(“Don’t worry, Junior! I can see him growing weaker with every punch! Three more rounds of this and he’ll be all yours!” / Photo via Getty Images)
We hate to even say this because he’s such a nice guy and all, but the beating Junior Dos Santos took at UFC 155 may have been the most deflating, one-sided ass-kicking in the history of UFC heavyweight title fights (other than the time that senior citizen beat the tar out Fatty McGoo, of course) and is being labeled as such by many MMA pundits out there. As one of you pointed out in our salary recap, Junior’s face mirrored one of those faces of meth posters over the course of the five round affair, yet the sumbitch still posed for photos afterwards.
As you can probably tell by now, my New Year’s resolution was to use more hyperlinks. SUCK IT, TOUCH PHONE USERS!
Aaanyway, Junior couldn’t even make it to the hospital before he was bombarded by SporTV, who thought the best time to ask a professional fighter strategy-based questions was while he was determining how much blood he had lost just hours earlier. You know, kind of like how CNN often waits until a soldier in Iraq steps on a landmine to drill him on the ins and outs of The Pincer Movement. Junior’s broken English response was as you would expect:
It (he) was better and deserved to win, but I used the wrong strategy. I was very worried about his entry in my legs and left face unprotected. So he hit me. When I was on the floor, I should have used more jiu-jitsu, I trained so much. But I tried to (get) back up, and it hurt me too, but on the ground it (he) is very good, very strong. I did not connect any punches good, even. It was bad because I was feeling very well, did a great training camp, everything was just right. But the fight is (over) anyway.
Ahh, the modern marvel that is Google Translate. If you were to read that statement on its own, it would sound like the woeful tale of Monica Belluci’s character in Irreversible, but thanks to fabulous, space age technology, the man labeled as simply “Gypsy” was able to offer such eloquent expressions as “I had no fracture, I’m just bloated. ’m Beautiful?”
Yes Junior, you are beautiful, no matter what they say. And words can’t bring you down, oh, no. So we won’t bring you down today.
Unfortunately for Junior, the words of Dana White might bring him down a notch or two, as The Baldfather stated in the aftermath of UFC 155 that the Dos Santos/Velasquez rubber match, although intriguing, will not be happening in the foreseeable future:
I think trilogies are always awesome, especially when both these fights went the way that they did. I mean, I want to see the third fight. It will be interesting.
But this isn’t like losing a regular fight. He got beat up pretty bad. It usually takes a little longer to recover from what he went through.
Honestly, it’s hard to disagree with White here. Velasquez was the victim of a one-shot KO in the pair’s first meeting — one that came after a ridiculous slew of injuries — and he still had to destroy something…uh…what’s the word I’m looking for here…well, he had to beat down Antonio Silva before he got his rematch. To assume that Dos Santos would receive an immediate rematch after being thrashed for five straight rounds would be preposterous to say the least. Then again, crazier things have happened.
And speaking of Antonio Silva, it appears as if the UFC has zero confidence that he will be able to get past Alistair Overeem at UFC 156, as Overeem is already being billed as the next challenger to Velasquez’s newly regained throne. That is of course until Alistair tests positive for horsewhatever in the pre-fight drug test, in turn leading Dana White to go on an epic rant about “that fucking sport killer Keith Kizer.”
Oh, MMA in 2013, please tell us that you’ll be different than you were in 2012. Because unlike Chris Leben, I can’t just mock you on Twitter while silently masking how depressing your plight has truly become.