If large sections of the UFC roster were peeved by the Reebok deal, imagine how the roster’s smartest cheaters must feel after Wednesday. The UFC isn’t messing around. It doesn’t want cheaters competing in the promotion. It is staking millions of dollars to weed them out, regardless of name, age, gender, nationality, religious belief, state of erectile dysfunction or celebrity status.
It’s a lot to digest all at once, all this cold turkey.
If the press conference to unveil the its new anti-doping program told us anything it’s that loopholes are fast becoming extinct, and the consequences of doping are about to get extreme. Fighters will be tested for performance enhancing drugs (approximately) five-and-a-half times a year out of competition. Wednesday was the notice for the upcoming Day of No Notice. As of July, first-time offenders are going on a long hiatus (one to two years). Second-time offenders are essentially being furloughed for good (double the sanction of first-time offenders). Third time offenders, well, they might as well go off to live in Dostoyevsky’s Siberia (double the sanction of second-time offenders, which in dog years is a lifetime).
Sobering stuff, this new push-broom policy. And it was the game-changer in the sport, Anderson Silva, who helped change the game to what it’s about to become when he popped hot for a medley of drugs back at UFC 183. Enough was enough. Now the thing has gotten serious enough to take prohibitive action.
A panel of five starched-collared gentleman (and Dana White) held court in Vegas to explain that if you are taking PEDs if the UFC, you’ll be caught and 86’d. There was COO Lawrence Epstein and CEO Lorenzo Fertitta from Zuffa, and the men they are paying to implement the program — former Olympic athlete Edwin Moses and Travis Tygart, both of the United States Anti-Doping Agency.
The USADA is the third-party administrator we kept hearing about. They’ll conduct 2,750 random tests a year on everybody under contract with Zuffa across the globe. That means no preferential treatment, because they are being paid to not give a damn about who’s who. The generic talk of cleaning up the sport to using phrases like “biological passport” and the “robustness of the policy” went from zero to a hundred in something like three seconds.
And wait…we haven’t even gotten to the chief whip-cracker himself.
Jeff Novitzky, the former BALCO investigator who was introduced as the Vice President of Athlete Health and Performance by the UFC in February, was also on hand. He’s overseeing the whole program, which extends to a relationship with the Cleveland Clinic to monitor brain trauma and the forthcoming UFC Lab, where fighters can rehab injuries and learn to train properly on the new UFC campus in Las Vegas.
In MMA circles, three sweeping words keep popping up when the name Novitzky is mentioned: “That dude’s legit.”
What Wednesday’s conference made clear is that careers in the UFC just became a little more like porcelain. Fighters will need to handle themselves with care. It’s a bold new world with a very stern face. Better know exactly what’s in the protein shakes and supplements. And this no-nonsense program is a drastic measure for a sport that has a problem. If it didn’t have a problem none of this would be happening.
If it all feels a little accusatory, it’s because it is. Bloodhounds are typically brought in to pick up a scent. The UFC is accusing itself of having a problem. That’s a hard look to give to the mirror.
And here’s the thing that people who follow this sport should be saying about it all: Good. Good for the UFC. Good for the sport. White said that “fighting has been living in the stone age” and you know what, in ten years that comment will appear absurd in its obviousness. At least the UFC brass has the big picture in mind enough to do something about it. Criticize the UFC for screwing the fighters out of income in the Reebok deal, but give them credit for trying to create a level playing field in a sport where the goal is to physically impose your will on another human being.
A death or serious injury in a UFC fight is the flip switch to shut a lot of things down.
It isn’t just a positive step, but a necessary one that no doubt will come at great cost. Fighters will be lost. Reputations. Fights will be canceled. Cards will be altered. Events will stay fluid until the touching of the gloves. Stars will fall from the sky. It’s a hell of a thing, volunteering to hurt your own bottom line.
But this anti-doping policy is more about fairness than it is convenience. If a fighter is clean, he shouldn’t mind the inconvenience of peeing in a cup or having his (or her) blood drawn at the odd hour. If he is guilty, let him (or her) sweat the knock on the door. And if being bothered (approx.) five times a year appears inconvenient for the fighters, imagine how inconvenient it is for the UFC, who is aiming a loaded gun at its own foot and ordering itself to dance.
“I’m hoping, I’m praying…that our guys aren’t using drugs,” White said. “We’ll see how this thing plays out.”
We will see how it plays out. But that it’s playing out at all is really the story.
Oh boy.
If large sections of the UFC roster were peeved by the Reebok deal, imagine how the roster’s smartest cheaters must feel after Wednesday. The UFC isn’t messing around. It doesn’t want cheaters competing in the promotion. It is staking millions of dollars to weed them out, regardless of name, age, gender, nationality, religious belief, state of erectile dysfunction or celebrity status.
It’s a lot to digest all at once, all this cold turkey.
If the press conference to unveil the its new anti-doping program told us anything it’s that loopholes are fast becoming extinct, and the consequences of doping are about to get extreme. Fighters will be tested for performance enhancing drugs (approximately) five-and-a-half times a year out of competition. Wednesday was the notice for the upcoming Day of No Notice. As of July, first-time offenders are going on a long hiatus (one to two years). Second-time offenders are essentially being furloughed for good (double the sanction of first-time offenders). Third time offenders, well, they might as well go off to live in Dostoyevsky’s Siberia (double the sanction of second-time offenders, which in dog years is a lifetime).
Sobering stuff, this new push-broom policy. And it was the game-changer in the sport, Anderson Silva, who helped change the game to what it’s about to become when he popped hot for a medley of drugs back at UFC 183. Enough was enough. Now the thing has gotten serious enough to take prohibitive action.
A panel of five starched-collared gentleman (and Dana White) held court in Vegas to explain that if you are taking PEDs if the UFC, you’ll be caught and 86’d. There was COO Lawrence Epstein and CEO Lorenzo Fertitta from Zuffa, and the men they are paying to implement the program — former Olympic athlete Edwin Moses and Travis Tygart, both of the United States Anti-Doping Agency.
The USADA is the third-party administrator we kept hearing about. They’ll conduct 2,750 random tests a year on everybody under contract with Zuffa across the globe. That means no preferential treatment, because they are being paid to not give a damn about who’s who. The generic talk of cleaning up the sport to using phrases like “biological passport” and the “robustness of the policy” went from zero to a hundred in something like three seconds.
And wait…we haven’t even gotten to the chief whip-cracker himself.
Jeff Novitzky, the former BALCO investigator who was introduced as the Vice President of Athlete Health and Performance by the UFC in February, was also on hand. He’s overseeing the whole program, which extends to a relationship with the Cleveland Clinic to monitor brain trauma and the forthcoming UFC Lab, where fighters can rehab injuries and learn to train properly on the new UFC campus in Las Vegas.
In MMA circles, three sweeping words keep popping up when the name Novitzky is mentioned: “That dude’s legit.”
What Wednesday’s conference made clear is that careers in the UFC just became a little more like porcelain. Fighters will need to handle themselves with care. It’s a bold new world with a very stern face. Better know exactly what’s in the protein shakes and supplements. And this no-nonsense program is a drastic measure for a sport that has a problem. If it didn’t have a problem none of this would be happening.
If it all feels a little accusatory, it’s because it is. Bloodhounds are typically brought in to pick up a scent. The UFC is accusing itself of having a problem. That’s a hard look to give to the mirror.
And here’s the thing that people who follow this sport should be saying about it all: Good. Good for the UFC. Good for the sport. White said that “fighting has been living in the stone age” and you know what, in ten years that comment will appear absurd in its obviousness. At least the UFC brass has the big picture in mind enough to do something about it. Criticize the UFC for screwing the fighters out of income in the Reebok deal, but give them credit for trying to create a level playing field in a sport where the goal is to physically impose your will on another human being.
A death or serious injury in a UFC fight is the flip switch to shut a lot of things down.
It isn’t just a positive step, but a necessary one that no doubt will come at great cost. Fighters will be lost. Reputations. Fights will be canceled. Cards will be altered. Events will stay fluid until the touching of the gloves. Stars will fall from the sky. It’s a hell of a thing, volunteering to hurt your own bottom line.
But this anti-doping policy is more about fairness than it is convenience. If a fighter is clean, he shouldn’t mind the inconvenience of peeing in a cup or having his (or her) blood drawn at the odd hour. If he is guilty, let him (or her) sweat the knock on the door. And if being bothered (approx.) five times a year appears inconvenient for the fighters, imagine how inconvenient it is for the UFC, who is aiming a loaded gun at its own foot and ordering itself to dance.
“I’m hoping, I’m praying…that our guys aren’t using drugs,” White said. “We’ll see how this thing plays out.”
We will see how it plays out. But that it’s playing out at all is really the story.
In the ever-shifting land of UFC heavyweights, Matt Mitrione could make some serious headway on Saturday with a victory over Ben Rothwell at UFC Fight Night 68 in New Orleans.
So why would the 36-year-old former pro football player — who is riding a three-fight win streak in which he knocked out all three opponents in the first round — make waves by criticizing the Reebok sponsorship deal publicly?
Because, he says, that’s who he is. When the tier of how Reebok would distribute pay came out – a tier-system based on tenure ranging from $2,500 to $40,000 – Mitrione voiced his displeasure through his Twitter feed.
“Congrats @Reebok, you got the deal of the century. Unfortunately, it was at the cost of the fights. Hope all the bad press is worth it. @UFC.”
Mitrione said during Monday’s edition of The MMA Hour that he tries not to filter himself when expressing his genuine feelings.
“The way I was raised by my mother and my father is that if I see something I do agree with, I speak out on it,” he told Ariel Helwani. “And sometimes I’m an example of where keeping it real goes wrong. I do my best…I live my life to be as open and honest as I can. If I see something I don’t agree with I typically say something.
“So maybe that gets me in trouble sometimes, but that also let’s me sleep at night, because at least I express my genuine opinion and people know where I stand.”
The consensus among many fighters and media is that you don’t rock the boat in the UFC for fear of repercussion. Mitrione said he never thought about the consequences of his actions, and doesn’t regret being vocal about a deal that doesn’t benefit the fighters. Even if it means he is booked into a less than ideal fight next.
“If you’re going to get punished by the UFC, right, they’re going to try and give you a bad fight, so that way you’ll get smoked and you’ll look terrible and you’ll lose your next fight or whatever,” he said. “In my school of thought, if you do something to get in the bad grace of the UFC and you’ll get a bad match-up. And if that’s the case, I feel like right now I’m the best fighter in the world I feel like. So I don’t think there’s a bad match-up I can get. So I think I’d be very prepared against anybody I’d come up against.”
Mitrione is coming off a performance of the night knockout of Gabriel Gonzaga at UFC on FOX 13 in December. Before then he knocked out Derrick Lewis and Shawn Jordan, meaning he has finished his opponents via KO/TKO in four of his last five fights.
A victory over Rothwell, whom he called “durable as hell” and hard to put away, could potentially catapult him into the upper reaches of the division.
Mitrione said ahead of the Reebok deal, which begins to take effect in July, he has lost a couple of sponsors but also gained a new one.
“I’ve had two companies jump ship,” he said. “And I just signed a pretty good sponsor, Wing Stop, a chicken wing joint with 750 stores nationwide. I just signed them, and they’re going to be one of my primary sponsors this camp. And they’ve been great to me, man, they’ve actually been very good. I think there’s a chance it might go on after the UFC puts the rule into effect.”
The new Reebok deal is structured so that all fighters on the roster must be in their designated Reebok gear for all UFC appearances during Fight Week, weigh-ins and for the fight itself. Most fighters who’ve been vocal about the new deal aren’t worried about homogeny so much as the loss of pay. Fighters from Sara McMann to Brendan Schaub have publicly criticized the deal and expressed their concerns over losing out on potential sponsorship money.
The deal has prompted some people to wonder about a fighter’s association, which would present a unified front against sweeping decisions that effect all fighters. Mitrione said that such things are difficult to accomplish, especially if the top five fighters on the roster aren’t involved. He cited fighters like Ronda Rousey (who has a more exclusive deal with Reebok) and Jose Aldo.
Aldo, who lambasted the Reebok deal on record this past week, was the first of the champions to truly criticize the deal. For that, Mitrione said he was in complete agreement.
“I think he’s very accurate, I think he’s highly accurate,” he said. “I think he’s right and I think he’s got huge stones to say it. He’s the first champion to say it, the first highly paid guy — which, I’m assuming he’s highly paid, because nobody’s beating him. The dude’s a monster.
“So I think he has huge stones and he’s doing it for the greater good, and it’s not the same ‘greater good’ as the Reebok deal. I think it takes huge stones on his part and I respect him a lot for doing it, for sure. Especially because he has a lot to lose, but he also knows that they, I think he feels they really can’t do that much to him because he’s the man. He knows that.”
In the ever-shifting land of UFC heavyweights, Matt Mitrione could make some serious headway on Saturday with a victory over Ben Rothwell at UFC Fight Night 68 in New Orleans.
So why would the 36-year-old former pro football player — who is riding a three-fight win streak in which he knocked out all three opponents in the first round — make waves by criticizing the Reebok sponsorship deal publicly?
Because, he says, that’s who he is. When the tier of how Reebok would distribute pay came out – a tier-system based on tenure ranging from $2,500 to $40,000 – Mitrione voiced his displeasure through his Twitter feed.
“Congrats @Reebok, you got the deal of the century. Unfortunately, it was at the cost of the fights. Hope all the bad press is worth it. @UFC.”
Mitrione said during Monday’s edition of The MMA Hour that he tries not to filter himself when expressing his genuine feelings.
“The way I was raised by my mother and my father is that if I see something I do agree with, I speak out on it,” he told Ariel Helwani. “And sometimes I’m an example of where keeping it real goes wrong. I do my best…I live my life to be as open and honest as I can. If I see something I don’t agree with I typically say something.
“So maybe that gets me in trouble sometimes, but that also let’s me sleep at night, because at least I express my genuine opinion and people know where I stand.”
The consensus among many fighters and media is that you don’t rock the boat in the UFC for fear of repercussion. Mitrione said he never thought about the consequences of his actions, and doesn’t regret being vocal about a deal that doesn’t benefit the fighters. Even if it means he is booked into a less than ideal fight next.
“If you’re going to get punished by the UFC, right, they’re going to try and give you a bad fight, so that way you’ll get smoked and you’ll look terrible and you’ll lose your next fight or whatever,” he said. “In my school of thought, if you do something to get in the bad grace of the UFC and you’ll get a bad match-up. And if that’s the case, I feel like right now I’m the best fighter in the world I feel like. So I don’t think there’s a bad match-up I can get. So I think I’d be very prepared against anybody I’d come up against.”
Mitrione is coming off a performance of the night knockout of Gabriel Gonzaga at UFC on FOX 13 in December. Before then he knocked out Derrick Lewis and Shawn Jordan, meaning he has finished his opponents via KO/TKO in four of his last five fights.
A victory over Rothwell, whom he called “durable as hell” and hard to put away, could potentially catapult him into the upper reaches of the division.
Mitrione said ahead of the Reebok deal, which begins to take effect in July, he has lost a couple of sponsors but also gained a new one.
“I’ve had two companies jump ship,” he said. “And I just signed a pretty good sponsor, Wing Stop, a chicken wing joint with 750 stores nationwide. I just signed them, and they’re going to be one of my primary sponsors this camp. And they’ve been great to me, man, they’ve actually been very good. I think there’s a chance it might go on after the UFC puts the rule into effect.”
The new Reebok deal is structured so that all fighters on the roster must be in their designated Reebok gear for all UFC appearances during Fight Week, weigh-ins and for the fight itself. Most fighters who’ve been vocal about the new deal aren’t worried about homogeny so much as the loss of pay. Fighters from Sara McMann to Brendan Schaub have publicly criticized the deal and expressed their concerns over losing out on potential sponsorship money.
The deal has prompted some people to wonder about a fighter’s association, which would present a unified front against sweeping decisions that effect all fighters. Mitrione said that such things are difficult to accomplish, especially if the top five fighters on the roster aren’t involved. He cited fighters like Ronda Rousey (who has a more exclusive deal with Reebok) and Jose Aldo.
Aldo, who lambasted the Reebok deal on record this past week, was the first of the champions to truly criticize the deal. For that, Mitrione said he was in complete agreement.
“I think he’s very accurate, I think he’s highly accurate,” he said. “I think he’s right and I think he’s got huge stones to say it. He’s the first champion to say it, the first highly paid guy — which, I’m assuming he’s highly paid, because nobody’s beating him. The dude’s a monster.
“So I think he has huge stones and he’s doing it for the greater good, and it’s not the same ‘greater good’ as the Reebok deal. I think it takes huge stones on his part and I respect him a lot for doing it, for sure. Especially because he has a lot to lose, but he also knows that they, I think he feels they really can’t do that much to him because he’s the man. He knows that.”
A potential fight between recent bantamweight contenders Sara McMann and Cat Zingano isn’t likely to happen.
Not in July, anyway.
According to a report on UFC Tonight on Wednesday, Zingano won’t be ready by July 15, which was the date the UF…
A potential fight between recent bantamweight contenders Sara McMann and Cat Zingano isn’t likely to happen.
Not in July, anyway.
According to a report on UFC Tonight on Wednesday, Zingano won’t be ready by July 15, which was the date the UFC was hoping to stage a fight between her and the former Olympic wrestler, McMann.
Zingano’s manager, Ed Soares, told Ariel Helwani that she is still nursing some bumps and bruises, and won’t be ready for the proposed UFC Fight Night date in San Diego. Zingano fought Ronda Rousey for the title at UFC 184 in Los Angeles, but lasted only 14 seconds before tapping out to an armbar.
Soares said that a more realistic timetable for Zingano would be this fall. One potential opponent for Zingano when she is ready might be Julianna Pena, who won The Ultimate Fighter 18. UFC Tonight reported that Pena’s head coach, Rick Little, said that a fight with Zingano is something they are interested in.
“That’s the best fight for [Pena’s] career path,” he said.
Pena is coming off of an emphatic TKO victory over Milana Dudieva at UFC Fight Night 63 in early April.
McMann, meanwhile, wants to still fight on the July 15 card, which takes place at the Valley View Casino Center. According to the report, she is willing to fight anyone — “it doesn’t matter who” — if matchmaker Sean Shelby can oblige her.
Though he was able to fight for and ultimately win the UFC lightweight belt at UFC 185 with a torn MCL, Rafael dos Anjos still hasn’t been cleared to make his first title defense.
Not yet, anyway.
According to a report on UFC Tonight, Dos An…
Though he was able to fight for and ultimately win the UFC lightweight belt at UFC 185 with a torn MCL, Rafael dos Anjos still hasn’t been cleared to make his first title defense.
Not yet, anyway.
According to a report on UFC Tonight, Dos Anjos is still recovering from the torn medial collateral ligament he suffered three weeks before beating Anthony Pettis to win the belt. His manager, Ali Abdel-Aziz, said that the Brazilian is looking at making a return to the Octagon in December.
As for who he will fight, the Dos Anjos’ camp said they believe that Donald Cerrone is the forerunner to the first crack at the title. If that fight materializes, it will be a rematch. Dos Anjos, who has won four fights in a row overall, defeated Cerrone at UFC Fight Night 27 in 2013 via unanimous decision. Cerrone has rattled off eight straight wins since that encounter in Indianapolis.
The only fighter to defeat Dos Anjos in his last 10 fights was Khabib Nurmagomedov, who was supposed to fight Cerrone at UFC 187 in a No. 1 contender’s bout. With Nurmagomedov suffering a knee injury in training just a little under a month before the fight, John Makdessi stood in against Cerrone in his stead.
Cerrone won via TKO (retirement) after breaking Makessi’s jaw in the second round.
It was an inauspicious return to the Octagon for Joanne Calderwood when she faced Maryna Moroz, and the Scottish fighter made it known she wasn’t in the greatest frame of mind when she stepped in the cage in Poland.
Upon losing to Moroz in just 90 seconds at UFC Fight Night 64, Calderwood sent out a message to her fans via her Twitter feed. In the note she said she was still “in shock” after dealing with a personal matter just a day before the fight. She has remained cryptic as to what happened exactly, but — in the same note — resolved to step back and admit when she’s not okay.
On Monday, two months before she returns to the cage to fight Bec Rawlings at UFC Fight Night 72 in her native Scotland, Calderwood appeared on The MMA Hour to talk about the chain of events that went down in Krakow.
“A lot of things happened before the fight,” she told Ariel Helwani. “Obviously I wasn’t at my home team [in Scotland]. I went away to Sweden [for camp], which was good and I got on with a lot of the guys over there. This training was perfect. It’s just, the night before the fight a situation happened and it just took me back, and it kind of was a breaking point for me I think.
“There were so many other things that I just put to the back of my head and I think it was just somebody in my fight camp that should have knew better kind of f—ed me over. It wasn’t a good night the night before. I didn’t get a lot of sleep.”
Calderwood said that she ended up training in Sweden due to a separate issue, involving her former coach and training partner, whom she was engaged to.
“We’d been having problems for a while, and six weeks before that camp we decided that we kind of needed time away from each other,” she said, saying the plan was to go to Sweden and Iceland.
When asked specifically what happened, Calderwood elaborated a little more, but ultimately didn’t want to get too specific.
“It was just a situation that I found myself in with someone that was in my fight camp at the time,” she said. “It was just not a nice…you know, the night before any fight — and this fight was a really big fight for me — the person that knew me, they should have known first-hand that I was already worried about this fight being not right. But, something happened and I didn’t sleep the whole night and I was worried. I don’t really want to mention names because, I don’t want to be that person.”
Calderwood was a cast member on The Ultimate Fighter 20, which introduced the strawweight division in the UFC and crowned its first champion. She defeated Emily Kagan in the opening round of the tournament bracket before losing to Rose Namajunas in the quarterfinals.
In her official UFC debut at the Finale last December, Calderwood scored a unanimous decision victory against Seohee Ham. She was the betting favorite heading into her fight with Moroz, which was why her listless performance stood out as something being off.
Now she is back at her normal team in Glasgow, and says she is very happy to be back in a familiar routine. Calderwood said that things are not contentious between her and her ex, and that she’s moving forward.
“It’s just hard because we never actually fell out, we just grew apart,” she said. “So, it’s really hard because you get on so well. I don’t know if you’ve had ex-girlfriends or ex-boyfriends, you know where you think, she’s alright, but you don’t want to see her again. We don’t have that. We don’t fall out. We just kind of just went our separate ways. We work well together and we got on well together and we just had to put that separation in. The timing wasn’t perfect, but at the same time it never is.”
It was an inauspicious return to the Octagon for Joanne Calderwood when she faced Maryna Moroz, and the Scottish fighter made it known she wasn’t in the greatest frame of mind when she stepped in the cage in Poland.
Upon losing to Moroz in just 90 seconds at UFC Fight Night 64, Calderwood sent out a message to her fans via her Twitter feed. In the note she said she was still “in shock” after dealing with a personal matter just a day before the fight. She has remained cryptic as to what happened exactly, but — in the same note — resolved to step back and admit when she’s not okay.
On Monday, two months before she returns to the cage to fight Bec Rawlings at UFC Fight Night 72 in her native Scotland, Calderwood appeared on The MMA Hour to talk about the chain of events that went down in Krakow.
“A lot of things happened before the fight,” she told Ariel Helwani. “Obviously I wasn’t at my home team [in Scotland]. I went away to Sweden [for camp], which was good and I got on with a lot of the guys over there. This training was perfect. It’s just, the night before the fight a situation happened and it just took me back, and it kind of was a breaking point for me I think.
“There were so many other things that I just put to the back of my head and I think it was just somebody in my fight camp that should have knew better kind of f—ed me over. It wasn’t a good night the night before. I didn’t get a lot of sleep.”
Calderwood said that she ended up training in Sweden due to a separate issue, involving her former coach and training partner, whom she was engaged to.
“We’d been having problems for a while, and six weeks before that camp we decided that we kind of needed time away from each other,” she said, saying the plan was to go to Sweden and Iceland.
When asked specifically what happened, Calderwood elaborated a little more, but ultimately didn’t want to get too specific.
“It was just a situation that I found myself in with someone that was in my fight camp at the time,” she said. “It was just not a nice…you know, the night before any fight — and this fight was a really big fight for me — the person that knew me, they should have known first-hand that I was already worried about this fight being not right. But, something happened and I didn’t sleep the whole night and I was worried. I don’t really want to mention names because, I don’t want to be that person.”
Calderwood was a cast member on The Ultimate Fighter 20, which introduced the strawweight division in the UFC and crowned its first champion. She defeated Emily Kagan in the opening round of the tournament bracket before losing to Rose Namajunas in the quarterfinals.
In her official UFC debut at the Finale last December, Calderwood scored a unanimous decision victory against Seohee Ham. She was the betting favorite heading into her fight with Moroz, which was why her listless performance stood out as something being off.
Now she is back at her normal team in Glasgow, and says she is very happy to be back in a familiar routine. Calderwood said that things are not contentious between her and her ex, and that she’s moving forward.
“It’s just hard because we never actually fell out, we just grew apart,” she said. “So, it’s really hard because you get on so well. I don’t know if you’ve had ex-girlfriends or ex-boyfriends, you know where you think, she’s alright, but you don’t want to see her again. We don’t have that. We don’t fall out. We just kind of just went our separate ways. We work well together and we got on well together and we just had to put that separation in. The timing wasn’t perfect, but at the same time it never is.”
There isn’t any real explanation for what Andrei Arlovski is doing different now as a contender at 36 that he wasn’t doing as a has-been at 32. There’s no doubt that his coaches Greg Jackson, Brandon Gibson and Mike Winkeljohn have all been feeding him relevant advice (“avoid big blows, dude…”), but nobody on Earth could have predicted that Arlovski would turn things around after Sergei Kharitonov left him for dead in the swamps of New Jersey back in 2011.
Nobody.
And yet here he is a couple of days removed from taking down the colossus Travis Browne in a fight that might shake out as his chef d’oeuvre. Not only is he not chinny, as was the accusation back in ’11, but he’s actually…and I can’t believe I’m going to write this…durable? Again? Suddenly he’s won five fights in a row, and three in the UFC since returning on the fumes of his name for UFC 174. That fight with Brendan Schaub left a lot to the imagination. He won it (on the scorecards), but not a single eyebrow got raised (except for those belonging to Schaub himself).
Then he blew up Antonio Silva in Brazil, and flashed his trademark fangs. That was the Arlovski from the previous era, the Mesozoic, the one from back when he and Tim Sylvia were the heavyweight attractions in the UFC.
Yet all that the “Bigfoot” victory did was get him into a reality check fight with Browne at UFC 187, a fight in which he was supposed to get busted up into a pile of molecules. Instead, as a 3-to-1 underdog and nursing a calf injury that nearly kept him out, he tagged Browne early, put him on skates…blasted him from inside, then from outside, on the fence and in the middle, uppercuts, body shots, and love-me-nots…rocked him again, and went for the finish…got lit up himself in the process with a big shot from the zombie Browne that seemingly changed the very course of destiny…yet dug his heals in at the first twinkling of the dead lights as he fell…and then finished Browne moments later in one of the craziest sequences on record.
Turns out Arlovski’s resurrection story isn’t a fluke. Joe Rogan was practically speaking in tongues on the call.
(And afterwards it was fun to think of how Arlovski’s performance might have affected Rogan’s next pilgrimage through his own purple cosmos. Remember it was Rogan that told Schaub during a podcast that he was never going to beat Browne days after Browne chopped down Schaub, only to see Arlovski, whom Schaub thought he beat, light up Browne like Times Square. Elite is a word that has a new definition every six months or so.).
The truth is, Arlovski is his own mind-altering substance.
Not all that long ago, on his “final” fight with Zuffa back at UFC 82, he fought Jake O’Brien on the undercard. It was an intentional slap on the face as he made his way out. From there he cashed in big on the EliteXC and Affliction stages, back when people were splurging large on MMA, and got clobbered out of mid-air by Fedor Emelianenko. That set up a four-fight losing streak in which he was disturbingly knocked out in three.
You see, that was the end of Arlovski. Everybody was teeing off on him. People were burning their Macs up with eulogies. The fears of lasting head trauma had plenty of people saying enough is enough. Arlovski was a name of the past, one of MMA’s many casualties that the game had caught up to.
Then he wasn’t. He went to Albuquerque. Somehow he came roaring back — first into relevance, then to the UFC, and now into title contendership. The only man to defeat him in his last 11 fights is the other resurrection story, Anthony Johnson. Otherwise, Arlovski has turned things around in the feast or famine heavyweight division. It’s possible he will fight the winner of Fabricio Werdum and Cain Velasquez, who will unify the belts at UFC 188 in June. Stipe Miocic may have a say, but Arlovski carries a lot of marketing trump cards in his pocket. If he wants a title shot, he can probably get it.
To have been a champion, to have fallen and been forgotten, only to rise again. It almost sounds like a tall tale. But it’s not. It’s Arlovski’s story in 2015. And it’s one hell of a story.
There isn’t any real explanation for what Andrei Arlovski is doing different now as a contender at 36 that he wasn’t doing as a has-been at 32. There’s no doubt that his coaches Greg Jackson, Brandon Gibson and Mike Winkeljohn have all been feeding him relevant advice (“avoid big blows, dude…”), but nobody on Earth could have predicted that Arlovski would turn things around after Sergei Kharitonov left him for dead in the swamps of New Jersey back in 2011.
Nobody.
And yet here he is a couple of days removed from taking down the colossus Travis Browne in a fight that might shake out as his chef d’oeuvre. Not only is he not chinny, as was the accusation back in ’11, but he’s actually…and I can’t believe I’m going to write this…durable? Again? Suddenly he’s won five fights in a row, and three in the UFC since returning on the fumes of his name for UFC 174. That fight with Brendan Schaub left a lot to the imagination. He won it (on the scorecards), but not a single eyebrow got raised (except for those belonging to Schaub himself).
Then he blew up Antonio Silva in Brazil, and flashed his trademark fangs. That was the Arlovski from the previous era, the Mesozoic, the one from back when he and Tim Sylvia were the heavyweight attractions in the UFC.
Yet all that the “Bigfoot” victory did was get him into a reality check fight with Browne at UFC 187, a fight in which he was supposed to get busted up into a pile of molecules. Instead, as a 3-to-1 underdog and nursing a calf injury that nearly kept him out, he tagged Browne early, put him on skates…blasted him from inside, then from outside, on the fence and in the middle, uppercuts, body shots, and love-me-nots…rocked him again, and went for the finish…got lit up himself in the process with a big shot from the zombie Browne that seemingly changed the very course of destiny…yet dug his heals in at the first twinkling of the dead lights as he fell…and then finished Browne moments later in one of the craziest sequences on record.
Turns out Arlovski’s resurrection story isn’t a fluke. Joe Rogan was practically speaking in tongues on the call.
(And afterwards it was fun to think of how Arlovski’s performance might have affected Rogan’s next pilgrimage through his own purple cosmos. Remember it was Rogan that told Schaub during a podcast that he was never going to beat Browne days after Browne chopped down Schaub, only to see Arlovski, whom Schaub thought he beat, light up Browne like Times Square. Elite is a word that has a new definition every six months or so.).
The truth is, Arlovski is his own mind-altering substance.
Not all that long ago, on his “final” fight with Zuffa back at UFC 82, he fought Jake O’Brien on the undercard. It was an intentional slap on the face as he made his way out. From there he cashed in big on the EliteXC and Affliction stages, back when people were splurging large on MMA, and got clobbered out of mid-air by Fedor Emelianenko. That set up a four-fight losing streak in which he was disturbingly knocked out in three.
You see, that was the end of Arlovski. Everybody was teeing off on him. People were burning their Macs up with eulogies. The fears of lasting head trauma had plenty of people saying enough is enough. Arlovski was a name of the past, one of MMA’s many casualties that the game had caught up to.
Then he wasn’t. He went to Albuquerque. Somehow he came roaring back — first into relevance, then to the UFC, and now into title contendership. The only man to defeat him in his last 11 fights is the other resurrection story, Anthony Johnson. Otherwise, Arlovski has turned things around in the feast or famine heavyweight division. It’s possible he will fight the winner of Fabricio Werdum and Cain Velasquez, who will unify the belts at UFC 188 in June. Stipe Miocic may have a say, but Arlovski carries a lot of marketing trump cards in his pocket. If he wants a title shot, he can probably get it.
To have been a champion, to have fallen and been forgotten, only to rise again. It almost sounds like a tall tale. But it’s not. It’s Arlovski’s story in 2015. And it’s one hell of a story.
