In October 2013, UFC heavyweight Cain Velasquez dispatched his greatest rival with disturbing ease. Junior dos Santos, the second-best heavyweight in the world, didn’t even come close to giving the champ a fight.
With contemporary challengers looking both helpless and hapless, attention turned to Velasquez’s place in the sport’s history. It was clear he stood alone among his peers. What about the likes of Fedor Emelianenko and Randy Couture?
While it was fun to ponder, a funny thing happened on the way to the UFC Hall of Fame. Since that fateful night in Houston, Velasquez hasn’t stepped into the cage a single time, slowed by a rotator cuff injury and knee surgery. His bout against Fabricio Werdum on Saturday will be his first in nearly 20 months.
No opponent could touch him—it took Velasquez’s brittle body betraying him to prompt change in the heavyweight class. While Velasquez was on the mend, the promotion crowned Werdum its interim champion, a downgrade both athletically and promotionally.
Losing his heavyweight champion, not to mention his bridge to the lucrative Mexican market, incensed UFC president Dana White, who lashed out at Velasquez’s trainers at the famed American Kickboxing Academy in San Jose, California.
“Some of the camps are still in the stone ages and need to be brought up to date,” White told Ireland’s Setanta Sports. “AKA is one of those places. You’ve got Cain Velasquez, our heavyweight champion, who’s always hurt. Those guys go to war every day.”
While I don’t often agree with White’s bombastic brand of hyperbole, he may be on to something with Velasquez. It’s hard to point the finger at anything specific the camp or champ are doing wrong, but there’s no doubt Cain’s career has been snake bit.
In nine years as a professional, he’s made his way to the cage just 14 times.
Velasquez discussed this with Shaun Al-Shatti of MMAFighting.com:
When I train, I train well. I think if something’s wrong with me, I just kinda work through it. That’s my mentality. If something hurts or something is injured, I think my pain tolerance is pretty high to where, it’s pretty bad where I might need surgery, but I’ll just kind of work through it. So, you know, again it’s part of the sport. We all go through it. I might’ve gone through it more than most, but I’m going to keep doing it.
While there’s something admirable about that kind of stubborn courage, it’s also an indicator that Velasquez may not have a long career to look forward to. In fact, already 32, his best years may actually be behind him.
UFC 188 will be a referendum on where Velasquez currently stands in a division he’s had very little interaction with. Velasquez has only fought two members of the heavyweight top 10. When last we saw him, Velasquez was an unstoppable buzz saw, moving forward face first like Rocky Balboa, initiating a clinch and then making his opponents work at a pace against the cage very few heavyweights are capable of maintaining.
The result wasn’t always aesthetically pleasing, but it was as effective as any style we’ve ever seen in the Octagon. In fact, the only time he’s fallen short, in his first bout with Dos Santos, Velasquez was coming off of a long layoff due to injury.
Sound familiar?
That, more than his improved stand-up and stellar ground game, is Werdum’s best hope to score an upset. The old Velasquez was more than capable of grounding him into hamburger—we’ll see the new Velasquez for the first time together Saturday night.
Jonathan Snowden covers combat sports for Bleacher Report.
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