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Mark Hunt’s mission to Mexico wasn’t ideal; he was traveling 20 hours by plane from his native New Zealand to fight Fabricio Werdum at high altitude on three week’s notice, and he had nearly 40 pounds of weight to cut in the interstices. If there were moments of exaltation in the fight, they came when — under that set of ridiculous circumstances — he nearly pulled off a heist anyway.

As improbable as it was, there were brief instances when Hunt looked primed to become the interim heavyweight champion of the UFC, which felt like a pending rearranging of the cosmos.

Hunt plodded forward and dropped Werdum with his big bashers early in the fight. He shoved him to the ground like a bouncer sorting out a fracas, at one point, and at another torpedoed his 285-pound bulk into Werdum’s guard. Even though it’s been a flytrap for people to follow Werdum to the ground in the past, Hunt managed to not only survive the sequence, but drop some hammers in the process. Hunt got up after that little dalliance in the minefield and resumed his search for Werdum’s jugular.

And he came close. He didn’t win in the end but, just by making the walk –and by making Saturday’s main event at UFC 180 tense with the idea that anything is possible — Hunt did a lot.

Werdum just did more.

Even though Hunt’s been the loveable underdog since coming to the UFC as a throw-in from the Pride deal, his run has been visible and easy to understand (if not fully process). Harder to understand is Werdum’s. He’s the man who continues to go about beating the carnival’s biggest attractions without ever taking on the burden of hype.

Werdum is like Gary Oldman in the movies; he’s so good at what he does that we forget who we’re looking at. He’s the sneakiest “great” fighter going, because he redirects attention. When he was to fight Cain Velasquez, it was all about Velasquez and the foray into Mexico. When Velasquez became Hunt, it became about Hunt as a kind of Samoan Cinderella.

Yet as we fixate on Hunt being a Cinderella it’s important to remember that Werdum — Mr. Shadow Puppets On the Wall — shows up to every fight in a coach and horses made from a pumpkin and field mice.

This is a guy who was cut by the UFC for getting starched by Junior dos Santos, but…do you realize that that’s the only legitimate loss he’s really suffered in over seven years? The loss to Alistair Overeem in Strikeforce felt more like a divide in perception than it did a true scorecard. Even for the judges it was hard to fathom that Werdum was actually beating Overeem on the feet with all that excessive pleading he was doing for “The Reem” to join him on the ground (very unbecoming).

The scorecards read like this: Texas doesn’t award victories to mendicants.

I can remember when Werdum was fighting Brandon Vera, and Vera felt like the 800-pound gorilla in the match-up. After the Brazilian somewhat unceremoniously beat him via first round TKO, Vera would say he slept with Werdum under his pillow at night, waiting for a chance to redeem himself. That chance never came.

Werdum was a 6-to-1 underdog against Fedor Emelianenko, really just a warm body to keep the Russian busy as he neared the horizon. Yet Werdum became the first man to defeat him in 10 years. It remains one of the single greatest jaw-dropping moments in MMA history. I can still hear Werdum and his team singing like lunatics backstage at the HP Pavilion in San Jose, just as easily as I can hear the word “fluke” that played down the chorus line afterwards.

Upsetting narratives is what Werdum does very well.

And he did it again to the feel good story of Mark Hunt on Saturday night.

It’s true that Werdum had the odds stacked in his favor against Hunt, since he had been acclimated to Mexico City’s altitude for an extended period of time. He was training for Velasquez, a 25-minute assault bull like the heavyweight division has never known, so he was in great shape. But it was still a change that he had to cope with. Hunt’s one-punch power was going to show up in force early, with the idea/promise that he may fade late. Werdum’s best chance was to either get the fight to the ground and submit Hunt, or to drag the thing into the later rounds, where Hunt would slowly extinguish.

So what did Werdum do? Hit him with a lunging knee in the second round, just when it felt like Hunt had the upper hand. Werdum, once again, surreptitiously beat somebody at their own game. Just like he beat Roy Nelson on the feet, and Travis Browne, and Mike Russow. His ground game is real; but it’s not necessary.

No, the greatest trick Werdum plays is staying just below our hype point. He’s good at other things, too, things like blending into the environs — by the time he stepped into the cage with Hunt, he’d long become a product of Mexico. There were corridos being penned about him and his long ride through the Oaxaca hills, and the crowd on fight night backed him as their own — but sneaking up on people in the cage is as much of a talent as the talent itself.

That’s what made the fight with Velasquez fun to think about, and it’s what makes it fun to rethink as they set it up again. Werdum is sneaky good. He’s a smart fighter. He has more than a single trick up his sleeve. He can sort of play along and then, just when you least expect it, spring a knee on Hunt or a triangle-armbar on Fedor, and kick the needle off the record.

He’s very good at making it feel as though he’s overachieving, but the more you watch him, the more you realize it’s not that at all. He’s simply achieving more than we’ve caught up with in accepting. If he unifies the belt against Velasquez in the spring, jaws will drop afresh. How is that possible for a guy who has won five in a row, all of them convincingly?

(Shhh. Because, brother, don’t be fooled by the goofy faces he makes. He likes the element of surprise. And even though it won’t show up on the Tale of the Tape, Werdum is the stealthiest spoiler in the game).

SAN DIEGO – The fans at the Valley View Casino Center on Saturday night apparently forgot that they were supposed to hate the Tito Ortiz vs. Stephan Bonnar fight.

While commenters on Twitter went out of the way to one-up one another in trash-talking the main event of Bellator 131 – and they may have had a point with Bonnar’s performance – in Southern California, the assembled had a party, turning the clock back to the days when their corner of the world reigned supreme.

From the moment Ortiz staged a vintage walkout down the new stage-and-ramp layout (more on that later), a crowd full of Punishment Athletics-clad fans treated the evening like a homecoming for the Huntington Beach native, a recognition of one of their own.

Was it MMA competition at its finest? Hell no. Ortiz doesn’t have much left to give as a fighter, but to his credit, he took his training seriously, and whatever he still has, he left in the cage. As for Bonnar, well, he looked like someone who not only wrote a check his ass couldn’t cash, but perhaps also one he intended on bouncing from the get-go.

But that’s beside the point. Bellator 131 was Scott Coker’s big rollout show, his chance to finally put a stamp on the company he was hired over the summer to run. While I can’t judge how it came off on television, at cageside, it felt like we we took a time-machine ride back to something that’s been missing since about 2010.

The evening wasn’t a straight clone of early Strikeforce days. But the card felt like an event. The people in the arena were emotionally invested in the fights. The marked increase in the quality of the arena presentation made fighters from Ortiz down to Joe Vedepo seem like a big deal. There were well-written vignettes shown on the big screen to explain the story behind the fights.

It was part Strikeforce, part PRIDE, part Affliction, and maybe even a dash of Elite XC. But it was most notable for what it wasn’t: The old Bellator. The Latin warrior on the logo was a joyless one. Bellator’s machine went through the motions week to week, cranking out an endless assembly line of tournaments. Even fans who desperately wanted to rally around an alternative to the UFC couldn’t bring themselves to get emotionally invested in the old Bellator.

Saturday, it became clear Bellator is finally free of the constraints which kept the company from building fighters in a manner fans cared about. There was a little bit of everything last night. The hardcore fan had the rematch between Will Brooks and Michael Chandler, which went four grueling rounds before a bizarre finish. Fans who like fireworks for their own sake got them in the form of Joe Schilling’s thrilling rally and brutal knockout of Melvin Manhoef. “King Mo” Lawal and Mike Richman both had solid showcase victories which push them forward in their respective divisions.

There was something for everyone. In other words, it was a well-booked Scott Coker show.

Under the old system, well, let’s use Brooks, now the undisputed Bellator lightweight champion, as an example. Brooks would have needed to sit out an extended period while the next lightweight tournament played out. Assuming whomever won that tournament emerged unscathed, you’re looking at long period of time before Brooks would return to the spotlight, and by the time he returned, not only would he have lost the momentum from last night, but fans likely wouldn’t know much about his challenger, either, since the tourneys became such a blur. While it’s still going to take time to build contenders, at least a fighter like Brooks will no longer be stymied by the self-imposed limitations of the old system.

On the flipside, there’s Chandler, who has been on the wrong end of three consecutive grueling championship fights, the sort which take years off fighters’ careers. Under the old system, Chandler would be casually tossed back into the meat grinder. Under Coker’s watch, Chandler will likely get the opportunity to take a step back and rebuild.

Which brings us back to Ortiz and Bonnar. Current revisionist history has it that Strikeforce was nothing but outstanding, serious fights, top to bottom. It’s certainly true that Strikeforce had more than it’s share of great fights, and their best competitors are only now getting their just due.

But Coker was also never afraid to use sizzle to lure customers into buying the steak. Go down the list: Frank Shamrock vs. Cesar Gracie. Shamrock vs. Phil Baroni, which was straight out of pro wrestling. Tank Abbott vs. Paul Buentello as a main event. Bob Sapp headlining and drawing a big crowd in his home state of Washington. Fight cards at the Playboy Mansion. Herschel Walker, a very serious athlete who happened to make his MMA debut at age 47.

Add Tito Ortiz and Stephan Bonnar to that list. Long after the fighters had returned to the locker room, the house lights went up, and the Twitter mockers turned turn their attention elsewhere, a chorus of “Tito! Tito!” ripped through the Valley View Casino Center.

That matters a whole lot more than whether the fight was a masterpiece. If Bellator keeps putting on total-package shows like the one which went down in San Diego, then fans will once again have a legitimate choice of MMA brands to choose from, offering distinct products. And that’s a good thing.