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UFC 139: Is Martin Kampmann a Contender or a Gatekeeper?

It’s not really reinventing the wheel to try and figure out where Martin Kampmann is in the UFC’s welterweight division. Anyone who’s been watching him for any amount of time has been trying to figure him out. Every time he enters the…

Every time he enters the cage he puts on a good show, he fights top guys and he’s never badly beaten. In fact, his last two losses were arguably wins. Actually, he flat out beat Diego Sanchez, no matter what the judges said.

But all those solid performances and good showings against tough opposition have left him in purgatory at 170lbs. What is he? A contender? A gatekeeper? Just a guy?

The reality is, if you’ve only lost to top-10 guys and guys who’ve fought for titles in the UFC, you’re legit. You’re a contender.

Hell, Kampmann has a win over Carlos Condit, who until Tuesday was going to fight for gold next weekend. That has to count for something.

Kampmann’s striking is vaunted, a remarkably crisp style founded on a lifetime of kickboxing. He understands angles and distance, he’s quick and he’s among the more technical combatants in all of MMA, much less his division.

He can also take a tremendous punch, as he’s displayed numerous times—most notably against Paul Daley, who regularly beheads opponents. Daley was unable to put Kampmann to the mat no matter how hard he tried.

He’s also among the most underrated grapplers in the division, as he’s difficult to take down and even more difficult to keep there.

Jake Shields, who has perhaps the best combination of jiu-jitsu and wrestling in all of MMA, had to fight tirelessly to take the Dane to the ground at UFC 121. Even when he did it usually came at the cost of eating big punches and knees.

The issue for Kampmann, it seems, is the gameplan. Particularly, how quickly it goes out the window when he gets the itch to throw down.

Training at Xtreme Couture in Vegas, he has access to perhaps the best mind in mixed martial arts in Randy Couture, a champion who proved his mettle countless times in the Octagon.

Yet, if you tag him or show any willingness to stand and chuck hands at all, Martin Kampmann is standing in front of you and throwing back. Gameplan be damned, he’s knocking you out or he’ll die trying.

That’s perhaps not the best approach if you have an eye on the title.

While people love a guy who throws caution to the wind, you don’t see those guys fight for gold that often.

You need to temper your enthusiasm to crack skulls a little, and perhaps use some of that unheralded wrestling and grappling from time to time. Kampmann won’t, and as a result he finds himself hovering in the top-10 but never really making up much ground.

Maybe that makes him a gatekeeper, a stout test for anyone who thinks they deserve to fight the big fish. There’s certain as strong an argument for him being a gatekeeper as there is for contender.

Therefore, it’s probably only fair to say that Martin Kampmann isn’t too far from either side of that dividing line between contender and gatekeeper.

In fact, perhaps he is that line.

But with a win over Rick Story at UFC 139, he’ll be back on the contender side of things, which is at the very least a guarantee for some exciting fights in the future. No fan can hate that idea.

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UFC 136 Results: Was Brian Stann Fool’s Gold All Along?

Going into his fight with Chael Sonnen on Saturday night, Brian Stann was being heralded as the next great thing at middleweight.He was riding a 5-1 record in his previous six fights, had proven his ability to reduce men to rubble in the cage and had g…

Going into his fight with Chael Sonnen on Saturday night, Brian Stann was being heralded as the next great thing at middleweight.

He was riding a 5-1 record in his previous six fights, had proven his ability to reduce men to rubble in the cage and had great marketing appeal as a former Marine who happens to be as affable and well-spoken as any pro athlete in the world today.

Unfortunately for him, the Sonnen fight served to completely undo a lot of what he’d accomplished. The American hero, that the UFC has so obviously been behind, was left battered and bruised after being outwrestled and choked out in a little over a round.

Not exactly what the company was hoping for. Probably even less so what Stann was hoping for.

However it really begs the question: was Brian Stann fool’s gold all along?

If you look at his UFC matchups since dropping to middleweight, most of them have been favourable. That’s not an attack or designed to be abrasive, it’s reality. Look at the list:

Mike Massenzio, a guy who has been hanging on like grim death just to stay on the roster. Stann finished him via triangle, establishing his ground game against a guy who likely only knew of triangles from math and music before being caught in one.

Chris Leben, the come-forward-no-matter-what slugger that Stann politely called out in an earlier effort to fight a name guy and get on the map. Mission accomplished, as he stopped Leben early in the first round. Still, it’s a guy you knew wouldn’t test anything other than his standup, and it made him look good in a big way.

Jorge Santiago, a fresh face with decent standup but without the durability to take Stann’s considerable punching power. Also enough hubris to try and fight fire with fire instead of fighting smart, which is what led to him being steamrolled by the former Marine.

So really, when you put him in there against Sonnen it was no wonder that he’d catch a beating. He seems like a good guy, and is unquestionably a great ambassador for the sport, but his accomplishments on the battlefield perhaps accounted for him being rushed along a little, just as much as those in the octagon did.

Everyone likes a good story, and Brian Stann is that. He’s the type of guy who is seemingly good at everything he does, and people respect his abilities no matter what they’re being applied to. In this case, he still has respect in his ongoing pursuit of success in MMA, but he’s further away than people realize.

Brian Stann was fool’s gold going into UFC 136. It was proven when he was so thoroughly outclassed by a man many consider to be nipping at Anderson Silva’s heels as best middleweight in the world. People—the UFC included—thought Stann was better than he was, and that injustice cost him a sound beating and a big loss.

He needs to get back in the gym and work on his wrestling and ground game, and then get matched up with a guy who can test it without the relentlessness and ferocity of Sonnen. Demian Maia comes to mind as a guy who makes a lot of sense, but there are others as well.

It was too far, too fast for Stann in the past year, and Saturday night officially marked the stopping point of that journey. Like most, I look forward to the reset that will follow, and the evolution he’ll go through to become better.

His story also needs to be remembered the next time a prospect on the rise looks invincible, because chances are he’s not.

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UFC 136 Results: The 5 Worst Performances of the Night

In MMA there are winners and losers. Such is life when you’re not working with a net, not playing as part of a team. You go out there as one man, and there are no excuses for the outcome that don’t just come right back on you. It’s about your preparati…

Some nights, you come out flat. That next gear isn’t there, you can’t get your head into the fight, or maybe you just run into a better man.

Regardless, every event has performances that range from forgettable to downright bad. Here are some of the worst from UFC 136.

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UFC 136 Results: Did a Lesson Learned Cost Gray Maynard a Title?

I feel like I’ve been here before. Such was my line of thought during the first round of Saturday night’s main event in Houston, where Frankie Edgar and Gray Maynard contested the lightweight title for the second time in 2011. I had this th…

I feel like I’ve been here before.

Such was my line of thought during the first round of Saturday night’s main event in Houston, where Frankie Edgar and Gray Maynard contested the lightweight title for the second time in 2011.

I had this thought because Maynard had just clubbed the champion with a thundering punch, and was following up with more punishment, as Edgar stumbled about the cage like a one-legged man rollerskating on marbles.

And in response to the beating, just as he had earlier this year, Edgar stabilized, fired back, and survived.

Then he went on and took the better part of three rounds from Maynard before stopping him violently in the fourth.

When that stoppage happened, I had another pause for thought:

Did a lesson from January actually cost Gray the title tonight?

You see, the argument in rematches is that you learn your opponent’s tendencies, study tape on him and adjust yourself. You realize where you went wrong as well, and fine-tune your game plan to improve your chances of success.

Going into the rematch with Edgar, there was a lot of talk about Gray gassing himself out trying to finish in the first round of their last fight.

That round, argued by many to be the most one-sided in MMA history for a man to actually survive, saw Maynard slug Edgar to a living death while expending tremendous energy himself.

This time, with Frankie teetering about the cage, Gray elected to play it cool and pick his spots. Unfortunately, he ran out of time in the round, and didn’t come close to doing the fullest amount of damage possible. Over the next few rounds, Edgar rebounded, and Gray still looked too slow—as he did last time.

The end result was two first rounds that were overwhelmingly in favour of Gray Maynard, both approached slightly differently, but both in title fights that saw Gray’s opponent walk away with the gold.

One has to wonder if Maynard’s evolution, his learning from pushing too hard the last time and trying to adjust, may have cost him the title.

What if he put it on Frankie like he did last time? Would he have gotten the finish? Would he be champion today?

There’s no way to know, but you can rest assured that such thoughts will fill Gray Maynard’s head while he tries to climb the lightweight ladder once again. And woe be unto the next guy that he has in trouble, because you can expect him to finish with a fury the likes of which few men can withstand.

That was his lesson in Houston.

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UFC 136: Jose Aldo Ready To Defend His Gold Against Veteran Florian

When he left World Extreme Cagefighting as its final featherweight champion, many expected Jose Aldo (19-1) to be the first man not named Urijah Faber to come from the promotion and gain mainstream success in the UFC.His dynamic striking, engaging pers…

His dynamic striking, engaging personality and seeming invincibility in the 145lbs. realm provided the fuel, all he had to do was put it together.

Booked to fight on New Year’s Day 2011, Aldo had to pull out of his first defense of the newly-created UFC featherweight title due to injury. He was re-booked to defend against Mark Hominick at UFC 129 in Toronto, where the biggest crowd in North American MMA history saw what he was all about.

A five round war against the home favourite Hominick ensued, a memorable scrap that had Rogers Centre bouncing and made both combatants $129,000 richer as a result of matching ‘Fight of the Night’ bonuses.

“It couldn’t have been a much better night. Fighting in the UFC for the first time and defending my title for the first time was great.”

Now, in his second defense—another that was rescheduled due to injury—Aldo will see veteran contender Kenny Florian across the cage. Florian, a longtime staple of the UFC, dropped to featherweight after two failed attempts to win gold at lightweight.

Aldo has great respect for the challenger, and doesn’t take offense to a notion many have that Florian is moving down solely to take his title away.

“It’s a natural transition for Kenny, a lot of guys move up and down in weight. I’m focused on my training, I respect Kenny, I don’t take it personally.”

For Florian, the fight is a chance at cementing his legacy as a champion, instead of the best bridesmaid the UFC has ever seen. Aldo has a legacy of his own to protect, seen by many as a top pound-for-pounder and a man who could reign atop the division for as long as he sees fit.

However, after a video of Aldo’s battle with cutting weight for the Hominick fight recently surfaced online, the possibility that he may elect to compete at a higher weight class seems to be growing more realistic.

“Since I started training martial arts, going back to my jiu-jitsu days, I’ve always been cutting a lot of weight. I’m comfortable now at 25 years old cutting that weight, but there may come a time when I’m older that I have to look at going to lightweight. Right now though, I’m okay cutting the weight. Before [UFC 129] we were working on putting on muscle mass, that might have been why that weight cut was a little bit more.”

Regardless of where his future lies and what his plans are, the violent Brazilian has one task at hand at the moment, that of a very crafty, very talented veteran on October 8. Kenny Florian is no joke for anyone, and Aldo knows what he’s up against.

“I’ve fought taller guys, guys with longer reach. All I can do is expect to impose my gameplan and win the fight.”

The talking is done. All that’s left is to lock the cage door and see which man is better. The champion believes it’s him, and he’ll look to prove it at UFC 136.

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UFC on Versus 6: Is Charlie Brenneman a Dark Horse at Welterweight?

Nothing satisfies me more than seeing a hype train derailed. Guys that lack in a given area of MMA, be it certain skills or charisma or whatever else have you, that go into a fight they should win only to be exposed and knocked off their perch. In June…

In June, Charlie Brenneman made a fan out of me be derailing one of the more obnoxious hype trains in recent memory, that of the insufferable Rick Story. The result for the man they call “The Spaniard,” is that he gets a chance to move up the ladder a little further in a tilt with Anthony “Rumble” Johnson.

Going into this weekend, that has left the question in many people’s minds: Is Charlie Brenneman a dark-horse contender in the welterweight division?

The answer, however, isn’t simple. It’s equal parts yes and no, in fact.

Yes, he’s a dark horse. No, he’s not a contender. Yet.

One win does not a career make, especially one over someone who—like it or not—was oversold and relatively unproven in Story.

Sure, he’d racked up some wins, but until he beat Thiago Alves, Story was just another name on the long list of good wrestlers with improving standup that have littered MMA in recent years. He lacked the cache of a signature win, usually beating grinders on prelims.

Brenneman outed Story as a work in progress, and basically stole his hype and excitement. The only problem is that Brenneman himself is more or less in the same mold as Story, though possibly not even as far along in his development.

Charlie is a great wrestler—that’s how he came in and beat Story on short notice. However, his hands are lacking big time and without a legitimate striking attack he’ll have a hard time moving upward in one of the toughest divisions in the sport. He’ll ride out plenty of decisions, but he’ll never sell himself as a serious threat to the best in the world without more diversity in the cage.

Which leads him to a big problem on Saturday night.

Johnson is a mountain of a man. His problems getting to 170 come weigh-in day have been well-documented, and he often tips the scales at 230 when not in training. He has great wrestling, and also what Brenneman has shown to lack at this stage in his career: numbing power in his striking.

That’s likely to give Brenneman fits, as he’ll have trouble taking the bigger man down and won’t be able to compete on the feet unless something has changed drastically since his appearance in June. I’m betting not much has.

And so exists the crossroads for The Spaniard. With the biggest win of his life over Story, he stole all that hype and propelled himself into big fights and, in some eyes, top-10 ranking in the welterweight class.

Unfortunately, that one win has pushed him too far, too fast and into fights that he’s not yet ready for. Where Story was a good matchup for him, he was also the easiest guy Charlie could hope to fight to gain credibility at this point in time.

So yes, Charlie Brenneman is a dark horse. He can wrestle, has good submission defense, and is tough. Those tools are often enough to beat lesser guys, and sometimes guys you have no business beating, most likely on the scorecards.

However, his greenness and lack of striking will keep him out of the title picture for now, which is the “no” side of the equation answering the question above.

Then again, in June we were all saying the same thing about the guy and look what happened. Rumble should probably be mindful, just in case.

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