For Yoel Romero, perhaps the trick will be avoiding any further episodes of foot-in-mouth disease just long enough for him to fight for the middleweight title.
A few days removed from his stunning third-round TKO win over Lyoto Machida at UFC Fight Night 70, most of the headlines about Romero are still fixated on the fighter’s bizarre postfight comments, rather than his actual performance in the cage.
That must be disappointing for Romero. He turned in the most complete and impressive showing of his career on Saturday, walking through Machida’s kicks to his legs and body, landing his own punches with shocking regularity and finishing the fight mere seconds after dropping Machida with a beautiful takedown in the early stages of the final stanza.
Then again, what do you expect? You can’t use your mic time on live TV to deliver an incomprehensible diatribe aimed—probably, maybe—at the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent legalization of gay marriage without expecting it to completely overshadow the biggest victory of your life.
Even though the full, true meaning of Romero’s words will likely never be known, he came to the postfight press conference ready to apologize and to say he had been misunderstood. The fire of controversy still swirled around him, however, even after the following non sequitur “clarification” had been delivered:
God made man to be free. Anybody could do whatever they want. I wouldn’t be the type of person to critique anybody. I gotta look at myself first. Be a better person. To be able to love people. I didn’t refer to anybody. What I was trying to say, the United States, thank you for giving me the American Dream. There’s no better country than this because it is blessed by God.
Yeah, sorry, Yoel, that’s not what you were saying. Not even close.
Yet if we can divorce the 38-year-old Solider of God from this one ugly PR gaffe, we have no choice but to admit he came away from the Machida fight looking like the contender to beat in the 185-pound division. With champion Chris Weidman already slated to take on Luke Rockhold later this year, Romero doesn’t just seem like a likely candidate to face the winner—he suddenly seems like a real threat to win the title.
Romero’s athletic prowess and fight-ending power have never been in doubt. Since he arrived in the UFC in 2013—sporting the physique of a Greek god, even into his late 30s—he’s always been regarded as a guy with near unlimited potential.
His unconventional style makes him tough to prepare for, as he effortlessly shifts gears from measured—almost lackadaisical—to deadly in a split second. At times, it’s almost as if he lures his opponents into a false sense of security, lulling them into believing they have his timing and skill set scouted before he suddenly explodes with jaw-dropping power.
Up to this point, however, he’s also very much been a work in progress.
By turns, Romero has looked like a completely unmolded lump of clay. One of the things that made his 5-0 start in the UFC so remarkable, in fact, was that he frequently looked like he had no idea what he was doing out there. Every now and then, it seemed he was just making it up as he went.
Entering the Octagon at such an advanced age for an athlete, perhaps the biggest worry about the Olympic silver medalist in wrestling was that he’d never put his MMA skills together before he aged out of the sport.
That concern was completely alleviated on Saturday.
At least from bell to bell, Romero’s quirkiness had mostly been reined in against Machida. Without warning, he has apparently matured from dangerous greenhorn into fully formed mixed martial artist. The awkward, uncertain moments that so often plagued his earlier UFC outings were gone. When his unorthodox offense did materialize, it was in the form of a lethal flying knee and superman punch off the cage near the end of the first round.
He never really looked lost or out of control. Instead, he stalked Machida around the cage from his southpaw stance, looking surprisingly adept at finding a home for his power strikes. To think that Romero was that composed and that dangerous against a guy like Machida—a dude whose entire UFC career has been based on elusiveness and counterstriking—was, in a word, frightening.
If Romero has abruptly taken his MMA game to expert levels, well, that’s bad news for the rest of the middleweight division. Previous to this, about the only thing you could fault the guy for was inexperience.
Admittedly, Machida didn’t exactly come into the bout on a roll. The loss dropped him to 1-3 in his last four UFC appearances, though aside from Romero those defeats came at the hands of Weidman and Rockhold. He may not quite be the fearsome Dragon of old, but he also didn’t look shot during the 11-plus minutes he spent in the cage with Romero.
On the contrary, Machida worked his steady, hide-and-seek offense. If anything, perhaps he was hampered from a quick turnaround from the Rockhold fight on April 18, or by the cozy confines of the UFC’s smaller cage. It just turned out he was no match for Romero.
The underdog fighter ended up stopping Machida via highlight-reel TKO. It should have been a glorious moment for him, but then he jumped on the mic and it all blew up in his face. It was unexpected, but we also shouldn’t be shocked to see a guy like this suddenly go clattering off script.
Part of Romero’s appeal has also always been that he’s sort of a loose cannon, after all. Just look at his immediate reaction to defeating Machida, prior to the interview: Romero—for lack of a technical term—freaked. His face ran the gamut of emotion as he jogged around the cage, looking for people to celebrate with or yell stuff at. He jumped up on the cage and stayed there until a member of the Florida Athletic Commission grabbed his hand to pull him off.
As the official result was announced, Romero—now sporting a white John 3:16 headband—put his head on referee John McCarthy’s shoulder, apparently looking for a little bit of mid-cage snuggle time.
It’s been clear for a while now that we aren’t dealing with a normal person here.
Now, it’s suddenly very clear that we’re also dealing with an elite fighter.
Romero has been scheduled to hook up with Jacare Souza at various times this year, but so far the fight has not come together. Considering Weidman’s date with Rockhold, it’s a good bet UFC matchmakers take another shot at making that fight. If Romero can win it—and prevent himself from going off the rails in interviews from here on out—it will be hard to keep him from a title shot.
For what it’s worth, it seems as though he won’t lose too much political capital with his bosses for last weekend’s odd postfight outburst. UFC President Dana White told MMA Fighting.com’s Ariel Helwani that Romero’s comments “weren’t controversial at all” but also made it sound like the fighter better watch his mouth from here out.
“You just won the biggest fight of your career,” White said. “America doesn’t want to hear your thoughts on Jesus. Keep that stuff at home—religion, politics, all that stuff. When you’re out there fighting and you’re being interviewed, they want to hear about the fight.”
Seems like fairly good advice for guy who has suddenly found his very formidable legs inside the cage but is still struggling to make his way outside it.
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