Junior dos Santos made his name with his boxing. Fast hands, shifty feet and power to burn brought him to the top before everything suddenly began unraveling.
Then, three losses in five fights seemed to signal a shockingly quick end. Dos Santos, after all, wasn’t just losing, but showing holes that had not previously existed. From being taken down repeatedly to being battered and then finished twice, dos Santos suffered significant and sustained damage, making a return to form unreasonable at best, unlikely at worst.
We should have known better. We should have known the man who has walked out to the “Rocky” theme song his entire career would have at least one comeback story in him, that he would make another run to the top.
The former UFC heavyweight champion is a legit contender again. That is for sure after he pulverized Ben Rothwell for five full rounds in earning a masterful unanimous-decision victory.
“Write it down, I’m going to be champion again,” he told Fox Sports backstage reporter John Gooden after the UFC Fight Night headliner held in Zagreb, Croatia.
Practically left behind on the scrap heap a few months ago after being knocked out by Alistair Overeem, dos Santos is indeed right back in the confusing mix at the top. Currently ranked at No. 5, he’ll no doubt move up a least one slot ahead of Rothwell. And with a victory over reigning champ Fabricio Werdum, a rematch is an easy storyline sell for the UFC in the future.
With Overeem, Stipe Miocic and Cain Velasquez ahead of him in the current pecking order, dos Santos will probably need to win at least one more time to get another crack at the belt, but he’s set himself up about as well as he can.
Werdum and Miocic will square off for the belt in May, Overeem has Andrei Arlovski lined up on May 8 and Velasquez has a July bout with Travis Browne.
Any combination of chaos among that group can vault dos Santos to the front of the line.
But that is for the future.
While dos Santos needs a few things to break in his favor, he handled his own business with deft. The performance was vintage, showing off the benefits of reuniting with his longtime coach Luiz Dorea, a preacher of body battering. Dos Santos showed intelligence, timing and variety, bombarding Rothwell from all angles.
Due to small gloves, fighters tend to become headhunters and dos Santos was no different after his early UFC success, falling in love with his power. On Sunday in Zagreb, he bucked that trend to great effect. According to FightMetric stats, a full 40 percent of his strikes targeted the body, a number significantly higher than the MMA norm. By comparison, Rothwell tried just 6 percent of his strikes to the body.
What fighters tend to forget is how much more accurate body strikes are. Dos Santos, for instance, landed 92 of his 100 body strikes thrown.
“It’s always good to go to the body, especially when fighting a huge guy like him,” he said in the post-fight press conference. “You can’t collide with those guys so I used my footwork, threw some hard jabs and punches. It worked well, and thank God I won.”
The body-striking style doesn’t just score points; it also plays the dual role of slowing down an opponent, as it did to Rothwell, making him tentative and putting dos Santos in the driver’s seat for most of the way.
The first round was the most competitive, but as the volume piled up dos Santos began to separate himself from Rothwell, effectively circling on the outside and beating Rothwell to the punch (or kick) time and again. Jabs, crosses, uppercuts, he had them working on multiple planes, forcing Rothwell to repeatedly change his sight lines. As a result, Rothwell connected on just 36 percent of his strikes.
“I can’t go away from boxing,” dos Santos said in the post-fight press conference. “I have to know jiu-jitsu and wrestling but I’m a boxing guy. I have to keep it there. I’m more confident. I’m feeling good. At this time now we’re putting everything in the right place and that’s why I’m saying I’m going to be champion again, and it’s not going to take too long.”
While the moment was transcendent for dos Santos, it was a monumental disappointment for Rothwell, a 15-year veteran who has scraped and clawed his way towards contender status, winning four in a row before Sunday, capped by a shocking submission victory over Josh Barnett.
Rothwell seemed to be on the verge of a title shot, but he was never able to get on track with his offense and even after falling behind, he did not display urgency, although he was undoubtedly slowed by all of dos Santos’ offense. Rothwell was sent to the hospital for observation following the bout.
That is the parity of the heavyweight division. Dos Santos has losses to Overeem and Velasquez, but he’s beaten both Werdum and Miocic. Overeem beat dos Santos but lost to Rothwell. Miocic hasn’t beaten anyone in the top five but is fighting for the belt. Velasquez? He has a hard enough time staying healthy.
It’s a bit like chaos, and in this madness, of what can we be sure? Not much, as it turns out. Just when it looked like dos Santos was done, he’s right back in the mix.
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