Getting to the UFC happens in slightly different style for everyone. Some fighters get months notice between their signing and their first fight, others get days. Some get to ease in with a similarly skilled opponent, others get a title challenger in need of a tune-up.
Sometimes you eat the bear, sometimes the bear eats you. I’m not entirely convinced this is a bad decision, but I think it’d be flat out impossible to call it a good one either. When Tony Ferguson got hurt just two weeks out from his planned headlining fight against top lightweight contender Khabib Nurmagomedov at UFC on Fox 19, the UFC went into scramble mode. Most of the top lightweights were already booked, or injured. Donald Cerrone, now at welterweight and scheduled to fight Patrick Cote later this spring, stepped forward for the opportunity, but nothing doing. It seems the UFC decided that if they needed a late notice lightweight to keep Khabib fighting on April 16th, they might as well go out and get a new face to do the job. Darrell Horcher is that new face. Fox Sports first reported the news. So…
Who is Darrell Horcher?
The 28-year-old “Saint” is a Pennsylvania native training out of Unrivaled Athletics in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. It looks like a pretty small fight team, from which Horcher is the first notable product. Horcher has also spent time training at Team Curran in Illinois alongside Pat and Jeff Curran. He’ll be stepping into the Octagon with a 12-1 record and the CFFC lightweight title around his waist. He’s currently riding a five fight win streak with victories over strong regional fighters Alex Ricci, Jordan Stiner, and Stephen Regman. Horcher also had a 3 fight streak in Bellator where he went 2-1, ending in his only pro loss, to Phillipe Nover. Outside of MMA, Horcher has some background in wrestling at the high school level.
What you should expect:
Horcher’s got a bit of the Justin Gaethje approach in him. He really likes to square up with people and put as many hands on them as possible, as hard as possible, as often as possible. He’s not much of a defensive wizard in that mode, tending to keep his head up and on-line, but it’s very much an “offense is defense” approach. He hits hard enough and often enough that if you’re going to try and hit him back you’re going to eat a lot of leather to do it. The thing that makes a lot of his style very successful is that he’s a very good counter-puncher. So while he made drop 3 or 4 hard shots on you at a time, the first one is most likely as a response to you trying to hit him.
He’s got decent enough takedown defense, at least against first shot attempts, but considering his aggression and his willingness to square up in front of opponents, he seems primed to get caught by reactive power doubles. In general, however, he’s got a very solid action oriented style that should serve him well in the UFC.
What this means for his debut:
That thing I said above about his style being open to reactive power double legs? That probably plays absolute hell for him against Nurmagomedov. Honestly, there are a lot of good fighters in the lightweight division that I think Horcher could have a real shot to stop. He’ll probably need to work on his defense to really rise up the ranks, but as a southpaw with power, he’ll make a lot of people uneasy in the cage. Khabib just isn’t one of them. I expect that this will be a classic 15 minute wall-n-maul from the Dagestani with Khabib pinning Horcher in the crease between the mat and the cage and working him over there.
It’s not that recent, but here’s Horcher’s quick KO of EJ Brooks in Bellator to get us better acquainted. His style is still a lot like this: