Author: Chuck Mindenhall

It looks like the UFC will be a frequent visitor to Europe in 2014. After UFC Fight Night 26 in Boston on Saturday night Dana White confirmed to the media that the UFC would return to Ireland in the third quarter of next year. This was thought to be, in large part, because of the sudden emergence of Dublin’s own Conor McGregor.

But Ireland appears to be one of numerous European countries that the UFC plans on hosting events at in 2014. According to Gary Cook, the UFC’s Executive Vice President and Managing Director of Europe, speaking at EA Gamescom in Cologne, Germany on Tuesday, the Octagon will visit everywhere from the British isles to several ports in mainland Europe.

“You know, the UFC is the world’s fastest growing sport,’ he said. “We have athletes representing 37 countries. We broadcast our events in over 28 languages. And we’ve established major broadcast partnerships in 145 countries around the world. And it 2014, UFC more live events—England, Sweden, Poland, Ireland, Turkey and most importantly, we will be back in Germany in 2014.”

The last time the UFC visited Germany was at UFC 122 in 2010 in Oberhausen, when Nate Marquardt headlined against Yushin Okami.

An electronic board behind Cook highlighted each country that the UFC intends to visit in the next year. One that he didn’t mention—but that was still highlighted—was Scotland. Though the UFC has flirted with the idea of Scotland in the past, the promotion has never visited that far north in the United Kingdom before.

And if Zuffa follows through on all these events, it’ll mark the first time that UFC events will be held in Turkey and Poland, as well.

The first time Carlos Condit stood in the Octagon, on April 1, 2009, the guy standing opposite him was Martin Kampmann – the Danish “Hitman” who was 5-1 in the UFC at the time. Condit was the reigning WEC champion coming over as an import from the UFC/WEC buyout. He had won eight in a row himself.

It was a close fight. So close, in fact, that when Bruce Buffer read the scorecards and announced Kampmann as the winner, Condit looked like a man still holding out hope that it was an April fool’s prank.

But it wasn’t a joke. The loss stood.

Now four-and-a-half years, two knockout of the nights and an interim belt later, Condit will get the chance to avenge that gnawing loss (the first on what has become his revenge tour). Kampmann and Condit will headline the UFC Fight Night 27 card in Indianapolis, and this time Condit insists he’ll arrive free from the most common side effect of hype – that is, complacency.  

“First time around I felt like there was a lot of hype and it was my fight to lose,” Condit told Ariel Helwani on Monday’s edition of the MMA Hour. “This time around I’m in a completely different place mentally. I’ve trained really, really hard, and I’m prepared to get in there and fight from bell to bell. In that first fight I cruised a little bit too much. I don’t know – I wasn’t real focused.”

When asked if he believed in his own hype heading into that first bout, the usually soft-spoken Condit was pretty candid.

“Yeah, probably,” he said. “That was a few years ago, and I was a few years younger and more immature. At that point in my career I had talent had gotten me a long way.

“I think with experience a lot of things are learned. In that first fight, going into that third round I felt like I had won the first two and I could cruise through the last round and get the decision. That was a really hard lesson learned. I lost my UFC debut. Martin Kampmann put an end to my win streak. That was something I definitely learned from. Either way, that fight’s behind us, and I’m really looking forward to next Wednesday.”

One thing that hasn’t changed is whether or not he believed the wrong man got his hand raised that night in Nashville. Time has not corrected what Condit perceived as a bad judgment.

“You know what, yeah, I think I won the fight,” he said. “It was really close. I think he edged me out in a lot of the scrambles and was able to take top control, and that’s why I think he got the judge’s [decision]. But, I definitely did more damage. Yeah, I won the fight. But I could see it was very, very close.”

The last time Matt Brown and John Howard shared a card was in Pittsburgh a couple of years back when they faced one another. It was a loser goes home affair between two always-game yet unevolved sluggers, each of whom happened to be on spiraling losing streaks. Heading in, Brown had dropped three in a row, and Howard a pair.

Brown ended up winning a decision. I remember they shared a hug backstage afterwards, and vaguely promised to train together at some point in Massachusetts. Howard was unceremoniously cut right after. Brown remained on the cusp himself, particularly as he followed that victory up with a loss to Seth Baczynski at UFC 139.

Neither would exist in two years. Not in UFC relevance, anyway. “Fun” fighters, who went in for the leather trade and crowd satisfaction, usually end up back on the regional circuit.

Funny thing, this fight game.

This past weekend both Howard and Brown fought again in the UFC. Howard came back after a seven-fight rebuilding project to defend the Boston turf against Uriah Hall – a fight he was vastly undersized for and meant to lose. Brown, on the other hand, is crashing and screaming into contention in a welterweight division that never saw him coming. He won his sixth straight fight. It was his fourth straight finish. If Mike Pyle was getting the better of him in the gym behind closed doors, the thing that goes down on public record is that Brown needed less than half-a-minute to draw up the little x’s over Pyle’s eyes.

“I really didn’t want to do that,” he stated afterwards. “I love Pyle. He’s a great guy and a friend, but once you’re in there it’s either you are me.”

But between March of 2010 and the fall of 2011, Brown was submitted four times and was getting used to life on the bubble. In summer of 2013, here he is saying things like, “obviously I’m in this sport for one thing, and that’s to beat [George St-Pierre]’s ass.”

And Howard, an undersized welterweight who was reminded of the fact before every fight, is now fighting a class up. Everything that has happened from that night in Pittsburgh has been so counter-intuitive.

“It is funny—right now me and Matt Brown, we’re talking again,” Howard told MMA Fighting. “It looks like it’s a possibility [that we’ll train together]. He’s doing good, and I’m real proud of him. He should get a title shot after his last performance. That was a good fight and I’m glad to see him doing it.

“But I hope that proves to the fans that the people I lost to are real topnotch fighters. After [our fight] Brown won six straight, and five of them finishes. The people I lost to are legit people.”

In retrospect, he’s right. Howard had dropped fights to Jake Ellenberger and Thiago Alves before the Brown do-or-die match in Pittsburgh. Outside the UFC he won six of seven fights, and finished five of them. Still, Howard was set up as a five-to-one underdog against Hall, a physical specimen from the TUF franchise. In front of his home crowd, Howard helped convert Hall from “next big thing” to flash phenom.

“It happens all the time,” Howard said. “Sometimes you deal in bad luck, and sometimes good luck. Hopefully I showed the world not only did I come back to the UFC, but I came back up a weight class. People used to call me the smallest welterweight, now I’m the shortest middleweight on the roster. And I beat Uriah Hall, and he’s a good fighter. I think the media overhyped him.”

Howard also pointed to the media creating the perception of Hall’s invincibility, which took all the pressure off of him in his homecoming.

“It was awesome, man, a dream come true,” he said. “I’m real excited to come back to the UFC, but I was also really excited to fight in Boston. To fight in Boston, that was my dream – I’d have fought for free. To get paid for it and win? That was a bonus. It was a good feeling.”

Far better than back in Pittsburgh, when Howard’s first stint in the UFC came to an end, and Matt Brown was still a one-dimensional afterthought in a division he was about to reimagine.

BOSTON – A few days ago UFC president Dana White revealed that he had approached welterweight Nick Diaz with an offer to fight Lyoto Machida at 185 pounds. Though Machida has flirted with the idea of moving down to middleweight, the proposed bout caught people by surprise for two reasons. One, because there is a 35-pound difference between each fighter’s natural weight class. And two because Diaz was, at latest report, still “retired.”

But that fight isn’t likely to materialize after all. White told a group of reporters after the UFC Fight Night 26 card that it was a flight of fancy that just didn’t come together.

“That was a bad idea,” he said. “The Diaz-Machida thing I was—I’m going to throw Joe SIlva under the bus again. That was Joe Silva’s idea. It was a bad idea.”

When asked if the decision to pull the fight off the the table was due to Diaz’s refusal to accept it, White made it clear that that wasn’t the case.

“No,” he said. “Diaz didn’t turn it down. There’s other things going on with Diaz.”

Though he didn’t elaborate on what Diaz’s plans were, Machida himself had expressed interest in fighting Vitor Belfort next, after having dropped a controversial decision to Phil Davis at UFC 163. But his tune changed after Chael Sonnen prevailed in Saturday night’s main event over Mauricio Rua. Machida tweeted out after the fight, “since @vitorbelfort hasn’t accepted our fight, i am sure that @danawhite can match me against @sonnench.”

White said that he would examine all the possibilities when he returns from a mini-vacation to Maine.

BOSTON – A colossus like Alistair Overeem would have a hard time sneaking into an event, but in Beantown he seems to be doing just that. With all the talk going to the launch of Fox Sports 1 and Chael Sonnen and Conor McGregor and Boston’s homegrown Joe Lauzon breaking bonus records, Overeem is for once lost in a sea of faces heading into UFC Fight Night 26.

And maybe that’s a good thing.

Even before arriving in the UFC, most the time when the spotlight comes up on Overeem, so do his red flags. There was the Strikeforce heavyweight grand prix, which he dropped out of because the turnaround between matches was too fast. A couple of months after beating Brock Lesnar – his crowning moment in the UFC – Overeem singlehandedly made epitestosterone a household word, as well as the entire galaxy of affiliated acronyms (TUE, TRT, ETC). Twice he’s been booked into fights for the UFC’s big heavyweight Memorial Day card, and twice he didn’t fight on the UFC’s big heavyweight Memorial Day card. He served out a year-long suspension in 2012.

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In his return fight, against Antonio Silva in a title eliminator that he was meant to win, Overeem rolled up to the MGM Grand like it was the discotheque. It was a grand entrance. A little over ten minutes into the fight, he was catching cinder blocks on his chin while folding over on himself along the fence.

It’s not in the tale of the tape, but, so far with Zuffa, Overeem has become a master of squandering.

Now he’s getting set to take on a quiet contender in Travis Browne in a fight with undefined stakes, and it’s the closest the former Dream and Strikeforce champion has come to a “stealthy approach” in years.

“I kind of actually like it a little bit,” he said during Thursday’s pre-fight press conference when asked about it. “I don’t have to think too much, just paying attention to the rising stars. Fine by me. I assume it’s going to pick up after this fight.”

And it will. If he wins. If he wins, it’s right back into title talk.

If he loses? That’s another story. As desperately as the UFC has tried to make Overeem the third man in the heavyweight title picture, he’s proven a very elusive recipient. Lose against Browne, and all those title flirtations come to an abrupt end. And for a guy whose monolithic appeal had people willingly looking past his asterisks as he entered the UFC, that’s not how he drew it up.

“I’m 33 years old – or young, I could say – and a UFC title is definitely something that would crown my career,” he told MMA Fighting last week. “But at the same time, I’m taking one fight at a time and I’m just enjoying my career too.”

There are signs that the “Bigfoot” loss has rejuvenated Overeem, or at least got him back in touch with his essences. He split his camp between the U.S. and Mike’s Gym in Holland, run by striking coach Mike Passenier. He is fine-tuning his striking, getting back to the basics. Browne’s an enabler when it comes to trading leather – he’s proven many times that he’s not afraid to bang.

Here’s the fine print though: Browne’s the guy with everything to gain, while Overeem has everything to lose.

“[Browne]’s a young and upcoming fighter,” Overeem says. “He’s aggressive. He’s hungry and very athletic, and definitely somebody you shouldn’t underestimate.”

No, Overeem can’t afford to underestimate his opponents anymore. Then again, the hoopla that usually surrounds his fights is a little less this time through, in part because the fear is he might.

BOSTON – On Tuesday, Conor McGregor arrived at Peter Welch’s South Boston gym just as fresh as Irish Spring. Dana White was there, along with some local and national media and a throng of fans. Everyone was standing ringside to get a good first look at this Irish kid, who showed up like a rock star in tight red jeans, as he went through an altered capoeira routine like a carnival strongman on display.

“How crazy is this?” he said, looking over the turn out. “This is the first time I’ve experienced one of these media workout things. I’m living the dream right now. Combat sports has given me the chance to live my dream.”

It’s not novel for the UFC to go in for pageantry like this on a big fight week, but it’s a little unusual when one of the principals is a prelimist with 67 seconds of Octagon experience. McGregor is walking on a red carpet made out his charisma, our strong hunches and a general sense of “big things to come.” To use his term, he is just “floating along.” And it’s not lost on McGregor that White has taken a “little shine” to him after his quick TKO of Marcus Brimage in April. At this point, pretty much everyone has, and he appears genuinely in awe of it.

He knows the other thing, too. Fair or unfair, he’s carrying Eire on his back as he heads into Saturday’s fight at the TD Garden with Max Holloway, and that’s something that Boston and its Irish heritage can appreciate.

“You know, you can’t help but pull for an Irishman,” a local fan with roots in Galway told me while watching McGregor spar. “They’re born scrappers.”

This sort of thing was echoed by others. Shamrocks have always gone over big in Boston.

And McGregor, with his “Notorious” nickname, does seem to embody the Irish prizefighter stereotype in his featherweight frame. He has that old Donnybrook thing going on, that little Notre Dame Fighting Irish mascot with his dukes up and ever-ready. People love it. As he weaved his arms with the UFC’s first Irish fighter, Tom Egan, as part of the open workout session, people were rapt. There’s something in his work ethic that everyone is picking up on. “I am like this 365 days a year, 24/7,” McGregor says waving a hand down his physique. “I’m always ready—I don’t have an off-season.”

At 25 years old, McGregor doesn’t shrink away from the circumstances he’s had to overcome to arrive at this moment. A few years ago he nearly gave up MMA before he truly got started. Back when he was fighting for Cage of Truth – a Dublin promotion ran by his still trainer/mentor John Kavanagh – he sold tickets for an upcoming card he was headlining to his friends and pocketed the proceeds.

“Chasing the martial arts’ dream, it is a struggle and you go through tough times, there’s not a lot of money out there – outside the UFC, there is no money,” he said. “I had some tough times like everyone. I fell into a little debt with my coach. I sold a lot of tickets and I spent all the money.”

Though that old debt might seem a pittance these days – somewhere in the range of €600 – it was everything to McGregor at the time. He walked away from the fight game until his mom ringed up Kavanagh herself, and asked the coach to help persuade her son to keep fighting.

“Again, my coach, he understood,” McGregor says. “He came over and took me under his wing and he said, ‘don’t worry about it, let’s get back to this dream.’ And again, he gave me a focus and a drive and showed me that we can build this here. I’m forever grateful to my coach. He stuck with me all this way. To be able to support the gym. After my first fight I was able to give some money back, and each fight it’s going to be the same. I’m going to give back and hopefully build a big facility instead of the little shack we’re in now.”

McGregor’s hype, of course, precedes him. When he arrived in Southie he was being shadowed by a Dublin-based documentary crew. They’ve been trailing him for a while now, and had planned to shoot him in Iceland training with Gunnar Nelson before visa issues redirected him to America earlier than expected. We caught portions of that episode when he filmed himself riding around with White – “The Don,” as he calls him – down the Vegas Strip in a Ferrari. Things are on the uptick for McGregor.

What we knew of him heading into his UFC debut against Brimage was that he was plowing through the whole of Ireland and was therefore wildly popular. So much so that Ryan Tubridy – the popular host of “The Late Late Show” on Ireland’s RTE – called McGregor an “Irish Muhammad Ali.” Pretty lofty for a fighter who is 13-2, even if he did make short work of Brimage and show uncanny poise and precision in the exchanges.

Not that he hasn’t notched some merits along the way. McGregor holds the distinction of having knocked out poor Paddy Doherty in four seconds when fighting in Letterkenny. That remains one of the fastest knockouts on record anywhere.

Asked to describe it, he says, “we went out and touched gloves, and then he threw a right hook, and I stepped out from the right hook and banged the left hook over the top, and he fell. It was three-and-a-half seconds.”

In his familiar brogue accent it sounds like he says “tree-and-a-half seconds.” Just like when he said he “tries not to think too deeply about any of the hype” it sounds like “I try not to tink too deeply.” In fact, he adds, “I try not to tink at all.”

All of it which goes into his charm heading into Saturday night, when he’ll fight in front of a partisan crowd. Should he beat Holloway, the pikelike 145-pounder who has taken the tougher road to get here, there are those who’d like to put him on the fast track in a fairly stacked featherweight class. It’s not that he’s on the prelims in the summer of 2013; it’s where he’ll be by the summer of 2014. What would we be doing if weren’t expediting our prospects into contention?

Not that McGregor minds. When asked about being fed to the wolves too early in a recent interview with ESPN, McGregor said simply: “I am the wolf.”

He reiterated that in Boston.

“If you don’t think I’m trouble for any of these guys in the division then you really need to take a closer look,” he said. “The opponent does not matter to me. It’s just another body. It’s just another set of movements. What’s on the line means nothing to me. This is just another chance to be able to support my family. I don’t think too far ahead.”

Unlike some of the more seasoned UFC fighters walk through the open workouts as a duty, McGregor actually breaks a sweat. He sparred for half an hour with Kavanagh and Egan to the sounds of LL Cool J. This little circus tent that the UFC set up in Southie to come out and “behold the mighty Irishman” was more than an exhibition – it was an actual training session to him. Afterwards McGregor posed for pictures and threw out t-shirts to the crowd and answered questions into all the camera lens’ that were aimed at him.

Prelim fighters don’t get this kind of treatment. But McGregor has something that most prelim fighters don’t, and that’s the coveted “it” factor.

By Wednesday, Dana White mentioned McGregor in the same breath as Brock Lesnar. And so it goes.