All right, all right, let’s all just relax now. Come on, deep breaths.
Yes, CM Punk is coming. But there’s no need to freak out. Either his MMA debut will be successful or unsuccessful.
It’s not the only reason to watch UFC 203 when it goes down Saturday from Cleveland, Ohio. In the main event, you have arguably the best MMA story of 2016 in new heavyweight champ and Cavaliers parade leader Stipe Miocic taking on Dutch kickboxer and generally dangerous man Alistair Overeem. Expect some striking exchanges.
In the co-main event, Fabricio Werdum takes on Travis Browne in a battle between a recent former champ (Werdum) and a guy (Browne) who faces his second consecutive recent former champ. He wants to collect the whole set!
The main card airs, as the late Mean Gene Okerlund once said, on a pay-per-view basis. In the interest of helping you find the intrigue—and decide whether to spend your hard-earned entertainment dollar on this slice of face-punching action—here are the four key storylines of UFC 203.
Can Anyone, Anyone at All, Defend the UFC Heavyweight Title?
The recent (and, in all seriousness, unprecedented) title turnover in the ladies’ 135-pound class has been amazing to watch.
The heavyweight division’s been doing it for two decades now.
Title turnover has been de rigueur among our best and heaviest since UFC titles first came into existence in 1997. Since then, 19 men have donned the lineal belt, and only eight successfully defended it. Only Randy Couture has defended the strap more than twice, and it took him three different stints to get there.
No other division has anywhere close to this kind of turnover, no matter how you slice it.
The latest spate started June 2015, when Fabricio Werdum defeated Cain Velasquez for the belt. Velasquez was considered by some to be the best heavyweight in MMA history. Then Werdum took the mantle and was subsequently considered the same. After Werdum lost to Miocic in May, no one knew what to think anymore.
Miocic and his well-tuned boxing game will have a tough challenge in Overeem’s blistering muay thai. If he can pass the test (perhaps using his wrestling?) he’ll instantly be in some rarefied company. If he can’t, well, around goes the carousel.
The Summer of Travis
The story of Travis Browne’s summer vacation doesn’t contain a great deal of surfing. There aren’t a lot of bonfires or moonlit walks in the mix, nor a lot of time kicking back.
Browne’s summer has not been the raddest. Saturday against Fabricio Werdum, it could get even less rad, if you can even picture that.
First, back in July, Velasquez bounced Browne around the cage like a defective soccer ball. The result was a first-round TKO that ended just three seconds before the horn. It could’ve ended even earlier, but why not wring every drop of violence out of the situation first?
Now, Browne, according to betting side Odds Shark, is a significant underdog to Werdum. That’s two former champs and, if the odds are borne out, two losses in a row. Given Werdum’s jiu-jitsu brilliance and underrated striking, it could also be back-to-back stoppage beats.
Don’t cry too much for Browne. This is two consecutive pay-per-view appearances for the big knockout artist, and he got himself a solid win (a TKO of Matt Mitrione) earlier this year.
Browne gained detractors not too long ago when he publicly parted ways with his wife—who accused him of domestic assault—in favor of someone named Ronda Rousey. There’s no doubt those detractors would like to see a dark end to the summer of Travis. Werdum might just oblige them.
The Quietest Fight of Faber’s Career
Can you believe Urijah Faber and CM Punk are the same age? It’s true: both men are 37.
While we’re at it, can you believe Faber is fighting on this card? Do you remember the last time Faber flew this far below the radar?
The former WEC featherweight champ can still fight but appears to pose a lesser threat than he once did to the top contenders. He’s 3-2 in his last five and is a slight underdog to the unheralded but talented Jimmie Rivera. Faber still has the wrestling and grappling chops to hang with Rivera.
At the same time, people seem to understand that Faber’s top days are over and may be reacting accordingly.
That Punk Kid
Mickey Gall is a more than -400 favorite to handle Punk at UFC 203. That’s pretty remarkable, given that Gall is only here because he and his random knockout were in the right place at the right time to reap the spoils of Dana White‘s reality show and an on-paper-super-easy matchup with the aforementioned Punk.
No need to go back over Punk’s pro wrestling career and fledgling MMA pursuits. No need to go over his odd place in UFC history or his lack of bona fides—so lacking he required special permission to even compete.
What is worth repeating is the fact that Punk is, as he has repeatedly said, just taking advantage of an opportunity that came to him. He’s playing that angle to the hilt, embracing the heel role that embraced him so voraciously during his time on the work circuit.
Take, for example, his antagonism of “hack journalists” who reported on his receiving the waiver (Ohio typically requires four amateur bouts before someone can fight professionally; Punk has none).
According to Steven Marrocco and John Morgan of MMA Junkie, Punk said Wednesday:
I don’t know why people care. Like if you’re not me, and you’re not the guy fighting me, why the hell are you so invested? Are we tarnishing the sport where people try to break each other’s faces?
[…]
They’re hack journalists who (expletive) want to stir up a bunch of (expletive) for no reason because they don’t get invited to this.
So, good for Punk. Go make that money and enjoy the fantasy camp. On the end, Gall and his knockout power and athleticism seem plenty capable of ending the experiment on a dime.
Then again, stranger things have happened.
Scott Harris writes about MMA for Bleacher Report. For more, follow Scott on Twitter.
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