The eternal saga of Jon Jones continued this week, as the former UFC champion faced what might be his fiercest foe yet—the California State Athletic Commission, where he finally confronted charges of performance-enhancing drug use before his…
The eternal saga of Jon Jones continued this week, as the former UFC champion faced what might be his fiercest foe yet—the California State Athletic Commission, where he finally confronted charges of performance-enhancing drug use before his title fight against Daniel Cormier last year at UFC 214.
The meeting Tuesday, a somewhat comical affair, featured one commissioner sans hearing aid, another giving Jones a verbal battering, a highly paid expert witness relying almost solely on information from a bodybuilding website and Jones himself admitting his signature was forged and that he never actually completed required training materials provided by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA).
In other words, it was the typical Jon Jones show.
At the end of the meeting, televised live online and thoroughly mocked on Twitter, Jones was fined $205,000 and had his license suspended in California. But the real decision was punted to USADA, which will adjudicate the issue later this year and decide how long Jones will be suspended from the sport, a number experts suggest could be anywhere from one to four years.
USADA will ponder the same questions we’ve all been asking ourselves in the wake of Jones’ latest batch of trouble, primarily whether or not he deserves leniency after multipleaccusations of PED use. It’s an opportunity to show the world just how serious USADA is about sending a message to other athletes that cheating doesn’t pay. Industry veterans Chad Dundas and myself tackle the same issue in this edition of “The Question.”
Snowden: Jones is the greatest MMA fighter in the sport’s short history. The list of his victims could double as a collection of Hall of Famers in the 205-pound class. Whether at distance, in the clinch or on the mat, he remains one of the most dangerous athletes to ever step into the Octagon.
With respect, he’s also a giant, I mean impossibly big, screw up.
Everything we’ve learned about Jones over the years tells us two things for certain: 1) If he’s welcomed back to the Octagon, Jones will continue to thrill us with his athletic exploits; 2) Jones, no matter how sincere he appears in a press conference, is going to mess up again. Perhaps it will be in a new, innovative way, but it’s coming. At this point, it would be naive to think otherwise.
So, what do you think Chad? Is it time to bid Jones farewell? Or is what he offers the sport in excitement and excellence worth a few questionable drug tests and a collection of crashed cars. Is the juice worth the squeeze?
Dundas: If Jones’ UFC career ended here and now, I would consider it perhaps the greatest tragedy in a sport that breaks our hearts as a matter of routine. Though he’s already accomplished great things, Jones is but 30 years old, and it’s not unthinkable he could go on fighting another 10 years. Trying to imagine what he might achieve in that time is just mind-boggling.
Of course, to stick around even close to that long he’d have to stay out of trouble, which thus far he’s proved completely incapable of doing.
Sitting here some 24 hours removed from Jones’ disastrous performance in front of the CSAC, I still can’t quite believe how badly it went for him. His team projected confidence leading up to the hearing, going so far as to say they believed Jones would likely fight again in the UFC in 2018. Then he showed up with basically no defense whatsoever besides shrugging his shoulders, saying he had no idea how Turinabol metabolites showed up in his system and that he super-duper hoped everybody would believe him.
A big part of Jones’ denial is based on the notion it would be too dumb for him to knowingly take such an easily detectable steroid when he knew had had an in-competition drug test coming up. But that line of reasoning totally ignores the fact that Jones’ entire recent career has been derailed by him doing really, really dumb stuff over and over again.
Until Jones can chef-up a better explanation, consider me unconvinced of his innocence.
So, to answer your question, Jonathan, it would be a terrible blow to MMA to lose Jones, but it would also be something he brought entirely on himself.
Am I being too hard on the GOAT? And doesn’t it seem like USADA will have to throw the book at the guy if it has any hope of preserving the notion that the UFC’s new anti-doping efforts are for real?
Snowden: Personally, I enjoyed MMA best when it was an outlaw sport, the wild west of athletics with almost no rules and certainly no prohibitions on what you could put into your body to improve performance. It takes a unique person to become a cage fighter. If that requires a little bit extra, from whatever source, I’m okay with that.
Unfortunately, I don’t get to make the rules. And, at the behest of the Nevada Athletic Commission, UFC began officially drug testing fighters back in 2002.
Once you set a standard, it’s only fair that it applies equally to everyone. So, whether or not Jones is a money-making fighter for UFC, whether or not he exudes excellence in all areas and whether or not he was set up in some way, ultimately, he had a banned substance in his body.
Again.
I don’t think USADA can let that slide. I think a two-year ban is fair. It’s not a complete career-killer, but also not a mere slap on the wrist. But I’d also make sure it is clear that any other missteps would come complete with a lifetime ban. I’m willing to give Jones another chance—but not a single chance more. What do you think Chad? Too Judge Dredd?
Dundas: You and I differ on some core issues here, and that’s OK. For my money, the action in the cage has never been better or more fun to watch than it is right now. Twenty-five years of breakneck evolution has produced a generation of athletes who routinely do things we couldn’t have dreamed of at the genesis of so-called “no holds barred” fighting.
And yes, Jones was among the vanguard of that generation, consistently wowing audiences with his athletic greatness since his UFC debut in 2008.
Along with that evolution, however, I believe quality drug testing is necessary, in large part because anything else would be unfair to the fighters who compete without PEDs. That includes—we think—Daniel Cormier, whose only two career losses have come against Jones at UFC 189 and UFC 214.
I applaud the UFC for partnering with USADA to ramp up anti-doping efforts. While the program isn’t perfect, its heart is mostly in the right place.
The Jones situation represents an important, high-profile moment for that partnership. After the Brock Lesnar fiasco at UFC 200, it will be important for both the UFC and USADA to send a message that their increased testing efforts are more than just window-dressing.
If Jones can’t come up with a better defense than the one he presented to the CSAC, then he absolutely deserves whatever suspension he gets. If it’s two years retroactive to his positive test in August 2017, he’d be eligible to return in the fall of 2019, just two months after his 32nd birthday.
He’d still potentially have a long career ahead of him, but as you noted, he’d be all out of chances.
It’d be time for Jones to prove he can be great in MMA and in life.
Jonathan Snowden and Chad Dundas cover combat sports for Bleacher Report.
PHOENIX — It’s a beautiful Saturday afternoon, a scorching 90 degrees in February, and Mackenzie Dern is the hottest thing going at the MMA Lab in suburban Phoenix.
The facility is…
PHOENIX —It’s a beautiful Saturday afternoon, a scorching 90 degrees in February, and Mackenzie Dern is the hottest thing going at the MMA Lab in suburban Phoenix.
The facility is so new that building contractors are still wandering around. The mats were just installed the previous night. A representative from the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency is there, razzing a fighter for blood, urine and a detailed accounting of some personal medication. There are dogs, a baby and more than a dozen fighters sparring, with differing degrees of enthusiasm all around.
None of it phases Dern, who is most definitely in her zone as Kanye and Jay-Z blare and she prepares for her first appearance in the UFC’s Octagon.
You wouldn’t know it by her steady, steel-eyed focus, but the 24-year-old jiu-jitsu wiz, a champion on the mats before she could legally drive, has confided in teammates that she’s nervous ahead of the match.
Mackenzie Dern? Nervous? The same Mackenzie Dern who won a jiu-jitsu world championship as a teenager while competing against adults? The same Mackenzie Dern who handed the colossal Gabi Garcia her first loss in seven years? The same Mackenzie Dern who’s been branded by many as the next Ronda Rousey?
If so, you can’t see it in the Lab’s regulation-sized cage, where Dern quickly taps out UFC veteran Jocelyn Jones-Lybarger with an armbar. Dern looks every bit the world-beater she’s reputed to be for five minutes against Jones-Lybarger, who poses as a southpaw to mimic Ashley Yoder, Dern’s opponent in her debut on March 3 at UFC 222.
Then Cortney Casey enters the cage, and Dern’s whole day changes. Dern is beaten to the punch, pushed into the fence and taken down with a bodylock slam that shakes the cage like Godzilla has just come stomping through the room. To add insult to injury, the jiu-jitsu ace has to struggle like mad to escape a last-second armbar attempt.
It’s not Dern’s finest hour. Afterward, talking with coaches John Crouch and Leo Vieira, she looks downright despondent. But Casey has nothing but praise. This, Casey says, is how you can tell “she definitely wants it.” And that’s what it takes to become great.
“If you want to be a local champion, that’s great. But you don’t come to the MMA Lab for that,” Casey says. “We’re trying to build world champions. That’s why she’s here.
“No one likes getting punched in the face. The fact that she keeps showing up, with a smile on her face? Come on! We want her on our team.
“It’s fight or flight in there. You either find out you can do this or that you can’t. Only a few people say, ‘Let’s do it again.’ That’s one thing that Mackenzie has. She gets in there, and she’s throwing. She knows she’s not as good at fighting as she is at jiu-jitsu, but she wants to be. That’s the perfect mindset. She’s smart enough to know she’s not that good yet—and that’s what gives her the opportunity to be great.”
The MMA Lab is about helping an athlete dispense with any delusions of invincibility. And contrary to what one might think, a fighter has to be broken down before her or she can be built up.
“You’re going to get your heart broken and have bad days and feel like a loser,” teammate Lauren Murphy says. “The Lab is a hard place. It’s like the Harvard of MMA. You might have been a really smart kid at your high school and gotten straight A’s, but when you get accepted at Harvard you sometimes feel like a f–king idiot.
“There have been days, when after rounds, she’s been frustrated. But that’s really normal. We’ve all had those days where we end up crying in the corner and just need a f–king second to calm down. It happens to men and women. And I think she’s had those days with us. But Mackenzie gets over it and bounces back really fast.”
A few minutes later, Dern and Vieira are working on clinch techniques against the wall, Casey’s success an opportunity for Dern to learn and grow. Fifteen minutes later, walking into Crouch’s office for our formal interview, her trademark smile is firmly planted back on her face.
“The sparring here is way worse than the fight,” she tells me. “In the fight, you have adrenaline and don’t feel anything until it is over. Here, you feel every punch. You feel it all.”
That feeling, after all, is why she is here. Already wealthy, impossibly beautiful and at the top of her profession, she’s chasing a state you can’t find just anywhere. The UFC, equal parts fabulous glamour and gritty grind, is the pinnacle of the martial arts mountain. And that’s a hill Dern has been climbing for a long time.
Dern’s UFC journey started 24 years ago, about a 20-minute drive away at the Megaton Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Academy, home to her formidable father, Wellington “Megaton” Dias.
“My first memory of the Academy is the TV he used to have on the mat,” Dern says. “He would put me there, and I’d roll some gis up like a pillow and watch Little Mermaid while he was teaching class.
“I would kind of be half paying attention to both the movie and him teaching his class, yelling ‘mount, pass the guard, sweep.’ You think that kids aren’t paying attention, but they notice more than you think.”
Dern started going to the gym because her mom worked a regular job and dad could more easily juggle work and childcare. But by the time she was three years old, she was participating. Quickly, very quickly, she was good enough that Dias saw a talent that should be cultivated. He started a kids program to find people for her to practice with. Tournaments soon followed.
“First tournament she did, she lost,” Dias remembers. “She didn’t so much like the idea, the feeling of losing. After that, man. I remember when she was just a little kid she was doing spider guard in a match. I said, ‘How is she doing this?’ She picked up things very quickly.
“You show her something today, by tomorrow she’s already added it to her game. I can’t explain how, except that the brain of a kid is like a sponge. Unconsciously, she’s absorbing so much.”
Because she was a child prodigy, people tend to imagine that Dern’s life was regimented, that she spent hours daily with her father to become a grappling star. But once she went off to school, that wasn’t the case. She played sports, went to the mall and lived a typical life. Except on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Those evenings were dedicated to jiu-jitsu.
By the time she was 15, her talent had transcended that normalcy.
“When we first went to tournaments, everyone would say, ‘Who’s that girl? Oh, she’s Megaton’s daughter.’ Now I go to a tournament and they say, ‘Who’s that guy? Oh, that’s Mackenzie’s father,’” Dias says with a laugh.
A hobby was becoming a burgeoning career—and setting off a battle with the school truancy office.
“I wasn’t, like, missing Friday and coming back Monday,” Dern says. “I’d miss three weeks at a time to compete in Europe and things like that.”
Eventually, the school understood that her absences were purposeful. Teachers started working with her, even when the requests seemed a bit odd.
“Not a lot of kids ask to leave class early so they can go run the bleachers during lunch,” Dern says. “But when I was cutting weight for a tournament, they’d let me.”
Tournament wins and competitions around the world followed. Dern would take homework with her and try her best to keep up with her schooling, but her continued success on the grappling scene required a hard choice be made. Dern’s parents had differing views on how to proceed.
“Her mom wanted me to push her to go to college,” Dias says. “Myself, I barely finished high school. I like to train. I like to compete. I like to travel and surf. I’m not really a school person.
“I came to this country with nothing. I had $400 in my pocket. Today, I have my house. I have my business. I have my car. I have a motorcycle and travel all over the world. I provide for my family. All with jiu-jitsu. I say, ‘Whatever she wants to do, but college she can do any time.’ Her jiu-jitsu career was booming.”
Dern ended up graduating a year ahead of her class and moving to Brazil to concentrate solely on jiu-jitsu. The result was staggering progress. By 2015, she was the world champion in her weight class both with and without a gi. Despite giving up more than 100 pounds, she even defeated the seemingly unbeatable Garcia in the World Professional Jiu-Jitsu Cup’s Absolute division. It was the first loss since 2008 for Garcia, including a number of wins over Dern.
“People just wouldn’t even sign up for the Absolute,” Casey says. “Because, what’s the point with Garcia there? But Mackenzie did. Every time. And they went, and went, and went. And it paid off. It’s a mental challenge. She wanted to go against her until she beat her. Bring it on. It’s the same mentality that brought her to MMA.”
“It was a big thing,” Dern says, still grinning about it almost three years later. “I was so happy I was able to do it. I had so much respect for her. It charged the whole jiu-jitsu world. Everyone was inspired. She had been undefeated.
“It was good to show people—keep trying. I fought her like 10 times. But all you need is one special time. I fought her trying to learn. And it’s one of the purposes of jiu-jitsu. For a smaller person—not necessarily to win, but to defend themselves against a larger person.”
By the end of the year, Dern had well and truly conquered her sport, including three consecutive wins over her archrival, Michelle Nicolini. There was nothing she hadn’t accomplished in the world of sport grappling.
She was just 22 years old.
The first time Dern got into a fight, she was a sophomore in high school. It was a scene right out of a movie. Her childhood buddy, a skinny stoner, was being bullied by one of the school’s mean girls. Dern, rarely angry, seethed when she heard his glasses had been tossed to the ground and broken.
In the cafeteria, with the whole school watching with eager anticipation, Dern challenged the bully.
“I took her down at lunch and did some punches,” Dern says. “I was, like, the hero. Everyone was cheering.”
It was her first and last fight—until the day she came to the MMA Lab in 2016 looking to change her vocation. Her then-fiance Augusto “Tanquinho” Mendes was training there to start his own MMA career, and she liked the feel and vibe of the place.
“The first day she was here, we rolled together, and I was just like, ‘Oh, my God, Mackenzie Dern,'” Murphy remembers. “And she was so nice. Cheerful and laughing. … And she just mounted me like it was nothing. I felt stupid. I’m pretty good on the ground, and I was an infant.
“She’s so heavy on top. She’s a nightmare on the ground. A nightmare to deal with. You’re not safe anywhere. If you leave a limb hanging out anywhere, she’ll go for it, jumping from your arm to your leg to your back. There’s no rest. She’s like a flying squirrel attacking somebody.”
Dern’s time at the Lab has been good for all involved. She has learned the striking game from the ground up. In turn, the experienced professionals have gotten the opportunity to work with one of the best female grapplers of all time.
“I go rounds with her, like preparing for this fight, and when you go to the ground with her, it’s a success for you to exit the round without getting submitted,” Casey says. “You’re like ‘Yes!’ The first few times you spar with her, you’re just defending, defending, defending. But now, I’m sometimes on the attack. Sometimes I’m sweeping. Now I’m standing up. At the end of the day, you get better because you have to survive against her. She doesn’t have to do anything more than show up and train with you and you’re going to get better. Just by her presence.”
The move into mixed martial arts was not a popular decision back home with her father, who imagined a life for his daughter like his own. She was already making good money, both competing and teaching classes all over the world. Why risk so much to enter a world where financial success was reserved for only a handful of top athletes and injury was almost a certainty?
“It worries me when she fights. Maybe she’s not mean enough,” Dias says. “These kinds of things worry me. A pretty girl like her? ‘Go be a model, Mackenzie,’ I tell her. I always worry for her. You want the best. I don’t want to see her get hurt or break her jaw. As a father, I don’t even want to think about that.”
Her father’s hesitance, and her own growing independence, are why, on a Friday afternoon at her dad’s gym, there is a single blue judogi in a sea of white uniforms. It belongs to Vieira, one of the founders of a competing school called Checkmat, a fierce rival to Dias’ own competition team.
“Don’t show that Checkmat logo,” a team member says with a laugh, kidding as I shoot photos of the training session.
“She asked me if I could help, and at first it surprised me,” Vieira acknowledges. “We were always on the opposite side of the mat. But this is MMA. It isn’t about jiu-jitsu teams. It’s a different perspective on the martial arts. She already has her team, but someone from the outside can be important.
“She was looking for somebody who could support and help her. Of course, ‘Megaton’ is her father, and he’s here to help. But sometimes it’s hard to be a father and a coach and maintain both relationships.”
“Even in jiu-jitsu, when he coaches me he is so emotional,” Dern says of her father. “It’s good. I love it. But it’s different getting punched in the face. I understand when he says, ‘You have such a good life with jiu-jitsu. Why do you want to get punched in the face?’ But I accomplished everything I wanted to in jiu-jitsu when I was 22 years old. Where am I going to go now?
“I needed something new.I want someone who loves me, wants the best for me, but their mind is clear. My dad, being my dad, he’ll never stop teaching me. But he still hasn’t seen me fight yet. He’s seen it on TV later but never live. It’s hard for him to see me getting punched.”
If there is a consensus about anything at the MMA Lab, where strong personalities abound, it’s that they like what they see from Dern. They’d also like to see more of her. For the first year she was with the team, her presence didn’t feel exactly permanent. Between her grappling career, seminars and frequent trips to Brazil, she was a part-timer at best, even while running up a 5-0 record on the regional scene.
That isn’t conducive, the Lab’s head coach John Crouch says, to getting the most out of your potential.
“She has a great life. And you can’t help but love Mackenzie. She’s wonderful,” he says. “But I want her to be a world champion. I think she has the athletic ability and she’s a competitor. It’s just a matter of putting in the time. She is a born competitor. She really shines when it’s time to shine. I see her make leaps and bounds when she applies herself. So I’m excited to get some consistent time. People are going to see what kind of fighter she can really be.”
After plenty of hemming and hawing, Dern has made the decision to curtail her grappling career. Mostly. She’s left the door open for the occasional superfight when her MMA schedule allows. But otherwise, for now, she’s a full-time fighter, committed to doing each of her camps at home in Arizona.
“Here, it’s good,” Dern says. “There are no distractions. In Brazil, there’s the beach, there’s partying. It’s hard to be focused. Here, it’s just house, Academy and back to the house. That’s it. It’s good for fighting.”
Expectations, to put it mildly, are high. Her team stresses patience. She’s been fighting, after all, for just two years and fighting full time for a grand total of a month.
“Sometimes we’ll be in a position, and she’ll kind of stop and say, ‘I can punch here?’ And we’re like ‘Yes, Mackenzie! Punch,'” Murphy says with a laugh. “She’s in such control that she can stop and have a conversation while the other person is still struggling. And she’s still learning.”
But her pedigree simply doesn’t allow for patience from either fans or promoters. Though she’s won all of her fights, they weren’t in the blitzkrieg fashion Rousey used to establish her own dominance and set the standard for how the next big thing was supposed to navigate the sport.
While comparisons to Rousey are typical for any top prospect, in Dern’s case they actually fit. Both were child wonders and champions from an early age. They each count a world champion as a parent and first coach, in Rousey’s case her mother, boundary-smashing judo legend AnnMaria DeMars. In some ways, Dern even out-Rouseys Ronda herself. Rousey ended up falling short at the highest level of her first sport; Dern dominated her own.
Of course, the pro ranks told a different story. It’s unlikely anyone will ever again match Rousey’s dominant early run. After all, it took five fights before anyone extended her even a single minute in the cage. But Dern has done well in her own own early forays into the cage, winning all five of her bouts, albeit in considerably less impressive fashion. The opposition, to be frank, is better today than it was seven years ago—in no small part a debt owed to Rousey’s incredible success.
“She’s so well-known because of her social media following and her jiu-jitsu career that people want to judge her,” Crouch says. “It’s extreme both ways. ‘Oh, she’s the greatest thing ever.’ ‘No, she’s terrible.’ You don’t necessarily want to finish everybody in 10 seconds early in your career. Things get hard, and all the sudden you don’t know how to fight back.
“I just see her getting better. She’s a ferocious competitor when the lights come on.”
Indeed, much of her training has been focused on getting Dern—a notoriously aggressive jiu-jitsu player—to take a more cautious approach to mixed martial arts, where the consequences for a mistake can be losing a tooth rather than losing a point.
“They aren’t looking to grapple with her like she’s used to. In grappling, you lose nothing by trying a submission. In MMA, losing position can be everything. All it takes is one fortunate shot and the game is changed completely,” Crouch says. “Rather than dive for something and possibly lose the position, she needs to stay on top. When she gets on top of you, she hits really hard. I want to see her hit people. She has thunder in her hands. I want her to beat them up first. Until they are begging for the armlock. Beg for it. Only then, with 20 seconds left in the round, will we let her go.”
Still, Dern watches her MMA peers, like UFC strawweight champion Rose Namajunas, with a jealous eye toward their freedom.
“I see her doing flying armbars, and I get excited,” Dern says. “That’s my style! I’m confident in that stuff too. I’ve been trying to be so careful that I’ve taken away from what I can do. They’re starting to tell me, ‘Now you’re ready. Now we believe in you.’ When I see an omoplata or an armbar, I can go for it. I know a little better what is possible in MMA.”
Dern will make her UFC debut at 115 pounds, the same weight class as Namajunas and her own teammate Casey. She’s tried 125 pounds, where Murphy competes, but would be much smaller than everyone else in the class.
“I’m not that tall. I have curves you know? I go on the scale and people say, ‘Oh man, she’s thick,'” Dern says with a laugh. “Even at 115 pounds, I have curves. Many women fighters, when they cut weight, they look like skeletons. I guess it’s the Brazilian in me.”
Her fight with Yoder on March 3 is the first step in a grand plan that ends with a UFC title belt strapped to her waist. But that success won’t come without sacrifice.
“Women like Mackenzie, who are good-looking, they’re going to be popular fighters,” Murphy says. “She has the potential to make millions of dollars. But it’s hard, because if you’re in the gym all the time, getting your face ground into the mat, you’re getting punched in the head, you’re working out twice a day, you’re not going to be good-looking for long. This sport takes everything from you.”
Dern, for her part, doesn’t intend to be in the sport long enough for it to suck her dry. She sees a future much like her father’s, with a pit stop in mixed martial arts to help spread the gospel of Brazilian jiu-jitsu.
“I think I was born to fight, to inspire girls to do martial arts,” she says. “Like Royce Gracie, Demian Maia, B.J. Penn, all these people who came from jiu-jitsu and made it bigger. I want to take jiu-jitsu to the big stage and be able to win.
“From the very beginning, since I came to MMA, I’m representing my whole sport, my lifestyle. People in jiu-jitsu think it’s this big world. It’s not. It’s a small world. So, if I can help grow jiu-jitsu, for women and everyone, I can help the sport. I don’t want to be in MMA forever, like Anderson Silva doing this 10 years in the UFC.
“I want to win the belt, defend the belt and come back to jiu-jitsu. I know it will be there for me.”
Jonathan Snowden covers combat sports for Bleacher Report.
BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA — The gym is big enough to hold 20 people scrambling around on mats, and small enough that fighters are slammed not into a cage, but into a wall shared with the Mexican restaurant next door. Occasionally, the thudding col…
BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA — The gym is big enough to hold 20 people scrambling around on mats, and small enough that fighters are slammed not into a cage, but into a wall shared with the Mexican restaurant next door. Occasionally, the thudding collisions startle people just looking to get their burrito on.
“It would be a god-damn catastrophe if we knocked over their dishwasher,” head coach, owner and former Marine Chris Conolley bellows in the direction of heavyweight Kem Oti and middleweight Eryk Anders. ” And it’s right on the other side of that wall.”
The lunch rush, especially on a Saturday afternoon, is just beginning. And seriously, the students at Spartan Fitness MMA in Birmingham, Alabama have knocked over tables before.
Conolley may be breeding fighters, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be neighborly.
Oti is there, 91 long miles on I-65 from his home in Decautur, Alabama, to prepare for a fight on the undercard of Roy Jones Jr.’s final boxing bout down in Pensacola, Florida, on Feb. 8. But he’s not the reason there are so many people in this room going hard and creating lunch-disturbing chaos.
The reason for that is Anders.
You may not have heard of Anders yet. He has just two UFC fights under his belt, both on Fox Sports 1, the cable network that houses the promotions’ least-marketable fight cards. But on Saturday, the former starting linebacker for Nick Saban‘s Alabama Crimson Tide steps into the cage against the legendary Lyoto Machida in Brazil.
After that, with a Hall of Fame notch on his belt, Anders believes he’s on the fast track to UFC glory. If he stays active, maybe even a title shot by the end of the year.
Conolley, listening in, is quick to pump the brakes on that kind of talk.
“You’re an unranked guy,” he reminds his charge. “And you’re going into an opponent’s home country. You haven’t done anything yet.”
It’s harsh but true, and the type of brutal honesty that keeps Anders—whose pedigree would allow him access to any gym in the world—close to home with the man who taught him how to be a professional.
The marquee prospect in the UFC’s 185-pound division isn’t hanging out on the beach in South Florida, in coastal California, the mountains of Albuquerque or anywhere else the top stars of the sport congregate.
Instead, he’s building a curriculum for the kids classes he teaches at his day job here, consumed in the business of martial arts. He’s surrounded, not by groupies and hangers-on leading him toward temptation, but by family, friends and a coach he can trust to tell him what he needs to hear.
“The more popular an athlete gets, the more the people around him just say yes to whatever he wants. Coach is not a yes man,” Anders says. “He’s the opposite. He tells me his opinion and what he thinks and demands a certain level of excellence.
“He’s not going to let you half-ass. He tries to motivate you and make you better. He genuinely cares about everyone here, versus some of these mega gyms where they don’t even pay attention to you until you are an upper echelon UFC fighter.”
As Anders talks, he falls behind his teammates, who are already on the mats and ready to go.
“Time starts and stops at your convenience Anders?” Conolley asks with a wink in his eye. “I guess we’ll all just wait for you.”
The two men move off to prepare for Machida, ready to shake up the MMA world—so long as they don’t rock the precariously positioned margaritas at the restaurant next door.
No one might have ever heard of Eryk Anders if not for the fateful penultimate evening of 2007 in Shreveport, Louisiana. Anders’ Crimson Tide had just squeaked by Colorado in the Independence Bowl, and the sophomore linebacker hadn’t played at all.
Over a night of cards and beers in a local casino, Anders and his dad, Gayle, broke down his future. Anders, recruited by Alabama’s previous coach, Mike Shula, didn’t see much hope under Saban, the harsh new Tide leader.
His father, the voice of reason, encouraged him to stay the course.
“I didn’t see myself playing,” Anders remembers. “Saban was bringing in his recruits, and I was just like, ‘Man, it’s over with.’ It wasn’t turning out to be what I’d thought it would be. But my dad said, ‘Stay in school. Worst case scenario, you get your degree. You’ll be alright.'”
It was the last time the two men would ever talk. That night, Anders awoke to screams. His mother had found his dad dead in bed, the victim of an apparent heart attack.
“He wasn’t in the best health,” Anders says. “He was overweight, he smoked cigarettes and he had diabetes. And he was a little older. He was 65 years old. So, it was kind of a circle of life. But he’d never steered me wrong before, so I decide to do what he said and stay in school—got my degree in health studies, and I think those last few years were pretty successful.
“I decided to stay, and that very next year, I started to come in on passing situations, to rush the passer. I found a knack for that, and by my senior year, I was the starter.”
His career with the Crimson Tide culminated in storybook fashion. The player who almost walked away for good instead led the team in tackles in the BCS Championship against Texas. With his team clinging to a one-score lead, Anders demolished the Longhorns quarterback Garrett Gilbert, forcing a fumble that led to the touchdown that secured the game.
“All the seniors were on the field together after the game,” Anders says. “And we all just kind of looked at each other like ‘Is this it? It’s over?'”
Tryouts with the Cleveland Browns and Canadian Football League followed, but neither amounted to much. Anders even played one season in the Arena Football League with Colorado “to get football out of my system.”
He was supporting his young son and working as a janitor for LabCorp with aspirations of getting a government job. He wanted to procure parts for Apache helicopters at the Redstone Arsenal in nearby Huntsville. His mom had made a life in the Air Force and he saw a similar future for himself.
That’s when his next great passion beat its way into his heart.
Anders met UFC heavyweight Walt Harris at the gym back in 2011 and was intrigued by his offer to stop by and see what mixed martial arts was all about. He fancied himself a tough guy and was looking for a way to burn off steam after working what felt like endless nine-hour shifts.
“The first day I walked into the gym, the coach there was like, ‘Hey, can you fight?’ Within an hour of walking in, I was sparring. I grew up fighting, so I thought I could,” Anders says with a knowing shake of his head. “Right up until I got in the ring with someone who really knew how to fight.
“I didn’t even have a mouth piece. I tried. I gave what I had, which wasn’t much. They weren’t malicious, but I spent the better part of the day in the corner just trying not to get my teeth knocked out. I got choked out and submitted. But I fell in love with it right there. I knew I had zero skill set and had to start from day one. I really embraced the challenge. What I love about the martial arts is that there is no end to it. Things are constantly evolving.”
Still, Anders was wary of getting in too deep. He kept his day job at Redstone and moved back to Birmingham to work as a customer service representative at AutoTec.
“Just sitting at a desk was hard,” he says. “I had already found this passion and had been training for two years. That’s when I started having these thoughts like, ‘Is this really it for my life?’ I’ve never been so tired as I was when I sat at a desk all day. Sitting there doing nothing and I was exhausted.”
Everything changed after meeting his soon-to-be wife, Yasmin, after an amateur fight on the local scene. His alcohol consumption, he admits with a grin, was up, his defenses down. The two started chatting. They’ve never stopped.
“Pretty much since the day I met her, we’ve been together,” he says. “She has a head on her shoulders. She speaks five languages. She’s from Brazil. She was in school to get her master’s [degree]. She was already a lawyer in Brazil. She had her ducks in her row.”
After his second pro fight, she laid out a challenge for him: Why not, she asked, give fighting a real try? AutoTec, after all, would be there if he tried and failed. But his athletic prime only offered a short window to give a pro career an honest shot.
“She was the foot on my back I needed to really do this,” Anders says. “I wasn’t sure. It’s risky. In this sport, it’s sink or swim. And I had a child. It’s not like I could just live under a bridge or sleep in my car. But she saw how dedicated I was to mastering my craft. I’d wake up at 4 a.m. so I could work out twice before I even started my regular day. She saw how bad I wanted it and told me, ‘Look, you can go back to a job anytime. But you can only do this now. Give it a go for two years.'”
The next piece in the puzzle was the right coach. Conolley, a black belt in the same Straight Blast Gym system that has bred world champions like Randy Couture and Conor McGregor, was the only man in Alabama who had the experience to take a neophyte to the big time.
The only problem: He wasn’t sure he was interested.
“I hate fighters,” he admits. “I don’t take fighters. A fighter only trains when he’s got a fight coming up. He’s only concerned with himself. Fighters quit. I train martial artists. Martial artists never quit. I needed to know if Eryk was a martial artist or a fighter.”
The tell came when he saw Anders compete against one of his students in a jiu-jitsu tournament. Many gifted athletes don’t enjoy jiu-jitsu in a gi, Conolley says, because their strength and quickness can be easily negated. But, Anders, he noticed, wasn’t just trying to muscle his way into positions. He was doing honest-to-goodness jiu-jitsu.
He wasn’t doing it especially well. But he moved like a martial artist. Conolley was impressed, and the two have been a team ever since.
“When he came to me, he was just this raw talent,” Conolley says. “There were serious concerns, especially with his footwork. It was sloppy. His fundamentals were sloppy. He just wasn’t a good striker.”
But Anders had natural ability and a willingness to work. The second part was key, because Anders was far behind the fighters he wanted to eventually compete with. And his physical tools, Conolley says, were never going to be enough to overcome a skill deficit.
“Man, I’m telling you, I’ve had a lot better athletes come into my gym,” he says. “From University of Alabama. From off the street. From everywhere. Some of them, football took its toll on them and they had too many injuries. Some of them liked the idea of it but weren’t really about this life, the grind of it. It’s not for everybody.”
Anders, he says, couldn’t get by in football on his athleticism alone. MMA would prove a harsh business if he counted on physical tools to help him solve problems in the cage. First he needed to get good enough just to learn what Conolley had to share. That involved starting from scratch and building fighting fundamentals he’d never picked up. It was a humbling task Anders undertook with good spirits.
“He had to come in here and really work hard to develop his jiu-jitsu, develop his striking, develop his footwork, just to survive,” Conolley says. “Nothing bothers him. Nothing really flusters him. He processes information quickly. He learns and is extremely coachable. And he’s one of the only guys I’ve ever worked with who does everything you’re supposed to do. Every single, solitary thing I tell him to do, he does. That comes from football.”
Anders agrees.
“The most important thing football taught me was how to be coachable,” he says. “Learning how to be coached is a big thing. Instead of just thinking that I know it all. Being at Alabama, I learned how to study film and breakdown my opponent, learned how to be coachable.
“It’s been a big help in my career. Because I go other places to train, and I kind of see the athlete being stubborn and not really listening to what the coach is saying. Then when it comes fight time, he goes out and loses because he didn’t do what the coaches said or stick to the game plan.”
Anders had under a month’s notice last year to prepare for his first UFC bout against tough veteran Rafael Natal. It was the second short-notice fight UFC had offered in the days since he’d won the regional LFA title. With a banged-up hand to worry about, he’d said no the first time.
He wasn’t sure he could say no twice.
“They’d offered us a different fight the week before that,” Conolley says. “Eryk, he wants to take anything that’s offered. He wants to get going. But it was an undercard fight. It wasn’t worth the risk. Four days later, they offered Natal. OK, I like that. With the way Eryk plays and the way Natal plays, it was going to be bad for Natal. We deciphered his game. When they offered us that fight, it was worth the risk. It’s on the main card. It was a week later. That one made sense.”
Anders decimated Natal in the first round, then beat Markus Perez to close out 2017, bringing his record to 10-0.
Machida, though he’s lost four of his last five, is a different than Perez and Natal. The former light heavyweight champion has beaten the likes of Randy Couture, Dan Henderson, Mauricio Rua, Tito Ortiz and Rashad Evans, champions all.
At 39, he’s still dangerous, both in retreat, where he’s an expert at turning defense into offense in the blink of an eye, and when charging forward with blistering speed. But his three consecutive losses, all finishes, give Team Anders confidence.
It’s taken some time to get here, to a place where the legends of the sport aren’t idols to hold up as examples, but rather targets for conquest. Along the way, Anders has had to reinvent his body for the challenges he would face. In every interview he does, it’s assumed his conditioning comes from a life on the gridiron. In truth, football had created an athlete entirely unsuited for the challenges of MMA.
“The conditioning pyramid was upside down,” Conolley says. “He had to learn to go at an intense pace for longer than 10 seconds, which is the longest you’ll see a football play last. It’s a huge change but a transition he’s made really well, thanks to the speed of his recovery.
“According to the UFC Performance Institute, he floats from the striking energy system to the grappling energy system better than anyone. He is the most in-shape athlete, for MMA, on their roster. He’s not going to be the best endurance athlete. He’s never going to be the best sprinter. But he is the best at going from grappling to striking with ease and recovering.”
Anders never looks tired, even as the workout reaches an end and everyone else shows signs of being human. His teammates take turns doing their best Machida impressions, with lightweight Matt Elkins proving most effective. They switch out every five minutes. Anders, the willing victim, works seven straight rounds. In the minute between, Conolley offers advice and demonstrates techniques, like an “unstoppable” uppercut from the clinch and a no-look cross that the left-handed Anders masters quickly.
“That would have hit, if your god-damn left foot had been on the mat,” Conolley yells at one point. “You were up like a ballerina when you threw that s–t.”
They work hard, but this isn’t the kind of sparring that you’d see in traditional MMA gyms, especially in the bad old days. There is never a sense that anyone wants to hurt the man across from him. This is about learning, not proving how tough you are.
“We train very intelligently here,” Anders says. “In football, every play, every game, you’re getting rattled. If you play on the line or as a linebacker, you’re getting smacked every play. In here, we only spar once a week, and we’re not in here trying to kill each other. For longevity, if you can train at a place where they actually care about you, you can do MMA for a very long time. Whereas in the NFL, at 30, I’d be considered old.”
Forty-five minutes later, the team gathers around Conolley for a military-style after-action review. Anders, soon to be on his way to Brazil, offers his home to Oti so he can minimize his commute in the final week of his training. Only one rule is in place.
“No girls,” Anders says.
The moment is typical of Anders, who Conolley says works hard to make sure all his teammates are included, mentioning them often in television interviews and making sure he’s just one among many.
“All the guys are super stoked for him,” Conolley says. “There is no jealousy. They want to see him succeed. The guy fought a five-round war with Brendan Allen on a [Friday night] last year. We flew home on Sunday. On Monday, he was here for practice because we had three guys getting ready for fights. And he knew he needed to be here as a body for them. And he came in here to help them.”
As Anders leaves to change, his coach is more willing to share praise instead of critique. At first, he feared, Anders was moving forward in his career too quickly. But every day, he sees things that tell him Anders has the potential to be special.
“He’s constantly developing,” Conolley says. “That’s the frightening thing. He’s just two fights in with the UFC, and he’s headlining an event. And he hasn’t even begun. He has so much more to do. There’s a lot more weapons we can add to his arsenal, and he’s getting better every time out. Perfecting the use of a weapon and just firing that bitch are two different things.
“He’s just now perfecting some of his weapons. He’s processing information and able to make reads. He’s making feints and setting traps. There’s levels to this s–t. And he’s moving to that next level.”
Anders knows all about levels. In college football, he competed at the highest one. Likewise, he knows if he wants to reach the pinnacle of MMA, every bout going forward will be a big fight against a big name.
He’s unconcerned.
“Some guys, you see their heart beating in their chest. Looking at their body language and their demeanor, you see the uncertainty,” Anders says. “I don’t really feel pressure. I’m fixin’ to go down and play an away game in Brazil, which I’d equate to going to Death Valley at LSU. A lot of people fold in those situations. But it kind of helps me focus a little bit more. I thrive under that pressure. That’s proven. And I’m happy to prove it again to Machida and to Brazil.”
Jonathan Snowden covers Combat Sports for Bleacher Report.
Blood spattered the screen during the entrance video for Rory MacDonald (20-4), Bellator’s new welterweight champion. Somehow, after his grueling victory over Douglas Lima at Bellator 192, that seemed more appropriate than ever.
“I have a rage in me, y…
Blood spattered the screen during the entrance video for Rory MacDonald (20-4), Bellator’s new welterweight champion. Somehow, after his grueling victory over Douglas Lima at Bellator 192, that seemed more appropriate than ever.
“I have a rage in me, you know,” he told the cameras on the new Paramount Network, face, as ever, devoid of any discernible emotion. “When things get messy, I rise to the occasion and take it to another level.”
Some fighters are known for their slick submissions, others for their fearsome knockout power or intricate footwork that turns the sport into almost a dance, a gliding display of brutal elegance.
MacDonald, though a skilled technician in all those areas, personifies something else entirely. The punishment he took in a 2015 fight against Robbie Lawler was so unsparing and barbarous that even thinking about it can make the most hardened fight fan shudder. His is the face of will, of grit, of courage, a broken, battered shell, eyes half-lidded, lips curled into half a smile.
And this time, his face wasn’t even the worst of it.
In the second round, new Bellator color commentator “Big” John McCarthy noted Lima’s powerful leg kicks and their potential impact on the fight. They weren’t the flashy kicks that traditionally draw a reaction from fans, shin bouncing off thigh with a satisfying smack. These, McCarthy pointed out, were targeting the shin. These were the crippling kind.
By the third of five rounds, there was no hiding the damage Lima had done. MacDonald’s lower left leg began to swell, eventually in truly grotesque fashion, his shin seemingly growing its own additional shin. As the round closed, Lima dropped him to the ground with a kick to the leg, then bloodied his nose with ground-and-pound.
Things didn’t look good.
“I’ve seen a lot of fights in my day and I’ve seen a lot of warriors go in there,” Bellator President Scott Coker told the press after the fight. “… But Rory MacDonald really impressed me tonight. He had the perseverance, the indomitable spirit, all the intangibles of what I consider the foundation of martial arts.
“He exemplified some great strength tonight, inner strength. He could have quit a couple of times. That leg was gone. … I said ‘one more kick, it’s over’ and then he got kicked again, then took him right down. I said ‘wow, this guy wants it really bad.'”
We watch sports to see human beings do incredible things. Sometimes those are feats of incredible athletic daring, displays of speed, strength and endurance that defy the limits of comprehension.
Fighting offers all of that and something more.
The great fighters conquer more than just their own bodies. They vanquish pain and fear itself, continuing in the face of adversity that would humble the strongest of us.
Rory MacDonald is a fighter’s fighter. As the judges rendered their scorecards and McCarthy interviewed him in the cage, the facade slipped momentarily. He needed a cornerman’s help just to stand. A trip to the hospital soon followed. But, for 25 minutes, MacDonald faced the pain—and pain backed down.
“I think I have a person growing inside of me,” MacDonald joked in the cage after the fight. “I can’t really walk on it. But, whatever. I got through it.”
Watching him dispatch Paul Daley and now Lima, it would be easy to make a case for MacDonald, still just 28 years old despite more than 12 years in the sport, as the best welterweight on the planet. I won’t do that here.
Let’s simply note that MacDonald is one of the bravest, mentally strong and truly inspiring warriors ever to step inside a steel cage. It’s possible to out-skill him. Some have managed to be even more ferocious. But if it’s a battle of will and will alone, my money is on Rory MacDonald.
And, for a fighter, that’s the greatest compliment of all.
Jonathan Snowden covers combat sports for Bleacher Report.
After two long weeks, it finally arrived—the first UFC fight card of 2018.
On paper, it was a show that left much to be desired. There were no fights with title implications at the Scottrade Center in St. Louis, Missouri.
No supersta…
After two long weeks, it finally arrived—the first UFC fight card of 2018.
On paper, it was a show that left much to be desired. There were no fights with title implications at the Scottrade Center in St. Louis, Missouri.
No superstars entered the Octagon, either, unless you count reality television sensation Paige VanZant. Worse, with the loss of the VitorBelfort vs. Uriah Hall bout on theday of the weigh-ins, there were no fighters who had ever held UFC championship gold.
Nothing happened to change that perception as the fighters engaged in one listless bout after another.
Then Matt Hughes limped out to the cage, just months removed from a collision with an actual train. It was a touching moment, with Hughes showing the fighting spirit that earned him a spot in the UFC’s Hall of Fame.
As if energized by the emotional display of courage and heart, the action immediately picked up. KamaruUsman channeled Hughes himself, practically slamming his opponent right through the mat. Jessica-Rose Clark outgrappledVanZant, and Jeremy Stephens closed the show with a brutal beating of Doo Ho Choi.
There were human beings fighting in a steel cage. Punches and kicks were thrown. Joints were stretched. Necks were strangled. Sometimes, that’s enough.
As always, the final stat lines only reveal so much. These are the real winners and losers from UFC Fight Night 124.
For the literal-minded among us, full results are listed at the end.
Every culture has a bogeyman, part myth, part monster, a terrifying reminder to children of the evil lurking in the hearts of men.
In Spain it’s the “Sack Man,” a vagrant who steals into the homes of naughty children, whisking them away from the only l…
Every culture has a bogeyman, part myth, part monster, a terrifying reminder to children of the evil lurking in the hearts of men.
In Spain it’s the “Sack Man,” a vagrant who steals into the homes of naughty children, whisking them away from the only life they’ve known. In the Netherlands, the Boeman hides under the bed, claws and fangs grotesquely long and sharp. In the mountains of Afghanistan, the Madar-i-Al, a hideous hag, comes to punish the uncooperative in the dark of night.
The story is universal because humanity needs an outsider, even in allegory, to set things right. Everywhere across the planet, regardless of race, religion or language there are bad kids and lessons that need learned.
If you ask hardcore fans, the UFC is no different.
The fighters, they believe, have gone mad with power. Conor McGregor’s emergence as a power broker—an athlete who only fights when and who he wants—has created chaos, with fighters demanding “money” fights and the sanctity of the ranking system called into question.
The internet is awash with fighters trying to do their best McGregor impression, perhaps forgetting the “Notorious” one only entered into legend after running over every featherweight in the world like a green, white and orange freight train.
The idea of the best fighting the best to establish primacy seems dangerously outdated, if not downright antiquated.
But a bogeyman lurks at lightweight, here to set things right. His name is Khabib Nurmagomedov (24-0). And he is a very dangerous man—perhaps, just the man to return mixed martial arts to its default state.
On the surface, such a claim is absurd. This is a sport of mean mugs and muscles that bulge, a sport where the trash talk and tattoos are equally loud.
Nurmagomedov, who fights Edson Barboza at UFC 219 Saturday on pay-per-view, fits none of those stereotypes, to the point his rejection of the current culture is a running joke. He’s confident, not cocky, strong without being veiny. Muscle and Fitness isn’t likely to be calling anytime soon. Neither is Saturday Night Live.
His is a power transported in time, the old-school kind developed by men like his father, Abdulmanap, a former wrestling, sambo and judo champion who grew strong tossing other men around because there was simply not much better to do.
“When Khabib gets a hold of people, they look surprised,” UFC announcer Joe Rogan told me. “It’s almost like they are shocked by how strong he is.”
It’s little wonder, then, that a young Khabib grew up learning the tools of combat, taking his first steps on the wrestling mats, navigating the world between the legs of his father’s pupils who lived and trained on the first floor of his family’s home.
Theirs is a martial culture, where fights on the street are frequent and terror attacks and violence are a constant threat; where, as a boy, he once famously wrestled a bear like a seven-year-old circus strongman.
There’s something old school about Dagestan, Russia, where Khabib grew up, too. Nestled in the Caucus mountains near the Caspian Sea, it’s home to the forever war, where Muslims such as Nurmagamedov have been fighting off a series of invaders from the Mongols to Peter the Great.
Until recently, a battle has raged against Vladimir Putin’s Russia, the most diverse part of the country fighting off the Great Slavic North.
As Bloody Elbow’s Karim Zidan explained, it’s a martial culture well beyond the Nurmagomedov homestead:
“Khabib’s upbringing was not particularly unique among Dagestani families. While most children did not have judo and wrestling champions for parents, almost all young boys between the age of eight and ten tested their resolve on a wrestling mat. Khabib’s father, Abdulmanap, provided a small gym that encouraged rural youth to participate in basic combat sports to build confidence, discipline, and ensure preparedness for the potentially traumatic experiences that ravished the North Caucasus. Having lived through radical fundamentalism and separatist warfare in the Chechen Wars in the 1990s, Abdulmanap took a pragmatic approach to combat sports and its pivotal role in the formation of Caucasus youth.
“‘I believe every man must be ready for war … even in peaceful times,’ Abdulmanap told BloodyElbow in 2015. ‘It is always a topic of discussion in the Caucasus.'”
While its cultural chaos forges hard men, it’s Dagestan itself that creates champions. Abdulmanap, who once sold four bulls to pay for a new gymnasium, has coached many of them, with his own son being just one in an army of grappling monsters who have descended on the world of combat sports.
“I feel the main things needed to be a successful fighter are a high level of commitment, an education, eagerness to learn all facets of the sport and a good upbringing,” he told me in a 2011 interview.
“Dagestan is a mountainous country. It presents its own challenges and benefits. In the elevation of the mountains, we train for 45 days. This helps prepare a fighter and get him into as best shape as possible.”
Khabib represents his roots, from hismountain shepherd’s hatto his heavy, top-control grappling game. But his journey into American mixed martial arts has required a new combat family, both to help him keep up with an ever-evolving sport and because his father has been denied a visa by the U.S. government and has been unable to corner him for any of his UFC fights.
“When I fight in USA, when I sign in 2012 to fight in UFC, he never can come and support me because we have problem with visa,” Khabib told The MMA Hour’s Ariel Helwani. “…I am fighting eighth time without my father. It’s OK. He prayed for me, with me all the time with my heart. We talk with him everyday about my weight, my plan, my everything. My father is with me all the time, it’s no problem.”
In his father’s absence, coaches at the American Kickboxing Academy have molded Nurmagomedov into a fiercely single-minded fighter, a throwback to a time when a single skill set could take a man far.
Modern mixed martial arts is a sport where wrestling and grappling are typically building blocks, sturdy parts of the overall structure rarely seen unless everything else comes crashing down. In any high-level UFC fight, it is presumed, both fighters have solid grappling fundamentals.
As a result, the bulk of every fight will consist of often awkward kickboxing and toughman contest shenanigans, either dreadfully technical or borderline bar-fighting.
Khabib plays a different game, effortlessly tossing every opponent with a variety of trips, bodylocks, and single leg shots, then demolishing them with one of the greatest top games in MMA history.
“My best background is like, smash opponents,” Nurmagomedov told UFC Countdown. “I all the time go forward. I all the time try to take down somebody. Make him give up. This is my style, you know. This is what I do all my life.”
Nurmagomedov doesn’t take an opponent down for points, then peck away fecklessly in his guard. Instead, he passes the legs quickly and smoothly, dropping furious ground-and-pound from either side control or the mount, confident enough to pursue submissions when they present themselves, knowing in his heart he can always find his way back to the top if things go awry.
As Vice’s Jack Slack points out, that style doesn’t just rack up points—it tends to crush a man’s spirit, even those who fight for a living:
“…the real strength of Nurmagomedov’s game: when he has a hold of his man. He is exceptional at shucking his way to a back bodylock and from there he will happily spend a round dragging his man to the mat, allowing them to get back up, and then either falling to the mat with them or tossing them to the mat and landing on them. Round after round in the octagon, Nurmagomedov has shown himself to be a step ahead of everyone who ends up with him around their waist.
“…And that is how Nurmagomedov wins bouts, he breaks fighters. He lets them up and he drags them down again. While he convinces opponents that his having a bodylock means the rest of the round is going to be spent on the floor.”
That’s not to say Nurmagomedov is hopeless in standing exchanges. There is both method and madness in his game, a combination that makes it hard for opponents to plan for him. His uppercut, in particular, is a formidable weapon, both a threat to an opponent’s consciousness and a tool to stand them upright for a takedown attempt.
On the whole, he’s an enthusiastic striker who often leaps in with winging hooks, counting on his speed and athleticism to bail him out of bad spots. That’s not supposed to be possible at the top levels of the sport. Not in 2017, when the game has become about punishing mistakes more than anything else.
In his last fight, Michael Johnson punished Khabib’s recklessness at times. The same punches landed by the incredibly disciplined McGregor would be fight-changers. His UFC 219 opponent, Barboza, is also the kind of striker who could end Nurmagomedov’s march to the championship with a single blow.
However, identifying weaknesses on video is one thing; in the cage, there is Khabib to contend with. Nurmagomedov is so good at what he does, it doesn’t really matter what the other man does well.
There is only Khabib—unyielding, unflappable and seemingly unstoppable.
“You have to give up,” he told Johnson in mid-fight, fists raining down like a storm. “I have to fight for the title. You know this. I deserve it.”
Actions, including a hammerlock that threatened to break Johnson’s arm, eventually spoke even louder than his words. Deserve was suddenly no longer part of the equation. Khabib had earned his opportunity against the best in the world.
While no man has been his match, and that shot at the title a presumptive inevitability, Khabib’s own body has continued to be his worst enemy. He’s fought just three times since 2013.
“Because all my life I train hard. This is why injuries are coming,” Nurmagomedov toldUFC’s Megan Olivi. “But now, in the last couple of years, I changed a lot of things. It’s working too. Now I train a little bit smarter. I take care of myself. I’m tired of injuries and surgeries, rehab, then comeback and talk about this.
“…I feel great. I want to show I’m very excited about this comeback…I want to compete in one year maybe three or four times. This is my plan for next year. Now I’m healthy, now I feel good…I want to stay busy.”
It’s an awkward few minutes—answering inquiries from the press is definitely not Nurmagomedov’s strong suit. Earlier in the month, he created headlines by refusing outright questions about his weight.
But the UFC he represents doesn’t require a master’s degree in communications to advance to the top. Khabib is at his best when mouths slam shut and the cage door opens.
Is Khabib the traditional fight star the sport needs to return to its roots? On Saturday, the time for talking is over. It’s a question that can only be answered in fire and blood.
Jonathan Snowden covers combat sports for Bleacher Report.
The eternal saga of Jon Jones continued this week, as the former UFC champion faced what might be his fiercest foe yet—the California State Athletic Commission, where he finally confronted charges of performance-enhancing drug use before his title fight against Daniel Cormier last year at UFC 214.