Allow me to get my bias out of the way early: I love Matt Brown.
Since “The Immortal’s” stint on The Ultimate Fighter‘s seventh season, I have been captivated by Brown’s skill set inside the Octagon.
The dude looks like he should be playing bass in a local modern rock cover band, and there is nothing overly athletic or impressive about his fighting style.
Brown finds beauty in the ordinary though, and he always manages to fight better than the sum of his parts.
Put simply, the dude can scrap, and he is competent anywhere a fight may go.
His striking is just slightly above average, his wrestling is positively average, and his offensive jiu-jitsu is fairly impressive. That said, his defensive ground skills are lackluster at best, and Brown has been forced to tap in four of his five UFC losses.
Because he does not have a go-to skill or a home run technique to rely on, he becomes the best kind of fighter to watch: the kind that can (and will) do anything at any time.
Against Mike Swick at UFC on Fox 5, we saw everything that is great about Matt Brown. We saw him take some hard punches in stride, and we saw him land kicks, punches, knees and elbows after absorbing punishment.
When the fight hit the mat, we saw Brown’s aggressive bottom game in full force.
He looked for a D’Arce choke immediately, but eventually gave up on the submission attempt in favor of a triangle. When the triangle failed, Brown then looked for a straight armbar.
Swick, despite being on top, was unable to mount any sort of offense on the ground because he was constantly defending Brown’s attacks.
None of it was flashy, and none of it was overly technical (as evidenced by the fact that he couldn’t finish), but, again, the sum of these attempts got him back to his feet and out of danger.
Honestly, Brown’s brutal knockout of Swick was just the icing on his primetime cake (which I’m sure was plain vanilla with vanilla frosting), as Brown had already proven his worth by avoiding danger against an incredibly dangerous opponent.
While Brown does not possess the athleticism and power of a Rory MacDonald or a single devastating weapon like Johny Hendricks’ H-bomb, he is without question one of the most entertaining 170-pound fighters in the world.
“The Immortal” comes to fight, and after notching his fourth straight UFC win against Mike Swick, it appears he is finally ready for the big stage.
Will he continue his streak of excellence, or will he regress into the body of a fighter who was nearly cut by the organization after losing three straight contests via submission in 2010?
I don’t know.
But I do know Brown will come to fight, he will entertain and he will compete.
What more could you want in a fighter?
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