If there’s one surefire way to keep your job in the UFC as a fighter, it is by impressing Dana White and the fans. We’ve seen it occur multiple times where a guy who obviously doesn’t have the skill set to be in the UFC remain employed for simply being…
If there’s one surefire way to keep your job in the UFC as a fighter, it is by impressing Dana White and the fans. We’ve seen it occur multiple times where a guy who obviously doesn’t have the skill set to be in the UFC remain employed for simply being an exciting and fan-favorite fighter.
The fighters on this list need to rebound in impressive fashion in their next fight. There is no way a fighter can be totally focused on their bout when having to worry about being handed their pink slip for losing.
Some of the fighters on this list even won their last fight, but still need to come back strong to put any doubters to rest.
If there’s one thing fans and fighters can relate to, enjoying it’s job security, and the fighters on this list can ensure some measure of that by coming back in impressive fashion for their next bout.
Demian Maia is a tough fighter to wrap your head around. One day, the onetime middleweight contender is choking out Chael Sonnen and handling a guy like Jorge Santiago the next he’s being dominated by Mark Munoz and Chris Weidman. The one thing the Brazilian jiu-jitsu standout, who is 9-4 in the Octagon has lacked in his career is consistency, which explains why he’s ready perhaps to make a change.
Maia, who admits he sometimes struggles to maintain his 198-pound walking around weight, told Tatame recently that he’s been thinking about dropping down a weight class to fight at 170 pounds.
Demian Maia is a tough fighter to wrap your head around. One day, the onetime middleweight contender is choking out Chael Sonnen and handling a guy like Jorge Santiago the next he’s being dominated by Mark Munoz and Chris Weidman. The one thing the Brazilian jiu-jitsu standout, who is 9-4 in the Octagon has lacked in his career is consistency, which explains why he’s ready perhaps to make a change.
Maia, who admits he sometimes struggles to maintain his 198-pound walking around weight, told Tatame recently that he’s been thinking about dropping down a weight class to fight at 170 pounds.
“It has not been decided yet [for sure]. I’ve always said it was a possibility… I usually have to make much effort to keep 198lbs and I gotta eat a lot not to lose weight because it’s easy for me. I’m getting healed from my hand (hand surgery), which is almost good. I’m taking a week off because it’s been a while since I haven’t taken some time to rest. Now that I’m not training and eating what I want I weight 194lbs, more or less. When it’s close to the fight I cut weight and leave the last 11 to 13lbs to lose at the very end.”
Maia is recovering from hand surgery following a break he sustained his loss to Chris Weidman at last month, but is hoping to be back 10 100 percent by the summer so he can fight on the next planned card in Rio.
“I hope to be ready in June. We’re getting back to training now and I’ll fight in June if I have to,” he explains. “I’ll be ready.”
Who do you think he should face if he debuts at 170?
If Dan Hardy had his way he would have shaved the mohawk by now. Five minutes with some clippers, one quick swoop down the middle of his head, and the signature hairstyle that makes him so recognizable to fight fans could be gone. Maybe then he could blend in. Maybe then he could get a moment to be alone with himself and figure out just what in the hell is going on.
He’d do it if he had it his way. But he doesn’t.
It’s a UFC fight week in Toronto and Hardy has come at the request of Xyience, a sponsor of his that has him scheduled for autograph signings and fan meet-and-greets all week. And Xyience? You better believe Xyience wants the mohawk. That’s because the fans want the mohawk. They expect it. You book Dan Hardy and he shows up with a shaved head, it’s like having Carrot Top show up as a blonde.
The fans want the guy they’ve seen on TV. They want the brash, cocky Brit with the punk rock swagger. But after a rough stretch of four straight losses in the UFC — a 17-month span that dropped him from top contender to just barely employed — he’s not even sure where that guy went, or if he’s ever coming back.
“I don’t feel like myself right now,” Hardy says.
You look in his eyes and you know he means it. He sits slumped in a plush leather chair in the lobby of a posh downtown Toronto hotel. He speaks so softly you have to lean in close just to hear him. The last thing he wants to do these days is draw attention to himself. He knows what people are thinking. And even if they aren’t thinking it, they might as well be, since he hears their accusations in the wordless glances from across the room. It’s not just the fans, either.
“I start to feel like other fighters are looking at me like, why is he still in the UFC? And I don’t want people looking at me like that.”
I don’t feel like myself right now. — Dan HardyThese days, he feels it more and more. When another fighter gets cut after two or three consecutive losses — even when the possibility is merely mentioned, as it was when UFC president Dana White suggested that he might cut “Mayhem” Miller after one unimpressive performance — Hardy’s name gets dragged into it.
“That had nothing to do with me,” he says. “But I’m constantly hearing about it.”
Social media tools like Twitter, which is almost a job requirement for UFC fighters these days, make sure of that. Fight fans seem to think that an internet connection and a working keyboard entitle them to tell Hardy exactly how he should spend his days. It’s gotten to the point where he can predict the tweets almost word for word.
“If I ever tweet something that’s not about training or fighting — anything, whether it’s about a movie I’ve seen or I’m out on the [Las Vegas] strip and see something funny and send a picture of it — I’ll always get some jackass tweet back, ‘Oh, don’t you think you should be working on your wrestling?'” he says. “Every. Time. That really winds me up.”
But he asked for his. He knows he did. He struck this bargain when he showed up on their TVs asking to be watched, judged, rooted for or against, maybe even loved. And nobody loves a loser. Not even himself.
****
How does it happen? How does a winning fighter become a losing one? In Hardy’s case the answer seems to be: a little bit at a time, until it seems like it’s been that way forever.
In March of 2010, he was the number one contender in the welterweight division. He’d won seven fights in a row — four in the UFC — and had earned the right to fight for Georges St-Pierre‘s 170-pound title. He was one step from eternal glory, already far beyond what most fighters ever achieve in their careers. Then he lost. And lost again. And again and again.
Oddly enough, the first one was the easiest to live with. It was at the hands of GSP, after all.
“To be honest, I went in there to give it my all,” he says. “I didn’t expect to totally dominate the fight or anything like that. I knew if I caught him with a good shot I could knock him out, but I also knew the chances were pretty slim on that because he wasn’t going to play that game.”
And he didn’t. Instead he schooled Hardy in a grappling match for five rounds, nearly tearing his arm off with one submission attempt after another. But Hardy took it. He went the distance with the champ and lost a decision that at least had some dignity to it. Later, GSP would tell anyone who would listen that Hardy was better than he expected, much better than people realized. It was nice to hear, but it’s like getting dumped by a girl who tells you that you’re going to make someone very happy some day. Hardy didn’t need compliments; he needed a rebound.
Seven months later he stepped into the cage again, this time back home in England against Carlos Condit.
“I knew I was going to win. No doubt about it. Then I opened my eyes and saw the doctor standing over me and I thought, man, it finally caught up to me.”
Maybe it was inevitable. As much as Hardy loves to stand and slug it out, and as much as fans love to see him do it, he always knew it was a gamble. He always knew that, if he kept it up long enough, one day it would be his turn to find out what it felt like to wake up on his back.
“You know sometimes how you’re watching the fights and you see a guy get knocked out, and then he opens his eyes and stands up and he’s asking people what happened, did he win? And I always thought to myself, if I open my eyes and the doctor’s standing over me, I’ll know I didn’t win. And then as soon as I opened my eyes and saw I was in that situation I thought, I’m the guy. That’s me.” He punked me, and he punked me good. — Dan Hardy on Anthony Johnson
But so what? It was two fights. Anybody could lose two fights, especially if one of them was against the world’s greatest welterweight. All Hardy knew was that he had to win the next one, because losing three in a row almost always means losing your job in the UFC. When he got offered the fight with Anthony Johnson, a fighter he knew and liked, he thought that at least he’d get a chance to go out on his shield in a striking war. He thought wrong.
“I got in there just expecting this blaze of glory,” he says. All the way through training camp he’d exchanged emails and direct messages on Twitter with Johnson, both of them talking about what a slugfest their fight would be, how they’d steal the show in Seattle. But Johnson was the superior wrestler, and he knew it. Why trade bombs with Hardy if you didn’t have to? And why not let him think he was walking into a kickboxing match, since that would only make him easier to take down.
“He punked me,” Hardy says. “And he punked me good.”
After three rounds of far more wrestling than slugging, an exhausted Hardy sat back in his corner and let the disappointment wash over him. He didn’t need to wait and hear how the judges had scored it. Nobody did. Three in a row, he thought. That ought to do it. When he looked up, there was Johnson strolling over to him like a kid who’d just cheated his best friend out of his lunch money.
“He came over to me right after the fight was over and he hugged me and said, ‘I’m sorry, man. I love you like a brother.’ And I thought, dammit, he punked me. He knew he was going to do it all the way through training camp. He properly played me.”
What’s worse, he couldn’t even really stay mad at Johnson afterward. If anybody understood that desperate need for a win — a desire so strong you’d spend weeks lying just to get it — it was Hardy.
“[Johnson] did the calculated thing. Whether you agree with it or not, he felt like he needed a win and that was the smartest way to get it. I know he got a lot of [expletive] for it, but he got the win and now he’s progressing, in a good place in his career. And me? Not so much.”
****
He expected to be cut. Maybe he even felt like he deserved it. The UFC has few official policy stances when it comes to deciding which fighters stay and which go, but he’d seen the three-strikes-and-you’re-out rule applied so consistently over the years that it might as well have been passed down through the generations on a stone tablet. When the axe didn’t come for him after three straight, he almost wished it had.
“It’s like the ship went down and everyone else drowned, and I was the captain and I survived,” he says. “You’re like, how did that happen? I should be the first one to go.”
When the UFC decided to not only keep him around, but also give him a main event bout against veteran Chris Lytle on a cable TV fight card, he was nothing short of baffled.
“I kind of felt like, I’m not sure why I’m getting this opportunity, but I’ve got it, I’m in the main event, and I’m going to try and make the most of it.”
Of all the losses in this miserable streak, this is the one he still can’t watch. He’s tried. The guy on the screen looks like him, has the same recognizable haircut, but there’s this strange disconnect, like watching video of yourself during a blackout. That’s him doing those things, throwing these blows, but he doesn’t feel any particular sense of ownership over it as he watches himself shooting for a takedown and getting choked into submission.
“It was just a terrible fight,” he says. “I can’t watch it.”
Four in a row. This had to be it. He just knew it. But Twitter actually brought some good news for a change, this time in the form of a tweet from UFC co-owner Lorenzo Fertitta.
“Will not cut @danhardymma,” it read. “I like guys that WAR!!!”
I’m letting the UFC’s reputation down, because they’re the ones that only keep the best fighters in the world. — Dan Hardy That was all it took. Like getting a stay of execution via text message.
“When I saw Lorenzo’s tweet…I just kind of thought, well now I have to turn this around,” he says. “If I don’t, I’m letting him down. I’m letting the UFC’s reputation down, because they’re the ones that only keep the best fighters in the world.”
But if halting a skid like this was as simple as wanting it badly enough, he never would have found himself here in the first place. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t been putting in the work in the gym. If anything, maybe he’d done too much, worked himself too hard in search of a win. As the fear and the doubt piled up, it made everything worse.
It would be one thing if he had a regular job that he was struggling at, he thought. If he worked in an office he could go home at night and forget about it. Whatever went wrong, he could put it away on weekends and holidays. But for Hardy, his job had become his identity. He was a pro fighter, the guy with the mohawk who knocked people out. Then pretty soon he was just the guy with the mohawk.
“With a career like this, you’re so invested in it that it affects everything,” he says. “It causes issues with your personal relationships. I get down on myself and then I’m short-tempered, I’m angry most of the time. That’s the hardest thing, is how it affects the people close to me. It affects everything. Like, my car breaks down, and it’s just another thing on top of the pile of [expletive], another thing that’s gone wrong. If my car had broken down after I fought Mike Swick, I could have laughed about it. But now, it’s just another thing, like it’s all just piling up.”
That’s why he hasn’t jumped back in the cage just yet, he says. He needs time. Time to grow as a fighter, maybe even as a person. Time to step back and figure out what in the hell has happened to him, and what he can do about it. Maybe in the spring he’ll be ready. May sounds like a good month for a comeback. All he knows is that he can’t keep going like this. Something has to change.
“I want to be able to go to Lorenzo after my next fight and tell him that I appreciate him not cutting me and it was the right decision, you know? I want to validate that decision.”
If only wanting it were enough. Then you could simply decide to win. But maybe then it wouldn’t feel so good when you’d done it, when it was your turn to stroll back into the locker room grinning that bloody grin with all the exhausted losers slumped over on folding chairs in your wake, watching you go by and wondering to themselves, why does it look so much easier for him? Didn’t it used to be that way for me? And if so, then what happened? What happened?
If Dan Hardy had his way he would have shaved the mohawk by now. Five minutes with some clippers, one quick swoop down the middle of his head, and the signature hairstyle that makes him so recognizable to fight fans could be gone. Maybe then he could blend in. Maybe then he could get a moment to be alone with himself and figure out just what in the hell is going on.
He’d do it if he had it his way. But he doesn’t.
It’s a UFC fight week in Toronto and Hardy has come at the request of Xyience, a sponsor of his that has him scheduled for autograph signings and fan meet-and-greets all week. And Xyience? You better believe Xyience wants the mohawk. That’s because the fans want the mohawk. They expect it. You book Dan Hardy and he shows up with a shaved head, it’s like having Carrot Top show up as a blonde.
The fans want the guy they’ve seen on TV. They want the brash, cocky Brit with the punk rock swagger. But after a rough stretch of four straight losses in the UFC — a 17-month span that dropped him from top contender to just barely employed — he’s not even sure where that guy went, or if he’s ever coming back.
“I don’t feel like myself right now,” Hardy says.
You look in his eyes and you know he means it. He sits slumped in a plush leather chair in the lobby of a posh downtown Toronto hotel. He speaks so softly you have to lean in close just to hear him. The last thing he wants to do these days is draw attention to himself. He knows what people are thinking. And even if they aren’t thinking it, they might as well be, since he hears their accusations in the wordless glances from across the room. It’s not just the fans, either.
“I start to feel like other fighters are looking at me like, why is he still in the UFC? And I don’t want people looking at me like that.”
I don’t feel like myself right now. — Dan HardyThese days, he feels it more and more. When another fighter gets cut after two or three consecutive losses — even when the possibility is merely mentioned, as it was when UFC president Dana White suggested that he might cut “Mayhem” Miller after one unimpressive performance — Hardy’s name gets dragged into it.
“That had nothing to do with me,” he says. “But I’m constantly hearing about it.”
Social media tools like Twitter, which is almost a job requirement for UFC fighters these days, make sure of that. Fight fans seem to think that an internet connection and a working keyboard entitle them to tell Hardy exactly how he should spend his days. It’s gotten to the point where he can predict the tweets almost word for word.
“If I ever tweet something that’s not about training or fighting — anything, whether it’s about a movie I’ve seen or I’m out on the [Las Vegas] strip and see something funny and send a picture of it — I’ll always get some jackass tweet back, ‘Oh, don’t you think you should be working on your wrestling?'” he says. “Every. Time. That really winds me up.”
But he asked for his. He knows he did. He struck this bargain when he showed up on their TVs asking to be watched, judged, rooted for or against, maybe even loved. And nobody loves a loser. Not even himself.
****
How does it happen? How does a winning fighter become a losing one? In Hardy’s case the answer seems to be: a little bit at a time, until it seems like it’s been that way forever.
In March of 2010, he was the number one contender in the welterweight division. He’d won seven fights in a row — four in the UFC — and had earned the right to fight for Georges St-Pierre‘s 170-pound title. He was one step from eternal glory, already far beyond what most fighters ever achieve in their careers. Then he lost. And lost again. And again and again.
Oddly enough, the first one was the easiest to live with. It was at the hands of GSP, after all.
“To be honest, I went in there to give it my all,” he says. “I didn’t expect to totally dominate the fight or anything like that. I knew if I caught him with a good shot I could knock him out, but I also knew the chances were pretty slim on that because he wasn’t going to play that game.”
And he didn’t. Instead he schooled Hardy in a grappling match for five rounds, nearly tearing his arm off with one submission attempt after another. But Hardy took it. He went the distance with the champ and lost a decision that at least had some dignity to it. Later, GSP would tell anyone who would listen that Hardy was better than he expected, much better than people realized. It was nice to hear, but it’s like getting dumped by a girl who tells you that you’re going to make someone very happy some day. Hardy didn’t need compliments; he needed a rebound.
Seven months later he stepped into the cage again, this time back home in England against Carlos Condit.
“I knew I was going to win. No doubt about it. Then I opened my eyes and saw the doctor standing over me and I thought, man, it finally caught up to me.”
Maybe it was inevitable. As much as Hardy loves to stand and slug it out, and as much as fans love to see him do it, he always knew it was a gamble. He always knew that, if he kept it up long enough, one day it would be his turn to find out what it felt like to wake up on his back.
“You know sometimes how you’re watching the fights and you see a guy get knocked out, and then he opens his eyes and stands up and he’s asking people what happened, did he win? And I always thought to myself, if I open my eyes and the doctor’s standing over me, I’ll know I didn’t win. And then as soon as I opened my eyes and saw I was in that situation I thought, I’m the guy. That’s me.” He punked me, and he punked me good. — Dan Hardy on Anthony Johnson
But so what? It was two fights. Anybody could lose two fights, especially if one of them was against the world’s greatest welterweight. All Hardy knew was that he had to win the next one, because losing three in a row almost always means losing your job in the UFC. When he got offered the fight with Anthony Johnson, a fighter he knew and liked, he thought that at least he’d get a chance to go out on his shield in a striking war. He thought wrong.
“I got in there just expecting this blaze of glory,” he says. All the way through training camp he’d exchanged emails and direct messages on Twitter with Johnson, both of them talking about what a slugfest their fight would be, how they’d steal the show in Seattle. But Johnson was the superior wrestler, and he knew it. Why trade bombs with Hardy if you didn’t have to? And why not let him think he was walking into a kickboxing match, since that would only make him easier to take down.
“He punked me,” Hardy says. “And he punked me good.”
After three rounds of far more wrestling than slugging, an exhausted Hardy sat back in his corner and let the disappointment wash over him. He didn’t need to wait and hear how the judges had scored it. Nobody did. Three in a row, he thought. That ought to do it. When he looked up, there was Johnson strolling over to him like a kid who’d just cheated his best friend out of his lunch money.
“He came over to me right after the fight was over and he hugged me and said, ‘I’m sorry, man. I love you like a brother.’ And I thought, dammit, he punked me. He knew he was going to do it all the way through training camp. He properly played me.”
What’s worse, he couldn’t even really stay mad at Johnson afterward. If anybody understood that desperate need for a win — a desire so strong you’d spend weeks lying just to get it — it was Hardy.
“[Johnson] did the calculated thing. Whether you agree with it or not, he felt like he needed a win and that was the smartest way to get it. I know he got a lot of [expletive] for it, but he got the win and now he’s progressing, in a good place in his career. And me? Not so much.”
****
He expected to be cut. Maybe he even felt like he deserved it. The UFC has few official policy stances when it comes to deciding which fighters stay and which go, but he’d seen the three-strikes-and-you’re-out rule applied so consistently over the years that it might as well have been passed down through the generations on a stone tablet. When the axe didn’t come for him after three straight, he almost wished it had.
“It’s like the ship went down and everyone else drowned, and I was the captain and I survived,” he says. “You’re like, how did that happen? I should be the first one to go.”
When the UFC decided to not only keep him around, but also give him a main event bout against veteran Chris Lytle on a cable TV fight card, he was nothing short of baffled.
“I kind of felt like, I’m not sure why I’m getting this opportunity, but I’ve got it, I’m in the main event, and I’m going to try and make the most of it.”
Of all the losses in this miserable streak, this is the one he still can’t watch. He’s tried. The guy on the screen looks like him, has the same recognizable haircut, but there’s this strange disconnect, like watching video of yourself during a blackout. That’s him doing those things, throwing these blows, but he doesn’t feel any particular sense of ownership over it as he watches himself shooting for a takedown and getting choked into submission.
“It was just a terrible fight,” he says. “I can’t watch it.”
Four in a row. This had to be it. He just knew it. But Twitter actually brought some good news for a change, this time in the form of a tweet from UFC co-owner Lorenzo Fertitta.
“Will not cut @danhardymma,” it read. “I like guys that WAR!!!”
I’m letting the UFC’s reputation down, because they’re the ones that only keep the best fighters in the world. — Dan Hardy That was all it took. Like getting a stay of execution via text message.
“When I saw Lorenzo’s tweet…I just kind of thought, well now I have to turn this around,” he says. “If I don’t, I’m letting him down. I’m letting the UFC’s reputation down, because they’re the ones that only keep the best fighters in the world.”
But if halting a skid like this was as simple as wanting it badly enough, he never would have found himself here in the first place. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t been putting in the work in the gym. If anything, maybe he’d done too much, worked himself too hard in search of a win. As the fear and the doubt piled up, it made everything worse.
It would be one thing if he had a regular job that he was struggling at, he thought. If he worked in an office he could go home at night and forget about it. Whatever went wrong, he could put it away on weekends and holidays. But for Hardy, his job had become his identity. He was a pro fighter, the guy with the mohawk who knocked people out. Then pretty soon he was just the guy with the mohawk.
“With a career like this, you’re so invested in it that it affects everything,” he says. “It causes issues with your personal relationships. I get down on myself and then I’m short-tempered, I’m angry most of the time. That’s the hardest thing, is how it affects the people close to me. It affects everything. Like, my car breaks down, and it’s just another thing on top of the pile of [expletive], another thing that’s gone wrong. If my car had broken down after I fought Mike Swick, I could have laughed about it. But now, it’s just another thing, like it’s all just piling up.”
That’s why he hasn’t jumped back in the cage just yet, he says. He needs time. Time to grow as a fighter, maybe even as a person. Time to step back and figure out what in the hell has happened to him, and what he can do about it. Maybe in the spring he’ll be ready. May sounds like a good month for a comeback. All he knows is that he can’t keep going like this. Something has to change.
“I want to be able to go to Lorenzo after my next fight and tell him that I appreciate him not cutting me and it was the right decision, you know? I want to validate that decision.”
If only wanting it were enough. Then you could simply decide to win. But maybe then it wouldn’t feel so good when you’d done it, when it was your turn to stroll back into the locker room grinning that bloody grin with all the exhausted losers slumped over on folding chairs in your wake, watching you go by and wondering to themselves, why does it look so much easier for him? Didn’t it used to be that way for me? And if so, then what happened? What happened?
Gil Martinez appeared on Mauro Ranallo’s “The MMA Show“ radio program today and the head boxing trainer and coach at Xtreme Couture dropped a bombshell about one of his highest profile students.
According to Martinez, he’s pretty sure that former number one UFC lightweight contender Gray Maynard has decided to cut ties with the Vegas gym and is planning a move to the San Francisco Bay area where he will train American Kickboxing Academy moving forward. There, Maynard will join a top-tier team that includes notables like Jon Fitch, Josh Koscheck, Mike Swick, Cain Velasquez, Daniel Cormier, Josh Thomson and Muhammed “King Mo” Lawal.
(Plan “B”: Boy band — PicProps: MMATKO)
Gil Martinez appeared on Mauro Ranallo’s “The MMA Show“ radio program today and the head boxing trainer and coach at Xtreme Couture dropped a bombshell about one of his highest profile students.
According to Martinez, he’s pretty sure that former number one UFC lightweight contender Gray Maynard has decided to cut ties with the Vegas gym and is planning a move to the San Francisco Bay area where he will train American Kickboxing Academy moving forward. There, Maynard will join a top-tier team that includes notables like Jon Fitch, Josh Koscheck, Mike Swick, Cain Velasquez, Daniel Cormier, Josh Thomson and Muhammed “King Mo” Lawal.
Martinez told Ranallo that he was hurt and disappointed that Gray decided to move without discussing it with his Xtreme Couture stablemates and coaches, but wishes him the best at his new gym.
Besides his recent knockout loss to Frankie Edgar, part of the reason for Maynard’s departure could be comments Martinez made about his camp for the bout. He revealed in his Fighters.com blog after the bout that he wasn’t involved as much in Maynard’s camp as he has been for previous bouts.
“In the corner I was just playing it by ear and looking for certain things since I wasn’t exactly sure of everything he had been doing since I wasn’t completely involved with his camp this time around, though I wish I had been,” he explained
Martinez also mentioned in the weeks after the fight that he didn’t agree with Gray’s decision to not train every day at Xtreme Couture for the camp. Instead, “The Bully” decided it would be best if he he rented out a gym closer to home and bring in training partners to train with so he didn’t have to travel to XC every day for the eight weeks before the bout.
Although he says that no official decision has been made by Gray, from what he is hearing, it’s all but a done deal.
Attempts to reach Maynard for comment have been unsuccessful. We’ll have more updates as we receive them.
*UPDATED at 7:30 pm ET on Monday, November 21, 2011:
Gray texted us the following statement regarding his supposed switch in camps:
“Nothing for sure yet. Just training, getting new looks. I love [Xtreme Couture], but there’s a lot to learn out there.”
So it seems that he is strongly considering a change of scenery, however he’s taking his time and putting a lot of consideration into where he’ll eventually land.
(“I want people to look at me and say, ‘Wow, this is where he started and look where he ended up.'” Photo props: MMA Weekly)
By Ben Goldstein
Over the last six years, we’ve watched Chris Leben evolve from The Ultimate Fighter‘s original wild-ass brawler, to a multi-faceted contender who has the tools to defeat virtually any middleweight opponent on any given night. In fact, two of Leben’s last three fights have resulted in the greatest victories of his entire career — his epic UFC 116 Fight of the Night against Yoshihiro Akiyama, and his stunning 27-second knockout of Wanderlei Silva at UFC 132.
On November 5th, Leben will headline UFC 138 in Birmingham, England, against Mark Munoz, in a meeting that could put one of them on the short-list for a title shot. We spent some time on the phone with the Crippler last week and discussed all the notable battles in his life that have led him to where he is today, facing yet another massive opportunity. Enjoy, and check out our previous Retrospective Interviews right here.
THE ORIGIN STORY
(Matt Lindland, overdressed as usual.)
CHRIS LEBEN: “I think I was in the fourth grade when I got into my first fight. I can’t remember what it was over — something on the playground. But that was my first real, non-wrestling match, hitting-each-other-in-the-face kind of fight. And all the other kids just stood around and watched. I didn’t get into fights a lot, but I definitely had some good ones, like all kids that are a little more on the wild side.
I did a little wrestling in grade school, and something called Christian Karate that I did in like third grade. Then I started boxing in eighth grade and I actually took that really seriously.
Even when I was in junior high, my plan was always to fight in the UFC. I joined Team Quest right after I turned 21. You have to remember that at 185 pounds, I was training with Matt Lindland, Evan Tanner, Chael Sonnen, Ed Herman — we were all in the same room, every day. And every day I walked into the gym, my first coach Robert Follis would say, ‘Good morning Chris, how are you doing?’ And I’d say, ‘Did you get me a fight yet? Did you get me a fight yet?’ I’d never say, ‘Good morning, how are you,’ it was always ‘Did you get me a fight yet?’ I believe it was about six months until I had my first amateur fight.”
(“I want people to look at me and say, ‘Wow, this is where he started and look where he ended up.’” Photo props: MMA Weekly)
By Ben Goldstein
Over the last six years, we’ve watched Chris Leben evolve from The Ultimate Fighter‘s original wild-ass brawler, to a multi-faceted contender who has the tools to defeat virtually any middleweight opponent on any given night. In fact, two of Leben’s last three fights have resulted in the greatest victories of his entire career — his epic UFC 116 Fight of the Night against Yoshihiro Akiyama, and his stunning 27-second knockout of Wanderlei Silva at UFC 132.
On November 5th, Leben will headline UFC 138 in Birmingham, England, against Mark Munoz, in a meeting that could put one of them on the short-list for a title shot. We spent some time on the phone with the Crippler last week and discussed all the notable battles in his life that have led him to where he is today, facing yet another massive opportunity. Enjoy, and check out our previous Retrospective Interviews right here.
THE ORIGIN STORY
(Matt Lindland, overdressed as usual.)
CHRIS LEBEN: “I think I was in the fourth grade when I got into my first fight. I can’t remember what it was over — something on the playground. But that was my first real, non-wrestling match, hitting-each-other-in-the-face kind of fight. And all the other kids just stood around and watched. I didn’t get into fights a lot, but I definitely had some good ones, like all kids that are a little more on the wild side.
I did a little wrestling in grade school, and something called Christian Karate that I did in like third grade. Then I started boxing in eighth grade and I actually took that really seriously.
Even when I was in junior high, my plan was always to fight in the UFC. I joined Team Quest right after I turned 21. You have to remember that at 185 pounds, I was training with Matt Lindland, Evan Tanner, Chael Sonnen, Ed Herman — we were all in the same room, every day. And every day I walked into the gym, my first coach Robert Follis would say, ‘Good morning Chris, how are you doing?’ And I’d say, ‘Did you get me a fight yet? Did you get me a fight yet?’ I’d never say, ‘Good morning, how are you,’ it was always ‘Did you get me a fight yet?’ I believe it was about six months until I had my first amateur fight.”
CHRIS LEBEN vs. MIKE SWICK WEC 9, 1/16/04 Result: Leben wins via second-round knockout and becomes the first WEC middleweight champion
“That was the first time I met Dana White. He was actually sitting in the front row for that fight, so I went up and talked to him, which was a pretty big deal for me. At that point, I think The Ultimate Fighter probably wasn’t much more than a pipe dream for the Fertittas. But me and Dana talked about fighting Sakurai in PRIDE because he was a little big after his knee injury back then, and possibly getting into the UFC sometime.”
“I kind of look at it like boot camp: You don’t necessarily enjoy it while you’re there, but once it’s done you’re glad you did it. And don’t get me wrong, I had some great times on the show, some fun moments, and I learned a lot — both about fighting and myself — but if they said, ‘Hey Chris, we want you be a competitor on The Ultimate Fighter right now,’ would I jump at that opportunity? To be a coach, yeah, I’d jump at that. But to be a competitor and live in that house with all those other guys, at my age, where I am now in my life? Absolutely fucking not.
The top-tier of the martial arts world is a small world, and we’re the original [cast], so I feel camaraderie with those guys. Every time I see Stephan Bonnar we’re always telling war stories.”
On the previousrumors of Chris Leben being booked to face his TUF nemesis Josh Koscheck: “It’s funny, the guys at my gym know more about what’s going on in the sport from me. Half the time I hear about who I’m fighting from some random fight-school member that read it on a blog somewhere. The Internet’s not really my favorite thing, but I heard some people at my gym saw that idea being kicked around on forums, and I loved it, but the opportunity never came to me. I’d love to take that fight.”
On the next page: An ill-fated run-in with the Spider, going zombie-mode against Terry Martin, and the fight he’d rather not discuss.
Filed under: UFCAfter repeated attempts to talk his way into a fight with former UFC welterweight champion Matt Hughes went nowhere, it looks as though Josh Koscheck might finally get his wish — and it’s all thanks to Diego Sanchez’s hand injury.
After repeated attempts to talk his way into a fight with former UFC welterweight champion Matt Hughes went nowhere, it looks as though Josh Koscheck might finally get his wish — and it’s all thanks to Diego Sanchez’s hand injury.
Just an hour after UFC president Dana White announced on Twitter that Sanchez was out of the UFC 135 co-main event with a broken hand, Koscheck took to his Twitter to say he’d accepted the fight, and was merely waiting to find out if Hughes would do the same.
“:) got a fight in 21 days [expletive]……..” Koscheck wrote, presumably before double-checking his math and realizing that UFC 135 goes down in Denver on September 24. “Oh ya 19 days then or something like that!!!! Either way it looks like I am in to fight matt Hugh if he takes it????”
Knowing how the dynamic has played out in the past, however, there’s no guarantee Hughes will accept it. Koscheck, along with AKA teammates Jon Fitch and Mike Swick, launched a minor media campaign to get a fight with Hughes a couple years ago, but the former champ managed to brush off each challenge.
But now, with Sanchez pulled from the bout and the pressure mounting to find a suitable, willing opponent on short notice, Hughes may have few other options.
Koscheck, who hasn’t fought since his decision loss to welterweight champion Georges St. Pierre in December of 2010, was rumored to be a participant in the UFC 139 event scheduled for San Jose, Calif. in November. There was even talk that his return would take place at middleweight as part of a one-time jump in weight classes.
Of course, that was before Sanchez got injured and the chance to face Hughes dropped in his lap.
Koscheck seems to have no reservations about taking the bout, even with less than three weeks to prepare. Now it’s just a question of whether Hughes will be equally as eager.
If 
After repeated attempts to talk his way into a fight with former