The concept of quitting is a taboo subject in mixed martial arts.
But in the heat of the battle in the Octagon, even some of the toughest human beings on the planet can be brought to their physical and mental breaking point.
To prove it, in this article, we’ll tell the stories of 10 UFC fighters who came to the painful conclusion that they had no other option left but to cast the stigma aside and quit on their stool.
Chris Leben
Leben is one of the toughest fighters to have ever set foot in the Octagon, which made it all the most shocking when he waved the white flag following the first round of his fight with Uriah Hall at UFC 168 in late 2013.
The already bloodied Leben, who had a reputation for possessing a granite chin and having the ability to take ungodly amounts of punishment, was attempting to take the fight to Hall in the dying seconds of the opening round when he suddenly ate a lightning-quick right hook flush to the face that floored him with a few more shots connecting cleanly on the mat before the bell saved him.
Leben rose back to his feet like a zombie afterwards and staggered back to his corner dazed and confused, asking his corner if the fight had been stopped.
They assured him that wasn’t the case, but that fact didn’t seem to put his mind at ease.
”I’m done man, I’m done,” Leben suddenly said. “Stop it.”
It was a poignant moment to see such a battle-hardened warrior admit that he had nothing left, and even more so in hindsight given that it would later emerge that Leben really was done.
After all the wars he’d been in over the years, both inside and outside of the cage, ‘The Crippler’s’ memorable career came to an end that night.
(Don’t worry, Julian, at least this moment was not forever immortalized by the power of the internet. That would be *super* embarrassing.)
If BG’s recaps are any indication, this season’s The Ultimate Fighter appears to be void of most of the fabricated, frat boy drama that has plagued countless seasons before it, opting rather for a more straightforward, yet stylistic focus on the fights themselves. And while TUF has undoubtedly matured after some 17 seasons, that isn’t to say that the showhas completely rid itself of the kind of unsightly characters reality television oft shines a light on. This season’s Julian Lane is none other than Robert “Bubba” McDaniel, a relentless a-hole who thus far has both bashed teammate Gilbert Smith for being mentally weak the day before he was scheduled to fight and unsuccessfully attempted to troll Kevin Casey into a fight using tactics usually saved for elementary school playgrounds (or the comments section of BloodyElbow).
So while a few of us were discussing McDaniel’s douchiness in the comments section of our latest recap, we (we being ReX) got to thinking: Who was the least likable fighter in TUF History?
After the jump lies a poll with the most obvious offenders (Browning, Lane, Koscheck the participant, Koscheck the coach, etc.) for you to choose from, along with an “Other” option in case you feeling like calling out some of the lesser-known but equally offensive jackwagons to enter the TUF household. I cannot stress enough that I have never entered the TUF household. I’ll announce the results at some point tomorrow, because I do what I want, when I want. OK, you can include me as an option for that statement alone.
(Don’t worry, Julian, at least this moment was not forever immortalized by the power of the internet. That would be *super* embarrassing.)
If BG’s recaps are any indication, this season’s The Ultimate Fighter appears to be void of most of the fabricated, frat boy drama that has plagued countless seasons before it, opting rather for a more straightforward, yet stylistic focus on the fights themselves. And while TUF has undoubtedly matured after some 17 seasons, that isn’t to say that the showhas completely rid itself of the kind of unsightly characters reality television oft shines a light on. This season’s Julian Lane is none other than Robert “Bubba” McDaniel, a relentless a-hole who thus far has both bashed teammate Gilbert Smith for being mentally weak the day before he was scheduled to fight and unsuccessfully attempted to troll Kevin Casey into a fight using tactics usually saved for elementary school playgrounds (or the comments section of BloodyElbow).
So while a few of us were discussing McDaniel’s douchiness in the comments section of our latest recap, we (we being ReX) got to thinking: Who was the least likable fighter in TUF History?
After the jump lies a poll with the most obvious offenders (Browning, Lane, Koscheck the participant, Koscheck the coach, etc.) for you to choose from, along with an “Other” option in case you feeling like calling out some of the lesser-known but equally offensive jackwagons to enter the TUF household. I cannot stress enough that I have never entered the TUF household. I’ll announce the results at some point tomorrow, because I do what I want, when I want. OK, you can include me as an option for that statement alone.
RESULTS
With 33.9% of the vote, TUF 8 alum and terrorizer of Taiwanese townspeopleJunie Browning shall henceforth be known as the most reprehensible scoundrel in the long line of reprehensible scoundrels to have paraded through the halls of TUF manor.
In a distant second place, none other than TUF 16′s Julian Lane with 25% of the votes, which just edged out the combination of coach/participant Josh Koscheck (24.9%).
In the “Other” category, TUF 1‘s Bobby Southworth collected 14 of 95 votes, somewhat ironically edging out “fatherless bastard” (his words, not mine) Chris Leben, who took in 10 votes. And to the scholar who wrote-in TUF 7′s Luke Zachrich for the sake of obscurity, congratulations. Game recognizes game.
Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey, the world’s leading questionnaire tool.
If we needed any more proof that Michael Chandler deserves to be mentioned among the world’s best 155’ers, we got it last night at Bellator 85 in Irvine, California, when the reigning Bellator lightweight champion made decorated judoka Rick Hawn look like it was his first time on the mats. Chandler completed his takedowns with impressive ease, and when he saw an opportunity to take Hawn’s neck during a scramble in round two, he seized on it, sinking a rear-naked choke and showcasing the killer instinct that has now become a hallmark of Chandler’s game. To be honest, it wasn’t much of a fight, and this season’s lightweight tournament field doesn’t suggest that his next challenger will make things any harder for him. On the bright side, Chandler may have just established himself as Bellator’s greatest home-grown fighter — a budding superstar for the promotion’s new Spike TV era.
While Michael Chandler made his title defense with little resistance, reigning featherweight champion Pat Curran faced a much trickier test in Patricio “Pitbull” Freire. Their title fight (which led off the Spike TV broadcast) played out as a 25-minute kickboxing match, which started slow but built into an entertaining and evenly-pitched battle. Curran’s striking was just a little more active and accurate, however, and if you were judging on facial damage through the fight, Pitbull’s swollen-shut right eye and bloodied mouth didn’t exactly scream “winner.” When the scores were announced, “Judo” Gene LeBell saw it for the challenger, but the other two judges made the right call in awarding the win to the defending champ.
In addition to the two title fights, Bellator 85’s main card also featured a pair of light-heavyweight tournament quarterfinals. Unfortunately, those UFC castoffs we mentioned yesterday are well on their way to becoming Bellator castoffs as well, as Renato “Babalu” Sobral and Seth Petruzelli were steamrolled by their lesser-known competitors. Russian M-1 Challenge vet Mikhail Zayats stunned Sobral with a spinning-backfist near the end of the first round of their fight, then swarmed him to the canvas and fired down punches until the fight was stopped. (Eddie Alvarez’s wife called that shit, you guys.)
If we needed any more proof that Michael Chandler deserves to be mentioned among the world’s best 155′ers, we got it last night at Bellator 85 in Irvine, California, when the reigning Bellator lightweight champion made decorated judoka Rick Hawn look like it was his first time on the mats. Chandler completed his takedowns with impressive ease, and when he saw an opportunity to take Hawn’s neck during a scramble in round two, he seized on it, sinking a rear-naked choke and showcasing the killer instinct that has now become a hallmark of Chandler’s game. To be honest, it wasn’t much of a fight, and this season’s lightweight tournament field doesn’t suggest that his next challenger will make things any harder for him. On the bright side, Chandler may have just established himself as Bellator’s greatest home-grown fighter — a budding superstar for the promotion’s new Spike TV era.
While Michael Chandler made his title defense with little resistance, reigning featherweight champion Pat Curran faced a much trickier test in Patricio “Pitbull” Freire. Their title fight (which led off the Spike TV broadcast) played out as a 25-minute kickboxing match, which started slow but built into an entertaining and evenly-pitched battle. Curran’s striking was just a little more active and accurate, however, and if you were judging on facial damage through the fight, Pitbull’s swollen-shut right eye and bloodied mouth didn’t exactly scream “winner.” When the scores were announced, “Judo” Gene LeBell saw it for the challenger, but the other two judges made the right call in awarding the win to the defending champ.
In addition to the two title fights, Bellator 85′s main card also featured a pair of light-heavyweight tournament quarterfinals. Unfortunately, those UFC castoffs we mentioned yesterday are well on their way to becoming Bellator castoffs as well, as Renato “Babalu” Sobral and Seth Petruzelli were steamrolled by their lesser-known competitors. Russian M-1 Challenge vet Mikhail Zayats stunned Sobral with a spinning-backfist near the end of the first round of their fight, then swarmed him to the canvas and fired down punches until the fight was stopped. (Eddie Alvarez’s wife called that shit, you guys.)
It was an unexpected finish, but not nearly as strange as Petruzelli’s anti-climactic showing against Jacob Noe, in which the Silverback blew out his knee during a takedown attempt midway through the first round, and immediately turtled up as Noe ground-and-pounded the crap out of him. Ah well. We still have King Mo, right?
In prelim action, Emanuel Newton advanced in the LHW tournament bracket by choking out Atanas Djambazov, and UFC vet Jason Lambert pulled off a slick first-round armbar against Hector Ramirez in a non-tourney bout. Plus, Savant Young ended Mike Guymon’s brief lightweight comeback in violent fashion, and Jamie Yager indeed got his ass kicked. Hooray! Full results from Bellator 85 are below…
Main Card
– Michael Chandler def. Rick Hawn via submission (rear-naked choke), 3:07 of round 2
– Jacob Noe def. Seth Petruzelli via TKO, 2:51 of round 1
– Mikhail Zayats def. Renato Sobral via TKO, 4:49 of round 1
– Pat Curran def. Patricio Freire via split-decision (48-47 x 2, 47-48)
Preliminary Card
– Aaron Miller def. Joe Camacho via unanimous decision (30-27 x3)
– Jason Lambert def. Hector Ramirez via submission (inverted straight armbar), 3:59 of round 1
– J.J. Ambrose def. Brian Warren via submission (guillotine), 0:50 of round 2
– Emanuel Newton def. Atanas Djambazov via submission (rear-naked choke), 2:21 of round 2
– Savant Young def. Mike Guymon via KO, 0:48 of round 2
– Joe Williams def. Jamie Yager via TKO, 4:02 of round 1
– Cleber Luciano def. Mario Navarro via unanimous decision (30-27 x3)
If you’re a fight fan looking for a way to burn through some spare cash in August, you’ve got options. Between UFC 133 last weekend and UFC 134 later in the month, the committed MMA fan is likely to add a hundred bucks to the cable bill this month just…
If you’re a fight fan looking for a way to burn through some spare cash in August, you’ve got options. Between UFC 133 last weekend and UFC 134 later in the month, the committed MMA fan is likely to add a hundred bucks to the cable bill this month just to keep up with all the pay-per-view action.
All these men have two things in common: 1) they used to fight in the UFC, and 2) they don’t anymore. So how do you convince people to pay money to see them fight after the UFC has decided it can’t even use them on free cable TV fight cards anymore?
“I think people are looking for an alternative to UFC events these days as well, and I think this is a card, as a fan, that I want to see,” said Torry Crooks, one of the promoters behind Saturday night’s event in Albuquerque, N.M. “These are some of my heroes that are on this card. These are guys who have a chance of making their way back, or as we expand as a promotion, going on to bigger and better things with us.”
In other words, the one thing we know about these promoters is that they’re optimistic.
It’s a tough time to hit up fight fans for some cash. One week after UFC 133 and two weeks after Strikeforce: Fedor vs. Henderson, MMA Fight Pit is squeezing in on a rare open Saturday night, but it’s also doing so just one day after a Strikeforce: Challengers card on Showtime and one day before a free UFC card on Versus. Even if it is available for twenty bucks less than a UFC pay-per-view, the main selling point is still fighters who the UFC decided it could do without.
That makes for a tricky little marketing tango. The main reason most fans know these names is because of UFC exposure, but now that the UFC is done exposing them, how much value remains?
The answer changes as you go down the card. Alexander still has the appeal of a slugger who’s long on power and short on defense. With Pulver, there’s the sense we’re seeing the final act in a great career, and whether it’s going to be a tragedy or a redemption story is still unclear. Browning brings little more than the allure of chaos, and after coming in more than seven pounds over the 155-pound limit for his bout, he seems poised to deliver.
Put them all together and you do have something resembling a draw, but is it the kind of draw fight fans are really going to pay $30 for?
A few probably will. Maybe they’ll be the independently wealthy types, or maybe just teenagers indiscriminately running up their parents’ cable bill with no thought to the consequences. But if the last few years worth of would-be competitors to the UFC have taught us anything, it’s that it’s hard enough to sell tickets with UFC castoffs, but almost impossible to do well on pay-per-view with them.
Then again, maybe it depends on how you measure success.
MMA Fight Pit promoter Crooks said he was encouraged by the early response from fans, who in his opinion, “either want to see these guys win or they’re controversial characters and they want to see them get beat up. Either way, it’s a fight they want to watch. We’re not as expensive as the UFC on pay-per-view, and I think people are hungry for an alternative.”
And who knows, maybe he’s right. It’s just hard to imagine that fans have thirty bucks worth of hunger in them for this particular alternative, and on this particular Saturday night.
Yes, Jens Pulver is still at it. Twelve years and 40 fights after his debut at the Bas Rutten Invitational 2, the former UFC lightweight champ is still getting in the cage, still trying to find some peace amid the chaos.
The question many people ask …
Yes, Jens Pulver is still at it. Twelve years and 40 fights after his debut at the Bas Rutten Invitational 2, the former UFC lightweight champ is still getting in the cage, still trying to find some peace amid the chaos.
The question many people ask the 36-year-old Pulver — and the question he’s been struggling with himself lately — is, why?
“It kind of dawned me a couple days ago,” he said Wednesday on a media conference call. “I thought I was doing it because it was fun, I love it, and that’s still part of it, but the reality is, I’m doing it now and giving it 100 percent the way I am…[because] when I walk away, I don’t want to walk away with any regrets. I don’t want to be 65, God willing, sitting in a chair on a deck in a rocking chair and wishing I would have gone out differently.”
In other words, he’s doing it so he can quit, but have it not feel so much quitting. He’s doing it so that he can feel good about how he’s doing, which in turn might allow him to feel good about stopping.
The only problem is, as long as a fighter feels good about how he’s doing, he isn’t likely to stop. He’ll probably just keep going, especially as long as he could use the money, which Pulver certainly could.
It makes you wonder what this happy ending for Pulver would look like at this point, and how he’d even know if he found it.
Things recently seemed like they were on the verge of turning around for him. After being dropped from the WEC following five straight losses and then adding a sixth on the small circuit, he won two in a row.
Sure, they weren’t big names or on big fight cards, but he got his hand raised again for the first time since 2007. Then he went to Kansas City for a fight in May and he lost again, this time via first round submission.
So much for that happy ending.
Now Pulver is back to take on former WEC bantamweight Coty Wheeler on a thirty-dollar pay-per-view card that’s littered with names fans used to know, but probably haven’t thought about all that much lately.
“Ironically, I spend more time remembering,” Pulver said. “…I watch interviews of mine from way back, especially when I had more confidence. I’m sitting there going, man, I remember that guy.”
The difference, Pulver said, is that now he doesn’t take several months off between fights, which means he doesn’t have to spend the bulk of his training camp “getting the fat off.” Physically, he’s not worn down, he said, and mentally, he’s no longer so burned out.
“I go with these guys that are my weight, and I’m right there with them. The problem is just trying to turn it on in the cage. I’ve become what I almost despised most or what I put down the most when I was a world champion, which was the gym fighter.”
In training, he said, he’s taking it to his younger, faster sparring partners. The broke-down old man looks pretty good then.
“It’s when the lights come on and the face in front of me is different” that he loses some of that pop, Pulver said.
“The mental side is what’s gotten the oldest. The physical skills are still there. I’ve got no injuries. …The mental side of me kind of got old, got tired, and that’s what I’m trying to fix more than anything. I don’t know how to adjust to that, because it’s new to me.”
Maybe it would be easier to deal with if it were a physical decline. Maybe then he could write it off as a natural and unavoidable consequence of age. The fact that he remains convinced that his problems are more mental than physical probably isn’t helping him find the strength to walk away.
As he put it: “I’m using this time to prepare myself to walk out the door of MMA, and when I do, I don’t want to have any regrets. Basically, my major reason why I’m fighting right now is I’m out there to send myself off the right way.”
Of course, that assumes that there is a right way, or that there’s any peace at all to be found in the last throes of a fighter’s career. It also assumes that you find that peace first, before you decide to leave, rather than after, when you don’t have any other choice.
(Video courtesy YouTube/oKAINo)
Nick Ring will likely never get away from the insinuations that he is gay (not that there is anything wrong with that), even though he has a girlfriend and he and several of his teammates on the show have…
(Video courtesy YouTube/oKAINo)
Nick Ring will likely never get away from the insinuations that he is gay (not that there is anything wrong with that), even though he has a girlfriend and he and several of his teammates on the show have stated on numerous occasions that he put on the somewhat feminine persona while he was on The Ultimate Fighter to screw with homophobic superheel, Jamie Yager.
In Ring’s defense, he’s taking the rumors like a champ (no homo) and rolling with the punches.
Here’s what he said about the act on his Heavy.com recap of the episode that started the snowball rolling:
"So here I am, it’s late and I am now happy and feeling good about my massage. My lower back is feeling good and it is definitely thanking me and I go to the washroom to brush my teeth and get ready for bed and McCray and Yager decide it is time for them gang up on me and "have a talk".
From their bedroom, McCray loudly asks me a loaded question that goes a little bit like "Hey Ring, Why would you get a massage from a dude at 3 AM?" I knew exactly where he was trying to go with this one so I thought fuck it – I’ll play, so I answered "because I’m a big queer".
They started laughing hard in disbelief at my remark, and I walked into their room and leaned my shoulder up against the doorway while I flossed my teeth. I knew that my reply would likely take most of the wind out of their sails but being the couple of Neanderthals they are, they relented by saying that I’m standing gay and tried telling me that I need to change my posture blah blah blah. I just thought it was funny so just poured it on more until they dropped it…
If you’re a fight fan looking for a way to burn through some spare cash in August, you’ve got options. Between 
Yes,