Before he switched to mixed martial arts, Lorenzo Hood was just your average 290-pound defensive lineman would could run a 4.5 flat. He played collegiate football and later in Canada’s arena league. He performed well enough at a regional NFL combine to “get a couple of people’s eyes,” before an injury ended his football pursuit.
Now the 26-year-old Chicagoan has gone headfirst into the other thing that had been brewing in the back of his mind for a long time. Fighting. And like so many prizefighters today, he got his first taste of cage-fighting by accident. In his case, it was because he happened to be a warm body on hand for an event when a warm body was suddenly needed to compete.
“I had always played football and rugby growing up,” he says. “But, in regards to getting into fighting, I actually went to an event with a couple of my friends. My friends were competing in MMA and had been for a while. I went to an amateur event, and I was sitting in the back room, and one of the heavyweights got hurt. They asked, would anybody be willing to fight? And they kind of looked around and my friend’s coach said, well I’ve got a guy…he’s never fought before, but he’s a heavyweight. So they gave me a pair of shorts and a cup, and I went in there to fight. I won in like 15 seconds. That was kind of it. I got kind of hooked.”
Hood will make his Bellator debut on Friday, Aug. 28, at the Pechanga Resort and Casino, for Bellator 141. He’ll be fighting Raphael Butler on a little over a month’s notice, which means he will have cut down nearly 30 pounds from his walking around weight of 293. To see him is to behold a 6-foot-3 specimen, an imposing figure with guns like that of a circus strongman.
And through 11 pro fights, he has acted the part. In all 11 fights, nine times he’s knocked somebody out in the first round. Twice he himself has been finished in the opening round. As a feast-or-famine fighter, he’s not afraid of a brawl. Which is also why he wants to at some point fight get his hands on fellow Bellator heavyweight, Kimbo Slice.
“We were supposed to fight in North Carolina, I forget the name of the event, it’s been a while now,” Hood says. “It was lined up, and I was ready. This is a guy I’ve wanted to beat up for a while. It fell through for whatever reason, his team didn’t want it because…what I’m guessing is they were talking to Bellator, and he didn’t want a fight that he could lose.
“But I’m hoping that once I take care of business, they’ll let me beat him.”
Hood says he’d also like the chance to bash pro wrestler-cum-martial artist Bobby Lashley at some point, too, but that he’ll get to them both in time. Given his kickboxing fighting style and power, those match-ups could mean something to Bellator president Scott Coker in the near future. Especially if Hood continues to knock people out the way he has been. If you glimpse his highlight reel, you’ll see some pretty vicious stuff. He won his last fight via a monstrous slam.
He says he hopes to showcase that viciousness in his Bellator debut against Butler.
“I know [Butler]’s a former pro boxer, and from what I know he was pretty well accomplished coming into MMA,” he says. “He’s a technical guy. He has good clean hands, good clean boxing. For me, I just kind of think the bigger difference for this fight will be chopping down wood. Just chopping him down and making him pay, everything that’s open – shoulders, elbows, forearms, legs, body. Anything that’s open. I’m pretty powerful. When I throw things I try to put it through your body. I don’t try to stop at whatever I hit.”
Hood’s name preceded him a little bit to get to the Bellator cage. He trains with UFC fighter Ricardo Lamas at Team Topnotch in Chicago, and has spent a few months with the Blackzilians in Florida. The latter was open for him to join full-time, yet Hood has opted to stay in his native Illinois for the time being.
He says he thinks Bellator is a good fit for him, given the platform of Spike TV, the promotion’s ideology to book tent-pole fights and its current crop of heavyweights.
“I think Bellator’s on the rise to doing big things,” he says. “They’re doing big things already but I think they have a lot of big things upcoming.
“As far as the heavyweight division goes, I respect everyone. It’s open. I seems pretty open to me, no staples anymore. You have guys — the heavyweight champ lost to a light heavyweight, and then got beat up again. You’ve got guys like Kimbo Slice coming back in, and you got people going crazy over him. It’s definitely a great division to be in, you can rise up. Might be three or four fights before you’re fighting for a belt.”
Before he switched to mixed martial arts, Lorenzo Hood was just your average 290-pound defensive lineman would could run a 4.5 flat. He played collegiate football and later in Canada’s arena league. He performed well enough at a regional NFL combine to “get a couple of people’s eyes,” before an injury ended his football pursuit.
Now the 26-year-old Chicagoan has gone headfirst into the other thing that had been brewing in the back of his mind for a long time. Fighting. And like so many prizefighters today, he got his first taste of cage-fighting by accident. In his case, it was because he happened to be a warm body on hand for an event when a warm body was suddenly needed to compete.
“I had always played football and rugby growing up,” he says. “But, in regards to getting into fighting, I actually went to an event with a couple of my friends. My friends were competing in MMA and had been for a while. I went to an amateur event, and I was sitting in the back room, and one of the heavyweights got hurt. They asked, would anybody be willing to fight? And they kind of looked around and my friend’s coach said, well I’ve got a guy…he’s never fought before, but he’s a heavyweight. So they gave me a pair of shorts and a cup, and I went in there to fight. I won in like 15 seconds. That was kind of it. I got kind of hooked.”
Hood will make his Bellator debut on Friday, Aug. 28, at the Pechanga Resort and Casino, for Bellator 141. He’ll be fighting Raphael Butler on a little over a month’s notice, which means he will have cut down nearly 30 pounds from his walking around weight of 293. To see him is to behold a 6-foot-3 specimen, an imposing figure with guns like that of a circus strongman.
And through 11 pro fights, he has acted the part. In all 11 fights, nine times he’s knocked somebody out in the first round. Twice he himself has been finished in the opening round. As a feast-or-famine fighter, he’s not afraid of a brawl. Which is also why he wants to at some point fight get his hands on fellow Bellator heavyweight, Kimbo Slice.
“We were supposed to fight in North Carolina, I forget the name of the event, it’s been a while now,” Hood says. “It was lined up, and I was ready. This is a guy I’ve wanted to beat up for a while. It fell through for whatever reason, his team didn’t want it because…what I’m guessing is they were talking to Bellator, and he didn’t want a fight that he could lose.
“But I’m hoping that once I take care of business, they’ll let me beat him.”
Hood says he’d also like the chance to bash pro wrestler-cum-martial artist Bobby Lashley at some point, too, but that he’ll get to them both in time. Given his kickboxing fighting style and power, those match-ups could mean something to Bellator president Scott Coker in the near future. Especially if Hood continues to knock people out the way he has been. If you glimpse his highlight reel, you’ll see some pretty vicious stuff. He won his last fight via a monstrous slam.
He says he hopes to showcase that viciousness in his Bellator debut against Butler.
“I know [Butler]’s a former pro boxer, and from what I know he was pretty well accomplished coming into MMA,” he says. “He’s a technical guy. He has good clean hands, good clean boxing. For me, I just kind of think the bigger difference for this fight will be chopping down wood. Just chopping him down and making him pay, everything that’s open – shoulders, elbows, forearms, legs, body. Anything that’s open. I’m pretty powerful. When I throw things I try to put it through your body. I don’t try to stop at whatever I hit.”
Hood’s name preceded him a little bit to get to the Bellator cage. He trains with UFC fighter Ricardo Lamas at Team Topnotch in Chicago, and has spent a few months with the Blackzilians in Florida. The latter was open for him to join full-time, yet Hood has opted to stay in his native Illinois for the time being.
He says he thinks Bellator is a good fit for him, given the platform of Spike TV, the promotion’s ideology to book tent-pole fights and its current crop of heavyweights.
“I think Bellator’s on the rise to doing big things,” he says. “They’re doing big things already but I think they have a lot of big things upcoming.
“As far as the heavyweight division goes, I respect everyone. It’s open. I seems pretty open to me, no staples anymore. You have guys — the heavyweight champ lost to a light heavyweight, and then got beat up again. You’ve got guys like Kimbo Slice coming back in, and you got people going crazy over him. It’s definitely a great division to be in, you can rise up. Might be three or four fights before you’re fighting for a belt.”
In the aftermath of 26-year old Frankie Perez’s abrupt retirement at UFC Fight Night 74 in Saskatoon, fellow fighter Michael Bisping spoke his mind on the topic during a studio segment on FOX Sports 1.
And what he had to say ultimately drew another kind of criticism from fans.
“I am glad — and no offense it Frankie Perez because I don’t know the guy and I’m sure he’s a very charming individual and a solid person — but if retired after knocking somebody out in his second UFC [appearance], I would say he doesn’t have the cojones to really be in this sport,” he said. “Because it’s a very tough sport. He said he’s sick of what it does to his body, he’s sick of feeling like this, well guess what? This sport isn’t designed for everybody.”
Perez surprised everybody after his 54-second knockout of Sam Stout on Sunday’s prelims by announcing his retirement from fighting. He later cited missing out on life events as the catalyst for the decision, saying that he wanted to spend more time with family.
On Monday, Perez told MMA Fighting that though he hadn’t heard Bisping’s comments word-for-word, that he had the gist relayed to him, and that he knew better than to give it too much import.
“I knew something was up because my brother said something and my Twitter’s been blowing up,” Perez said upon arriving back in New Jersey on Monday afternoon. “It hasn’t stopped. I did an interview [in Saskatoon] and they mentioned ‘cojones,’ but I haven’t heard the actual thing.
“But Bisping’s a clown. Anything that comes out of his mouth…it kind of sucks too because I was always kind of a fan of his. I thought he was one of the most underrated fighters in the UFC, but his mouth gets him in trouble, you know what I mean? Hey, dude, cojones. I think I proved I have balls. I’ve got 20 something fights and I knocked out Sam Stout, so I don’t know what he’s talking about with that, whatever B.S. Whatever, if he’s got an issue, take it up with Dan Henderson.”
Perez, who trains with Frankie Edgar on the East Coast, lost his UFC debut back in January against Johnny Case, via a third-round TKO. Though that was his first UFC fight, Perez had already stacked a professional record of 9-1 beforehand, with a couple of amateur bouts on his resume too.
Asked if he was surprised to hear Bisping’s criticism, he said he was a little taken aback.
“Yeah man, he’s a d*ck for whatever reason,” Perez said. “But everybody has their own opinion, freedom of speech and all that. Reading some of the Twitter feed — and I can’t read it all, there’s so much of it — it’s been positive. But there’s a few people saying, ‘he’s a joke, he should have never fought in the first place, and he’s just scared.’ Man, let me tell you something. Half these people don’t even know what goes on in the real world of mixed martial arts. They just see all the lights and the knockouts and the good stuff, but they don’t know what goes on in these people’s lives.
“To hear Bisping say some stuff like that, and I’m sure he’s had some struggles in the martial arts, it’s kind of hypercritical. But it doesn’t bother me. I’m on cloud nine right now, and so what Bisping says I could give two sh*ts about. It’s not going to wind me up. That’s just who he is.”
Bisping, who was a guest on Monday’s edition of The MMA Hour, explained that he wasn’t trying to take a shot at Perez with his comments.
“One hundred percent they misunderstand,” Bisping told Ariel Helwani. “Listen, I respect everyone who steps into the Octagon because it’s such a hard thing to do for a living. And the world is made up of many, many different types of people. And not everybody has what it takes to be a UFC fighter. That’s just the fact of things. If he doesn’t want to do that, if he wants to pursue another career, then great for him, and I really respect his choice to do that. And of course, that is his decision.
“My opinion, being a fighter and a competitor, for me that’s the best living I can give my family. That’s the best way I provide for them. So I always struggle to understand when people say I’m not going to do this for my family. For me, I’m willing to put myself through that for my family. This is my best opportunity. He got a $50,000 bonus last night on top of his wages. He probably got $70,000. I don’t know anywhere else you’re going to earn that type of money in one night.”
Bisping said that he was trying to give an honest opinion on the topic.
“It wasn’t an insult, I just don’t necessarily agree,” he said. “Good for him. I’m sure he’s got a great head on his shoulders, and who knows, maybe he’s got an illustrious career in something else away from fighting. I wish I had. And if he has, God bless him and all the best. I certainly didn’t mean to be insulting but my mindset as a competitor, this is the best way I can provide for my family, and to be honest, not many people have this opportunity. He had the opportunity in front of him, he had a beautiful performance, he got a knockout of the night and he’s walking away. To me it just seems a little weird. But good for him. God bless him.”
Perez, who has a DJ business and runs a clothing line called Dead Serious Fight Gear, said for the most part his retirement has been met with tremendous acceptance.
“It’s crazy the amount of support I got,” Perez said. “I got a tweet from TJ Lavin, you know what I’m saying? It’s wild. I didn’t think I was doing anything big. What I did, it was just something I wanted to do. I didn’t expect to get all this support. It was just something I wanted to do.
In the aftermath of 26-year old Frankie Perez’s abrupt retirement at UFC Fight Night 74 in Saskatoon, fellow fighter Michael Bisping spoke his mind on the topic during a studio segment on FOX Sports 1.
And what he had to say ultimately drew another kind of criticism from fans.
“I am glad — and no offense it Frankie Perez because I don’t know the guy and I’m sure he’s a very charming individual and a solid person — but if retired after knocking somebody out in his second UFC [appearance], I would say he doesn’t have the cojones to really be in this sport,” he said. “Because it’s a very tough sport. He said he’s sick of what it does to his body, he’s sick of feeling like this, well guess what? This sport isn’t designed for everybody.”
Perez surprised everybody after his 54-second knockout of Sam Stout on Sunday’s prelims by announcing his retirement from fighting. He later cited missing out on life events as the catalyst for the decision, saying that he wanted to spend more time with family.
On Monday, Perez told MMA Fighting that though he hadn’t heard Bisping’s comments word-for-word, that he had the gist relayed to him, and that he knew better than to give it too much import.
“I knew something was up because my brother said something and my Twitter’s been blowing up,” Perez said upon arriving back in New Jersey on Monday afternoon. “It hasn’t stopped. I did an interview [in Saskatoon] and they mentioned ‘cojones,’ but I haven’t heard the actual thing.
“But Bisping’s a clown. Anything that comes out of his mouth…it kind of sucks too because I was always kind of a fan of his. I thought he was one of the most underrated fighters in the UFC, but his mouth gets him in trouble, you know what I mean? Hey, dude, cojones. I think I proved I have balls. I’ve got 20 something fights and I knocked out Sam Stout, so I don’t know what he’s talking about with that, whatever B.S. Whatever, if he’s got an issue, take it up with Dan Henderson.”
Perez, who trains with Frankie Edgar on the East Coast, lost his UFC debut back in January against Johnny Case, via a third-round TKO. Though that was his first UFC fight, Perez had already stacked a professional record of 9-1 beforehand, with a couple of amateur bouts on his resume too.
Asked if he was surprised to hear Bisping’s criticism, he said he was a little taken aback.
“Yeah man, he’s a d*ck for whatever reason,” Perez said. “But everybody has their own opinion, freedom of speech and all that. Reading some of the Twitter feed — and I can’t read it all, there’s so much of it — it’s been positive. But there’s a few people saying, ‘he’s a joke, he should have never fought in the first place, and he’s just scared.’ Man, let me tell you something. Half these people don’t even know what goes on in the real world of mixed martial arts. They just see all the lights and the knockouts and the good stuff, but they don’t know what goes on in these people’s lives.
“To hear Bisping say some stuff like that, and I’m sure he’s had some struggles in the martial arts, it’s kind of hypercritical. But it doesn’t bother me. I’m on cloud nine right now, and so what Bisping says I could give two sh*ts about. It’s not going to wind me up. That’s just who he is.”
Bisping, who was a guest on Monday’s edition of The MMA Hour, explained that he wasn’t trying to take a shot at Perez with his comments.
“One hundred percent they misunderstand,” Bisping told Ariel Helwani. “Listen, I respect everyone who steps into the Octagon because it’s such a hard thing to do for a living. And the world is made up of many, many different types of people. And not everybody has what it takes to be a UFC fighter. That’s just the fact of things. If he doesn’t want to do that, if he wants to pursue another career, then great for him, and I really respect his choice to do that. And of course, that is his decision.
“My opinion, being a fighter and a competitor, for me that’s the best living I can give my family. That’s the best way I provide for them. So I always struggle to understand when people say I’m not going to do this for my family. For me, I’m willing to put myself through that for my family. This is my best opportunity. He got a $50,000 bonus last night on top of his wages. He probably got $70,000. I don’t know anywhere else you’re going to earn that type of money in one night.”
Bisping said that he was trying to give an honest opinion on the topic.
“It wasn’t an insult, I just don’t necessarily agree,” he said. “Good for him. I’m sure he’s got a great head on his shoulders, and who knows, maybe he’s got an illustrious career in something else away from fighting. I wish I had. And if he has, God bless him and all the best. I certainly didn’t mean to be insulting but my mindset as a competitor, this is the best way I can provide for my family, and to be honest, not many people have this opportunity. He had the opportunity in front of him, he had a beautiful performance, he got a knockout of the night and he’s walking away. To me it just seems a little weird. But good for him. God bless him.”
Perez, who has a DJ business and runs a clothing line called Dead Serious Fight Gear, said for the most part his retirement has been met with tremendous acceptance.
“It’s crazy the amount of support I got,” Perez said. “I got a tweet from TJ Lavin, you know what I’m saying? It’s wild. I didn’t think I was doing anything big. What I did, it was just something I wanted to do. I didn’t expect to get all this support. It was just something I wanted to do.
A hotel in Saskatchewan can be a lonely place when you’ve got a fight coming up to two days, a hungry stomach and a lot to reflect on. That was the situation for Frankie Perez this past Friday, the day before the weigh-ins for his UFC Fight Night 74 fight with Sam Stout. He grew introspective.
Two days later, after scoring an emphatic TKO over Stout in just 54 seconds on the prelims, the 26-year-old Perez promptly — and somewhat shockingly — retired on the spot.
“Honestly I didn’t think that [Sunday] would 100 percent be the day,” he told MMA Fighting on Monday morning. “When I was sitting there the day before weigh-ins, and I’m sitting there by myself, and I was going over and thinking a lot of things man. I was like, you know what, this is it. I called my mom up first off to let her know, then I called every one of my siblings one by one so that they wouldn’t hear it from anybody else, they’d hear it from me. I didn’t tell my dad until I won. I didn’t want any distractions.
“And that was it. I didn’t talk about it, or talk about it. I was just focused on Sam and getting the W.”
After Perez downed Stout, the clamoring on social media was for Stout to retire after suffering his third straight knockout loss. Through Stout’s first 30 professional MMA bouts, he’d never been finished that way, so the writing was beginning to appear on the wall.
Yet it was Perez who made the hard decision right after getting his arm raised.
“I didn’t plan for everything the way it turned out to be,” Perez said of the knockout. “Everything was kind of perfect. And Stout, everybody keeps saying he should hang them up, hang them up, and yeah, maybe he should –but man, the times he’s gotten knocked out, they were nice shots. It wasn’t like he got tapped on top of the head and he fell. KJ Noons is a big knockout artist, and caught him with a big right hand. He fought Ross Pearson who’s got a big left hook. He took a couple of big shots, and I just caught him with another one. If he does, he’s been in this sport 10 years, he knows what he’s doing.
“But, I mean, I guess it was kind of like a storybook ending for me the way things played out.”
Storybook, too, because Perez not only got his first UFC victory in his swan song, but he also collected a Performance of the Night bonus of $50,000. It played out as severance money, which Perez said caught him completely by surprise.
“It’s kind of crazy, because I didn’t even know I got the bonus until I got to my hotel and I called my mom just to see how she was doing,” he said. And she said, ‘congratulations, you got it.’ I was like, ‘got what?’ She said, ‘they just announced it, you got the bonus!’ I started jumping up and down. I had no idea. So it was pretty funny. Nobody thought they were going to give it to me because I retired. It was crazy the way it played out.”
Asked if the bonus money might change his tune a little bit, or give him second thoughts about walking away, Perez said it wouldn’t.
“Not at all man, I never got into this sport for the money,” he said. “I never thought about all the money I could be making. It’s nice we can be paid, but I’ve always had my side businesses to make my money and keep me supported financially.”
The New Jersey native Perez began training at 17 years old, and he has been competing since he was 18. For the last eight years he said he’s been forced to watch things outside the cage stream by in his periphery as he dedicated himself to training.
Though he had a great moment in Saskatoon at the end of his journey, it was the moments he missed en-route that bothered him.
“I talked to one of my buddies right before I got the [Stout] fight, and I was going over all the things going on,” he said. “When I fought Johnny Case [in my UFC debut], I was going through a lot of personal issues. I lost my grandfather right before the fight, and my grandmother right after. With training for that fight, I couldn’t be around them all the time, and that put things into perspective as far as what else am I going to be missing in my life. I’ve been dedicating my life to this sport. I kind of just been thinking about it, and it just felt like the moment. Everything came into play, and I just knew it was the right time for me.”
It’s rare for anybody to get out of the fight game gracefully, but it helps to have a Plan B. In Perez’s case, he said he’ll continue to help his teammates Corey Anderson, Frankie Edgar and Edson Barboza, but that he has other pokers in the fire.
“I’ve had a DJ company since I was 18,” he said. “I do private parties, like weddings and Sweet 16s and stuff like that. So I’ve been very busy doing that. And I’m in the family business. My family owns a clothing line called Dead Serious Fight Gear, and plus they have their own promotion, so I’m always helping them as far as production wise and stuff like that. I mean right now that’s what I got. Who knows, if the UFC needs somebody to travel with them, I’m always down to work and travel.
“But right now I really just want to take this time to enjoy my family, go see my family in Florida and travel a little bit and enjoy fatty foods.”
A hotel in Saskatchewan can be a lonely place when you’ve got a fight coming up to two days, a hungry stomach and a lot to reflect on. That was the situation for Frankie Perez this past Friday, the day before the weigh-ins for his UFC Fight Night 74 fight with Sam Stout. He grew introspective.
Two days later, after scoring an emphatic TKO over Stout in just 54 seconds on the prelims, the 26-year-old Perez promptly — and somewhat shockingly — retired on the spot.
“Honestly I didn’t think that [Sunday] would 100 percent be the day,” he told MMA Fighting on Monday morning. “When I was sitting there the day before weigh-ins, and I’m sitting there by myself, and I was going over and thinking a lot of things man. I was like, you know what, this is it. I called my mom up first off to let her know, then I called every one of my siblings one by one so that they wouldn’t hear it from anybody else, they’d hear it from me. I didn’t tell my dad until I won. I didn’t want any distractions.
“And that was it. I didn’t talk about it, or talk about it. I was just focused on Sam and getting the W.”
After Perez downed Stout, the clamoring on social media was for Stout to retire after suffering his third straight knockout loss. Through Stout’s first 30 professional MMA bouts, he’d never been finished that way, so the writing was beginning to appear on the wall.
Yet it was Perez who made the hard decision right after getting his arm raised.
“I didn’t plan for everything the way it turned out to be,” Perez said of the knockout. “Everything was kind of perfect. And Stout, everybody keeps saying he should hang them up, hang them up, and yeah, maybe he should –but man, the times he’s gotten knocked out, they were nice shots. It wasn’t like he got tapped on top of the head and he fell. KJ Noons is a big knockout artist, and caught him with a big right hand. He fought Ross Pearson who’s got a big left hook. He took a couple of big shots, and I just caught him with another one. If he does, he’s been in this sport 10 years, he knows what he’s doing.
“But, I mean, I guess it was kind of like a storybook ending for me the way things played out.”
Storybook, too, because Perez not only got his first UFC victory in his swan song, but he also collected a Performance of the Night bonus of $50,000. It played out as severance money, which Perez said caught him completely by surprise.
“It’s kind of crazy, because I didn’t even know I got the bonus until I got to my hotel and I called my mom just to see how she was doing,” he said. ?And she said, ‘congratulations, you got it.’ I was like, ‘got what?’ She said, ‘they just announced it, you got the bonus!’ I started jumping up and down. I had no idea. So it was pretty funny. Nobody thought they were going to give it to me because I retired. It was crazy the way it played out.”
Asked if the bonus money might change his tune a little bit, or give him second thoughts about walking away, Perez said it wouldn’t.
“Not at all man, I never got into this sport for the money,” he said. “I never thought about all the money I could be making. It’s nice we can be paid, but I’ve always had my side businesses to make my money and keep me supported financially.”
The New Jersey native Perez began training at 17 years old, and he has been competing since he was 18. For the last eight years he said he’s been forced to watch things outside the cage stream by in his periphery as he dedicated himself to training.
Though he had a great moment in Saskatoon at the end of his journey, it was the moments he missed en-route that bothered him.
“I talked to one of my buddies right before I got the [Stout] fight, and I was going over all the things going on,” he said. “When I fought Johnny Case [in my UFC debut], I was going through a lot of personal issues. I lost my grandfather right before the fight, and my grandmother right after. With training for that fight, I couldn’t be around them all the time, and that put things into perspective as far as what else am I going to be missing in my life. I’ve been dedicating my life to this sport. I kind of just been thinking about it, and it just felt like the moment. Everything came into play, and I just knew it was the right time for me.”
It’s rare for anybody to get out of the fight game gracefully, but it helps to have a Plan B. In Perez’s case, he said he’ll continue to help his teammates Corey Anderson, Frankie Edgar and Edson Barboza, but that he has other pokers in the fire.
“I’ve had a DJ company since I was 18,” he said. “I do private parties, like weddings and Sweet 16s and stuff like that. So I’ve been very busy doing that. And I’m in the family business. My family owns a clothing line called Dead Serious Fight Gear, and plus they have their own promotion, so I’m always helping them as far as production wise and stuff like that. I mean right now that’s what I got. Who knows, if the UFC needs somebody to travel with them, I’m always down to work and travel.
“But right now I really just want to take this time to enjoy my family, go see my family in Florida and travel a little bit and enjoy fatty foods.”
If there was such a thing as a guaranteed fight card, UFC 194 could flush the preliminaries out to sea and stand as it is with just three bouts. The wallets would open just the same and money would fly right on out, with or without five hours of additional filler. Two title fights and a middleweight dream eliminator between a reptilian man and right-wing Cuban mic-dropper who’s built like The Thing. Honestly, what could be better?
Fact is, though, UFC 194 on Dec. 12 in Las Vegas could be a mirage. To be frank, it’s the least “guaranteeable” card possible. To the point that it almost feels hypothetical. Just a bunch of wishful thinking. Nothing more than somebody’s flight of fancy.
Yoel Romero and Ronaldo Souza is a fantastic match-up with so many ridiculous technical variables that it feels almost too good to be true. And so far it has been. That fight has been booked twice before to high-fives and shouts only to fall apart both times. After an unprecedented World Tour, Conor McGregor and Jose Aldo was the fight of the summer until it wasn’t. Now it’s the fight of the winter, because Aldo hurt himself in training the first time through.
Chris Weidman and Luke Rockhold is the only fight (so far) on UFC 194 that has never hitherto been attempted. Yet…not to roll in like a bank of dark clouds or anything…Weidman fights have a way of coming apart, too.
You can look it up.
What I’m trying to say is knock on some damn wood, people, because if UFC 194 comes off as it’s meant to, this already has the scaffolding to be the biggest UFC event ever. Bigger than UFC 100, when Dana White reneged on his promise to jump off the top of the Mandalay Bay if he got 1.5 million PPV buys (which he did). Bigger than UFC 129, when the gate got shattered in fight-starved Toronto. Bigger than Matt Freaking Brown. In some ways you hate to even talk about it for fear of personally pulling a loose string. In a game like this, so powerfully packed with superstitions and divination and neuroses, everybody is in collusion with the cosmos. As such, better to sneak up on Dec. 12 and not make too big of a fuss.
Still, here goes. What a card.
These three fights are the best possible fights available at just the right moment in time. There is not a bigger featherweight fight than McGregor-Aldo possible, and there never has been. There has not been a bigger fight this year than McGregor-Aldo. You could argue this is the biggest fight in UFC history, and not come across as either arrogant or myopic. McGregor fetches eyes and disposable income. He’s a star in the now (meaning, he hasn’t yet annoyed everyone into hating him yet — though his coaching stint on TUF may change all that). Both he and Aldo are carrying belts, each accusing the other of being an impostor.
Oh, and Aldo is perhaps the best pound-for-pound fighter in the game.
Equally compelling, at least in hardcore circles, is that Chris Weidman has never faced somebody like Luke Rockhold. Rockhold, a casual Adonis from Santa Cruz, finishes everybody he faces. Or he gets finished by Vitor Belfort so violently that little asterisks flit around his head in a chirping circle. In five UFC fights, none have gone to the scorecards. And Weidman has not only never been defeated, he has rearranged the canon of greats. It was him who sent Anderson Silva spiraling into the twilight, and it was him who punished Vitor Belfort for his run during the The Year of Loose Standards (back in 2013, when he used TRT and destroyed all visitors to Brazil).
Weidman makes all men vincible. So does Rockhold.
Then there’s that third fight, which was announced on Monday. Jacare and Romero has made sense from the first time it was booked a year ago, and it makes even more sense now. Jacare has won eight in a row, seven by knockout or submission. His last loss was against Rockhold four years ago in Strikeforce. Romero, at 38, is 6-0 in the UFC has knocked out five guys.
If all these fights share something in common, it’s this: Momentum. Rare, pure clashes of momentum. It’s unique for two truly great heads of momentum to collide in this sport at just the right time. It’s nearly impossible for three different sets of full-blown momentum to clash on the very same card.
And the drama on a card like this is that somebody in each scenario has got to lose. Three of the six fighters at the top of UFC 194 will be forced into the drastic thing they know least about. Losing. The novelty of figuring out which three is enough to make your head spin.
Then again, it’s better not to think too hard about it. Better to downplay the hell out of UFC 194, and pretend that it’s just 113 days away (and counting).
If there was such a thing as a guaranteed fight card, UFC 194 could flush the preliminaries out to sea and stand as it is with just three bouts. The wallets would open just the same and money would fly right on out, with or without five hours of additional filler. Two title fights and a middleweight dream eliminator between a reptilian man and right-wing Cuban mic-dropper who’s built like The Thing. Honestly, what could be better?
Fact is, though, UFC 194 on Dec. 12 in Las Vegas could be a mirage. To be frank, it’s the least “guaranteeable” card possible. To the point that it almost feels hypothetical. Just a bunch of wishful thinking. Nothing more than somebody’s flight of fancy.
Yoel Romero and Ronaldo Souza is a fantastic match-up with so many ridiculous technical variables that it feels almost too good to be true. And so far it has been. That fight has been booked twice before to high-fives and shouts only to fall apart both times. After an unprecedented World Tour, Conor McGregor and Jose Aldo was the fight of the summer until it wasn’t. Now it’s the fight of the winter, because Aldo hurt himself in training the first time through.
Chris Weidman and Luke Rockhold is the only fight (so far) on UFC 194 that has never hitherto been attempted. Yet…not to roll in like a bank of dark clouds or anything…Weidman fights have a way of coming apart, too.
You can look it up.
What I’m trying to say is knock on some damn wood, people, because if UFC 194 comes off as it’s meant to, this already has the scaffolding to be the biggest UFC event ever. Bigger than UFC 100, when Dana White reneged on his promise to jump off the top of the Mandalay Bay if he got 1.5 million PPV buys (which he did). Bigger than UFC 129, when the gate got shattered in fight-starved Toronto. Bigger than Matt Freaking Brown. In some ways you hate to even talk about it for fear of personally pulling a loose string. In a game like this, so powerfully packed with superstitions and divination and neuroses, everybody is in collusion with the cosmos. As such, better to sneak up on Dec. 12 and not make too big of a fuss.
Still, here goes. What a card.
These three fights are the best possible fights available at just the right moment in time. There is not a bigger featherweight fight than McGregor-Aldo possible, and there never has been. There has not been a bigger fight this year than McGregor-Aldo. You could argue this is the biggest fight in UFC history, and not come across as either arrogant or myopic. McGregor fetches eyes and disposable income. He’s a star in the now (meaning, he hasn’t yet annoyed everyone into hating him yet — though his coaching stint on TUF may change all that). Both he and Aldo are carrying belts, each accusing the other of being an impostor.
Oh, and Aldo is perhaps the best pound-for-pound fighter in the game.
Equally compelling, at least in hardcore circles, is that Chris Weidman has never faced somebody like Luke Rockhold. Rockhold, a casual Adonis from Santa Cruz, finishes everybody he faces. Or he gets finished by Vitor Belfort so violently that little asterisks flit around his head in a chirping circle. In five UFC fights, none have gone to the scorecards. And Weidman has not only never been defeated, he has rearranged the canon of greats. It was him who sent Anderson Silva spiraling into the twilight, and it was him who punished Vitor Belfort for his run during the The Year of Loose Standards (back in 2013, when he used TRT and destroyed all visitors to Brazil).
Weidman makes all men vincible. So does Rockhold.
Then there’s that third fight, which was announced on Monday. Jacare and Romero has made sense from the first time it was booked a year ago, and it makes even more sense now. Jacare has won eight in a row, seven by knockout or submission. His last loss was against Rockhold four years ago in Strikeforce. Romero, at 38, is 6-0 in the UFC has knocked out five guys.
If all these fights share something in common, it’s this: Momentum. Rare, pure clashes of momentum. It’s unique for two truly great heads of momentum to collide in this sport at just the right time. It’s nearly impossible for three different sets of full-blown momentum to clash on the very same card.
And the drama on a card like this is that somebody in each scenario has got to lose. Three of the six fighters at the top of UFC 194 will be forced into the drastic thing they know least about. Losing. The novelty of figuring out which three is enough to make your head spin.
Then again, it’s better not to think too hard about it. Better to downplay the hell out of UFC 194, and pretend that it’s just 113 days away (and counting).
On July 15, after she scored a methodical, somewhat holstered decision over Marion Reneau, most agreed that Holly Holm was still a country mile from having what it takes to stand in there against Ronda Rousey. So who is Rousey’s next title defense against? Against Holly Holm, a decorated boxer who just also happens to be tomorrow’s minced meat.
This news, delivered by Rousey on Good Morning America of all places, had a few people spitting out their morning coffee.
For starters, UFC president Dana White made it pretty clear that Miesha Tate was fighting Rousey next, a trilogy fight that left diehards a bit hollow but dealt well in the bigger picture of Rousey’s star strata. Tate herself was operating under the assumption that she was to face Rousey again, and could be seen smiling broadly wherever she went. Her coach, Robert Follis, was already scheming up new ideas on how to make the third time the charm. Her partner, Bryan Caraway, was emboldened enough by the prospect of Tate’s status as contender that he himself, vicariously basking in a duet’s spotlight, turned a deaf ear on a direct challenge from Manvel Gamburyan.
Such was the solid ground beneath Miesha Tate’s feet.
And even the 33-year old Holm, who has said she wouldn’t turn down a fight with Rousey, wasn’t exactly demanding the thing happen immediately. She just left that fight out there for down the road, for when she collects a couple more scalps. For all the mild criticism Holm has received for not obliterating opposition to taste in her first two UFC fights, she’s been even more critical of herself. There has been a note of dissatisfaction in the air from Holm after each of her victories, over Raquel Pennington and Reneau.
In other words, Holm was the first to admit that she needed more time to be ready for the ultimate ultimate.
But, as the UFC’s motto of yesteryear says, the time is now. Holm, who will carry a scroll of victim’s names from her previous career as a boxer to the cage with her on Jan. 2 in Las Vegas, definitely have some intrigue as a challenger. Her striking is better than any of Rousey’s previous opponents by a long shot. She has a healthy sense of self-preservation; she’s not likely to pin her ears back and turn berserker, like Bethe Correia and Cat Zingano. She’s new blood…she’s not Tate, for instance, which adds some novelty to the proceedings.
And there’s slightly more tape for Holm’s coaches, Greg Jackson and Mike Winkeljohn, to look at and study. In fact, spread over three fights, there’s a little over a minute of raw Rousey footage to pore over and try to glean an advantage.
Still, the Holm news is a bit of a surprise.
The idea being floated around (by everybody except maybe matchmaker Sean Shelby) was to have Rousey defend the title against Tate, go off to shoot a movie in Hollywood, then return in July for UFC 200, where her and Cris “Cyborg” Justino could throw the biggest pay-per-view bash in UFC history. Not that Holm will kick the needle off the record, but her waiting in the wings for a title fight in late-2016 would have seemed advantageous to all parties involved. With Amanda Nunes also floating around as a contender, Holm’s name was the last you’d expect to hear for Rousey’s next title defense.
The truth is, Holm could have benefitted from getting some more cage time before standing in there against Rousey. This feels a little too much too soon, even for somebody who has been competing in combat sports for as long as Holm has. Her in-ring experience doesn’t hurt. In fact, it will/can hearten optimists to imagine Holm not being intimidated by Rousey. But boxing prowess is limited when fighting off your back. And it’s completely nil when one of your arms is being torqued from the joints. How well-rounded is Holm all told? We don’t know, but there’s an assumption that she’s green in some of the areas where Rousey is phenomenal.
In that sense, it might feel like we’re popping the lid on the cask to sample the whisky a full year before it’s had a chance to age properly. Truth is, the taste doesn’t really matter. It only matters if it’s flammable. Is there a spark, and can a blue flame play over it?
When you get to the level Rousey is at, where you’re breaking your own fights on Good Morning America for the Friday morning aloof, the answer is yes. See, the thing is, all concepts begin and end with Rousey. She created the division, it’s hers to demolish. She is the paragon for mankind’s sense of destruction. Tate can wait.
Holm has been deemed next.
On July 15, after she scored a methodical, somewhat holstered decision over Marion Reneau, most agreed that Holly Holm was still a country mile from having what it takes to stand in there against Ronda Rousey. So who is Rousey’s next title defense against? Against Holly Holm, a decorated boxer who just also happens to be tomorrow’s minced meat.
This news, delivered by Rousey on Good Morning America of all places, had a few people spitting out their morning coffee.
For starters, UFC president Dana White made it pretty clear that Miesha Tate was fighting Rousey next, a trilogy fight that left diehards a bit hollow but dealt well in the bigger picture of Rousey’s star strata. Tate herself was operating under the assumption that she was to face Rousey again, and could be seen smiling broadly wherever she went. Her coach, Robert Follis, was already scheming up new ideas on how to make the third time the charm. Her partner, Bryan Caraway, was emboldened enough by the prospect of Tate’s status as contender that he himself, vicariously basking in a duet’s spotlight, turned a deaf ear on a direct challenge from Manvel Gamburyan.
Such was the solid ground beneath Miesha Tate’s feet.
And even the 33-year old Holm, who has said she wouldn’t turn down a fight with Rousey, wasn’t exactly demanding the thing happen immediately. She just left that fight out there for down the road, for when she collects a couple more scalps. For all the mild criticism Holm has received for not obliterating opposition to taste in her first two UFC fights, she’s been even more critical of herself. There has been a note of dissatisfaction in the air from Holm after each of her victories, over Raquel Pennington and Reneau.
In other words, Holm was the first to admit that she needed more time to be ready for the ultimate ultimate.
But, as the UFC’s motto of yesteryear says, the time is now. Holm, who will carry a scroll of victim’s names from her previous career as a boxer to the cage with her on Jan. 2 in Las Vegas, definitely have some intrigue as a challenger. Her striking is better than any of Rousey’s previous opponents by a long shot. She has a healthy sense of self-preservation; she’s not likely to pin her ears back and turn berserker, like Bethe Correia and Cat Zingano. She’s new blood…she’s not Tate, for instance, which adds some novelty to the proceedings.
And there’s slightly more tape for Holm’s coaches, Greg Jackson and Mike Winkeljohn, to look at and study. In fact, spread over three fights, there’s a little over a minute of raw Rousey footage to pore over and try to glean an advantage.
Still, the Holm news is a bit of a surprise.
The idea being floated around (by everybody except maybe matchmaker Sean Shelby) was to have Rousey defend the title against Tate, go off to shoot a movie in Hollywood, then return in July for UFC 200, where her and Cris “Cyborg” Justino could throw the biggest pay-per-view bash in UFC history. Not that Holm will kick the needle off the record, but her waiting in the wings for a title fight in late-2016 would have seemed advantageous to all parties involved. With Amanda Nunes also floating around as a contender, Holm’s name was the last you’d expect to hear for Rousey’s next title defense.
The truth is, Holm could have benefitted from getting some more cage time before standing in there against Rousey. This feels a little too much too soon, even for somebody who has been competing in combat sports for as long as Holm has. Her in-ring experience doesn’t hurt. In fact, it will/can hearten optimists to imagine Holm not being intimidated by Rousey. But boxing prowess is limited when fighting off your back. And it’s completely nil when one of your arms is being torqued from the joints. How well-rounded is Holm all told? We don’t know, but there’s an assumption that she’s green in some of the areas where Rousey is phenomenal.
In that sense, it might feel like we’re popping the lid on the cask to sample the whisky a full year before it’s had a chance to age properly. Truth is, the taste doesn’t really matter. It only matters if it’s flammable. Is there a spark, and can a blue flame play over it?
When you get to the level Rousey is at, where you’re breaking your own fights on Good Morning America for the Friday morning aloof, the answer is yes. See, the thing is, all concepts begin and end with Rousey. She created the division, it’s hers to demolish. She is the paragon for mankind’s sense of destruction. Tate can wait.
On a day when fights are being booked left and right, a lightweight bout between surging Brazilian Leonardo Santos and Kevin Lee has been made official for UFC 194 on Dec. 12.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal broke the news of the fight on Frida…
On a day when fights are being booked left and right, a lightweight bout between surging Brazilian Leonardo Santos and Kevin Lee has been made official for UFC 194 on Dec. 12.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal broke the news of the fight on Friday.
The 35-year old Santos, who broke into the UFC via The Ultimate Fighter Brazil 2, hasn’t lost since 2009. Since defeating William Macario in the TUF Brazil 2 season finale, he has gone 2-0-1 in the UFC, scoring victories over Efrain Escudero and Tony Martin in his last two bouts.
UFC 194 will be the first time the Brazilian jiu-jitsu specialist Santos has competed in the United States.
The 22-year old prospect Kevin Lee (11-1), meanwhile, has been nothing short of impressive since signing with the UFC in 2013. After dropping a decision to Al Iaquinta at UFC 169, the Las Vegas resident has rattled off four wins in a row, his latest coming against James Moontasri at UFC Fight Night 71 in San Diego.
UFC 194 will take place at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas on Dec. 12. The card will feature two title fights, including a featherweight unification bout between Conor McGregor and Jose Aldo, and a middleweight title fight between champion Chris Weidman and Luke Rockhold.
