At this point, the narrative on Donald Cerrone is that there is no narrative.
Honestly, it’s getting to the point where there just isn’t a lot left to say about the guy.
Cerrone did his “Cowboy” thing again on Sunday at UFC Fight Night 59, showing up on impossibly short notice to eke out a close but unanimous-decision win over his friend and frequent foe, Benson Henderson.
“Ben is one hell of a guy,” the ever-honest, ever-plainspoken Cerrone told UFC color commentator Joe Rogan in the cage when it was over. “Fighting him on short notice, he’s a stud man. My hat’s off to him.”
Even the most casual observers must be well-versed in Cerrone’s story by now. He’s been one of the UFC’s most engaging personalities over the last 14 months, and if you tuned in to any of the fight company’s events during that time, there was a good chance you saw him fight.
Cerrone is the guy who lives fast and competes with a frequency previously only seen in movie montages. He swills beer, swears like a sailor and, for this bout, drove an RV from Albuquerque, New Mexico to Boston to take on Henderson on just 15 days’ rest.
Perhaps better than any other fighter, he embodies the “anyone, anytime, anywhere” spirit the UFC has tried so hard to make synonymous with its modern product.
Yet Cerrone’s incredible gameness makes him a hard figure to reckon with in the current UFC landscape. It’s almost as if he’s fought himself right out of context in the lightweight division. He has become his own story, and it feels as if he exists independently of the lightweight title picture.
Most of the tired and trite ways we talk about fighting in 2015—in terms of momentum, rankings and being “in the mix”—just don’t apply to him.
We love him for it, but it also casts him as a man on an island.
This fight marked Cerrone’s seventh Octagon appearance dating back to Nov. 2013—all of them wins—his third career bout against Henderson and his 17th overall in the UFC. The turnaround between the Henderson fight and Cerrone’s decision victory over Myles Jury at UFC 182 on Jan. 3 was the fourth-fastest in UFC history, according to MMA Junkie’s Mike Bohn.
For any other 31-year-old lightweight with such prodigious stats, it would be a title shot or bust—but we already know Cerrone’s not getting the next shot at champion Anthony Pettis.
Barring injury, that honor will fall to Rafael dos Anjos at UFC 185 in March.
Assuming Pettis wins and stays healthy, it would likely be mid-to-late summer before the champion is ready to go again. By then, there’s no telling how many times Cerrone may have fought or what his official standing will be in the division.
He gives some lip service to one day becoming champion, but in practice it’s clear he doesn’t really care. Cerrone just wants to fight as often as possible, collect six-figure checks to support his wild lifestyle and see how many beers he can drink before the post-fight press conference begins.
With that in mind, it’s hard to put his victory over Henderson in any meaningful perspective.
This bout itself wasn’t the 5-star classic many were expecting when Cerrone stepped in for the ailing Eddie Alvarez two weeks ago. It was a good, competitive contest—perhaps the best on the Fight Night 59 main card—but neither man seemed to really crank the volume all the way up.
Cerrone looked sharp in the early going, scoring with crisp punching combinations and a couple of well-timed takedowns as the 15-minute affair progressed.
Henderson, meanwhile, continually worked to the legs with front sidekicks, traditional low kicks and even a few punches to the thigh.
All three rounds were close, but as the fight moved into its final stanza, neither man really forced the issue. Henderson appeared to forge a slight edge in the third period, and when the official decision was announced as a 29-28 sweep for Cerrone, many on social media—including UFC Tonight‘s Karyn Bryant—openly questioned if the ringside officials had made the right call.
“Only the judges know,” Cerrone said to Rogan. “The only thing I can do is fight. Win or lose, I’m here every damn time.”
It was neither a robbery nor a clear-cut win. There were no highlight-reel moments. It was just two top-level professionals engaging in a decent, hard-fought scrap and then vowing to do it again as soon as possible.
“Sign me up for next weekend,” Henderson shouted to the crowd, taking a page out of Cerrone‘s playbook now that he finds himself on the heels of two straight losses for the first time in his career. “Let’s go. Anybody, anytime, anywhere.”
The victory moved the Cowboy past Khabib Nurmagomedov for the longest active win streak in the UFC’s stacked 155-pound division. It snapped his 0-2 skid against Henderson during their previous fights in 2009-10. It helped shovel more coal into the streaking engine that Cerrone has become during the last year.
But the controversial nature of the decision and Cerrone’s own, singular place in the lightweight class make the performance hard to contextualize.
Luckily, Cerrone likely won’t give us time to dwell on it. For better or worse, he’ll be back before we know it.
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