A pair of UFC veterans are set for Fight 2 Night’s upcoming event this month, as Matt Hamill takes on Luiz Cane. Hamill (11-8) has not won a fight since 2012 when he defeated Roger Hollett at UFC 152, including three consecutive first round finishes. He was bested by Julian Marquez in October. Cane (17-6) […]
A pair of UFC veterans are set for Fight 2 Night’s upcoming event this month, as Matt Hamill takes on Luiz Cane. Hamill (11-8) has not won a fight since 2012 when he defeated Roger Hollett at UFC 152, including three consecutive first round finishes. He was bested by Julian Marquez in October. Cane (17-6) […]
Saturday’s featured middleweight bout between Tom Lawlor and Francis Carmont was supposed to serve as a thrilling affair that would likely push Carmont into the upper echelon of the promotion’s division. It ended up being a snoozefest that …
Saturday’s featured middleweight bout between Tom Lawlor and Francis Carmont was supposed to serve as a thrilling affair that would likely push Carmont into the upper echelon of the promotion’s division. It ended up being a snoozefest that consisted of a whole lot of wall and stall.
Don’t get me wrong, I was strangely entertained by the fight, and that was probably a result of the intrigue surrounding this specific collision. Could Carmont put away a rugged, dangerous guy like Lawlor? Would Lawlor finally snag a major victory for the promotion?
The answer in both cases was no.
Carmont turned in a somewhat timid performance, and while he was able to exit the cage victorious, the fight probably didn’t do too much to gain him many new fans. Lawlor, meanwhile, came up just short of derailing the highly touted prospect.
Carmont’s takedown defense and reach kept him out of serious danger, and Lawlor’s ability to close the distance without sustaining too much damage kept him alive in the fight.
What ensued was a spicy wrestling match that took place, for the most part, from the upright position.
It wasn’t particularly exciting, and it failed to produce the answers so many sought heading into the fight.
We’re still completely unsure of how Francis will perform against a top-tier middleweight, and we’re still uncertain of just how far Lawlor can go in the division. In the grand scheme of things, one could actually label last night’s meeting as irrelevant.
We learned absolutely nothing from watching these two men fight. Carmont is still unbeaten inside the Octagon, but Lawlor certainly isn’t, and if he wants to remain employed by the largest MMA promotion in the world, he’s going to need to pick up a few big wins.
(It isn’t often that you can document the exact moment someone’s UFC career went to shit, yet here we are…)
If you were to ask any knowledgeable fan of the sport circa 2008 what they thought of Luiz Cane, they would likely tell you that he was “one of the most underrated LHW’s in the division.” Following an unsuccessful UFC debut — which was halted when Cane accidentally struck James “Curse Watch” Irvin with an illegal knee — “Banha” absolutely blistered Jason Lambert and Rameau Sokoudjou in back-to-back contests, then scored a solid UD victory over Steve Cantwell to solidify his place as a rising contender. No, not the five fight losing streak Steve Cantwell, we’re talking about the Brian Stann TKOing, Al-Hassan arm-breaking Steve Cantwell. Cane’s chin appeared to be made of iron, platinum, unobtanium, or whatever element you’d prefer to compare it to, and combined with his solid takedown defense and devastating hands, looked to be on the fast track to a title shot.
But then, things fell apart (as they oft do in MMA) and Cane would quickly find himself fighting not just for a win, but to remain employed under the promotion in which he had once thrived.
(It isn’t often that you can document the exact moment someone’s UFC career went to shit, yet here we are…)
If you were to ask any knowledgeable fan of the sport circa 2008 what they thought of Luiz Cane, they would likely tell you that he was “one of the most underrated LHW’s in the division.” Following an unsuccessful UFC debut — which was halted when Cane accidentally struck James “Curse Watch” Irvin with an illegal knee — “Banha” absolutely blistered Jason Lambert and Rameau Sokoudjou in back-to-back contests, then scored a solid UD victory over Steve Cantwell to solidify his place as a rising contender. No, not the five fight losing streak Steve Cantwell, we’re talking about the Brian Stann TKOing, Al-Hassan arm-breaking Steve Cantwell. Cane’s chin appeared to be made of iron, platinum, unobtanium, or whatever element you’d prefer to compare it to, and combined with his solid takedown defense and devastating hands, looked to be on the fast track to a title shot.
But then, things fell apart (as they oft do in MMA) and Cane would quickly find himself fighting not just for a win, but to remain employed under the promotion in which he had once thrived.
It all started when Cane squared off against PRIDE veteran Antonio Rogerio Nogueira at UFC 106. You see, word had it that this “Minotoro” guy — who was making his UFC debut at the time — packed some power of his own. Word also had it that he had a brother who had been around the block a time or two. Despite this, many members of the MMA media were pegging Cane as the favorite, being that Rogerio and Cane had shared a similar opponent in Sokoudjou and one of them was KTFO by him. In either case, it took roughly two minutes for Lil’ Nog to throw enough left hooks to ensure that Cane would not only fall over, but would never truly pick himself back up. This kind of fighter-changing moment would be mirrored at the very next UFC pay-per-view event when Frank Mir would take a moderately entertaining kickboxer in Cheick Kongo and turn him into a lethargic, hesitant grappler for the rest of his career*.
For his next outing, Cane would be paired against another hard-hitting PRIDE veteran making his UFC debut in Cyrille Diabate. Although he managed to rock Diabate on at least one occasion this time out, just 17 seconds would be the only thing separating his second TKO loss from his first by the time this one was over.
After managing to end up on the right side of a first round TKO in his next outing against Elliot Marshall, Cane was given a golden opportunity to impress in front of his home country at UFC 134, where he would take on fellow slugger Stanislov Nedkov. It would not go well. Despite battering and bloodying his foe up early in the fight, you could almost see the hesitance in Cane’s eyes. “Bahna” would go down in the first (again) and Brazil would suffer its only loss to foreign competition that night. It was at this point that we placed Cane on our list of fighters we wished were better than they actually were, hoping it would provide the spark of motivation that he seemed to be missing.
For his final shot at redemption, Cane faced TUF 11 alum Chris Camozzi at UFC 153. It was a match that he was favored to win, due in part to the fact that Camozzi lacked the kind of KO power that had given Cane trouble in the past. Yet in the end, Cane would find himself swinging at air for the majority of the three round affair and eating a hellstorm of leg kicks and crisp combos to boot. According to Cane’s manager, the Brazilian’s sluggishness could be attributed to the pair of surgeries he was forced to undergo and the fact that he took the fight against doctor’s orders:
[Cain] comes from two knee surgeries. At first, the doctor made a mistake and he had to have another. To compete at that level, with a lot of athletes, it’s hard. He made a great fight.
He’ll keep fighting, and hope to be back soon to the UFC. People have to understand that being cut from the UFC is not a disaster. Once you’ve got a name in the UFC, things get easier for a comeback. Every athlete is likely to have that phase. Soon he wins and returns to the Ultimate.
*Kongo’s Hail Mary KO of Pat Barry, while remarkable, does not change this fact. One fluke KO does not compensate for his abysmal performances against Travis Browne, Paul Buentello, Matt Mitrione, and Shawn Jordan.
(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.
Filed under: UFCTimes like these, it’s the waiting that really gets to you. Either the call is coming or it isn’t. Either your dream is dead — possibly for good this time — or else it still has the faintest hint of a pulse. Eliot Marshall doesn’t kno…
Times like these, it’s the waiting that really gets to you. Either the call is coming or it isn’t. Either your dream is dead — possibly for good this time — or else it still has the faintest hint of a pulse. Eliot Marshall doesn’t know yet which way things are going to swing following his narrow decision loss to Brandon Vera at UFC 137, but he’s not terribly optimistic.
“I’m pretty sure I’m done, but what can you do?” Marshall said on Tuesday afternoon. “I really genuinely believe that [the UFC is] going to cut me.”
It’s a shame, considering how close he came to not only winning the fight, but finishing Vera in the third round. He came so close, in fact, that Marshall wasn’t the only one who was stunned when the judges failed to give him a 10-8 round in that final frame.
“In my opinion, the worst it could have been was a draw,” said Marshall. “I don’t know what else you’ve got to do [to get a 10-8 round]. I showed good power, knocking him down twice in that round, got a takedown, almost choked him out and I broke his arm.”
All three judges gave Marshall a 10-9 in the final round, just like all three gave Vera a 10-9 in rounds one and two. Despite the near finish and the questionable scoring, it still goes down in the record books as a win for Vera and yet another loss for Marshall, who came into this bout on shaky ground with the UFC.
After getting TKO’d by Luiz Cane at UFC 128 in a fight he took on ten days’ notice just to get back in the UFC, Marshall needed a victory just to stay viable. He may have been a 5-1 underdog coming into the bout, but in the final seconds he had the armbar on so tight that Vera had to choose between defeat and injury. Vera chose the latter, sustaining a torn ligament in his left elbow that landed him on the medical suspensions list, but preserved his decision victory.
“I want to say 99 percent of the people tap in that situation; he didn’t,” Marshall said. “If he tapped, we’d be having a different discussion. You’d be calling me, asking what I’m going to do with the $75,000 bonus for Submission of the Night. He chose to let his arm break. He made a choice for his career that he thought it would be better to go on after his breaking his arm.”
With the loss, Marshall may be out of a job and a career, since he said publicly before the bout that he’d likely retire if released from the UFC for a second time in two years. With that on the line, and with as close as he came to victory, it’s hard for him not to feel as if throughout his time in the Octagon the breaks never seemed to go his way.
“It kind of sums up my career with the UFC, from my first fight for The Ultimate Fighter until now,” he said.
That first fight was his contest against Karn Grigoryan for a spot on TUF’s eighth season. Before being admitted to the house, every fighter had to earn his place with a victory, which meant spending all day cutting weight in a hotel room before the exhibition bout. Marshall asked for a scale in his room so he could check his progress, he said, and he was told one would be delivered.
“A scale never shows up. Never. So I just have to cut the weight, having no clue where I am. I mean, I have a rough estimate of where I’m starting, but a pound matters. You miss [weight], you’re out.”
Marshall weighed in at 197 pounds for that 205-pound bout, he said. He went on to batter Grigoryan in the fight, but lost a split decision that shocked most observers. Ostensibly, his TUF run should have ended there, but Marshall was selected as a replacement for an injured cast member and his career was launched.
“Then I go 3-1 in the UFC and get cut,” he said. “Holy cow. Then I have a fight like that with Brandon and I lose that one too. That’s what I mean. It sums it up.”
Now Marshall is left waiting for news on his future as his management makes his case to the UFC. Lex McMahon, Marshall’s agent, is more optimistic about his future, since the way the Vera fight ended “gave us a lot to work with.”
Marshall, however, seems to be preparing himself for the worst. If the UFC releases him again, he said, he’ll most likely call it quits and do something else with his life.
“You can’t say a hundred percent, but the only way I’m not retired is if I get a big money fight. I won’t fight in regional promotions for $5,000. I’m not doing that. It’s too tough on my family. My kid’s getting to the point where he knows when I’m gone. He knows when I’m not home for a week. So that’s not happening anymore. Unless there’s good money on the table, I’m done.”
But if he is done with MMA after coming so close to a victory, and after what may have been the single best round in his UFC career, how will that sit with him in the years to come? If he ends up retired from fighting at the age of 31 all because one man refused to tap and three judges declined to mark a 10-8 on their scorecards, is that going to be an ending he can live with?
Marshall doesn’t know the answer just yet. For now, he’s waiting. Waiting for bad news, for any news. Waiting to find out which direction his life is going to head in now, and preparing for whatever comes next.
“I proved everything I needed to prove to myself,” Marshall said. “My last fight [against Luiz Cane], ten days’ notice or not, it was bad. I’ll be the first to say that. It was bad in more ways than one. Physically, my mental was off, I kind of fell apart in my mind. But this fight I was prepared, I was ready to go. If that was my last round, that’s my last round. It’s a pretty good last round, right?”
Filed under: UFCIf things go very, very well for Eliot Marshall at UFC 137 — which is to say, if he not only beats Brandon Vera, but also earns one of the UFC’s bonus awards for the best submission, knockout, or fight of the night — it will be a prof…
If things go very, very well for Eliot Marshall at UFC 137 — which is to say, if he not only beats Brandon Vera, but also earns one of the UFC’s bonus awards for the best submission, knockout, or fight of the night — it will be a profitable night in the Octagon for the Colorado-based light heavyweight.
But if he merely wins without collecting a big bonus, he told MMA Fighting, he’ll probably just break even in the end.
“That’s how much I’ve put into this [training] camp, financially,” said Marshall. “Spending money to travel, go here and do this, do that, it’s not cheap. I’m a hundred percent committed.”
At this point, he pretty much has to be. That’s because Marshal knows he’s likely just one loss away from being cut by the UFC for a second time in two years. And if that happens, Marshall said, he plans to hang up the gloves and call it a career.
His thinking on the matter is simple, he explained. He’s already been cut from the organization once, and had to volunteer for a short-notice fight with Luiz Cane at UFC 128 just to get back in. He lost that one via first-round TKO, but his willingness to step up when the UFC needed someone was apparently enough to earn him this second chance.
If he gets beat by Vera this Saturday night, he’ll drop to 0-2 in his current UFC run and will almost certainly get his walking papers as a result. If that happens, he’s not sure what the point would be of continuing on with his fighting career.
“How many guys do you know who get brought back for a third time?” he pointed out.
That’s why, at least to hear Marshall tell it now, this could very well be it for him. He knows he’ll be the underdog heading into the bout with Vera, and if things go the way oddsmakers expect them to the 31-year-old Marshall might be on his way to retirement this time next week.
Maybe that helps to explain why he’s invested so much time and money into this training camp. With so much at stake, he wanted to make sure he was as well prepared as possible, he said, which meant multiple trips down to Greg Jackson’s gym in Albuquerque, N.M., as well as driving all around Colorado to get in the gym with as many different sparring partners as he could find.
“That way you don’t get used to anybody’s style,” he explained. “Sometimes you get used to what guy A does or guy B does, and then when you get in the cage to really fight, the guy you’re fighting doesn’t do what guy A or B does and you have to adapt. I’ve had to adapt every sparring session. My mind and my body is used to it, so it’s not so much about what they’re going to do, it’s what I’m going to do.”
But against an opponent like Vera, figuring out a path to victory isn’t so easy, as Marshall has learned from hours of watching film.
“He’s very, very tough,” Marshall said. “Even when he’s losing, he takes it. Thiago Silva whooped his ass, and he wasn’t close to being stopped. He switches stances well. Obviously, he kicks hard. I guess on paper he should be the champ of the world, right?”
So why isn’t he? Instead of being champ of the world, why is Vera winless in his last three fights, and just barely holding on to a spot in the UFC himself?
“I just don’t think he wants it that bad,” said Marshall, who added that, in the end, that’s what he believes will make all the difference.
“What’s going to decide the fight is who wants it more. I don’t think any one skill-set is going to decide this fight. It’s going to be, who’s willing to get beat up? Who’s willing to suffer to win this fight?”
The way Marshall sees it, that person is him. That’s because he has to win this fight. If he doesn’t, his stay in the UFC — and, so he says, his career in MMA — will both come to an end.
That explains why he’s invested so much in his own training and preparation, he said. There’s no reason not to go all-in now and see what happens. At this point in his career, there might not be a next time.
Times like these, it’s the waiting that really gets to you. Either the call is coming or it isn’t. Either your dream is dead — possibly for good this time — or else it still has the faintest hint of a pulse. 
If things go very, very well for 