Some fighters are born to be champions. From the time that they step foot into the Octagon, it is clear that they are on a collision course with greatness. Jon Jones, Cain Velasquez and Dominick Cruz are all examples of this undeniable talent.However, …
Some fighters are born to be champions. From the time that they step foot into the Octagon, it is clear that they are on a collision course with greatness. Jon Jones, Cain Velasquez and Dominick Cruz are all examples of this undeniable talent.
However, not everyone can be so lucky. Some fighters are afforded golden opportunities time and time again, but simply can’t get the job done. Occasionally, they’ll score a major win against a quality opponent, but their margin of victory is fairly small or the opponent is considered to be past their prime.
With the recent fall of some of the UFC’s top divisional contenders, let’s take a look at 10 fighters who struggle when the going gets tough.
Since the sport of MMA was invented fighters have been changing weight classes to help further their careers. Sometimes a drop or an increase in weight can do wonders to a fighter’s mindset and career. Look at Demian Maia. Randy Couture dropped to…
Since the sport of MMA was invented fighters have been changing weight classes to help further their careers.
Sometimes a drop or an increase in weight can do wonders to a fighter’s mindset and career. Look at Demian Maia. Randy Couture dropped to light heavyweight and won a championship there. The options are endless.
Some fighters change divisions to have a weight advantage on their opponent. Some do it for the size advantage or easier weight cut.
Some change to test their skills against different opponents. Others look to gain a shot at a title.
This is a second list about multi-division fighters.
Kenny Florian had one heck of a run in the UFC. The Boston native entered the promotion on the first season of The Ultimate Fighter as as an undersized middleweight and walked away as one of the best competitors of the lightweight division in rece…
Kenny Florian had one heck of a run in the UFC. The Boston native entered the promotion on the first season of The Ultimate Fighter as as an undersized middleweight and walked away as one of the best competitors of the lightweight division in recent years.
Florian has seen it all in the UFC after fighting some of the biggest names in the division but expressed to Fighters.com that he only has one regret from his career.
“If there is one regret, I wish that I came to compete against Diego Sanchez…I feel like I beat myself before anyone else. I feel like I went out there and let the moment beat me. I don’t know what would have happened in that fight, but I didn’t compete; that was not me out there. I went out there and I was a nervous wreck. Before I knew what was happening, I was mounted and bloodied up. I wish that – if there was one thing I could take back – that I could just go out there and compete, and just fight him.”
Still, Florian is proud of what he’s done in the Octagon.
“I really had a great career. Fighting a great guy like Clay Guida, a guy who I looked up to so much like Takanori Gomi was cool. Getting to fight a legend in BJ Penn was awesome; a lot of great moments. Fighting one of the best pound-for-pound guys in the world, Jose Aldo. Those were big moments – wins and losses.”
Only three of Florian’s 20 professional bouts occurred outside the bright lights of the UFC. He competed at middleweight while on the first season of The Ultimate Fighter, moved down to welterweight after losing the finale and eventually found a home at 155-pounds.
After losing badly to Penn, Florian dropped to featherweight where he earned a title shot at Aldo at UFC 136. Florian revealed in the interview that his health is progressing, but it looks like UFC 136 will be the last time Florian steps into the Octagon.
Before we even get into the awesome that is UFC Tonight’s recent “Fighter Trivia” episode, I just want to put it out there that I will beat any of you in any game show trivia challenge. Any of you. When I was in college, the only channel my RCA 630TS television received was The Game Show Network. Jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune, Family Feud, Double Dare, right down to the early pioneers of Press Your Luck, Match Game, Pyramid, and The Price is Right were at my disposal on a near 24/7 basis. When I wasn’t browned out in an alleyway looking for a jar of marmalade and bus ticket to Santa Fe, you could assume I was getting my trivia knowledge on with Brawlin’ Bob and the gang.
So you can imagine my excitement when I came across this gem of an idea Fuel TV devoted an episode of UFC Tonight to, with Ariel Helwani playing the proverbial Bob Eubanks role. The premise is simple, a group of fighters are subjected to what I assume is five rounds of trivia (there aren’t videos of all 5 rounds to confirm/deny this) covering everything from their knowledge of The Ultimate Fighter to that of pop culture. They are paired up for certain rounds, but mostly are forced to go on their own until one man is declared the winner.
For the inaugural segment, Michael Bisping, Rashad Evans, Dominick Cruz, and Kenny Florian were chosen as participants. Spoiler alert: Cruz doesn’t know sh*t about sh*t, and Bisping knows more about Dora the Explorer than we would have ever imagined.
After the jump: Two snippets from the show in which Florian forgets that Bisping and Evans fought at UFC 78 (along with the rest of the world) and Cruz fails to identify Bruce Springsteen by his nickname. Unforgivable, Dom.
Before we even get into the awesome that is UFC Tonight’s recent “Fighter Trivia” episode, I just want to put it out there that I will beat any of you in any game show trivia challenge. Any of you. When I was in college, the only channel my RCA 630TS television received was The Game Show Network. Jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune, Family Feud, Double Dare, right down to the early pioneers of Press Your Luck, Match Game, Pyramid, and The Price is Right were at my disposal on a near 24/7 basis. When I wasn’t browned out in an alleyway looking for a jar of marmalade and bus ticket to Santa Fe, you could assume I was getting my trivia knowledge on with Brawlin’ Bob and the gang.
So you can imagine my excitement when I came across this gem of an idea Fuel TV devoted an episode of UFC Tonight to, with Ariel Helwani playing the proverbial Bob Eubanks role. The premise is simple, a group of fighters are subjected to what I assume is five rounds of trivia (there aren’t videos of all 5 rounds to confirm/deny this) covering everything from their knowledge of The Ultimate Fighter to that of pop culture. They are paired up for certain rounds, but mostly are forced to go on their own until one man is declared the winner.
For the inaugural segment, Michael Bisping, Rashad Evans, Dominick Cruz, and Kenny Florian were chosen as participants. Spoiler alert: Cruz doesn’t know sh*t about sh*t, and Bisping knows more about Dora the Explorer than we would have ever imagined.
It’s OK Kenny, we all forgot about UFC 78. But because I live to educate you members of the Potato Nation, I offer the following Rondeau to take you back to that magical night:
It came boasting “Validation,”
Achieving mere irritation,
Two undefeated TUF winners,
Served the crowd a NyQuil dinner,
A lay-n-pray meditation.
Though it was quite a sensation,
Watching hype trains leave the station,
A future champ dry-humped Fischer, Lytle saved us.
“Assassin’s” humiliation,
A Jiu-Jitsu education?
Earlier, a ginger sinner,
Made the lights in Joe’s brain dimmer,
Overall, a dull occasion,
Lytle saved us!
God damn, I am a lyrical wordsmith.
Now, onto the pop culture round.
Now, I’m never one to play the race card, but did anyone find it rather odd that the black guy (Evans, for those of you who can’t see color or are afraid to make obvious observations) was given two questions about rappers, and all the white dudes were given questions involving Twilight, Britney Spears, Hannah Montana, and generic British history?
And you gotta love that the show made Brittney Palmer don her full octagon “uniform” — ring card and all — to inform us what round it is. Because if there’s one thing people tune into late night MMA news shows on obscure networks for, it’s the chance to see some tits.
But after three grueling rounds, Michael Bisping found himself atop the leaderboard despite the fact that he could barely remember who Prince William was married to. Unfortunately for “The Count,” Dana White still gave the third round to Rashad.
Now who else agrees that at the minimum, this needs to become a regular feature on UFC Tonight, if not a full time game show? Think about it; they could do a Password round with Chael Sonnen and Jon Jones(The password is: “coward”), and a game in which several English-speaking fighters try to decipher whatever the hell Terry Etim is saying. It would be TV gold.
Kenny Florian and hardcore MMA fans have an interesting relationship. By the end of his career we respected him—after all, his heart, courage and incredible variety of skills both standing up and on the ground were undeniable.But it was a rock…
Kenny Florian and hardcore MMA fans have an interesting relationship. By the end of his career we respected him—after all, his heart, courage and incredible variety of skills both standing up and on the ground were undeniable.
But it was a rocky road for a time, and it all started with UFC 64 and a bout for the newly reinstated lightweight title with Sean Sherk.
To many, it was a fight that didn’t make sense. Sherk was a career welterweight, dropping to 155 for the first time after losing bouts to Georges St-Pierre and Matt Hughes, making it clear he was not better than third best in his division.
Sherk at least had the pedigree to make a title challenge reasonable. Florian, for better or worse, was a product of The Ultimate Fighter. Seen as a flash in the pan, an artificial creation of reality television, his single fight as a lightweight against Sam Stout didn’t convince fans and critics that he deserved a spot in a fight for the gold.
And yet, there he was, face on the event poster, co-main-eventing a UFC pay-per-view in his first appearance outside the Spike TV safety net.
“It was kind of like my experience in The Ultimate Fighter when I didn’t really realize how big it was. Which was kind of good for me. I just kind of fought my ass off,” Florian told Bleacher Report in a career-spanning interview from the Mandarin Oriental hotel in Las Vegas. “I knew I was outgunned against Sean Sherk. The guy had almost 40 fights to my, like, seven.
“Big, strong guy, lots of experience. But for me, I went in there to kill. And that’s why I walked out with the samurai outfit. That was my feeling. I was going out there to die. Win or die. That’s what I was prepared for. It was a great experience. Fighting for the championship, it was so early in my career…it was crazy. You don’t pass up opportunities like that. I had to do it.”
By the end of the second round, you could forgive forensic experts if they accidentally thought they had stumbled onto a murder scene. Florian was soaked in blood—and it wasn’t his own. He opened up a bad cut with an elbow strike and Sherk looked close to exsanguination, bleeding like a faucet even after the third round began, his corner unable to stop the bleeding.
“It gave me motivation,” Florian remembered. “The fans just went nuts. There was so much blood in the cage that night from him. Literally, it was the next day, and I had already taken two or three showers—the next day I still found blood in my ear, outside my ear. I found it inside, like rolled up in my eyelids.
“There was so much blood, I can’t even tell you. It was ridiculous. I can still taste it to this day. Like liquid metal. It was nuts. And definitely it motivated me. And that was a war. That was a war. I remember peeing blood after that.”
Sherk, to his credit, recovered his bearings and won a unanimous decision in a brutal fight. For Florian, it was back to the gym, time to reinvent himself as a fighter and an athlete. Many fighters get a single opportunity to compete for a championship. Florian was determined he would not be among their number.
“When I went back I said, ‘Here’s the deal.’ I was kind of dealing with some injuries. I could have done some other things differently. I didn’t have a strength and conditioning coach. I could have been eating a little bit better year-round. I could have been training a little bit more,” Florian said. “It was a kick in the ass for me and got me to train like a true professional. I was a professional fighter fighting. After that, I became a professional who fought… A professional athlete.
“And that’s the way I approached it. It really paid off. Before every fight, I always worked harder and harder, and I was able to increase my capacity to train more and more…those losses provided so much fuel for me.”
What followed were six consecutive wins and a second shot at the belt. Florian walked the hard road back to contention, earning another opportunity. But it was a journey that almost went awry in his first fight post-Sherk.
Against Japanese submission ace DokonjonosukeMishima, Florian was caught in a tight kneebar, one that almost ended the fight.
“I was winning the whole fight and he almost catches me in this kneebar. Almost taps me, almost rips my knee off,” Florian recalled. “I just said, ‘Screw it.’ That was my mistake. If my knee breaks it’s gonna break. I’m going to try to get out of this….That was very close.
“He had locked it out. I got a little lackadaisical, a little cocky. Man, that was close. Luckily I turned the right way. I had really worked on my leg lock defense for that fight…I was so angry at myself that I hit him with one of the hardest shots I’ve ever thrown. As soon as I got that mount, got his back, I was just livid at myself.”
Florian ended up finishing the fight with a rear-naked choke and, without meaning to, proceeded to talk a little smack in the aftermath.
“I tried to show him respect. I was learning Japanese before the fight, and I sat and bowed down to him and I said, in Japanese, ‘I am a samurai,’ instead of saying, ‘You are a samurai.’ So I beat him up and then said, ‘I am a samurai.’ And he looked at me with these eyes and said, ‘Me too. I’m a samurai too.’ And I said, ‘No, no, no! You. You’re a samurai.’ …It was the worst.”
International incidents and foreign language shenanigans behind him, Florian continued to make a case that he deserved another shot at the lightweight title. After subsequent wins over Din Thomas and Joe Stevenson, among others, Florian would once again find his way into title contention.
His opponent for his second shot at gold wouldn’t be Sean Sherk. Instead, standing across the cage was the most legendary lightweight of all, and Florian’s hero, BJ Penn. We continue our interview with Florian tomorrow here at Caged In.
For many fighters, the path into the cage is predictable. A hard life, early struggles with abuse or neglect, an all-consuming desire, from a very young age, to command respect with five knuckles. Ten if they learn to throw a solid left.Without an outl…
For many fighters, the path into the cage is predictable. A hard life, early struggles with abuse or neglect, an all-consuming desire, from a very young age, to command respect with five knuckles. Ten if they learn to throw a solid left.
Without an outlet for whatever is burning inside of them, these young men would still find themselves drawn to violence, proverbial moths to the flame. The violence, for some, is inevitable. The cage isn’t necessarily their destination. It’s a convenient and life-saving exit off a toll road that leads to prison or the morgue. It’s salvation.
With others, fighting is an elaborate science experiment, a violent one perhaps, with human lab rats. This subset of fighter sees the mat as a laboratory. The question that consumes them is not who is the toughest guy on the block or who can beat up whom. It’s a simpler one, a more elegant one: what works? When two human beings collide, what strategies and techniques are the most effective?
“Finding these techniques that would work in a fight…for me it was kind of just formulas,” UFC announcer Kenny Florian, sporting the hottest of hot pink pants, told Bleacher Report in a career-spanning interview. “I didn’t see it as ‘I’m this tough guy. I want to fight. I want to get hit in the head. Punch the guy back and bleed.’ I came to actually like that stuff, but that wasn’t my initial impression.
“For me it was always about the method and finding the way to beat guys. That was what was so interesting to me…I don’t think I was ever a fighter. I think I was a martial artist. And I think there is a difference.”
Florian, for the better part of a decade, was a leading scientist of fistic violence, a professor of pain. The son of a surgeon, a professional on his way to a career that involved absolutely no face-punching, a soccer player in college, for God’s sake, Florian was one of the least likely candidates in UFC history to become a championship level fighter.
“I had no intentions of being an actual MMA fighter,” Florian said. “I just wanted to do martial arts full time. At the time I was really in love with Brazilian jiu-jitsu. That’s all I could think about. That’s all that I wanted to do. I just wanted to dedicate myself to the martial arts. So I stopped working—I said ‘If I can put a gi on every single day, I’ll be a happy man.'”
Even today, 10years later, with a career of incredible accomplishments in his rearview mirror and the future ahead of him on the horizon, that sounds a little silly.
“I stopped working.”
He tells the story with a laugh, as if recognizing the absurdity. In our consumer-driven culture, the very idea of quitting a solid job, of abandoning his hard won college degree and his parents’ dreams for his future, for what was at the time a very dicey proposition, was preposterous.
“There’s no money in that. That’s the first thing my parents are thinking,” Florian said. “You went to Boston College, you graduated…we thought you were going to law school. All this stuff…how are you going to survive? How are you going to pay the bills?
“And it was a good question. I didn’t know.”
The answer came just a year into his nascent fighting career, in the same form it has come from many young fighters in the short history of the UFC—the bombastic Dana White and his consigliere, Joe Silva. Looking for talent to fill the inaugural season of The Ultimate Fighter, White found Florian on the losing end of a fight with another athlete the UFC was scouting, named Drew Fickett.
While Fickett captured the judges in a close fight, it was Florian who captured the attention of the UFC. Impressed with his moxie and heart, White offered Florian a spot on reality television. Suddenly, the idea of putting on a gi and going to practice for a living looked a little less ridiculous.
“Maybe 15 minutes after the fight he showed up and said ‘Listen, I thought you won the fight. You showed a lot of heart. I thought you were going to get your ass kicked. Listen, we’re doing this show called The Ultimate Fighter. Have your brother interview you on camera. Send it in to us,'” Florian remembered.
He also recalled being so upset he almost blew the entire thing off. Reality television may have been a staple of cable television by then, but it wasn’t yet an automatic ticket into the Octagon. Florian considered passing.
“…I was so pissed that I lost,” Florian said. “I didn’t even end up doing the interview. I sent in a seminar tape where I’m teaching MMA techniques. The producers called me a couple of weeks later and said they wanted to invite me out to Vegas for an interview…They said the fights will be at 185 pounds. You’re probably 170 pounds, if that. Do you want to do the show? I said ‘Yeah, why not?'”
For Florian, weight was a constant obstacle. During his career he bridged an incredible range of 40 pounds, starting in the UFC as a middleweight and eventually cutting all the way down to 145 pounds for a featherweight title fight against Jose Aldo.
As his career progressed, Florian understood the need to gain, or at least not yield, every advantage. But in those early days he was still a believer in technique conquering all. His role model, as has been the case with so many other young martial artists, was Royce Gracie. The jiu-jitsu ace had run the table against behemoths in the UFC’s formative days, and Florian wasn’t quite ready to write him off as a relic of the past. Kenny might have been undersized, but that wasn’t, in his mind, something that would stop him from making his mark.
“I couldn’t pass it up,” Florian said, explaining why he took fights at middleweight when he never even approached the 185 pound weight limit, even after eating a full breakfast and lunch the day of the weigh-ins. “You had the other guys, Diego (Sanchez) and (Josh) Koscheck who were fighting up in weight too. There were a couple of us who really shouldn’t have been fighting at 185, but it was too good of an opportunity to pass up….we had a nice crop of talented fighters mixed with very interesting personalities. That’s what made the show.”
Florian was David in a house full of Goliaths. Yes, there were other smaller fighters in the fighter house. But what they lacked in heft, they made up in stature and pedigree. Koscheck was an NCAA champion. Sanchez was arguably the top unsigned prospect in the whole sport, an obvious future star who was ready to step into the UFC immediately.
Kenny was just a soccer player from Boston, an afterthought who was expected to lose quickly and brutally to Chris Leben, the loudmouthed street fighter from Team Quest in Portland who was a natural middleweight and an immediate fan favorite, a trash talking anti-hero who was rarely at a loss for words.
Leben had all the advantages. He trained with one of the best teams in the world, soaking up knowledge from the likes of Matt Lindland, Dan Henderson and coach Randy Couture. He had more experience and a seemingly unlimited supply of confidence. And he was the bigger and stronger man.
None of that saved him from Florian. Instead of a rock and a slingshot, Florian carried just his own razor-sharp elbows into the fight. It was all over by the second round, with a gaping cut on Leben‘s eye leading to a stoppage. The result placed Florian one fight away from the dream that propelled every fighter on the show—the title of The Ultimate Fighter and a six-figure UFC contract.
It was the first of many disappointments for Florian. Late in his career, White labelled him a choke artist, a sentiment that was perhaps unkind to voice but not entirely unsupported by the record. After all, Florian had five losses in the UFC, all five when it mattered most with either a championship or title fight on the line.
But of all his setbacks, it is his first, at The Ultimate Fighter Finale in 2005, that Florian wishes he had back.
“That really was the only time I choked in an MMA fight,” Florian admits. “I didn’t even get a chance to compete. I succumbed to the pressure and the nervousness and the inexperience. Coming off that show, people would be like ‘Hey man, aren’t you from The Ultimate Fighter?’ And I’d kind of have my head down. ‘Yeah.’ People would recognize me, but for me, it was the worst experience ever. Because I lost.
“Not even that I lost. It was that I didn’t even get a chance to compete, in my opinion. Maybe I would have lost anyway. But I didn’t even get a chance to show my skills, and that’s really what hurt the most…It was bittersweet, but more bitter…Not the greatest feeling.”
Luckily for Florian, the television show was not the end of his UFC journey. Although the fighters were allegedly competing for a UFC contract, in reality almost every competitor got several opportunities in the Octagon.
While that became the case after every season of The Ultimate Fighter, at the time it was unclear exactly what would happen next. In Florian’s case, it was the birth of a star. Spike TV identified him as a potential headliner right away, thanks to a combination of name recognition and an exciting fighting style.
His first three fights after TUF were all on Spike, with the third showcasing Florian in the main event against striker Sam Stout.
“They probably wanted to build me up. And saw potential in me, I hope,” Florian said. “I’m very grateful. You know what’s crazy—I am so lucky because every single one of my fights have been featured on TV or pay-per-view. Which is extremely rare for a fighter. Literally every fight I’ve ever had has been seen by the public on like a main network or pay-per-view card. I’ve been on a main card every single fight of my life…I’m blessed. Very, very lucky.”
For Florian, the high-profile bouts led to a rising profile in the sport. Less than two years after fighting to simply secure a UFC contract, he’d find himself battling for UFC gold. Stay tuned tomorrow as the Kenny Florian story continues here at Bleacher Report.
