Sage Northcutt tasted defeat for the first time in his MMA career on Saturday night in Newark.
That doesn’t make him an exception; it makes him the rule. Even the best fighters in the sport’s history have suffered losses early in their careers, many of them by submission.
Conor McGregor had two such defeats within the first three years of his career, tapping to a kneebar from career journeyman Artemij Sitenkov and then to an arm triangle from the talented Joseph Duffy. The only prior loss of the man he defeated for the featherweight title, Jose Aldo, was a rear-naked choke at the hands of journeyman Luciano Azevedo.
Georges St-Pierre gave in to a Matt Hughes armbar in their first meeting. Anderson Silva dropped a decision to Luiz Azeredo and then tapped to Daiju Takase and Ryo Chonan. Urijah Faber locked in a tight guillotine on a young Dominick Cruz. Benson Henderson fell to an anaconda choke from the otherwise unknown Rocky Johnson.
The list could go on and on and on.
Overconfidence in one’s physical abilities and a lack of familiarity with being in bad spots is the essence of the classic prospect loss. Young fighters are going to lose fights, and a great many of them happen by submission when they run into craftier veterans who can catch them in transitions or wear them down in ways they haven’t run across in training or their limited experience.
Athleticism of the type that elite prospects possess makes that problem worse, not better, since the youngster usually thinks he can simply explode his way out of trouble. It takes a loss to reinforce the importance of technical refinement and learning the correct way to both escape bad positions and how to avoid them in the first place.
None of this is to say that Northcutt will end his career among the all-time greats, but simply to note the commonality of losses of this kind and the reasons behind them.
The difference between Northcutt and those fighters is that his loss happened on national television after an enormous marketing push and generous pay raise from the UFC. Perhaps understandably, his fellow fighters weren’t exactly understanding of the 19-year-old Texan’s plight.
All of this schadenfreude, however, overshadows just how raw Northcutt is.
He has been a professional fighter for just shy of 15 months. At the same stage of his career, Aldo was in the process of getting choked out by Azevedo on the fifth Jungle Fight card. Cruz had yet to debut in the WEC. St-Pierre was still almost a year shy of his first UFC appearance.
Johny Hendricks would first fight in the WEC the next month. Josh Koscheck would shortly debut at The Ultimate Fighter Finale. Rafael dos Anjos was a meager 3-2 and still three years shy of eating a Jeremy Stephens uppercut at UFC 91. Donald Cerrone had just defeated Anthony Njokuani at a regional show. Henderson wouldn’t debut in the WEC for another year.
Only Jon Jones, a true phenom who breaks every possible aging curve, was ahead of where Northcutt is in terms of exposure at such an early stage of his career.
There’s a distinct tendency among fans and media to forget the long, arduous and fitful process of development that forges young fighters into finished products. Constant training, good matchmaking and steady building over the course of years make elite competitors what they are.
There is no sudden “Eureka!” moment in which a flash of light reveals a fully formed championship fighter with no holes in his or her game.
Young fighters aren’t complete. The inherent question with fighters like Northcutt is how long their physical gifts can continue to cover up the obvious skill gaps, and whether they’re matched in such a way as to exploit those gaps.
Bryan Barberena was well suited to do so. Northcutt‘s entire game is built on transitions between striking and wrestling and wrestling and grappling; his more experienced opponent, a product of a gym (the MMA Lab) that teaches those transitions well, consistently shut them down.
Even when Northcutt repeatedly tagged Barberena in a first round he handily won, he failed to fool Barberena with his phase-shifting. The Texan had trouble getting in on his hips after a punching blitz, and the openings to get to the back or find a choke in a scramble that he was used to finding simply weren’t there.
This is a problem for athletic young fighters who depend on the speed of their transitions: They simply don’t have much depth of skill in any individual area, and if you can force them to strike, wrestle or grapple, that shallowness becomes obvious quickly.
The clearest sign of Northcutt‘s inexperience was in the exchanges. A great many young fighters, particularly those blessed with extraordinary speed and power, aren’t all that used to getting hit. As far as they’re concerned, their opponent should back off and give them respect when they come forward. Anthony Pettis, for example, has never really grown out of this.
When their opponents stand their ground and throw back at them, young fighters tend to have two responses: Bite down and throw back harder to prove that they’re not scared, or back off, surprised that their opponent is willing to bang it out.
Northcutt did both at different points in the fight and got himself in trouble both ways. It takes real craft, the kind that only comes from years of training, to stand in front of your opponent and exchange responsibly.
He doesn’t have that yet.
When all of Northcutt‘s transitions failed, and the durable Barberena turned up the pressure and exploited Northcutt‘s inexperience in exchanges on the feet, it was essentially over. Barberena had seen Northcutt‘s speed, power and his entire bag of tricks. Northcutt‘s nonexistent bottom game caught up with him when he ended up on his back and tapped to an arm triangle or Von Flue choke, depending on whom you ask.
Northcutt was bound to lose at some point. This doesn’t mean he won’t reach the sport’s elite, much less that his career is somehow over after a single loss at the tender age of 19. Most fighters don’t reach their actual prime until they’re five or six years into their careers, much less 15 months.
With that said, he does need to make some changes.
First and foremost among them is moving himself to Tristar in Montreal for a full eight- or 12-week training camp. The practice of moving between what’s essentially a local gym in Texas and short stints with world-class coaching and training partners in the form of Firas Zahabi and Tristar isn’t viable over the long term.
He needs to be in a big, well-run gym for months at a time to fix the massive holes in his skill sets. That can’t happen in a couple of weeks of fight-specific training; only day-in, day-out work in a gym surrounded by elite coaching and sparring partners can do that.
If he does so, there’s no reason to think Northcutt won’t become every bit the fighter the UFC thought he could.
The only real difference between Northcutt and everyone is that most young fighters tend to take their early losses in small venues where few eyes are watching or on big-show undercards before the hype machine has gotten to them.
Northcutt will be back, and like those who have gone before him, he’ll be better for the loss.
Patrick Wyman is the Senior MMA Analyst for Bleacher Report and the co-host of the Heavy Hands Podcast, your source for the finer points of face-punching. He can be found on Twitter.
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