Big fighters. Small fighters. Rich fighters. Poor fighters. Ground fighters. Stand-up fighters. Mixed martial arts contains multitudes, fighters seemingly crafted especially to fulfill their role in the combat sports ecosystem.
But, in this vast …
But, in this vast sea of archetypes and stereotypes, there is only one RousimarPalhares, the World Series of Fighting welterweight champion who submitted longtime UFC contender Jon Fitch in just 90 seconds Saturday night on NBCSN.
Fighting is all about misdirection. The most successful prize fighters are the ones who lull opponents into a false sense of security, zigging left at the exact moment their foe expects them to zag right. Trickery, much more than pure force, is the hallmark of the world’s best.
Perhaps that, even more than the string of bodies he’s left laying in his wake, is why Palhares inspires such terror. There is nothing tricky about anything he does. His purpose is single-minded. His approach is entirely predictable.
And, when the opportunity to strike arises, he is impossible to stop. Fitch, like everyone who steps into the cage with Palhares, told me last week that he knew exactly what to expect.
“He’s a master of what he does. His body and frame are built exceptionally well to do just that—to attack the ankles and legs,” Fitch said. “A lot of guys just avoid the leglock stuff, either because they don’t understand it or some people look down on the idea of twisting on somebody’s leg and they don’t want to learn how to do it. It’s really interesting that he’s specialized in this one thing. But it works for him. He’s good at it and he’s able to utilize it.”
He drilled endlessly to stop Palhares‘ patented attack. He knew what to do in order to combat each submission. One of the smartest fighters in the game, Fitch was fully prepared for what Palhares was going to do.
It didn‘t matter.
Built like a tiny tank, all bulging muscles and tiny compact limbs, Palhares was seemingly born to crank on an opponent’s appendage. Knowing what he intends to do means very little when he’s stronger, meaner and simply better at the leglock battle that is to come anytime the fight approaches the mat.
Many fighters, as grappling expert Ricky Lundell explained to MMA Fighting’s Luke Thomas, are ill-prepared to truly defend against a leglock expert because of the paranoia that surrounds the holds in the Brazilian jiu jitsu community:
Leglocks have been viewed as taboo in jiu-jitsu for many years. It wasn’t long ago that you would be basically booed off the mat for submitting your opponent with a leglock or some of type of lower body submission hold. I feel that when people don’t fully understand something, they discredit it. They become afraid of it. Because of this, they start to even create a false propaganda and try to strike fear into other practitioners and try to keep them away from leglocks.
And then there’s the matter of Palhares‘ hidden edge. He isn’t afraid to cripple an opponent—and everybody knows it. Palhares has a well-deserved reputation for holding on to his submissions just a little bit too long, literally forcing the referee to physically intervene before loosening his grip.
With a regular hold, that wouldn’t be a huge concern. A second here or there would be bad form, sure. But it wouldn’t have huge repercussions on an opponent’s future. Leglocks don’t work that way, though. As Fitch outlined in our interview, the submissions Palhares specializes in are particularly dangerous because they are often doing immense damage before an opponent realizes he’s in trouble.
This insistence on making sure, really sure, an opponent is finished has done real harm, not just to opponents, but to his own career. In 2010, New Jersey suspended Palhares for 90 days after his leglock submission victory over TomaszDrwal extended a little longer than the 45 seconds it took him to make Drwal tap.
Last October, Palhares faced an even more severe sanction. After submitting Mike Pierce with a heel hook in just 31 seconds, he refused to break his hold. It cost him a $50,000 Submission of the Night bonus—and his job.
“This is the second incident we’ve had with Palhares where he had the lock and he didn‘t let it go,” UFC president Dana White told ESPN’s Jeremy Schaap the next day. “Finally he let it go. I’m going to cut him too…he’s done.”
In the aftermath, Palhares signed with the World Series of Fighting knowing full well his behavior would be scrutinized under a very large microscope. He won their welterweight championship in March in just over a minute, the heel hook again his weapon of choice. It was your garden variety submission win—but, as MMA Junkie’s Ben Fowlkes explained, even the innocuous looked sinister when Palhares was involved:
You didn’t need Nostradamus to know that people would be watching him very closely in his first post-UFC outing, especially if he managed to lock on his submission of choice. The fact that some saw controversy in such a run-of-the-mill finish only tells us that Palhares was, at least to some extent, doomed before he began.
Is that unfair? Yeah, a little. It’s also not entirely unearned.
Against Fitch, however, there was a little more room for doubt. Watching in slow motion, you can see a shrieking former UFC star tap Palhares nine times on the leg, each concession a bit more frantic than the last. By the fourth tap, the referee, too, was on the scene and physically attempting to stop the fight.
Palhares, as usual, walked a fine line. It wasn’t normal, not quite. But it didn‘t quite cross over into straight-up assault. It was gray—a color that has come to define the Brazilian’s career.
It was a win that served two purposes. It established Palhares, arguably, as a legitimate contender for the title of “best welterweight in the world.” But it also likely reaffirmed the UFC’s decision to leave Palhares on the outside looking in. Some fighters, even in a sport like MMA, are just too dangerous for something that’s ultimately just a game.
For more than seven years, welterweight Jon Fitch built a reputation as one of the UFC’s toughest fighters. He fought a who’s who of the world’s best at 170 pounds—and beat almost all of them.
Over the course of his tenure in the Octagon he went …
For more than seven years, welterweight Jon Fitch built a reputation as one of the UFC’s toughest fighters. He fought a who’s who of the world’s best at 170 pounds—and beat almost all of them.
Over the course of his tenure in the Octagon he went 14-3-1 with one no-contest. As records go, they don’t get much better. But, in many ways, Fitch failed to make his way. His ground-centric style didn’t make him any fans with the UFC brass.
He got just a single opportunity at the UFC championship. He failed to capture gold, though he extended champion Georges St-Pierre to five hard rounds. But instead of being a perpetual contender, he festered.
Worse, to maintain the status quo he had to be nearly perfect.
He wasn’t.
The first time he faltered, Fitch was cut from his UFC contract, despite filling a place in the promotion’s own top 10 rankings.
In the last year, however, he’s found his bearings. On Saturday, he fights the fearsome RousimarPalhares for the World Series of Fighting welterweight championship. He took the time, however, to talk with Bleacher Report about the state of the sport and why, at 36, he’s reinventing his process.
Bleacher Report: Thirty-six, 34, 12. That’s your age, number of professional fights and number of years fighting. That’s a lot of grinding. What keeps you coming back? What keeps you interested?
Jon Fitch: I enjoy myself. I like doing what I do. Ever since I was a little kid, all I’ve thought about was being a professional athlete. I always enjoyed working out and pushing myself physically and mentally as much as I possibly could. And I still enjoy doing that now that it’s my career.
B/R: At the same time, you’re just a little bit younger than me. I know a bit how you feel some mornings. Do you ever wake up thinking, “Man, I am too old to be doing this?” Do you have those moments?
Fitch: This is still such a new sport, still in its infancy. I don’t think people have quite figured out how to train and how to do things properly yet. I think you’ve got a lot of experts in other fields who kind of think they know.
A lot of things have changed in the later parts of my career with the way I train. I think that’s made the biggest difference. And not breaking my body down, not getting injuries. Even the mental anguish involved in breaking your body down to a certain point is gone.
B/R: I think there is room for growth in MMA. Doing this job, I’ve had the chance to see high-level fighters in boxing and MMA prepare for a fight. And in boxing, it’s all about preparing that fighter to be his best, about him getting work. Whereas, you go into an MMA gym and it’s dog-eat-dog. Even when a guy is two weeks out from a big fight, I’ve seen training partners looking for the kill in sparring.
Fitch: For a big part of my career, at AKA, we went so hard all the time. And it’s not just about going hard. I still go hard, but it’s more drill-focused. I do hard drills and technical drills instead of just doing live stuff.
I still spar hard twice a week and it’s still 95 percent, 90 percent. We’re going after it. But it’s two times a week instead of three times a week. Even grappling or wrestling really hard, I’ve taken a step back too, replacing it with hard drills.
B/R: You feel like you’re getting just as much from the drills as you did from going after it in the traditional AKA way?
Fitch: If you’re doing a drill with intensity, you get more out of it, even more than five minutes of a live go. For example, doing five-minute gos for takedowns, the chances are you’re going to hit maybe two to five takedowns. You’re going to defend a couple of shots. But if I do a five-minute drill round, I may hit 50 double legs in that drill round. I can get a lot more out of it.
I can push myself further cardio-wise and I can get more muscle memory out of it. Because I’m doing more repetitions.
B/R: I know you’ve moved on from AKA, but I’ve been talking with my MMA colleagues and no one is quite sure where you are now. I know you were in Syracuse for a while, but the scuttlebutt is that people have seen you around Las Vegas. So where are you sitting right now? Where are you implementing these new ideas?
Fitch: We were in Syracuse from about Thanksgiving time last year to about mid-April. Then we went back to San Jose for a while. I trained there for the (Dennis) Hallman fight. And we moved, again, to Vegas in August.
B/R: So what are you doing out there?
Fitch: I’m training at One Kick’s Gym with Nick Blomgren. He’s trained a lot of high-level stand-up fighters in boxing and kickboxing. And I’ve taken on kind of a coaching role at his gym too. I’m going to be coaching a lot of his guys for the ground and the MMA aspect of things.
B/R: Very cool. So you have a chance to kind of set up your own shop and implement some of the things you’ve learned over the long, hard grind of a career?
Fitch: Exactly. Especially the last two years. I’ve really started to develop a systematic approach towards fighting. I’m making things simple. It’s important to have a lot of technique, to know a lot of things that are out there. But everything can get confused. I think it’s more important to have a strong base.
B/R: How do you mean?
Fitch: When you get to a position you should really only have two options—do I go left or do I go right? You shouldn’t have 15 choices of technique. When you have too many choices you’re going to have to think about picking the right one. And then you freeze. You lose that second that you needed to make your move.
B/R: That’s interesting. For years, since Frank Shamrock, all we heard about in MMA training was diversifying. Adding to your skill set was the goal. But I guess your proposition is pulling back on that? Because you can only be really good at a certain number of things? Is that it?
Fitch: You can get really good at them. But it’s about picking the right one at the right time, I think you need a basic frame of technique. A base level of knowledge you then build off of. It won’t be the same. Each guy needs to create his own individual game based on his own attributes and things that he likes to do and things that he’s good at doing.
It’s very important to learn the individual arts, but that is for in between fights. I call that skill-set training. You go to a boxing class or you go to Muay Thai class, or even go to Thailand to train for a while. You put the gi on and train that.
But then when it’s time to get ready for the fight, I think it’s time to start building your individual game and your individual system, towards that fight and towards your opponent.
B/R: So you stick with this core technique, but occasionally when you do this skill-set training, you add something into your base framework?
Fitch: Sometimes you pick up a little extra. A little trick here or there. Something that fits into your game so you have another tool.
I explain it like this. You can have a whole warehouse full of weapons, but if someone attacks you need to get that weapon fast. If you have to run to the warehouse and look around, you’re going to get killed. You’re better off with a little backpack of weapons instead of that warehouse.
B/R: Like you might have that bazooka somewhere in a supply closet somewhere, but you might be better off pulling your pistol instead of trying to remember where you left it?
Fitch: Exactly. Don’t waste time looking for the bazooka. Throw the grenade you’ve got on your belt.
B/R: I like that. So, when you fight this weekend, you won’t be alone. Far from it. The UFC has multiple events. There’s likely something else on the dial. This would have been heretical to ask in 2005—but is there too much MMA on television?
Fitch: No, I think the problem is that some of the organizations have not stayed true to what fans really want. Fans want heroes. They’re bored of the brand. They want a hero and want to follow that guy.
B/R: You’re talking about UFC right?
Fitch: The UFC has kind of fallen away from that. They just push the UFC brand in your face. And people don’t really attach to brands that way. Not in the fight game. They want to follow that individual. The people who have been released from the UFC, when they go somewhere else fans are going with them. They like the name. They follow the name. The person.
B/R: You can really see that most clearly in boxing. Floyd Mayweather Jr. has been promoted by Top Rank, Golden Boy and by his own promotional company. Fans don’t care. They want to see Floyd Mayweather.
Fitch: They want to watch Floyd Mayweather. They want to watch the name. That rings true in all combat sports. People want to follow an athlete.
B/R: What do you make of the current MMA landscape?
Fitch: I think it’s kind of exciting because of where everything sits right now. I think 2015 is going to be a very interesting year. UFC is still the dominant force, the monopoly over everything.
It’s not even that the other organizations have put themselves into position to compete. I think UFC is kind of hamstringing themselves. They’ve put themselves in a really bad situation by allowing many of the name fighters that people want to watch and support to go.
Now they have a whole crew of people no one has ever heard of, who they haven’t been introduced to in the right way, so the fans aren’t really following them passionately.
B/R: You get the feeling, in the last week, that they’re a little bit desperate.
Fitch: They’re jumping the shark. They’re pulling in random famous people like this pro wrestler guy in order to try to bring fans in. I think it’s stagnant. People really want to see somebody get built up, know that name and follow that name around.
B/R: There is some precedent for them having major success with a pro wrestler like CM Punk though right?
Fitch: Brock’s an outlier though. Lesnar was a different breed. Because he was a very competitive amateur wrestler and national champion. If he didn’t go the pro wrestling route, and gone MMA right away, he would have become one of the top dogs anyway.
B/R: Oh for sure. But do you think the UFC has to make this move because, like you said, they haven’t done a good enough job cultivating the talent they already have in house?
Fitch: Yeah. It’s never been about that. They’ve always tried to make it about the brand and keep even the biggest superstar’s name beneath the brand name.
B/R: And that strategy has worked well, particularly when it comes to fighter pay. In the biggest fight of your career you fought Georges St-Pierre in the main event of a pay-per-view that sold an estimated 600,000 shows. Based on that number, the UFC probably made $15-20 million.
Fitch: Yep.
B/R: You made a rumored $34,000. Is that really what they paid you for that?
Fitch: I also got a Fight of the Night bonus. I walked away with probably $120,000 off of that fight because of the bonus. Still, that’s pocket change compared to what they made.
B/R: So, at the end of the day, even after all these infamous locker room bonuses and all of that, you made $120,000 for a show that made more than $10 million easy?
Fitch: Yeah. And that’s just the pay-per-view. It doesn’t include food and beverage sales, the gate, or sales of the fight on demand or on DVD. Those things make that number way, way bigger. We don’t even know what those numbers are. But we know they’re huge.
B/R: Is that enough money? Do they pay fighters enough for what they do?
Fitch: I don’t think it’s a fair pay rate. But I think that’s a common theme with all big business. I think all workers in this country are underpaid. Wal-Mart is a huge example. I read they pay their workers so little that people who work there full time have to go on welfare. I think each Wal-Mart store averages about $1.7 million in welfare paid to their employees.
How is that even possible? When you have a man and his wife working full-time to support a family, and you still have to be on welfare, it’s not right. But it’s a common theme across the world.
The people on top are making buttloads of money and they’re barely paying their workers enough to survive.
B/R: Wow. That’s true. We always ask fighters, “Hey, do you think you should unionize?” and discuss the plight of fighter pay. Like it’s just a fighter’s problem. Meanwhile, most people haven’t had a raise in eight years.
Fitch: Exactly. But your living expenses have gone up. Gas has gone up. Housing. Rent. All those things have gone up. The pay hasn’t gone up. But if you look at the profit margins of your employer, they’re probably going through the roof.
It’s worse now than it was in feudal England with kings and queens and peasants. The wealth disparity is greater now than it was back then.
B/R: So there’s nothing necessarily unusual about the way the Fertitta brothers and Dana White run the UFC. They’re just doing what big business does. The difference is, they’re asking you to go out and get punched in the head.
Fitch: (Laughs). True. And on top of that we have a very short earning window. If I worked at a desk I could work 50 years.
B/R: I think people see a number like $120,000 and think that looks pretty good. But after taxes, and you pay management and trainers…
Fitch: And he’s only going to make that kind of money for five or six years. Ten years if he’s really lucky. Because you have to build up to that point. It takes a long time to get to that point.
B/R: But before you get to that point there’s real struggle. And then they get out of the sport and have done such immense damage to their bodies that they can’t even work. At least not a manual job. Not even getting into the potential issues with the brain.
Fitch: And then the next slap in the face is that they’re opening up UFC gyms everywhere. You’re not even going to be able to open a gym after you stop fighting. You can’t compete with that. They have low cost and more stuff and a bigger brand name than you.
You’re going to a have a little tiny rinky-dink gym and they’re going to have cardio equipment, weights, saunas—and it will be cheaper for them just like it is for Wal-Mart. They’ll put us out of business like we were the mom and pop stores around the neighborhood.
B/R: Maybe they can hire fighters to work in their gyms. Part time of course.
Fitch: Imagine going from fighting for titles to working part time and having to go on welfare and not having enough to pay rent. (Laughs).
B/R: Do you think people really understand how much some fighters they know from television really struggle? Living on friends’ couches and barely getting by?
Fitch: They have to live in a house with a couple of other people or find places to stay. You fight three times a year for $10,000 a fight. Or eight and eight ($8,000 to fight and $8,000 to win—Editor’s note) which is a common starting point for a lot of guys. After you pay your trainers and your other expenses, it’s really not that much.
And you’re lucky to be busy enough to fight three times a year. A lot of times guys are only fighting twice a year.
B/R: I’m sure because of what happened with the video game a few years ago, everybody asks you their sponsor and likeness related questions. I’m going to do the same. The UFC’s deal with Reebok—is that just another way to control that fighter so that there’s no way of making money independent of the UFC?
Fitch: Yeah. They’re kind of making the managers irrelevant too. Because now the managers aren’t going to make any money off of sponsors.
There are some guys floating around out there, that’s all they do. They go out and find sponsorships for fighters. That’s their hustle. They’re out there cold calling different companies. Well, those guys are completely out of the business.
It’s really nice for us guys not in the UFC though. Because all those sponsors, they’re going to come our way.
B/R: You think it will play out that way?
Fitch: Oh, I’ve already been contacted by people. Like “hey, when this goes through we’ll be talking to you.”
B/R: This wasn’t really a surprise was it?
Fitch: We all kind of knew. All of us outside the UFC were crossing our fingers. We knew the uniforms would open it up for the rest of us to make a little bit more money.
B/R: In 2007 Ken Shamrock came on TheUltimate Fighter and said, “I’m a leg lock man.” And everybody laughed, because that was so out of touch. That was 1993’s MMA. But here you are in 2014—and you’re fighting a straight up leg-lock man, RousimarPalhares.
Fitch: (Laughs)
B/R: How different has your training been for this fight? I have to imagine, besides basic defense, you’ve almost never had to consider defending a leg lock in preparation for other fights.
Fitch: It’s interesting. I like the old-school angle of this fight. He’s definitely a specialist. He’s a master of what he does. His body and frame are built exceptionally well to do just that—to attack the ankles and legs.
A lot of guys just avoid the leg-lock stuff, either because they don’t understand it or some people look down on the idea of twisting on somebody’s leg and they don’t want to learn how to do it. It’s really interesting that he’s specialized in this one thing. But it works for him. He’s good at it and he’s able to utilize it.
B/R: Is it hard to train this? Because things can go bad quickly, especially if you’re training a heel hook or something. How do you mitigate that risk?
Fitch: You have to have good training partners and not people who crank on things. There’s a difference between cranking on it and catching it, holding it and making the guy work out. You have to be selective with your training partners for sure.
B/R: Do you think sometimes with leg locks, and I know this is true with me, that people tap early because they’re scared.
Fitch: Yes. I’d say 90 percent of leg taps are what I call panic attacks. One of the biggest one of these I’ve ever seen was Frank Mir and Brock Lesnar. I don’t think that kneebar should have made him tap. I think he was fine. I think his leg was far enough out to be fine.
But he panicked. Because it’s scary. Leg locks are scary. There’s no gradual pain. It’s fine, fine, fine, snap. Something’s broken. When you are in a choke, it’s like there’s a timer on it. You just slowly go out. With an armbar, there’s a timer on it. Because as an arm gets extended, you start to feel the pain.
But the leg lock really panics people, because you don’t see it that often. And they don’t understand the bio-mechanics of it so they’re not sure when they’re fine and when something’s going to get broken. And there’s the factor of “you’re fine until it breaks.”
B/R: Do you think, to be a great fighter, you almost have to be an expert in human anatomy?
Fitch: That’s a good question. When I was at Purdue University, I studied PE and history. And, as part of the PE program, they had you take some hard classes to weed out the lazy people. So we had to take a bunch of pre-med biology classes.
So I did have anatomy and physiology and labs where we learned to take things apart and reanimate a frog’s heart with adrenaline. All kinds of crazy stuff you’d never expect a PE teacher to have to learn, but it’s really hard and it gets rid of the riffraff.
B/R: I’ll bet they never imagined one of their students would apply those lessons quite the way you have.
Fitch: (Laughs). I had a bio-mechanics class too. You learn how people walk and how the bones and ligaments work. It really did give me a great base of knowledge for how to hurt people and even cutting weight and cardio and stuff like that.
B/R: Even with your level of experience, at school and otherwise, considering what happened at the end of your UFC tenure and the Josh Burkman fight, do you still feel like you have something to prove to people?
Fitch: I don’t care about proving things to people. I’m proving things to myself. I was mentally in a bad spot the last few UFC fights. I started thinking, “What’s the point?”
What was the point of working so hard, of winning all those fights, what’s the point of busting my a– in training if they were going to keep their thumb on my f—ing head and their foot on my throat? To never get a chance to raise up.
It kind of broke me a little bit mentally. But after the Burkman fight, when I woke up I think I really woke up. I remembered why I got into this, why I was doing this, and I was able to put all that other stuff to the side.
B/R: You sound ready.
Fitch: In the last few fights you’ve seen Jon Fitch with his physical and mental strength back where it was in the beginning. Now I’ve added my knowledge to that physical and mental strength—I think I’m unstoppable right now.
Jon Fitch battles RousimarPalhares for the World Series of Fighting welterweight championship Saturday at the McClellan Conference Center in Sacramento, California. The evening’s NBCSN-broadcast main card kicks off at 9 p.m. ET.
Fights happened at UFC 181. Titles were defended. Blood spilled. But all that went down in a very large shadow—deposed WWE wrestling kingpin CM Punk is coming, per an announcement during the pay-per-view Saturday night, to the UFC Octagon.
P…
Fights happened at UFC 181. Titles were defended. Blood spilled. But all that went down in a very large shadow—deposed WWE wrestling kingpin CM Punk is coming, per an announcement during the pay-per-view Saturday night, to the UFC Octagon.
Punk, whose real name is Phil Brooks, left the WWE on bad terms in January. He’s been the subject of whispers ever since, rumors of his eventual signing with the UFC swirling around for months before the company finally pulled the trigger Saturday.
Brooks, who will compete as either a middleweight or a welterweight, appeared on the UFC 181 broadcast to discuss his multi-fight deal with announcer Joe Rogan.
“I have a background in kempo, and I’ve been doing Brazilian jiu-jitsu for a long time,” Brooks said. “This is my new career, 100 percent I’m going to go full steam ahead, all systems go after today, and it’s going to be fun.
“I have nothing but respect for everybody here at the UFC, everybody who steps in the Octagon to fight. And when it’s all said and done, when I’m finished, everybody’s going to have to respect me because I have come here to fight.”
It was a move that shocked the combat-sports world, me included. To be honest I never gave a potential Punk signing much thought. It simply seemed too far-fetched to warrant much brain power. Sure, Punk was a noted MMA fan who trains with Rener Gracie. And, yes, he’s expressed some interest in giving MMA a try.
But in the UFC? The Super Bowl of mixed martial arts?
It just didn’t seem feasible. After all, this is a man with no history of athletic success, no track record in martial arts competition and a laundry list of injuries than made continuing his career as a wrestling showman untenable.
Giving fighting a shot is Punk’s choice. Putting him in the Octagon, where ostensibly the best cage fighters in the world compete, is White’s. And it’s nothing more than a sideshow, the kind of hucksterism the UFC was supposedly escaping when it ran towards respectability and away from its early reputation as human cockfighting.
This is a publicity stunt and a naked cash grab. The UFC is eschewing sport for spectacle, walking the opposite path it followed to grow the “sport” to this point. But there’s no underestimating the levels Dana White and company will sink to in the name of American capitalism.
The UFC is struggling in the American market. Television numbers are down. Pay-per-view numbers are reportedly at the lowest levels since the dawn of The Ultimate Fighter in 2005. It’s, no doubt, pretty scary to ponder the future these days. They’ve bet it all, everything White and his partners have built over more than a decade, on successful foreign expansion.
And that’s a bet that will be slow paying off—if it does at all. In the meantime, with it’s top stars either in decline like Anderson Silva, pondering a movie career like Ronda Rousey or in an extended public spat with the promotion over drug testing and other issues like George St-Pierre, the UFC is desperate for something to click with their fans.
Enter CM Punk.
The UFC has seen the potential power of a professional wrestler at the box office before. When former (and current) WWE champion Brock Lesnar signed with the company in 2008, it lit a fire that burned hot and fast. The promotion broke box-office records behind Lesnar, riding his success to unthinkable heights.
It’s tempting to compare the two men because of their WWE backgrounds. But Lesnar was an athletic marvel, a former NCAA champion wrestler who once tried out for the Minnesota Vikings on a whim and impressed even NFL scouts with his raw ability.
Comparing Punk to Lesnar rings hollow. At best it’s naive. At worst it’s manipulative and dishonest. Punk has no athletic credentials. He never even played sports in high school. And, while he’s had some training in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, he’s never competed at a high level in that art either. He’s a complete unknown.
If he wants to fight—fine. But putting him in the hallowed UFC Octagon, once meant only for the best of the best, turns a sport into a carnival show, especially if he’s fighting in a high-profile bout. Is this athletics? Or is it celebrity fantasy camp?
Even worse, from a moral standpoint, is Punk’s age and history of injuries. The 36-year-old entertainer, though not a sportsman, did travel the world with the WWE, sacrificing his health and well-being in thousands of televised wrestling collisions and slams.
They took their toll. In a revealing podcast interview, Punk said not only had he torn his meniscus, PCL, MCL and injured his ACL, he also had serious troubles with his elbow. Worse still, he had suffered more than a dozen concussions in his career, and it was affecting him nightly (transcribed by Cageside Seats):
I worked Luke Harper in a match and I got hit with something and it f——g rung my bell and I got a concussion. But we were leaving for Europe the next day. So Doc was leaning on me going ‘do you want me to… do you have a concussion or can you go to Europe’ kind of thing. And I was just like ‘you f—–g… you pigs.
I’ll go to Europe. Whatever.’ That’s on me. That’s my fault. I probably shouldn’t have.
After the European tour, the whole European tour, I’m dry heaving after every match. I mean, luckily I was in tags.
It was me and Daniel Bryan vs. The Wyatts and they were awesome, and they were fun — the parts I remember — but I’m on all fours after every match and I’m either puking for real or I’m just dry heaving because I don’t have anything in my stomach. I have no appetite. I don’t know what is up and what is down. I can’t sleep. I can’t f—–g train. It’s like a bus, a hotel, a cold building.
This doesn’t sound like a man who needs to be competing in a brutal sport like mixed martial arts. This sounds like a man who should be taking measures to protect his brain for what will hopefully be a long and productive life.
It will ultimately be an athletic commission’s job to decide whether Punk is fit to fight. Of course athletic commissions let Muhammad Ali fight into the 1980s, long after it was clear he was doing himself irreparable harm. If there’s money to be made with CM Punk, the UFC will find a way to get him in the cage.
Will CM Punk make the UFC money? In the short term, I have no doubt. While he wasn’t a great box-office PPV attraction for WWE, no one was giving up on him, which is how they ended up creating the WWE Network, he is a significant star to an audience of several million wrestling fans.
People will watch CM Punk, at least once or twice. The question, then, is whether his signing will further degrade MMA’s standing in the broader sports mainstream.
No other sport would even consider signing a celebrity to compete at the highest level or try to pass one off as an equal to their hardworking professionals. Even Michael Jordan, arguably the greatest athlete of his era, was forced to give baseball a try in the minor leagues, not for the Chicago White Sox.
Jordan, famously, failed. So, too, will this. The UFC will cash in on Punk at the cost of their hard-earned credibility.
Five minutes flies by in a flash, at least in most contexts. It’s the length of time it takes to heat a standard microwave dinner.
Five minutes is fleeting. Five minutes is transitory. What’s five minutes?
But for UFC challenger Robbie Lawler, five min…
Five minutes flies by in a flash, at least in most contexts. It’s the length of time it takes to heat a standard microwave dinner.
Five minutes is fleeting. Five minutes is transitory. What’s five minutes?
But for UFC challenger Robbie Lawler, five minutes on March 15, 2014 was ultimately unforgettable.
For four rounds at UFC 171, Lawler—in the midst of an inexplicable and improbable comeback after seemingly falling right off the MMA map—battled Johny Hendricks in thrilling even-Steven fashion. On every scorecard, the two were even going into the final frame.
Lawler, in no uncertain terms, didn’t get the job done.
With 300 seconds separating him from fulfilling what once seemed like his destiny, he simply stopped performing. When it mattered most, it was Hendricks—after taking a drubbing in Round 4—who picked himself up and earned a shiny gold belt. He joined the immortals.
Lawler did what he’s done throughout his career—he failed to rise to the occasion when the stakes were at their highest.
“Johny is a competitor and Johny knows how to win,” Lawler told UFC.com’s Duane Finley. “That’s what I need to do. I need to figure out a way to win rounds and dominate the fight so that it’s my hand that is raised at the end. I worked on a lot of things since our first fight and I’m physically and mentally ready to go. I’m coming in fully ready to dominate.”
It’s become a pattern in Lawler‘s career. Every time he reaches a turning point, that moment that could send him careening toward a new level of success and glory, he can’t quite pull it off.
It happened first against Pete Spratt way back at UFC 42, a three-fight winning streak stopped in its tracks, the first loss in a backslide that saw him fall right out of the promotion. In the midst of his second act, it happened again, with Jason Miller and Jake Shields choking off his ambitions in brutal losses three years apart.
And then there was Hendricks.
“I should’ve done more in the fight and thrown more punches, thrown more kicks and took him out,” he said immediately following the fight, dejection written on his face at a press conference streamed to the world. “I don’t know. It’s easy to look back now and look at the things you should’ve done.”
Counting him out, however, seems a fool’s game. Over the years, he’s developed his craft in countless ways, evolving from a frenetic and frantic puncher as a kid to a surprisingly sophisticated striker in his latter years.
“Stubborn is not giving up and coming back every day when stuff is rough and not easy. I guess I want to be stubborn,” Lawler told me earlier this year. “I’m a grinder. You just wake up every day and get after it. I was banged up here and there. There was a time it felt like I just couldn’t get healthy. But I kept learning. It would have been easy to give up and do something else. It would have been easy to give up. To say, ‘This is hard. Maybe I shouldn’t do this anymore.’ What I thought was, ‘I’m in it. And I’m going to stay in it until I can’t do it anymore.’ Everything I’ve been through, it’s just made me a stronger individual, plain and simple.”
Bloody Elbow’s striking expert ConnorRuebusch explains what makes him such a difficult challenge for opponents:
The real key to the effectiveness of these punches is Lawler‘s manipulation of rhythm. By throwing slow, predictable strikes first, Lawler establishes a rhythm–a tempo that is subconsciously picked up by his foe. This makes the follow-up punches very difficult to predict or defend, as they are thrown completely off rhythm, shooting in at three times the speed. …
Lawler uses his constant slow, rhythmic movements to coerce his opponent into matching his rhythm, at which point he abruptly changes the tempo and surprises them with his deceptive speed and power.
There’s little doubt Lawler has the tools to win any fight in the welterweight division. He can hit Hendricks—and hurt him. That isn’t conjecture. We’ve all seen it.
The question, then, is whether he can do it mentally. Can Lawler reach inside himself and give his best performance on the biggest night of his life?
Most fighters never get a shot at the UFC title. Lawler went nearly 13 years, toiling as a journeyman at shows big and small to arrive at that moment. This time, just nine months separate his greatest failure from a second opportunity at redemption.
There may not be another.
With all that swirling around in his head, Lawler has seemingly maintained his equilibrium. Yes, Saturday’s UFC 181 fight matters. It matters a lot. But all he can do is what he does. It’s a simple philosophy, but one that has carried him a long distance in one of the world’s most difficult sports.
“I just go out there and do what I do best, and that’s fight,” Lawler told Bleacher Report’s Finley. “I let my hands and feet go and try to finish fights. I guess fans appreciate that, and that’s what I always looked up to when I watched martial arts and boxing growing up. I always appreciated guys who went out there looking to finish and gave it their all. That’s what I’m looking to do every time I go out there.”
When Anthony Pettis steps into the cage for the first time in 15 long months on Saturday at UFC 181, he’ll be facing down more than just opponent Gilbert Melendez, the former Strikeforce champion who is looking to write his own name in the UFC’s record…
When Anthony Pettis steps into the cage for the first time in 15 long months on Saturday at UFC 181, he’ll be facing down more than just opponent Gilbert Melendez, the former Strikeforce champion who is looking to write his own name in the UFC’s record book. In Melendez’s shadow, another man lurks—his spirit and reputation still engulfing the entire lightweight division.
Pettis fights not just to secure his UFC Lightweight Championship but against the legend of future Hall of Famer B.J. Penn.
Slow down, I can hear you thinking. Pettis, after all, hasn’t even defended his UFC title a single time. All-time great? Really?
The stakes, surprisingly, are just that high.
With just a handful of solid wins, Pettis could write his name next to Penn’s, staking his claim as the best 155-pound fighter in MMA history. That says plenty—both about Penn’s overwhelming presence in the division for years and just how good Pettis can be.
But, despite his obvious and at times mesmerizing skill, doubt has attached itself to Pettis like a shroud. His ability just to make it to the fight has been called into question—and perhaps rightfully so. Since his famous “Showtime kick” helped him beat Benson Henderson for the WEC championship in 2010, Pettis has only stepped into the Octagon five times.
“I’ve been through a lot in my life, and I believe I’m mentally very strong,” Pettis told Bleacher Report’s Duane Finley. “There isn’t much that can faze me mentally. But it’s hard, man. Seeing all of these people advancing their careers and winning these fights and I’m stuck on the sidelines. It’s just one of those things you just have to get through, and I had to get through it. Once you do that, the great things come.”
While it’s hard to carve out a place in fans’ hearts and atop the pound-for-pound list—where Pettis currently sits in the sixth position on the UFC’s official rankings—without, you know, fighting, Pettis’ skills are so overwhelmingly obvious he’s managed to do so anyway.
His physical tools are plain—speed, quickness and a long, lanky build. Less obvious, Bloody Elbow striking expert Connor Ruebusch explains, is that Pettis’ success is predicated on his smarts every bit as much as his athletic prowess: “Cagecraft, generalship, Octagon control—whatever you call it, Pettis understands it. Much like highly hyped UFC neophyte Conor McGregor, Pettis is equally adept at playing the counter fighter and the aggressor. When he is on the prowl, his understanding of the cage is unrivaled.”
Physical skill alone won’t be enough to stop Melendez, one of the division’s toughest outs for more than a decade. A classic wrestler-boxer, the Cesar Gracie product is capable of taking a slick finesse fighter and grinding him into the mat for 25 long minutes.
There’s some fear of that, surely, in the back of Pettis’ mind. After all, Clay Guida, a kind of lesser Melendez, did something similar to the champion in his first UFC fight.
That loss, however, was more than three-and-a-half years in the past. In the meantime, Pettis has spent plenty of time on the mat with Olympian Ben Askren, improving his wrestling defense and ground game by leaps and bounds.
That much was obvious in his title win over Henderson. The former champ was thought to be the better grappler going in, but Pettis was able to consistently stymie Henderson’s wrestling attacks against the fence. When Henderson did manage to leap on top of his challenger after a slip, Pettis exacted the ultimate revenge—an armbar submission from the bottom.
Pettis believes he can fend off Melendez’s takedowns as well. And, if he does, the fight will be contested in his wheelhouse, where he expects his more multifaceted approach to pay serious dividends against a fighter who has focused almost entirely on his hands.
“I think he’s very basic when it comes to stand-up,” Pettis told Damon Martin of Fox Sports. “He’s got decent boxing, and he’s tough. That’s most Mexican fighters; they are the most exciting fighters, they are tough and have good boxing. Unfortunately for him, that’s my zone. If he wants to stand in there and trade, he’s not going to see me having a Diego Sanchez fight, I’ll tell you that. I think I outclass him in the striking like he’s a beginner.”
If Pettis can back up that boast, it would be the kind of resume item that would help him make a strong case historically in the lightweight division. In a career spanning 12 years, much of it spent competing against top competition, Melendez has never been stopped.
If Pettis can pull it off, in that trademark spectacular Pettis fashion, it’s time to start talking about more than just a run-of-the-mill title defense. It’s time to, once again, dust off the superfight with featherweight champion Jose Aldo and let Pettis, finally, make his case for immortality.
It hasn’t been the easiest year to be an MMA fan. Between the UFC’s precipitous financial decline, decimated fight cards and what seemed to be a bizarre crime ring made up exclusively of fringe fighters, 2014 was far from a banner year.
But you know us…
It hasn’t been the easiest year to be an MMA fan. Between the UFC’s precipitous financial decline, decimated fight cards and what seemed to be a bizarrecrimering made up exclusively of fringe fighters, 2014 was far from a banner year.
But you know us—here at B/R MMA we look for the slightest glimmers of hope and hang on with both hands. Could this year have been better? Sure. Did we sometimes want to hang our heads in shame, mostly anytime we saw the two words “War” and “Machine” in close proximity? Yes, again.
That doesn’t mean there weren’t plenty of great moments too. For that we pause to give thanks. What follows are five things we’re thankful for this year—the main course if you will.
Have one to add? That piece of pumpkin pie goes in the comments. Won’t you join us?
Big fighters. Small fighters. Rich fighters. Poor fighters. Ground fighters. Stand-up fighters. Mixed martial arts contains multitudes, fighters seemingly crafted especially to fulfill their role in the combat sports ecosystem. 