Andrei Arlovski used to be a big fish in a small pond.
He was the best heavyweight on a UFC roster that was filled with wheezing barroom brawlers and bulging bellies.
Back then he was a lean, mean fighting machine. Putting him up against some of the combatants of 10 years ago almost seemed unfair. His blend of lethal hands and legitimate grappling chops was the stuff dreams were made of.
Slap in your fanged mouthguard and go to work, Prime Andrei.
That Arlovski won six in a row from 2002-05, including an interim heavyweight title win and a couple of defenses along the way. He was stopping fools left and right, be it with technically marvelous movement and strikes or with the occasional crafty footlock.
He was an athlete in a division and at a time that athletes hadn’t yet arrived. He was the first guy to really show UFC fans what a heavyweight could be: well-rounded, powerful and skillful.
No one knew at the time, but he was a prototype of the men he’d be facing when he returned to the promotion after a hiatus of six years. He was the precursor to the Travis Brownes and Stipe Miocics of the world, the athletic monsters who believed MMA was a better use of their talents than dunking a basketball or whacking a baseball.
That’s why Arlovski’s win at UFC Fight Night 51 is almost irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. Sure it’s nice to have—it might even make him into a contender in the tumultuous heavyweight class—but his legacy goes beyond what happened in a fight few really cared about in a gymnasium in Brazil. He was the first of a generation, a man who was winning when the UFC couldn’t get on television and who’s still winning when you seemingly can’t get the UFC off television.
Arlovski is one of the rare guys who was able to leave the promotion, go make some money on his own terms, then return amicably for a chance to end his career where he should. He’s beloved the world over for his charisma and career-defining showings when the sport was burgeoning, and all that came from his run as the king of the UFC’s big men a decade ago.
For him to peter out in some regional promotion or spend three years getting knocked out by nobodies would have been a shame. To see him back in that pond he patrolled so dutifully years ago, still scoring big wins over big names, offers a symmetry that isn’t often enjoyed in this sport.
Sometimes that’s even better than the outcome itself.
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