Who doesn’t love and respect Georges St-Pierre, Randy Couture or Lyoto Machida? Those guys ooze respect, honor and sportsmanship. They seem, by all accounts, great guys and fine ambassadors for the sport.But the world isn’t all smiles and h…
Who doesn’t love and respect Georges St-Pierre, Randy Couture or Lyoto Machida? Those guys ooze respect, honor and sportsmanship. They seem, by all accounts, great guys and fine ambassadors for the sport.
But the world isn’t all smiles and handshakes. The world needs its villains, and MMA is no different.
Who wants to watch the same stagnant clone of a persona take the microphone after brutally pummeling another man into submission every fight?
Bad boys, or rebels if you’d prefer, are a necessary counter the sport’s good guys. They keep the eyes wide and the ears cocked, and they keep butts in seats. If you’ve got your doubts, take a look at this list, and think for a moment about how many of these men are major financial draws.
Hard work and determination made Josh Koscheck one of the elite 170-pound fighters on the planet, and he has every intention of reclaiming that status Saturday, Feb. 23 at UFC 157.When “Kos” steps back into the Octagon to face Robbie Lawler in Anaheim …
Hard work and determination made Josh Koscheck one of the elite 170-pound fighters on the planet, and he has every intention of reclaiming that status Saturday, Feb. 23 at UFC 157.
When “Kos” steps back into the Octagon to face Robbie Lawler in Anaheim Calif., it will be the beginning of a new chapter for the former NCAA Division I national champion wrestler—one he is very much looking forward to getting underway.
After a hectic 2012 that saw the former No. 1 contender drop a razor-thin decision to Johny Hendricks and suffer a back injury which sidelined him for the remainder of the year, the 35-year-old is ready to return to his winning ways. In the process of doing so, Koscheck also intends to send a reminder to the MMA world that he’s still a force to be reckoned with in the welterweight division.
“I have to come out and prove I’m still here and I’m still a fighter,” Koscheck told Bleacher Report. “I definitely have to come out and make a statement against Robbie Lawler, that’s for sure. That’s what I plan on doing. It’s been awhile since I’ve had a fight where I can look back and say I had a real fight and that I came out and performed at my best. I need to step up and do that.”
“It seems like I’ve always done well under the pressure of coming off a loss and after my last fight with Hendricks, I have a lot to prove. I feel like, and a lot of people still feel like Hendricks didn’t beat me, but there were three judges who felt he did. That’s just the way it works. I have a lot to prove and I have to come out and perform.”
Another big factor in the changes Koscheck made in 2012 was his relocation from his longtime home at AKA in San Jose to starting up his new gym, the Dethrone Base Camp in Fresno.
The process of transferring training facilities came with an adjustment period, but now, the season one TUF alum believes he has everything in place to make the next great run of his career.
“I feel good and I’ve put together a nice little training camp,” Koscheck said. “I actually had some time to focus on getting some good guys in to train with me. Before my last fight we kind of just put together something really quick and did some training. But for this fight I’ve had plenty of time to get training partners, coaches, get a schedule going and to put good people around me to better myself. I have a good structure and atmosphere to do all my training. It’s been good.”
While Koscheck is looking to get back to handling business inside the Octagon, Lawler is making a return of his own. It has been over eight years since the veteran slugger competed on the sport’s biggest stage, and where Lawler was once one of the UFC’s top welterweight fighters, his career outside the Octagon has experienced varying degrees of success.
Coming into the bout with Koscheck, the former Elite XC champion has hit a rough patch, dropping three of his last four outings. That being said, Koscheck realizes his opponent has a lot on the line and a proven track record of put-away power.
“I think it’s a good fight for him,” Koscheck said. “[Lawler] gets to come in and fight against a guy who has been in the UFC his entire career. He has something to prove and is trying to get his career back on track. He comes in with a lot of power and a lot of knockouts.
“I can tell you this: Hopefully Robbie Lawler worked on his cardio and hes’ ready to go because I’m going to push the pace and be in his face for 15 minutes if I have to. My plan is to break him and I’m coming ready for 15 minutes.”
After nearly a decade in the sport and 21 fights inside the Octagon, Koscheck has learned how to take the rigors of being a dedicated mixed martial artist in stride. Where other fighters have fallen victim to the trappings of success or become overwhelmed by physical demand of the fight business, Koscheck has remained above the fray.
The Pennsylvania native attributes his ability to stay on the grind to his blue-collar roots and recognizing the need to separate fighting and life outside the cage.
“I’m sure it is for some guys,” Koscheck responded when asked about the difficulties balancing life and career in the fight business. “It’s definitely hard because you put so much into this game, or at least I do…I know that. I put so much into it and it can take over your life. It can over things in your life outside fighting.
“I’ve been doing it for a long enough time where I can step away from it for a couple of weeks to do some vacationing. It is still on my mind and I’m still thinking about it, but I can separate it enough where I can relax and have a life outside of the cage.”
“I love to fly and have a couple of hobbies like that. Getting up there and flying is definitely a big part of getting away and it is one of the things that’s important for a guy who trains as hard as I do to have something like that. My days off are training sessions for my mind. I’m trying let my body and mind recover and step away from the every day monotony of training. Flying is definitely one of those things.”
Coming into UFC 157, Koscheck finds himself at an interesting point in his career. The former No. 1 contender to the welterweight crown has plenty of success behind him and the potential for great things on the horizon, but with the 170-pound weight class becoming increasingly competitive, now is the time for the four-time All-American to re-introduce himself to the heated divisional picture.
That being said, whatever steps Koscheck takes in the future will be approached with the same mentality he’s always carried.
Koscheck believes hard work will get the job done and isn’t concerned with how much you like or dislike him. It is all fine by Koscheck because love him or hate him, the only thing that changes for the perennial contender is the opponent standing across the cage.
Ultimately, it falls on his shoulders to accomplish the task at hand. Whether people get behind him or rally for the opposition simply doesn’t matter.
“I’ve always been the type where either you like me or you don’t,” Koscheck said. “That is the attitude I’ve always had and I’m not going to change just because people don’t like me or change if they do. I am who I am and I’ve done what I’ve done in the sport because of the person I am and the work ethic I’ve put into it. I’m not going to change for anybody. I’m going to continue being me and you either like it or you don’t. That’s how it is; plain and simple.”
Duane Finley is a Featured Columnist at Bleacher Report. All quotes are obtained firsthand unless noted otherwise.
It doesn’t seem like all that long ago that Robbie Lawler was fighting for the first time in the UFC as a name to watch from the Miletich camp, blasting opponents off their feet. Lawler was the new kid on the block, a training part…
It doesn’t seem like all that long ago that Robbie Lawler was fighting for the first time in the UFC as a name to watch from the Miletich camp, blasting opponents off their feet.
Lawler was the new kid on the block, a training partner to welterweight champion Matt Hughes, and it seemed logical that he would be the man to take the handoff from Hughes as the next great champion.
On Feb. 23 of this year, at UFC 157, Lawler will be stepping back into the Octagon for the first time since 2004, now an “old man” in the game, set against Josh Koscheck.
Talk about a rough “welcome home.”
Still, Koscheck isn’t going to bring anything into the cage that Lawler hasn’t seen before; as dynamic as the sport and its fighters have become, a takedown is still a takedown and an overhand right is still an overhand right.
Given the names in the division—Koscheck, Jon Fitch, Johny Hendricks, Martin Kampmann, Rory MacDonald, Carlos Condit—it’s hard to imagine Lawler standing out, really.
But upon careful reconsideration, he does begin to stand out, if for no other reason that he’s a contradiction in so many terms: a youthful veteran, an established newcomer, a quiet fighter.
And he’s better now than he was the first go-round in the UFC.
Lawler has a serious test in front of him with Koscheck, but win or lose, odds are he’s going to get his feet back under him and find his equilibrium within the division, and when he does, he could rise up the ranks for a shot at Georges St. Pierre’s title.
None of this is to say that Lawler isn’t a beatable fighter, but at 30 years old, he’s still got a lot he brings to the party, including some serious physical power and explosiveness.
Anytime someone looks at the welterweight division they see it in parts as the murderers’ row it is, with GSP playing the part of capable warden, putting down any uprisings with a kind of no-risk mechanical efficiency that belies the depth of the division.
Lawler matches up well with nearly all of the top welterweights and he possesses the kind of power that could knock any of them out cold.
And having fought many of the past years as a legitimate middleweight, Lawler is going to be a very big, powerful man in the ring at 170.
On paper, Lawler is an improbable threat to the title; most of his losses seem to stem from being outworked on the mat and he’s been submitted five times.
But most of the men who submitted him—Jake Shields, Jason Miller, Ronaldo Souza—are among some of the best submission artists in the game; a threat he won’t be facing against GSP.
All of this conjecture is really based around central notion, being that a highly motivated and excited Lawler is capable of beating anyone in the division on any given night—especially if they are foolish enough to stand and trade with him, like Melvin Manhoef was.
It’s been a long time since we’ve seen Lawler look like he was honestly enthused to be fighting, but sometimes coming home can bring back the memories of better days and rekindle the joy of riding hard and fighting harder.
If there is any place for aspirations, it’s the UFC, and for Lawler, stepping down into the welterweight division, sans all the fanfare he was afforded as a younger man in the Octagon, could be the perfect formula for an awakening.
After all, he’s in a prime position; no one is expecting much out of him and most, while acknowledging his presence, have him somewhere out of the corner of their eye, standing by the gate.
Given that this is a sport where nothing is given, Lawler has a real chance to take it all by force; much as it’s the punch you don’t see coming that knocks you out, it’s also the threat you don’t see honestly that runs you over.
But he’s going to have to be more than he has been in recent years and exactly what he was once upon a time, before he became disenchanted with life and reckless in the cage.
Josh Koscheck’s upcoming fight Robbie Lawler at UFC 157 hasn’t stopped him from thinking about perennial welterweight bad boy, Nick Diaz. “Did you say a fan of Nick Diaz? No, I’m not a fan,” Koscheck told MMAHeat’s Karyn Bryant when she asked…
Josh Koscheck‘s upcoming fight Robbie Lawler at UFC 157 hasn’t stopped him from thinking about perennial welterweight bad boy, Nick Diaz.
“Did you say a fan of Nick Diaz? No, I’m not a fan,” Koscheck told MMAHeat’s Karyn Bryant when she asked for his thoughts on the Stockton Brawler.
Why the hate? Part of it relates to Diaz’s well-known habit of marijuana use, a habit that earned Diaz a year-long suspension after his fight with Carlos Condit when he tested positive for marijuana metabolites.
“His values and my values are way different,” Koscheck said. “He does things that I don’t do. The smoking the pot and things like that, I don’t associate with things like that. I’m not saying it’s wrong. That’s just what he does. It’s just not my thing. I’m not a fan of Nick Diaz.”
However, Koscheck’s dislike of the elder Diaz brother owes its existence to more reasons than just pot smoking. Koscheck, a fighter who is almost always “in the mix” at welterweight, has become dejected with the way that title shots are gifted to undeserving fighters. He gave Diaz’s title shot as one such example.
“It seems like now in the UFC, if you can talk a good game, you might be able to get a light heavyweight title shot,” he said in reference to Chael Sonnen being matched up against UFC light heavyweight champion Jon Jones.
“And if you get suspended for a year, and then you come right back after losing a fight, you get to fight [UFC welterweight champ Georges St-Pierre] for the title,” said Koscheck concerning Nick Diaz’s title shot. “Maybe I’ll just take another couple months off and do some things I shouldn’t do and fight for title!”
Furthermore, Koscheck doesn’t respect Diaz’s skills as much as he respects those of other fighters, specifically GSP. According to Koscheck, GSP should run through Diaz at UFC 158 without much trouble.
“It’s just gonna be an easy fight for St-Pierre, I believe. He’ll just take [Diaz] down and wrestle him and just control him like he does anyone else,” he said.
Koscheck is coming off a loss to Johny Hendricks and will be facing former UFC fighter and recent Strikeforce import Robbie Lawler at UFC 157. If Koscheck bests Lawler and Diaz loses to GSP, perhaps a Koscheck-Diaz match would be waiting in the wings?
Both men have a tendency to generate controversy and both men are names in the division. A fight between them only seems natural, given the right circumstances.
Georges St-Pierre believes Johny Hendricks may have been gifted a decision against Josh Koscheck.At the UFC 158 press conference, St-Pierre was asked why he passed on Hendricks as an opponent and chose to fight Nick Diaz, who is coming off a loss.The U…
Georges St-Pierre believes Johny Hendricks may have been gifted a decision against Josh Koscheck.
At the UFC 158press conference, St-Pierre was asked why he passed on Hendricks as an opponent and chose to fight Nick Diaz, who is coming off a loss.
The UFC welterweight champ harped on the bout with Diaz being the fight fans wanted to see, and he also pointed to Hendricks’ controversial split decision win over Koscheck at UFC on FOX 3 as the main reason for his decision.
“Nick and I were supposed to fight before. This is the big fight that people wanted to see. People wanted to see this fight more than me fighting any other guys. My other option was Johny Hendricks, and Johny Hendricks, when I watched the fight with Josh Koscheck, according to me I believe Josh Koscheck should’ve won that fight.
I don’t want to fight a guy that lose to me to a guy that I beat, and I think for me, Nick Diaz is the number one contender. He’s proved himself many times before, and there’s a story between us.”
Diaz is a marquee name who has a tendency to stir up controversy.
For St-Pierre and the UFC, it makes little sense to pass up on the opportunity to put together the blockbuster fight fans have salivated over for years. This certainly isn’t fair to Hendricks, who has amassed a five-fight win streak in the UFC.
Unfortunately, it’s the nature of the fight business.
Hendricks deserves the UFC title shot more than any other fighter in the division, but his disconnect with fans makes it even harder for him to climb the welterweight ladder. As of now, fans aren’t really interested in seeing Hendricks compete for a world title.
It’s a similar situation to the one Jon Fitch was in years ago. It took Fitch nearly three years, and an eight-fight win streak before the UFC finally caved in and gave him a title shot. Hendricks could be headed in the same direction.
If he can’t find a way to make fans care, he can expect a long wait in the never-ending line of contenders for UFC gold.
Brock Lesnar burst onto the scene. He was the most feared man in the UFC, he was the future of pay-per-view and everyone in the world was waiting to see what would happen next. Then, he lost, got injured and faded away.There comes a time every year whe…
Brock Lesnar burst onto the scene. He was the most feared man in the UFC, he was the future of pay-per-view and everyone in the world was waiting to see what would happen next. Then, he lost, got injured and faded away.
There comes a time every year where we find ourselves wondering, “What the heck happened to so-and-so?”
Were they outmatched in their fights? Did they get banged up? Or like Joe Pesci in Goodfellas, was it just their time to go?
It seems like all fighters fall victim to at least one of three things at the end of their career: time, injuries or a string of bad luck. Regardless of which one of the three it is, it’s inevitable that every year we unofficially have to say goodbye to fighters who run the risk of no longer being relevant in a division. Sure, we’ll catch them on an undercard again and maybe even the first fight of a UFC PPV, but their days of headlining are over.
Here are the top seven fighters that could fade away in 2013.
Hard work and determination made