Tag: EdHerman

Falling Action: Best and Worst of TUF 13 Finale

Filed under: UFCI’ve always wondered what Ultimate Fighter winners do with their cut-glass trophies. It looks like something you might get for being the most improved player on a high school water polo team, so I’d be surprised if too many recipients h…

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I’ve always wondered what Ultimate Fighter winners do with their cut-glass trophies. It looks like something you might get for being the most improved player on a high school water polo team, so I’d be surprised if too many recipients have it displayed prominently in their homes.

I keep expecting to see one show up on Ebay, but then who would buy it? I have no idea, but maybe Tony Ferguson will get a chance to find out. He’s our latest reality show winner, joining a diverse group that has had wildly varied post-grad results.

So what does Ferguson’s win mean, and how far has Anthony Pettis fallen after putting his title shot on the line against Clay Guida? The answers to those questions and more await you, as we sort through the biggest winners, losers, and everything in between after the TUF 13 Finale.

Biggest Winner: Clay Guida
Any lightweight who has ever considered a strategy that involves tiring Guida out only needs to look at him bouncing around in the post-fight interview after three hard rounds to know what a bad idea that is. Against Pettis, Guida showed that a non-stop motor and a wealth of quality experience to draw upon is sometimes all you need to get your hand raised. The decision victory was Guida’s 29th win and his 40th pro fight overall. Even Guida would probably agree that Jim Miller deserves to be ahead of him in line for a crack at the belt, but “The Carpenter” is definitely in the conversation now. What he lacks in sheer talent, he makes up for with work ethic and a willingness to get right in your face and stay there all night. How can you not root for a guy like that?

Biggest Loser: Anthony Pettis
Pettis gets this distinction less for his performance than for what it cost him. He didn’t fight poorly, but all it took was fifteen minutes on a Saturday night for him to go from number one contender to the middle of a crowded pack. Not that it needs to be anything more than a minor setback in the long run. He’s young and has a lot of potential, but Guida showed us all that there are some holes in his game. Some of that is just inexperience. He caught a big break in the third round, yet couldn’t capitalize on it. It’s also possible that he’s trying to force those crowd-pleasing kicks a little too much, which resulted in more interesting misses than useful hits against Guida. He lost his title shot with the defeat, but it’s not the end of the world. If he uses it as a learning experience, this will be nothing more than a speed bump in a promising career.

Best Prospect: Tony Ferguson
He can wrestle and he can swat – a combination that makes him a man to be taken seriously. If we’ve learned anything from 13 seasons of TUF, however, it’s that winning the show is not quite the career-crowning achievement it’s made out to be. What it is, is a nice start for Ferguson and a chance to develop in the UFC with a little more slack than most new hires get. That’s why I wouldn’t recommend calling out guys like Amir Sadollah. While there are benefits to being proactive about matchmaking, the TUF winner usually gets to ease into the big time a little more gently. I don’t want to say he should expect an easy fight in his first post-TUF appearance. There aren’t many of those to be found in the UFC. But there are easier fights out there, and with them, a chance to get comfortable in the Octagon. Just because you’re a reality TV hero, it doesn’t mean the roads are all paved with gold now. Just ask Efrain Escudero.

Least Certain Future: Ramsey Nijem
He looked great on TUF, but all it took was one lunging left hook from Ferguson to stiffen him up like stale toast. He’s obviously got talent, but he also seems like he might not be quite ready for the UFC just yet. He’s now 4-2 in his career, and his most high profile wins were reality show exhibition bouts. He might still turn into a legitimate UFC fighter, but he’d better do it soon. It doesn’t take much to go from TUF finalist to TUF footnote. Just ask Kris McCray. And Vinny Magalhaes. And Luke Cummo. And…you know what? I think you get it.

Biggest Win Under Dire Circumstances: Ed Herman
After losing three of his last four and sitting out with a recurring knee injury for nearly two years, Herman was desperate for a big victory. Knocking out a tough opponent like Tim Credeur in less than a minute is a good way to get back on the map. Herman should consider it a temporary stay, and one possibly aided by the fact that Credeur had been out of action nearly as long as he had. Now Herman has to hope that he’s more successful in his comeback than he was before his initial injury.

Most Disturbing Trend: Ken Stone‘s recent KO’s
He was on the business end of a brutal slam knockout back in December, then got pounded out by Scott Jorgensen in the first round on Saturday night. Two scary knockouts in a row – all in a six-month span – is never good for your career prospects, but it’s even worse for your brain. While we still don’t know a ton about knockouts and long-term brain health, we do know that it’s a bad sign when a fighter keeps ending bouts asleep on the mat, especially when the knockouts start to come easier and easier. Maybe Stone could take some time off and reevaluate. Even if he doesn’t want to, it’s quite possible that the Zuffa contract axe will do it for him.

Most in Need of a Step Up in Competition: Kyle Kingsbury
The decision over Maldonado was his fourth straight victory in the UFC. Now that his skills have caught up to his size and natural athleticism, he seems like a guy who might actually go places in the light heavyweight division. It’s hard to know for sure though, since the UFC keeps giving him opponents who are all at roughly the same level. Jared Hamman, Ricardo Romero, Fabio Maldonado – all are tough guys, but it’s not exactly a steady climb in quality of competition. Now’s the time to throw Kingsbury into the deep water and find out if he can swim.

Least Convincing Effort: Josh Grispi
It’s strange to think that not so long ago, this guy was considered a credible challenger for Jose Aldo’s title. The fighter who showed up to face George Roop on Saturday looked like a man who would have preferred to be almost anywhere else. It’s never a good sign when your cornermen are all but begging you not to quit between rounds. He made it into the third, but just barely, and he didn’t need much encouragement to crumble up and collapse after Roop hammered him with a body shot. Any fighter is going to have his good nights and bad nights, but Grispi has fallen off hard lately. Might be time to sit down with his coaches and talk about what he’s really trying to accomplish here.

 

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In Search of Comeback Victory, Credeur and Herman Walk Parallel Paths

Filed under: UFCIt’s almost a shame Tim Credeur and Ed Herman have to fight each other at the TUF 13 Finale this Saturday night.

In another line of work – another life altogether, perhaps – they might have been something other than just opponents. On…

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Ed Herman.It’s almost a shame Tim Credeur and Ed Herman have to fight each other at the TUF 13 Finale this Saturday night.

In another line of work – another life altogether, perhaps – they might have been something other than just opponents. One might have been the only person who could understand what the other has been through in the last two years. With all the recent struggles they have in common, they might have even been friends.

In another line of work, maybe. Not this one.

21 months. That’s how long it’s been since Credeur’s last fight. Herman has him beat, but not by much. He blew out his knee at UFC 102 in Portland, Ore. just 18 days before Credeur stepped in against Nate Quarry at UFC Fight Night 19 in Oklahoma City for what would be his last bout for nearly two years.

Neither of them knew it then, but they were each in for a long wait and an emotional rollercoaster ride before they would get back in the cage again. They certainly had no way of knowing that, at the end of it all, they’d be returning against someone who had walked a similarly hard road.

“When I heard his name I thought, this is a good fight for me. This makes sense,” said Herman, whose blown ACL resulted in travails that were at least somewhat typical for a pro athlete, unlike Credeur’s.

Herman knew something was wrong when he felt a sharp pain in his knee after a first-round takedown by Aaron Simpson that night in Portland.

“He took my knee out in the first round, but I had never really had a serious knee injury so I didn’t know what was wrong with it,” Herman said. “I knew something was wrong, but I wasn’t ready to bow out.”

In the second stanza he tried to throw a head kick – “probably not the smartest thing I could have done,” Herman can admit now – and he went down in a heap. Everyone in the Rose Garden knew the fight was over just by looking at the way he rolled on the mat, holding on to his knee like it might fall off if he let go.

Herman had surgery soon after, began physical therapy two days after that, then got right back into training as soon as he was cleared and promptly blew the same knee out again that January.

This is about the time that he started to wonder if he’d ever fight again. And if he didn’t, what would he do instead? What if the knee never got back to full strength? How would he make a living? What would his future look like?

Down in Louisiana, Tim Credeur was asking himself some of the same questions, only for him the answers were even less certain. Things were looking good at first. He had a fight scheduled against Tom Lawlor at UFC 113 – his first “UFC with numbers,” he recalled – but when he went in for his pre-fight medicals, that’s when his plans began to unravel.

“I guess about three weeks before I was supposed to go to Montreal, they found something in my brain scan,” Credeur said. “They had no idea what it was or what it could do.”

They knew it was small – about the size of a freckle or a mole, according to Credeur – and they knew it was located too near to his brain stem for any kind of surgery to be a realistic option. They also knew that while they tried to find out exactly what it was they were looking at, Credeur was officially out of action.

“I just knew that I wasn’t going to be fighting, and that’s one of the main ways that I support my family. I was walking to my car thinking, what do I do now? Do I just go have a hamburger or something? Do I go fishing for three months? What?”

Then the phone rang. It was his wife, calling to give him some good news. She was pregnant with their first child. Credeur was going to be a father. That is, if he lived that long. If the mysterious mark on his brain that no one could tell him anything about didn’t turn out to be something that would get him first.

“This phone call happened within like ten minutes of me getting out of the doctor’s,” Credeur said. “I mean, where do I even begin?”

So he decided not to begin at all. He told her how happy he was about the pregnancy. He didn’t mention the words ‘brain abnormality.’ He didn’t tell her that he’d be sidelined from fighting for the foreseeable future, or that he had no idea what was about to happen to him – or to their growing family.

Not at first, anyway. It didn’t seem like the right time. But eventually it had to come out.

“It was kind of crazy,” Credeur said. “We weren’t even sure whether I was going to be around for the baby, or if I was, how I was going to support my family. Really, what I did was throw myself into my other business, which is teaching at our academy. It was kind of a blessing in disguise, because now our academy has gotten so big and is doing so well that I really don’t need to fight. We’ve got so many great instructors and the city has really grown with the sport. It’s amazing.”

Eventually the doctors came back with good news. That spot on Credeur’s brain? It was most likely something he’d had all his life. A birthmark, of sorts. Totally harmless.

“[The doctor] said, ‘You know, I’m a brain doctor, so cage fighting with four-ounce gloves would not be my recommended life choice, but you’re in no greater danger than anyone else.’ That was great to hear.”

Once he had the greenlight to start sparring and fighting again, Credeur soon set his sights on a June return. It seemed only fitting that he’d get matched up against Herman, who has been out just a tad longer than he has. If it takes a little while to knock off the ring rust, at least he’s facing someone with the same problem, so there’s no excuse.

But to Herman, it seemed like a sensible match-up for more than just one reason.

“Tim comes to scrap,” he said. “That’s what I like about it. He comes forward and he likes to get after it. He’s not the type who’s going to run from me or squeak out a win. He comes to finish, just like I do, so it’s going to be a good fight and a good one for the fans, but especially for me.”

But while it’s nice to have these dueling storylines of long struggles through adversity, they can’t both have a happy ending on Saturday night. Someone has to win, which means someone else has to lose in his big comeback fight.

And since both men are coming off losses in their last outing, the future for this weekend’s loser might have still more adversity in store, and they know it.

“Honestly, if I don’t win this fight, I don’t deserve to be there,” said Herman. “It’s always kind of like that because [the UFC is] always bringing in new guys, and there’s always someone else who can take my job.”

It’s the same for Creduer, who lost a decision but earned a $30,000 Fight of the Night bonus in his last fight. He found himself on the microphone pleading with the UFC not to cut him after that one, because he knows that exciting fights and tales of personal redemption are nice, but they aren’t enough in a business where winning means everything.

“I don’t care that much about Fight of the Night,” said Credeur. “My wife was excited, for sure. But when I got back [to the locker room], I was still crying in the shower, no doubt about it. I’m passionate about this sport and about what I do, and a loss is a loss is a loss. There’s no other way to go about it. I take them hard because there’s nobody else to place the blame on. That’s what I love about this sport. That’s what’s great about it.”

 

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