The Ultimate Fighting Championship does its part in listening to the fans in order to ensure that some of the most exciting and anticipated matchups come to fruition. Sometimes, however, you just cannot make them all happen.There are always going to be…
The Ultimate Fighting Championship does its part in listening to the fans in order to ensure that some of the most exciting and anticipated matchups come to fruition. Sometimes, however, you just cannot make them all happen.
There are always going to be matchups that are exciting to some fans but not to others. But then there are these matchups. The ones where you say, how did that not happen? Or, how has that not happened yet?
Some of these blockbusters still have a chance to happen but ultimately are probably past their optimal date.
These are the top five UFC fights that never happened.
“So you want to be a fighter?”Dana White’s iconic quote makes fans and fighters alike consider how impossibly difficult it is to compete in the Ultimate Fighting Championship. Cross-training in multiple disciplines and spending most of your time in the…
“So you want to be a fighter?”
Dana White‘s iconic quote makes fans and fighters alike consider how impossibly difficult it is to compete in the Ultimate Fighting Championship. Cross-training in multiple disciplines and spending most of your time in the gym is beyond the limits of normal men and women. Perhaps that is one of the reasons that we look up to successful mixed martial artists.
Today’s article is a celebration of the fighters who go above and beyond the normal UFC schedule. We will look at fighters who fight frequently against hefty competition, and those fighters who are ready to assist Joe Silva in case a scheduled fighter is affected by injury.
In this article, we look at the UFC stars who say they will fight anyone, any time, anywhere…and actually mean it.
UFC 145 competitor Jon Jones earned his spot on this list with his fantastic 2011. One more fighter who is fighting on Saturday night made the list too. Can you guess which one?
Note: For the sake of this article, I only included fighters who are on the active UFC roster.
“I’ve battled drugs and alcohol. I’ve battled with those for my entire life. I’ve had an issue with being addicted to painkillers for years now. I had some issues with my camp and it was almost a cry for help. I knew I was going to get caught and I just didn’t care at the time. I’m extremely embarrassed, I feel like I let down the UFC, but at the same time I think getting caught is probably the best thing to ever happen to me. The UFC has been unbelievable, they sent me to a rehab facility and they really took care of me.”
As Leben tells it, he had hoped to go cold-turkey off the painkillers before the fight, but his addiction was too powerful:
“I’ve battled drugs and alcohol. I’ve battled with those for my entire life. I’ve had an issue with being addicted to painkillers for years now. I had some issues with my camp and it was almost a cry for help. I knew I was going to get caught and I just didn’t care at the time. I’m extremely embarrassed, I feel like I let down the UFC, but at the same time I think getting caught is probably the best thing to ever happen to me. The UFC has been unbelievable, they sent me to a rehab facility and they really took care of me.”
As Leben tells it, he had hoped to go cold-turkey off the painkillers before the fight, but his addiction was too powerful:
“My wife had brought them to me for after the fight, and I had tapered off them for the fight, but there were some issues, a lot of stress, and I cracked. It was as simple as that. I knew they were there and I cracked. I couldn’t hold out.”
Leben says he hasn’t taken a pain pill since he got out of rehab, though he did have a brief relapse with alcohol, and is now taking Antabuse to help him stay on track. Leben now says that his life is “going really good, better than it has in a long, long time,” and that he hopes he’ll make a return to the Octagon late this year.
The question is, how long will these good times last? Can Leben make it through the rest of his career without succumbing to his old habits? While his painkiller bust might have been “the best thing to ever happen” to him, catching another suspension this late in his fighting career would be devastating, and possibly career-ending.
Before his fight against Munoz, we tried to ask Leben if he’d learned anything from his previous struggles with addiction, and he kind of jumped down our throat. It was clearly a sore subject, which makes more sense now that we know he was still very much in the grips of addiction at the time. That’s something he’ll have to struggle with the rest of his life, and hopefully it’s a fight he can win.
(Step 1. Absorb EVERY kick, Step 2. ??????, Step 3. Profit. Props to the brilliant cine-files over at Pajiba for the inspiration behind this article.)
Mixed martial arts fans are perhaps the most ruthless group of people out there; a quick scroll down any one of our comments sections only confirms this. One minute, a certain fighter is praised as a ruthless, badass hombre cut from the same cloth as the greatest champions the sport has ever known, and the next, they’re being told to save themselves the embarrassment of another performance and just retire already. It’s a crazy sport.
But then there are those few and far between fighters that we choose to rally behind regardless of where they currently stand in the MMA ranking system. Sometimes it’s simply because they can make us laugh, and other times it’s their “go for broke” mentality that wins us over. Sure, they’ve dropped seven of their last eight, including one to a drunken bar patron who accidentally stumbled into the ring, but all of those fights were like totally awesome, bro, so who are we to complain when they are kept around while other, more talented fighters are let go?
Here are eight fighters we will continue to root for, no matter how quickly their performances make us silently wish otherwise.
#8 – Aaron Riley (Even when Riley *doesn’t* lose a fight, he still loses the fight.) Current record: 30-13-1 Record in last five fights: 2-3
Aaron Riley’s nickname could very well be “TUF Fodder,” because the man has fought nothing but The Ultimate Fighter alums, and often winners, for the better part of his UFC career. And it’s a shame, because the dude always brings the fight to these whippersnappers, but simply hasn’t been able to put any of them away. Most recently, he had his jaw broken again by TUF 13 winner Tony Ferguson at UFC 135. Back at UFC 105, he was made into mince meat by TUF 9 winner Ross Pearson. Set to square off against, you guessed it, TUF 12 alum Cody McKenzie, at UFC on FUEL 3 in May, Riley may be looking at his final chance to prove he can hang with these young guns before he is demoted to the Strikeforce roster. Speaking of a certain Alaskan native…
(Step 1. Absorb EVERY kick, Step 2. ??????, Step 3. Profit. Props to the brilliant cine-files over at Pajiba for the inspiration behind this article.)
Mixed martial arts fans are perhaps the most ruthless group of people out there; a quick scroll down any one of our comments sections only confirms this. One minute, a certain fighter is praised as a ruthless, badass hombre cut from the same cloth as the greatest champions the sport has ever known, and the next, they’re being told to save themselves the embarrassment of another performance and just retire already. It’s a crazy sport.
But then there are those few and far between fighters that we choose to rally behind regardless of where they currently stand in the MMA ranking system. Sometimes it’s simply because they can make us laugh, and other times it’s their “go for broke” mentality that wins us over. Sure, they’ve dropped seven of their last eight, including one to a drunken bar patron who accidentally stumbled into the ring, but all of those fights were like totally awesome, bro, so who are we to complain when they are kept around while other, more talented fighters are let go?
Here are eight fighters we will continue to root for, no matter how quickly their performances make us silently wish otherwise.
#8 – Aaron Riley (Even when Riley *doesn’t* lose a fight, he still loses the fight.) Current record: 30-13-1 Record in last five fights: 2-3
Aaron Riley’s nickname could very well be “TUF Fodder,” because the man has fought nothing but The Ultimate Fighter alums, and often winners, for the better part of his UFC career. And it’s a shame, because the dude always brings the fight to these whippersnappers, but simply hasn’t been able to put any of them away. Most recently, he had his jaw broken again by TUF 13 winner Tony Ferguson at UFC 135. Back at UFC 105, he was made into mince meat by TUF 9 winner Ross Pearson. Set to square off against, you guessed it, TUF 12 alum Cody McKenzie, at UFC on FUEL 3 in May, Riley may be looking at his final chance to prove he can hang with these young guns before he is demoted to the Strikeforce roster. Speaking of a certain Alaskan native…
#7 – Cody McKenzie Current record: 12-2 Record in last five fights: 3-2
Don’t let the numbers fool you, Cody McKenzie is in dire straights. Coming off two rear-naked choke losses in a row, the inventor of “The McKenzietine” is in a must win situation against Aaron Riley come May 15th. Some of you may bash the “AK kid” for being a one-trick pony, and you are most certainly right, but let us not forget that this man once made Josh Koscheck eat crow in one of the greatest moments in TUF History. That alone warrants our worship, so here’s hoping McKenzie either finds a way to win against Riley or at least look good enough to get a fourth shot under the Zuffa banner.
#6 – Pat Barry Current record: 7-4 Record in last five fights: 2-3
Pat Barry is one funny motherfucker. This we know. Sure, some of his jokes are a little out of date by internet terms, but the man is undoubtedly an entertainer. He is also 4-4 in the octagon thus far, and has been submitted by Tim Hague and KO’d by Cheick Kongo, the latter of which is nothing to complain about, but still, you get the point. Perhaps it is too early in Barry’s career to truly gauge his success, being that he is relatively new to the whole ground aspect of MMA. And he did show some improvement when he escaped that (poorly applied) armbar of Christian Morecraft‘s, right? In either case, “HD” won’t have to be worried about getting submitted when he takes on hard hitting Lavar Johnson at UFC on FOX 3 in May. Let’s just pray his chin holds up better than last time.
After crushing any of Mirko Cro Cop‘s dreams of a UFC Heavyweight title back at UFC 70 with one of the most shocking victories in the history of the sport, hard times befell the mythical mountain creature known as “Napao.” He would get punched out by Randy Couture and Fabricio Werdum in his next two contests, and would spend the rest of his first octagon run picking up wins over sub-UFC competition sandwiched between violent knockout losses to the likes of Shane Carwin and Junior Dos Santos. Thankfully, Gonzaga has gone back to his BJJ roots as of late and scored two straight submission wins, because he will need to pull out every trick in his arsenal when he faces undefeated powerhouse Shane Del Rosario at UFC 146.
Fighting with anger, for some, is not the preferred way to enter a fight, as it may lead to silly mistakes.For some, fighting with anger brings the best out of them. Anger fuels them and motivates them to push the fight into a finish.Let’s take a look …
Fighting with anger, for some, is not the preferred way to enter a fight, as it may lead to silly mistakes.
For some, fighting with anger brings the best out of them. Anger fuels them and motivates them to push the fight into a finish.
Let’s take a look at the fighters who perform better when they are angry.
An integral part of professional fighting is the ability to take a punch. All fights start standing up, increasing the odds of having you chin tested early in a fight.The deterioration of fighters’ chins come by years of taking punishment. Fighters lik…
An integral part of professional fighting is the ability to take a punch. All fights start standing up, increasing the odds of having you chin tested early in a fight.
The deterioration of fighters’ chins come by years of taking punishment. Fighters like Wanderlei Silva, Chuck Liddell and Mirko Cro Cop could not take nearly the amount of damage they could at the end of their career as they did in the beginning.
Fighters presently in the UFC have a wide range of chins, from the weakest, such as Wanderlei Silva, to the strongest, which we will examine by division.
Fighters on this list are only UFC fighters, although guys like Patrick Cote and Fedor Emelianenko definitely contend as top-notch punch takers.
