Faber Both Facing Long Odds

It must needle Dominick Cruz to know the latest episode in his seemingly endless, excruciating series of injury setbacks opened another door for Urijah Faber.
Anyone who has followed MMA’s lightest weight classes long enough to have seen either o…

It must needle Dominick Cruz to know the latest episode in his seemingly endless, excruciating series of injury setbacks opened another door for Urijah Faber.

Anyone who has followed MMA’s lightest weight classes long enough to have seen either of their past meetings (in the WEC in 2007 and UFC in 2011) knows that Cruz and Faber don’t like each other.

By default, their feud stands as the most acrimonious in the short and otherwise fairly cordial history of the UFC bantamweight division. Even after Cruz avenged his earlier loss by thoroughly outpointing Faber at UFC 132, their business felt unfinished. We’ve always assumed their rivalry would be renewed one day, so long as Cruz wasn’t forced into early retirement by his own body.

Now, the two rivals are unexpectedly back in the news together, as both of them face different uphill climbs.

When word spread on Monday that Cruz had suffered a torn groin, he was vacating his 135-pound championship and Faber would replace him against Renan Barao in UFC 169’s bantamweight title unification bout, it must have gone down as a very bitter pill.

Recall that Cruz and Faber were originally slated to have a third fight at UFC 148. The fight company intended to use the first season of The Ultimate Fighter on the FX Network to build toward it, but Cruz blew his ACL during filming, and instead Faber lost to Barao in an interim title bout.

Next month’s main event was supposed to be Cruz’s opportunity to reclaim his belt from Barao, but now he’s out. Again. And who is in? Probably the last guy Cruz would want to replace him.

For the time being, though, Cruz will have enough on his plate without worrying about what happens to Faber. Cruz hasn’t fought since October of 2011, owing to a spate of knee injuries. Even before this week’s revelation, there had already been questions about his future in the cage.

To its credit, the UFC seemed to wait for him as long as it possibly could. Nobody likes interim champions (least of all the two guys with dueling belts), and we dread seeing a champion vacate his title due to injury.

When it happened to Cruz on Monday, however, it was especially hard. As Dana White made the announcement on an afternoon edition of SportsCenter on ESPN News, it felt like a pit had opened in the bottom of our hearts. One we wanted to climb inside and wallow in for a good, long while.

Cruz can take some measure of solace that this time it wasn’t his knee. There’s nothing (that we know of) about the groin tear that seems career threatening. But make no mistake: After the last two-plus years on the I.R., his career is indeed threatened.

We all want Cruz to come back. We all want to see him get a shot at reclaiming the top spot in the 135-pound division and for him to enjoy the long, successful career he appeared destined for when he began it on a 19-1 roll.

At this point, though, everybody—including Cruz’s bosses—must have their doubts. If he is able to return this year, fight successfully and even recapture his title, it’ll go down as one of our sport’s great comeback stories.

His nemesis, too, faces a pivotal 2014, though the set of long odds confronting Faber are more conventional in nature.

He has to beat Barao.

Faber just stepped in to face the newly minted champion on three weeks’ notice, which is a heck of a way to start your Monday. Frankly, it would be a tall order for anyone, especially a guy who already lost to Barao in July of 2012.

Dating back to 2008, Faber is 0-5 in title fights, and that stat threatens to follow him to the end of his career if he can’t undo it, and in a hurry.

The former WEC featherweight champion who remains perhaps the most popular fighter under 155 pounds is 34 years old now. In a way, it seems like an incredibly bold gambit for him to step in against Barao with such limited warning, in what might conceivably turn out to be his final shot at UFC gold.

At least this time you can’t say Faber doesn’t deserve it. His 2013 rivaled anyone in the sport for good vibes, as he cruised to 4-0 and re-established himself as the obvious No. 1 contender. He advanced his overall record in non-title fights to an astounding 30-0 and proved he’s far more than just the bantamweight division’s prettiest, best-known face.

Yet his bout against Barao will be Faber’s fifth in the Octagon in approximately 11 months. It’s been a breakneck sprint back to the top for him and—from the outside looking in—the Barao fight looks like an enormous obstacle with very little time to prepare.

Win it, and Faber could set a course for a new rivalry with his old adversary Cruz.

Lose it, and Cruz might not be the only one facing a long road back to the top.

Read more MMA news on BleacherReport.com

Ronda Rousey: Top 5 Threats to Her Reign as UFC Champion

It’s not really even an insult to call Ronda Rousey one-dimensional anymore.
Like any self-respecting fighter, she would likely bristle at that notion, but the truth is, she’s easy to figure out. There’s nothing wrong with being …

It’s not really even an insult to call Ronda Rousey one-dimensional anymore.

Like any self-respecting fighter, she would likely bristle at that notion, but the truth is, she’s easy to figure out. There’s nothing wrong with being one-dimensional as long as that single dimension is so terrifyingly good that the rest of her division can’t decide if they hate or fear her.

Spoiler alert: She’s going to take you down and try to break your arm.

So far, it’s been a recipe for unmatched success in the UFC women’s bantamweight division. But let’s also be realistic here: Rousey is not as unbeatable as some pundits would have us believe. All it’s going to take for her to get a true test is someone who can stay away from her Olympic-level judo game long enough to do damage on the feet.

And yeah, when we say “All it’s going to take,” we know that sounds like the most impossible mission in the world.

In any case, we’d like to see a few female MMA fighters try. Here (in no particular order) are our picks for the top five threats to Rousey’s ongoing tenure as UFC champion.

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