In October 2013, UFC heavyweight Cain Velasquez dispatched his greatest rival with disturbing ease. Junior dos Santos, the second-best heavyweight in the world, didn’t even come close to giving the champ a fight.
With contemporary challengers looking b…
In October 2013, UFC heavyweight Cain Velasquez dispatched his greatest rival with disturbing ease. Junior dos Santos, the second-best heavyweight in the world, didn’t even come close to giving the champ a fight.
With contemporary challengers looking both helpless and hapless, attention turned to Velasquez’s place in the sport’s history. It was clear he stood alone among his peers. What about the likes of Fedor Emelianenko and Randy Couture?
While it was fun to ponder, a funny thing happened on the way to the UFC Hall of Fame. Since that fateful night in Houston, Velasquez hasn’t stepped into the cage a single time, slowed by a rotator cuff injury and knee surgery. His bout against Fabricio Werdum on Saturday will be his first in nearly 20 months.
No opponent could touch him—it took Velasquez’s brittlebody betraying him to prompt change in the heavyweight class. While Velasquez was on the mend, the promotion crowned Werdum its interim champion, a downgrade both athletically and promotionally.
Losing his heavyweight champion, not to mention his bridge to the lucrative Mexican market, incensed UFC president Dana White, who lashed out at Velasquez’s trainers at the famed American Kickboxing Academy in San Jose, California.
“Some of the camps are still in the stone ages and need to be brought up to date,” White told Ireland’s Setanta Sports. “AKA is one of those places. You’ve got Cain Velasquez, our heavyweight champion, who’s always hurt. Those guys go to war every day.”
While I don’t often agree with White’s bombastic brand of hyperbole, he may be on to something with Velasquez. It’s hard to point the finger at anything specific the camp or champ are doing wrong, but there’s no doubt Cain’s career has been snake bit.
In nine years as a professional, he’s made his way to the cage just 14 times.
Velasquez discussed this with Shaun Al-Shatti of MMAFighting.com:
When I train, I train well. I think if something’s wrong with me, I just kinda work through it. That’s my mentality. If something hurts or something is injured, I think my pain tolerance is pretty high to where, it’s pretty bad where I might need surgery, but I’ll just kind of work through it. So, you know, again it’s part of the sport. We all go through it. I might’ve gone through it more than most, but I’m going to keep doing it.
While there’s something admirable about that kind of stubborn courage, it’s also an indicator that Velasquez may not have a long career to look forward to. In fact, already 32, his best years may actually be behind him.
UFC 188 will be a referendum on where Velasquez currently stands in a division he’s had very little interaction with. Velasquez has only fought two members of the heavyweight top 10. When last we saw him, Velasquez was an unstoppable buzz saw, moving forward face first like Rocky Balboa, initiating a clinch and then making his opponents work at a pace against the cage very few heavyweights are capable of maintaining.
The result wasn’t always aesthetically pleasing, but it was as effective as any style we’ve ever seen in the Octagon. In fact, the only time he’s fallen short, in his first bout with Dos Santos, Velasquez was coming off of a long layoff due to injury.
Sound familiar?
That, more than his improved stand-up and stellar ground game, is Werdum’s best hope to score an upset. The old Velasquez was more than capable of grounding him into hamburger—we’ll see the new Velasquez for the first time together Saturday night.
Jonathan Snowden covers combat sports for Bleacher Report.
The average post-fight interview in the UFC is a dreadful bore. The announcer, in this case Jon Anik, asks the fighter to talk him through the fight. Then he’ll ask who the fighter wants to step into the cage with next.
Typically that question, a…
The average post-fight interview in the UFC is a dreadful bore. The announcer, in this case Jon Anik, asks the fighter to talk him through the fight. Then he’ll ask who the fighter wants to step into the cage with next.
Typically that question, asked after literally every fight, will be met with a blank stare.
If you’re a fan of the sport, you know exactly what I’m talking about. Collectively we’ve wasted years of our lives listening to these meaningless question-and-answer sessions.
At UFC Fight Night 68, Ben Rothwell made it all worthwhile.
For a minute-and-a-half, Rothwell and Matt Mitrione were slugging it out as expected, two enormous men looking to turn each other’s lights out. Then, inexplicably, Mitrione shot in for the very first takedown of his UFC career. Rothwell countered with a whizzer, and the two men battled for position and supremacy.
“The person who wins that position is the one who hustles more,” Fox Sports 1 commentator Dominick Cruz said after the fight. “The reason Rothwell was able to get that front headlock was because he hustled to it faster than Mitrione. Which doesn’t make sense—except for the fact that Rothwell for sure trains grappling more often than Mitrione.”
Rothwell, using his superior experience and impressive bulk, locked in a front headlock, sticking his fist right in Mitrione‘s throat and forcing the favorite to tap out. The whole thing took less than two minutes and was undeniably impressive. But it was the interview that followed that truly stole the show.
“I am something completely different. The only fight that matters to me now is the number one contender’s spot. I will have the UFC title,” Rothwell said in the cage after the fight, pausing to make a strange gesture with his hands. “I know right now there is not a man on this planet who can stop me inside this Octagon. And only politics can slow me. I don’t have much left to say other than you have seen nothing yet.”
Then it happened—a fun interview turned classic when Rothwell unleashed the greatest evil laugh in UFC history. Like that, in a single goofy moment, a potential contender was born.
Rothwell wasn’t the only heavyweight making his mark on what ended up being the greatest UFC Fight Night in the promotion’s history on Fox Sports 1. On the undercard, local favorite Shawn Jordan clocked “The Black Beast” Derrick Lewis with a hook kick that could have easily been mistaken for pro wrestler Shawn Michaels‘ famous “Sweet Chin Music.”
Jordan, who still owns several records in the weight room from his days as a fullback with the LSU Tigers football team, moves with a deceptive quickness for a man his size. The win is his third in a row, all coming by way of knockout. It’s a victory that, at the very least, should vault him back up to the main card and potentially into a bout with a top-10 opponent.
Heavyweight fights in the UFC are binary. They are either amazingly entertaining or complete disasters. Tonight we landed squarely in column A. The big boys delivered—and when they happens, MMA just doesn’t get much better.
Jonathan Snowden covers combat sports for Bleacher Report.
You’ll read a lot this week about 44-year-old Dan Henderson, a throwback to a simpler time in the sport of mixed martial arts. In the days before biological passports and year-round random drug testing, before, MMA fighting was even a full-time pr…
You’ll read a lot this week about 44-year-old Dan Henderson, a throwback to a simpler time in the sport of mixed martial arts. In the days before biological passports and year-round random drug testing, before, MMA fighting was even a full-time profession, Henderson carved out a legacy as one of MMA’s most enduring legends.
Henderson’s career is perhaps most remarkable for its longevity. After all, when he made his first UFC appearance way back in 1998, his 28th birthday was creeping up on him. His physical prime was spent only occasionally in the cage, the dream of Olympic glory dying hard.
By the time he really had things figured out, a period that culminated with a 2007 knockout of Wanderlei Silva, he was already in his late 30s. It had been a good run, but it had to be coming to an end. Athletes, after all, don’t excel into their 40s.
Henderson, however, had a secret. He was, we would later found out, an early adapter of testosterone replacement therapy, a since-banned medical procedure that allowed older fighters the benefits of a younger man’s hormones into their dotage.
Despite known risks, including enlarged prostates, potential blood clots, congestive heart failure and sleep apnea, fighters like Henderson were willing to take whatever chances necessary to excel.
“I knew what I was doing. I knew that what I was doing is bad for my body in the long run,” former TRT user and UFC Hall of Famer Forrest Griffin told the Boston Herald. “But to me, being a better fighter was worth it. It was worth even shortening your lifespan to be good at something.”
Once known as “Decision Dan,” Henderson’s career-changing knockout win over Silva was accomplished with the help of synthetic testosterone. So were his legendary knockouts against Michael Bisping and Fedor Emelianenko and his fight-of-the-decade bout with Mauricio Rua at UFC 139.
In fact, almost every moment that would make up a Dan Henderson highlight reel was the product of a chemical boost.
Henderson, for whatever reasons, has escaped the scrutiny and vitriol fellow aging legend Vitor Belfort faced for his TRT use. Belfort, who like Henderson, saw dramatic results from his own drug usage, became a target for scorn and recrimination, even from fellow fighters.
But the fact we’ve mostly ignored it doesn’t change anything. Henderson’s is a legacy built on the power of synthetic testosterone. To make matters worse, when TRT was finally outlawed in 2014, Henderson’s surging late career comeback hit the skids.
He’s lost four of his last five, his lone win coming in a rematch with a declining Rua last year in a fight where the Brazilian Commission allowed him to return to the drug. More damning, still, is how bad he’s looked doing it. Dan Henderson without TRT is a very different beast than Dan Henderson on TRT.
Despite it all, Henderson fights on. His bout this weekend against Tim Boetsch seems like the kind of entertaining bout capable of making fans forget his past and reminisce about the time their two drunk uncles scrapped over the final can of Pabst Blue Ribbon at the family barbecue.
I think this fight has a lot of potential to be very exciting for the fans. We both move forward and are aggressive. We are both wrestlers who have a lot of power in our hands. I think there are some holes in his game I should be able to exploit, but he’s a tough fighter. He’s not going to be easy to beat, but I’m excited to get out there and bang with him.
As Henderson fights out the final bouts of his UFC contract, mechanisms are in place to assure he will be the last of his kind. The UFC’s new PED program will incorporate random, unannounced testing of every fighter on the roster year-round. A minimum of 2,750 tests will take place each year, a staggering number which averages out to about five random tests per fighter, per year.
“Our goal is to have the best anti-doping program in all of professional sport,” Jeff Novitzky, UFC’s vice president of athlete health and performance, told Bleacher Report’s Jeremy Botter.
That is obviously good news for those who dream of a clean sport. But it’s bad for anyone hoping against hope to be the next Dan Henderson.
If fighters need a needle or a patch to compete, they no longer belong in the cage. That, more than any of his iconic knockouts, is Henderson’s true and lasting legacy in this sport.
Jonathan Snowden covers combat sports for Bleacher Report.
UFC 187, on paper, was one of the very best combat sports cards of the year. With two title fights on top and exciting fighters sprinkled throughout, I had every hope that this event would deliver a solid night’s entertainment.
Best card of the year, i…
UFC 187, on paper, was one of the very best combat sports cards of the year. With two title fights on top and exciting fighters sprinkled throughout, I had every hope that this event would deliver a solid night’s entertainment.
Best card of the year, it turns out, was faint praise.
By the time Anthony Johnson tapped the mat and Daniel Cormier sent a succinct message to deposed UFC champion Jon Jones, we were no longer looking at one of the best cards of 2015—we were looking at one of the most entertaining UFC events of the decade.
While no card is ever perfect, this one was pretty close, at least during the pay-per-view portion of the evening. In a new post-fight series, we’ll look at the card as a whole and choose the five best and worst moments—the handful of things worth talking about in the event’s aftermath.
Want to extend the bout from five rounds into forever? Enter the comments, if you dare, and make your voice heard.
Co-promotion works.
For MMA fans, that might feel like a bold statement. After all, for years the UFC has eschewed it, preferring instead to establish themselves as the dominant player in the market and force fighters to come to them. You’l…
Co-promotion works.
For MMA fans, that might feel like a bold statement. After all, for years the UFC has eschewed it, preferring instead to establish themselves as the dominant player in the market and force fighters to come to them. You’ll see the UFC’s best fighting the best from other organizations about the time you see pigs fly.
But, in boxing, co-promotion has a storied history, including a little bout you may have heard of—Floyd Mayweather versus Manny Pacquiao. That was a fight that brought together rival fighters, rival networks (HBO and Showtime) and rival promoters (Bob Arum and Al Haymon).
If those long-time deadly enemies can do it, anyone can—something Legacy FC and Resurrection Fighting Alliance (RFA) intend to prove Friday night on AXS TV, no matter the cost. The two promotions, arguably the top farm systems for future UFC stars, will duke it out in a five-fight battle to establish supremacy on the regional scene.
“We have been working behind the scenes for years to negotiate a promotion versus promotion superfight,” AXS Fights CEO Andrew Simon said. “…After discussions with some of the top external promotions, it became clear that they weren’t interested in making it happen. Through the years, we have come close a couple times to two AXS TV promotions setting up an event, and then it would fall apart. It took two quality promotions with great ownership like RFA and Legacy to put it together.”
As Simon points out, bringing rival promotions together can be a tricky business. There are financial and logistical hurdles involved to be certain. But the biggest obstacle of all, Legacy FC owner Mick Maynard tells Bleacher Report, is much more personal.
“Egos are usually the biggest obstacle, first and foremost. We all have them and no one wants to lose and look bad,” Maynard said. “I think once you get beyond that it really is about understanding that this is good for our TV partner, good for the fighters, good for RFA and Legacy and good for the sport overall. The biggest risk and downside is our ego taking a bit of a beating.
“…There are financial issues to work through—who comes out first from each corner, who is the co-main, etc. Honestly there are a host of things we have had to work through. It has taken months. The only reason this is happening is because at the end of the day we are all like-minded reasonable people. It most definitely wouldn’t work with everyone which is also why this is so special.”
While none of the fighters involved are household MMA names—yet—everyone involved is confident their rising stars are a match for both the other guy’s and the UFC’s own crop of young fighters to boot. For these two promotions, building stars for bigger promotions is the name of the game. They are establishing primacy, not as promotions, but as the top farm systems in the sport.
“Everyone has always asked the question ‘What if this champ fought that champ?’ Well, we decided to answer the question. We have faith in where our guys stack up against any promotion out there so it really wasn’t that hard to pull the trigger,” RFA COO Sven Bean said. “…I think that RFA and Legacy are the leaders in developing talent, and by coming together only compounds that. I don’t see how it couldn’t. Two of the very best promotions in the sport working together, and doing it with such a stacked card, can only produce great results for everyone involved.”
What follows is an exclusive look at highlights from many of the young prospects on the card. These aren’t just the fighters of the future—they are finishers fully capable of wowing the crowd right now.
“I expect that the MMA world will be watching closely and that a win on this card offers a new level of fame and opportunity for the victors,” Simon said. “No one sends more fighters to the UFC than Legacy and RFA each year. This event will be one of the top showcases for MMA in 2015.”
Unless you’ve been living under a rock the past two days, you know all about the current shenanigans surrounding UFC light heavyweight champion Jon Jones. Just in case, here’s a quick recap: Jones was allegedly involved in a hit-and-run on Sunday morni…
Unless you’ve been living under a rock the past two days, you know all about the current shenanigans surrounding UFC light heavyweight champion Jon Jones. Just in case, here’s a quick recap: Jones was allegedly involved in a hit-and-run on Sunday morning, fleeing the scene of a car accident after running a red light and striking a vehicle with a pregnant woman inside.
As if running away weren’t bad enough, the women in the other vehicle suffered a broken arm. And so, just like that, Jones’ misdemeanor became a felony. A warrant was issued for his arrest, and Jones turned himself inon Monday night. He was quickly released on $2,500 bail.
Now, all eyes turn toward the UFC. It issued a complete non-statement statementon Sunday, saying, essentially, that they aware of the situation. That just proves that they have Twitter like the rest of the world. We know that they are aware of the situation. The question is, what will they do?
Will they support him? Will we, as Dana White said in January after Jones tested positive for cocaine, understand when “the truth comes out“? What’s next for the best fighter in the history of mixed martial arts?
To discuss this, Bleacher Report’s Jonathan Snowden and Jeremy Botter join forces like a good-guy version of the Suicide Squad to answer The Question: What should the UFC do about its Jon Jones problem?
Jeremy: Jon, I’m just going to come right out and say it. The UFC needs to strip Jones of its light heavyweight championship and put him on the shelf for at least a year. And that’s the absolute minimum.
I don’t care how the legal system works and I don’t care that he needs his day in court. Both of those things are true. But it is also true that this is a grown man with an obvious problem, and that he needs the kind of help he is clearly never going to seek on his own.
If the eyewitness accounts are true, Jones ran a red light, crashed into another car, began making his escape, then came back for cash while leaving a marijuana pipe with marijuana in it before leaping over a fence and running away. You can’t explain this one away.
And even if Jones somehow makes it out unscathed, without facing any prison time, the UFC has to take a stand. At the minimum, they have to strip him of the championship and suspend him for a year. Will that happen? I have my doubts. And that’s the maddening thing: Jones is a star, and so he’s treated differently.
He shouldn’t be.
Jonathan: I couldn’t disagree with you more here Jeremy. The idea of punishing someone before they’ve had a chance to present a defense is utterly un-American. In every civilized society in the world, you are innocent until proven guilty. The rule of law is absolutely fundamental to our way of life.
Even for UFC fighters.
Instead of rash action, I’d advise caution here. The UFC tends to run into problems when it responds with emotion rather than reason. Let the legal system go to work. Give Jones his day in court. Then decide what additional punishments to dole out, if any.
In the meantime, the UFC could proactively work with Jones and his team to get him help if he needs it. There are signs of substance abuse everywhere here. If Jones does have a problem, the focus should be on helping him, not punishing him. That’s the best goal, long term, for everyone involved.
Jeremy: I agree that the legal system needs to run its course here. And, normally, I would suggest waiting to see how things play out.
But Jones has a history. The DWI in 2012. The cocaine test in December. He’s the best fighter in the world and one of the UFC’s most visible stars, and he continues to bring a bad look to the promotion. Granted, they haven’t exactly done their part to prevent that bad look, but still: It’s not good.
And it’s not without precedent. The NFL has shown a quick hand in suspending players involved in things like this, even before the justice system runs its course, when there has been enough evidence to show that whatever happens in court won’t really be all that surprising. The same thing should happen here. Jones may end up settling and he may end up not going to jail. Maybe nothing will happen to him from a legal perspective, even though it might be the best thing for him. But from a fighting perspective, something has to be done.
Jonathan: Does it though? Why?
Fighting is a different beast. We keep trying to cram mixed martial arts into a mold created for the NFL and other team sports. Maybe it just doesn’t fit?
Sure, we’ve seen the NFL act quickly to punish player conduct, especially when under the spotlight. But we’ve also seen how boxing operates.
Floyd Mayweather not only competed months after pleading guilty to a domestic violence charge but actually had the court delay his jail term until after his bout with Miguel Cotto was complete. I’m not saying that was necessarily the right call—but it does show that combat sports don’t have to play by the same rules every one else so slavishly obeys.
Switching gears a bit here Jeremy, but is it OK at all to be enjoying this scandal a little bit? Since the victim was not seriously injured, I say it’s OK for us to marvel about the particular circumstances here. If the police report is accurate, Jon Jones didn’t just run away from a car accident on foot, he actually ran away from a car accident on foot and then returned to the scene of the crime to stuff a wad of cash down his pants.
Jones’ actions were incredibly serious that day. But they were also a little bit hilarious. Who does that?
Jeremy: If it doesn’t fit into the same mold, then the UFC is utterly failing on their mission statement. But at the same time, I agree with you. I’ve told folks for years that fighting is never going to be a mainstream thing. Because, despite White’s famous refrain, fighting is not in our DNA. Most people, if they see a fight on a street corner, are not going to stop and watch. They’re going to call for help.
And I don’t think Floyd Mayweather is a good example here. He brings so much money to Nevada that everyone in the government will band together to make sure he’s coddled. The fact that his jail sentence was postponed so that he could fight here tells you all you need to know. The government here is complicit in the Mayweather business, because the Mayweather business is good. Which is mostly corruption, but whatever.
I don’t think we should be enjoying this at all, but I do think the idea of a UFC champion thinking he could get away from such a major problem by leaping over a fence and running away is, at least on the surface, a laughable thought. I mean, did he think it was all going to go away?
Jonathan: I think the UFC only has one real course of action here, Jeremy. Rather than suspend Jones, I recommend that they pull him from UFC 187 while waiting for his legal proceedings to play out.
That way he isn’t being unduly punished before the facts are established but the UFC also isn’t immediately rewarding him with a payday worth millions of dollars. Then, once we are all on firmer ground here, the organization can take further action as warranted.
Whatever happens, the focus should be on getting Jones the help he needs. That’s the right thing to do. Let’s hope the UFC sees it that way too.
In October 2013, UFC heavyweight Cain Velasquez dispatched his greatest rival with disturbing ease. Junior dos Santos, the second-best heavyweight in the world, didn’t even come close to giving the champ a fight.