Yoel Romero went to Australia and buried Luke Rockhold in the Outback.
The UFC 221 main event was a fight for the interim middleweight championship, a fake belt constructed out of thin air because the UFC has this new thing where they believe a pay-per…
Yoel Romero went to Australia and buried Luke Rockhold in the Outback.
The UFC 221 main event was a fight for the interim middleweight championship, a fake belt constructed out of thin air because the UFC has this new thing where they believe a pay-per-view must be headlined by a title fight. So we had Romero, who lost his last shot at the interim middleweight title last summer when he was beaten by Robert Whittaker. Whittaker was promoted to undisputed middleweight champion when the real undisputed champion, Georges St-Pierre, decided his foray to middleweight would be a brief one and, in a rare display of grace, vacated the championship, which meant Whittaker got a promotion.
And then, as if the middleweight title picture couldn’t get any more convoluted, Romero missed weight for the UFC 221 main event, which meant he couldn’t win the belt even if he beat Rockhold.
And boy, did he beat Rockhold.
Romero is a weird cat. He might have a reputation for being a serial cheater, but even when he’s not staying on his stool too long or failing tests for performance-enhancing drugs, he just has a strange vibe that extends to his fighting style.
But the thing is, Romero is a terrifying dude.
In fact, outside of Francis Ngannou, Romero is probably the scariest fighter on the UFC roster. Maybe some of that is due to his quirkiness and unpredictability, both inside the Octagon and out. But a lot of it is due to sheer athleticism and the fact that Romero can be utterly docile one second and a raging force of nature the next.
Which is what we saw against Rockhold, the arrogant California boy who was absolutely sure Romero had nothing to offer him in the Octagon. Romero did a lot of fun hand movements in the first round, and he did some solid work on Rockhold’s leg, but Rockhold was never in any real danger.
But as it turns out, Romero was doing two things: lulling Rockhold into a false sense of security and saving his energy for the terrifying way he’d sprint at Rockhold in the second round, his arms whirling and flailing, swinging from the ground up in repeated attempts to separate Rockhold’s head from his shoulders and his soul from his body.
And that’s what happened in the third round. Romero knocked Rockhold face-first to the canvas. Rockhold was unconscious but awoke when his face hit the ground.
And then came the coup de grace: Romero rushed in with unnatural speed and landed an uppercut/hook that snapped Rockhold’s head backwards and ended his night. The referee was quick in waving it off, which is a thing Rockhold (and the rest of the world) should be quite thankful for.
After the fight, Romero came over to Rockhold, who was standing against the cage, and started talking to him. It appeared he was saying nice things, and he kissed Rockhold on the cheek. It was just another odd thing that Romero has done. Rockhold, still trying to reconnect his soul and body, looked like he wanted to be anywhere else in the world but right there with the dude who just slept him yakking in his face.
You can’t really blame Rockhold for feeling that way. Romero doesn’t act like other fighters act. He’s an absolutely breathtaking athlete—one of the best competitors to ever fight in the UFC—but his strange mannerisms and habits only serve to make him more unpredictable and terrifying.
As Romero talked with Jon Anik after the fight, he sat on the canvas talking about a variety of subjects, jumping from Jesus and soldiers to Whittaker and Rockhold. It was unclear what point he was trying to make, but it didn’t really matter. Romero gives us plenty of be critical about outside the cage, and he’s probably going to keep on doing things that make us shake our heads in confusion.
But he’ll also keep us shaking our heads at the things he’s capable of inside the cage. In the end, that’s the only thing that matters.
“Build yourself into a star, and you won’t be talking about money fights. … Become a star. Don’t worry about Conor McGregor or fighting on Conor McGregor’s card. Become a star yourself.”
Those were UFC president Dana White’s words in January, per&nbs…
“Build yourself into a star, and you won’t be talking about money fights. … Become a star. Don’t worry about ConorMcGregor or fighting on ConorMcGregor‘s card. Become a star yourself.”
It would probably be inaccurate to suggest that a critical mass of UFC fighters read this and took it as a sign that a reckoning was at hand.
But it is probably accurate to point to this as another example of the widening rift between UFC fighters and the bosses who control them, particularly White. Some recent high-profile dissent has served as a counterweight to White’s bluster and the UFC decisions that fighters find to be against their interests.
This is not a new tension—anyone remember “Dana is my b—h“?—but it may now be getting hotter than ever.
On Jan. 20, in the cage following his win over Francis Ngannou, UFC heavyweight champion StipeMiocic snatched his belt out of White’s hands and handed it to his coach for the honor of strapping it around Miocic‘s waist.
Miocic later brushed off the incident by saying his coach “respects me and I respect him. End of story,” per Peter Carroll of MMA Fighting. Still, the optics were striking, particularly given Miocic‘s history of public disputes over his contract.
Other recent examples go deeper. Earlier this month, featherweight champ Max Holloway, citing a serious injury, withdrew from his March 3 title defense with Frankie Edgar at UFC 222. Needing a new main event, the UFC went to T.J. Dillashaw, the bantamweight champion, to request a rematch with Cody Garbrandt, Dillashaw‘s heated rival and the man he defeated to retake the strap in November.
Dillashaw declined. He made clear in no uncertain terms that he felt the UFC’s terms were unreasonable—especially at the price point they offered.
“It took me two years to get a title shot back, and now they want me to defend it on four weeks’ notice?” he told ESPN’s Brett Okamoto on Saturday. “I have a five-week-old son. I’m not training. … I lost a split decision to Dominick Cruz when I lost my belt, the UFC told me they thought I won that fight and it still took me two years to get back to [a title shot].”
Dillshaw isn’t the first fighter to turn down an opportunity. What usually happens, though, is that a fighter tactfully declines by citing injury or an apolitical situation. Dillashaw did subsequently go back and mention injuries, but at the same time, he noted that the UFC wasn’t able to “do anything” (read: financially) to make a short-notice rematch worth his while.
On the very same day (Feb. 3), bantamweights John Dodson and Pedro Munhoz were scheduled to face off in the co-main event of UFC Fight Night 125 in Brazil. The day before, however, Munhoz weighed in at 140 pounds—four pounds over the bantamweight upper limit.
Usually, the fighter who made weight accepts the fight anyway and agrees to take a portion of the overweight person’s purse in exchange for the increased risk that comes with facing a larger opponent.
Dodson declined.
Reports quickly surfaced that the UFC would not pay Dodson his show money for the fight, even though his only action was to decline the catchweight fight, which he has every right to do. The report did not attribute the decision to any specific official, but it had White’s fingerprints all over it. A knee-jerk decision applied from a place of emotion instead of logic and with no regard for precedent: That’s the White style.
Dodson didn’t take the news lying down. Speaking to Damon Martin of MMAWeekly, Dodson pointed to an earlier fight, when opponent John Lineker missed weight and he took the fight anyway, to his own detriment.
“Lineker came in overweight and I was being a good company man, I’m just going to go ahead and fight him, do what I have to do and just be excited about being the main event,” Dodson said. “Lineker came over heavy. I clearly outstruck the man, but I came away with a loss, and I got screwed, so I wasn’t rolling the dice on that for a second time.”
The UFC later agreed to pay Dodson an unspecified portion of his show money—although Dodson said Monday he still hasn’t received the payment and doesn’t know the status of it. The Dodson-Munhoz fight also has been rebooked for UFC 222.
The fourth recent example is from middleweight Uriah Hall. In February, Hall fainted on his way to the weigh-in scales, a result of a steep weight cut for his bout with VitorBelfort. Hall’s coach, Eric Nicksick, later said Hall sustained a “slight heart attack” during the process.
The bout was called off. Immediately after, White claimed the blame was on Hall.
“He doesn’t take his training serious, he doesn’t do what anybody tells him,” White said, per Mike Bohn and John Morgan of MMA Junkie. “He does his own thing. A week before the fight, he went to L.A. and was hanging out in L.A. in clubs and stuff. So, not good.”
A couple weeks later, Nicksick stood up to White.
“It’s tough, especially when your employer is the first one to bag on you,” Nicksicktold MMAjunkie Radio. “I think what really hurt me was this guy almost died for your organization.”
“You mean to tell me my entire career, all of a sudden I’m going to party in L.A.? It’s too funny man,” Hall said, per Bohn. “Oh, my God. But that’s what happens when you don’t come out [to fight]—a lot of speculation.”
Hall has since been rebooked for a bout with Paulo Costa in April.
It is no secret that the UFC, and White in particular, are vindictive against fighters who don’t do as they’re told. With restrictive contracts and the stranglehold they have on the fighter market, there are a million ways for the UFC to get away with that, under the table or over it. Even in cases where fighters do everything by the UFC book, good pay and other benefits are scarce.
Fighter grumbling about such treatment is also not novel. But loud dissent was typically the domain of outliers, men like Jon Fitch who seem predisposed to challenge systems they view as unjust.
But it’s remarkable to see this kind of flurry. In the span of three weeks, four prominent fighters—two champions and two co-main eventers—acted and spoke out in defiance of the UFC’s will. White is the face of UFC leadership and will, it seems, continue to be so for an open-ended period of time. That could be a problem for the UFC, especially with White making public comments that distance him from the fighters who provide that company’s content.
If the UFC only wants to promote itself and not its fighters, fine. If White asks UFC fighters to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps with no help from the company, that’s his prerogative. But it’s a double-edged sword.
It seems his worry-about-yourself stance stands in contrast to his expectation that fighters make sacrifices in the name of the company. You can’t have it both ways, and White may be learning that.
Anderson Silva’s fighting career—at least as we know it—may already be over.
Details of Silva’s second failed drug test emerged this week, casting his future into peril. The former UFC middleweight champion faces a possible four-year ban af…
Anderson Silva‘s fighting career—at least as we know it—may already be over.
Details of Silva’s second failed drug test emerged this week, casting his future into peril. The former UFC middleweight champion faces a possible four-year ban after turning up positive for synthetic testosterone and a banned diuretic in a sample collected in October 2017.
His reps are apparently asking for a lighter sentence, arguing that Silva’s first test failures—for a pair of steroids in January 2015—didn’t fall under the auspices of the UFC’s current anti-doping policy and therefore shouldn’t count against him, according to Combate (h/t MMA Fighting’s Marc Raimondi). Silva, who initially denied knowingly taking performance enhancers, remained mum this week.
Even before this latest drug scandal, things had gotten pretty bleak for a guy once regarded as the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world.
Just 1-4-1 dating back to the loss of his title to Chris Weidman at UFC 162 in July 2013, Silva’s positive test knocked him out of a proposed fight against Kelvin Gastelum at UFC Fight Night 122. Not only was that bout scheduled to air exclusively on the UFC’s digital subscription service instead of pay-per-view, but the once-mighty Silva was a slight underdog to the up-and-coming Gastelum, per BookMaker.
Already 42 years old, any sort of significant suspension would likely be a death sentence for The Spider as an active fighter, at least in America. If this truly is the end of the road for one of the UFC’s greatest champions, how will the sport ultimately look upon his legacy?
Here, Bleacher Report lead MMA writers Chad Dundas (that’s me) and Jonathan Snowden try to sort it out.
Chad: Very few people seem to be able to find it in their hearts to offer a charitable view of Silva’s career at the moment, Jonathan. Former middleweight champion Michael Bisping—who beat Silva by unanimous decision in February 2016 and then replaced him in the fight against Gastelum in late 2017—said his drug test failures “completely destroy his legacy” during a media conference call prior to UFN 122.
Meanwhile, MMA Fighting’s Dave Doyle wrote Saturday that Silva had “disqualified himself” from consideration as greatest of all time and former foe Weidman told Raimondi that a second failed test “definitely tarnishes his legacy” and that his “whole career is in question.”
Former UFC color commentator and middleweight contender Brian Stann was slightly more bullish during a recent appearance with RJ Clifford and Ricky Bones on SiriusXM’s Fight Club.
“He’s still one of the best to ever do it,” Stann said. “In my eyes, there was a clear steroid era of this sport, and he was the best at it during that time. … I wish he would have retired sooner.”
Personally, I’m a bit torn. Silva ruled the 185-pound division with an iron fist from 2006-2013, amassing 10 successful title defenses while three times traveling up to light heavyweight to make mincemeat of larger competitors like James Irvin, Forrest Griffin and Stephan Bonnar.
Frankly, we’ve never seen anybody match that for sheer dominance.
His drug test failures came during the twilight of his 20-year MMA career, after he was into his late 30s/early 40s and had suffered a potentially career-ending leg injury against Weidman in their rematch at UFC 168.
So, if you told me that Silva turned to performance-enhancing drugs only as a beleaguered elder statesman, just trying to keep his battered body going and stay on pace with a new generation of fighters, I might believe it.
But part of me also agrees with guys like Stann and Weidman, in that multiple failed tests is enough for me to suspect Silva’s entire amazing body of work was built while operating outside the rules. Even if the bulk of that run took place during Stann’s so-called “steroid era,” for me it adds a mental asterisk. I can’t bring myself to consider him on par with other all-timers who haven’t tested positive for PEDs.
What say you?
Jonathan: This is a very complicated issue, one that inspires strong feelings on both ends of the spectrum.
Part of me agrees with cynics who believe all athletes seek advantages over their competitors and robust drug testing merely turns athletics into a chemical arms race. Why not, the argument goes, allow controlled use of performance-enhancing drugs, under a doctor’s care, and improve the capabilities of fighters across the board? After all, isn’t enhanced performance a good thing? If Silva was able to kick Vitor Belfort in the head because of drug use, well, he needs to share a little of the good stuff with others. He was the most dynamic fighter in the sport, a walking advertisement for PEDs if that’s what made it all possible.
Then again, PEDs can have serious consequences to long-term health, some of which may be unknown while the athlete is actively using them. And lines, even in a free-for-all, have to be drawn somewhere. When lives and livelihoods are at stake, athletes will make poor decisions about what to put in their bodies. We need regulation, and knowing that, why not play it safe and prohibit all substances that are potentially harmful to the human body? Better, this argument goes, safe than sorry (NSFW language in tweet).
Stann is right and wrong about the “steroid era.” UFC fighters have been subject to testing since 2002, when Nevada became the first state to do a post-fight screening (and also became the first state to catch a champion, when new heavyweight kingpin Josh Barnett popped hot that very night). For years, the UFC and state regulators met in the middle, testing only on the night of the fight. This eliminated the most egregious abuses while leaving months for a fighter to serve as a petri dish, building muscle and increasing recovery time in between fights. This seemed to work pretty well for everyone—at least everyone willing to cut corners when the hall monitor wasn’t watching.
This is the environment Silva came up in. He was subject to drug testing at each of his UFC fights. While we can’t say for certain he wasn’t abusing PEDs in his prime, we can say for sure he was never caught.
Testing under USADA is much more robust. While it’s still possible to get away with using drugs, especially expensive ones that clear your system quickly, it’s also much easier to get caught red-handed. Silva, clearly, is regularly reaching into the cookie jar. This is likely going to be the case for many fighters who came up in his era. As we learned during the testosterone replacement era of MMA, once you start using exogenous testosterone, it’s very difficult to stop.
The truth is, many of our heroes have been busted for PED use of various kinds. From Royce Gracie to Jon Jones, there is no MMA history if we erase the names of all the abusers from the books. Insert an asterisk if you must—but I say the man’s accomplishments stand.
Is my heart too soft to give him the scolding he may very well deserve? Am I going too easy on him, Chad?
Chad: No, that all seems reasonable to me. I also suspect that as more time passes and the memories of Silva’s test failures aren’t so fresh, it will be easier to look back on his many talents and enjoy their pure artistry.
Legacy-wise, you can’t merely write the guy out of the history books. He was too good and too important for too long—and as you pointed out, if you eliminate PED users from the story of MMA, there won’t be much of a story left to tell.
Instead, I favor a warts-and-all approach to honoring Silva’s accomplishments. We can marvel at the win streak, the skills and the terror he inspired in the opposition while still noting that he tested positive twice late in his career. We can still note that, like so many others, he likely overstayed his welcome.
Even though the implementation of the UFC’s revamped anti-doping policy hasn’t been perfect, I remain convinced we need aggressive, state-of-the-art drug testing in this sport. You mentioned the athlete health and safety concerns that must dominate nearly any discussion in combat sports. Any other approach wouldn’t be fair to fighters who want to do it cleanly while still competing at the highest level of the sport.
I shudder at the notion of MMA with no PED regulation. For me, it brings up dystopian visions where doping doctors are just as important and influential as top coaches and where the divide between haves and have-nots is even wider than it is today.
But I digress.
For Silva, I think it will be important to recognize his great abilities inside the cage while also noting his very human flaws. That’s about all you can ask of any athlete in the modern era.
One thing I wonder about is where he goes from here. While I support the UFC’s testing efforts, I also balk at the notion that the company can essentially impose a lifetime ban on an independent contractor who might still need to make a living.
If Silva is handed a lengthy ban in America and instead of calling it quits, he turns up in Japan, I’m not sure how I’ll feel.
On one hand, more power to the guy for still being able to make a buck. On the other hand, as he forges toward his mid-40s, it’ll be tough to watch a reduced version of him continue to risk his future health for short-term gain.
It’s an uneasy feeling I’m growing scarily accustomed to as an MMA fan in 2018.
BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA — The gym is big enough to hold 20 people scrambling around on mats, and small enough that fighters are slammed not into a cage, but into a wall shared with the Mexican restaurant next door. Occasionally, the thudding col…
BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA — The gym is big enough to hold 20 people scrambling around on mats, and small enough that fighters are slammed not into a cage, but into a wall shared with the Mexican restaurant next door. Occasionally, the thudding collisions startle people just looking to get their burrito on.
“It would be a god-damn catastrophe if we knocked over their dishwasher,” head coach, owner and former Marine Chris Conolley bellows in the direction of heavyweight Kem Oti and middleweight Eryk Anders. ” And it’s right on the other side of that wall.”
The lunch rush, especially on a Saturday afternoon, is just beginning. And seriously, the students at Spartan Fitness MMA in Birmingham, Alabama have knocked over tables before.
Conolley may be breeding fighters, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be neighborly.
Oti is there, 91 long miles on I-65 from his home in Decautur, Alabama, to prepare for a fight on the undercard of Roy Jones Jr.’s final boxing bout down in Pensacola, Florida, on Feb. 8. But he’s not the reason there are so many people in this room going hard and creating lunch-disturbing chaos.
The reason for that is Anders.
You may not have heard of Anders yet. He has just two UFC fights under his belt, both on Fox Sports 1, the cable network that houses the promotions’ least-marketable fight cards. But on Saturday, the former starting linebacker for Nick Saban‘s Alabama Crimson Tide steps into the cage against the legendary Lyoto Machida in Brazil.
After that, with a Hall of Fame notch on his belt, Anders believes he’s on the fast track to UFC glory. If he stays active, maybe even a title shot by the end of the year.
Conolley, listening in, is quick to pump the brakes on that kind of talk.
“You’re an unranked guy,” he reminds his charge. “And you’re going into an opponent’s home country. You haven’t done anything yet.”
It’s harsh but true, and the type of brutal honesty that keeps Anders—whose pedigree would allow him access to any gym in the world—close to home with the man who taught him how to be a professional.
The marquee prospect in the UFC’s 185-pound division isn’t hanging out on the beach in South Florida, in coastal California, the mountains of Albuquerque or anywhere else the top stars of the sport congregate.
Instead, he’s building a curriculum for the kids classes he teaches at his day job here, consumed in the business of martial arts. He’s surrounded, not by groupies and hangers-on leading him toward temptation, but by family, friends and a coach he can trust to tell him what he needs to hear.
“The more popular an athlete gets, the more the people around him just say yes to whatever he wants. Coach is not a yes man,” Anders says. “He’s the opposite. He tells me his opinion and what he thinks and demands a certain level of excellence.
“He’s not going to let you half-ass. He tries to motivate you and make you better. He genuinely cares about everyone here, versus some of these mega gyms where they don’t even pay attention to you until you are an upper echelon UFC fighter.”
As Anders talks, he falls behind his teammates, who are already on the mats and ready to go.
“Time starts and stops at your convenience Anders?” Conolley asks with a wink in his eye. “I guess we’ll all just wait for you.”
The two men move off to prepare for Machida, ready to shake up the MMA world—so long as they don’t rock the precariously positioned margaritas at the restaurant next door.
No one might have ever heard of Eryk Anders if not for the fateful penultimate evening of 2007 in Shreveport, Louisiana. Anders’ Crimson Tide had just squeaked by Colorado in the Independence Bowl, and the sophomore linebacker hadn’t played at all.
Over a night of cards and beers in a local casino, Anders and his dad, Gayle, broke down his future. Anders, recruited by Alabama’s previous coach, Mike Shula, didn’t see much hope under Saban, the harsh new Tide leader.
His father, the voice of reason, encouraged him to stay the course.
“I didn’t see myself playing,” Anders remembers. “Saban was bringing in his recruits, and I was just like, ‘Man, it’s over with.’ It wasn’t turning out to be what I’d thought it would be. But my dad said, ‘Stay in school. Worst case scenario, you get your degree. You’ll be alright.'”
It was the last time the two men would ever talk. That night, Anders awoke to screams. His mother had found his dad dead in bed, the victim of an apparent heart attack.
“He wasn’t in the best health,” Anders says. “He was overweight, he smoked cigarettes and he had diabetes. And he was a little older. He was 65 years old. So, it was kind of a circle of life. But he’d never steered me wrong before, so I decide to do what he said and stay in school—got my degree in health studies, and I think those last few years were pretty successful.
“I decided to stay, and that very next year, I started to come in on passing situations, to rush the passer. I found a knack for that, and by my senior year, I was the starter.”
His career with the Crimson Tide culminated in storybook fashion. The player who almost walked away for good instead led the team in tackles in the BCS Championship against Texas. With his team clinging to a one-score lead, Anders demolished the Longhorns quarterback Garrett Gilbert, forcing a fumble that led to the touchdown that secured the game.
“All the seniors were on the field together after the game,” Anders says. “And we all just kind of looked at each other like ‘Is this it? It’s over?'”
Tryouts with the Cleveland Browns and Canadian Football League followed, but neither amounted to much. Anders even played one season in the Arena Football League with Colorado “to get football out of my system.”
He was supporting his young son and working as a janitor for LabCorp with aspirations of getting a government job. He wanted to procure parts for Apache helicopters at the Redstone Arsenal in nearby Huntsville. His mom had made a life in the Air Force and he saw a similar future for himself.
That’s when his next great passion beat its way into his heart.
Anders met UFC heavyweight Walt Harris at the gym back in 2011 and was intrigued by his offer to stop by and see what mixed martial arts was all about. He fancied himself a tough guy and was looking for a way to burn off steam after working what felt like endless nine-hour shifts.
“The first day I walked into the gym, the coach there was like, ‘Hey, can you fight?’ Within an hour of walking in, I was sparring. I grew up fighting, so I thought I could,” Anders says with a knowing shake of his head. “Right up until I got in the ring with someone who really knew how to fight.
“I didn’t even have a mouth piece. I tried. I gave what I had, which wasn’t much. They weren’t malicious, but I spent the better part of the day in the corner just trying not to get my teeth knocked out. I got choked out and submitted. But I fell in love with it right there. I knew I had zero skill set and had to start from day one. I really embraced the challenge. What I love about the martial arts is that there is no end to it. Things are constantly evolving.”
Still, Anders was wary of getting in too deep. He kept his day job at Redstone and moved back to Birmingham to work as a customer service representative at AutoTec.
“Just sitting at a desk was hard,” he says. “I had already found this passion and had been training for two years. That’s when I started having these thoughts like, ‘Is this really it for my life?’ I’ve never been so tired as I was when I sat at a desk all day. Sitting there doing nothing and I was exhausted.”
Everything changed after meeting his soon-to-be wife, Yasmin, after an amateur fight on the local scene. His alcohol consumption, he admits with a grin, was up, his defenses down. The two started chatting. They’ve never stopped.
“Pretty much since the day I met her, we’ve been together,” he says. “She has a head on her shoulders. She speaks five languages. She’s from Brazil. She was in school to get her master’s [degree]. She was already a lawyer in Brazil. She had her ducks in her row.”
After his second pro fight, she laid out a challenge for him: Why not, she asked, give fighting a real try? AutoTec, after all, would be there if he tried and failed. But his athletic prime only offered a short window to give a pro career an honest shot.
“She was the foot on my back I needed to really do this,” Anders says. “I wasn’t sure. It’s risky. In this sport, it’s sink or swim. And I had a child. It’s not like I could just live under a bridge or sleep in my car. But she saw how dedicated I was to mastering my craft. I’d wake up at 4 a.m. so I could work out twice before I even started my regular day. She saw how bad I wanted it and told me, ‘Look, you can go back to a job anytime. But you can only do this now. Give it a go for two years.'”
The next piece in the puzzle was the right coach. Conolley, a black belt in the same Straight Blast Gym system that has bred world champions like Randy Couture and Conor McGregor, was the only man in Alabama who had the experience to take a neophyte to the big time.
The only problem: He wasn’t sure he was interested.
“I hate fighters,” he admits. “I don’t take fighters. A fighter only trains when he’s got a fight coming up. He’s only concerned with himself. Fighters quit. I train martial artists. Martial artists never quit. I needed to know if Eryk was a martial artist or a fighter.”
The tell came when he saw Anders compete against one of his students in a jiu-jitsu tournament. Many gifted athletes don’t enjoy jiu-jitsu in a gi, Conolley says, because their strength and quickness can be easily negated. But, Anders, he noticed, wasn’t just trying to muscle his way into positions. He was doing honest-to-goodness jiu-jitsu.
He wasn’t doing it especially well. But he moved like a martial artist. Conolley was impressed, and the two have been a team ever since.
“When he came to me, he was just this raw talent,” Conolley says. “There were serious concerns, especially with his footwork. It was sloppy. His fundamentals were sloppy. He just wasn’t a good striker.”
But Anders had natural ability and a willingness to work. The second part was key, because Anders was far behind the fighters he wanted to eventually compete with. And his physical tools, Conolley says, were never going to be enough to overcome a skill deficit.
“Man, I’m telling you, I’ve had a lot better athletes come into my gym,” he says. “From University of Alabama. From off the street. From everywhere. Some of them, football took its toll on them and they had too many injuries. Some of them liked the idea of it but weren’t really about this life, the grind of it. It’s not for everybody.”
Anders, he says, couldn’t get by in football on his athleticism alone. MMA would prove a harsh business if he counted on physical tools to help him solve problems in the cage. First he needed to get good enough just to learn what Conolley had to share. That involved starting from scratch and building fighting fundamentals he’d never picked up. It was a humbling task Anders undertook with good spirits.
“He had to come in here and really work hard to develop his jiu-jitsu, develop his striking, develop his footwork, just to survive,” Conolley says. “Nothing bothers him. Nothing really flusters him. He processes information quickly. He learns and is extremely coachable. And he’s one of the only guys I’ve ever worked with who does everything you’re supposed to do. Every single, solitary thing I tell him to do, he does. That comes from football.”
Anders agrees.
“The most important thing football taught me was how to be coachable,” he says. “Learning how to be coached is a big thing. Instead of just thinking that I know it all. Being at Alabama, I learned how to study film and breakdown my opponent, learned how to be coachable.
“It’s been a big help in my career. Because I go other places to train, and I kind of see the athlete being stubborn and not really listening to what the coach is saying. Then when it comes fight time, he goes out and loses because he didn’t do what the coaches said or stick to the game plan.”
Anders had under a month’s notice last year to prepare for his first UFC bout against tough veteran Rafael Natal. It was the second short-notice fight UFC had offered in the days since he’d won the regional LFA title. With a banged-up hand to worry about, he’d said no the first time.
He wasn’t sure he could say no twice.
“They’d offered us a different fight the week before that,” Conolley says. “Eryk, he wants to take anything that’s offered. He wants to get going. But it was an undercard fight. It wasn’t worth the risk. Four days later, they offered Natal. OK, I like that. With the way Eryk plays and the way Natal plays, it was going to be bad for Natal. We deciphered his game. When they offered us that fight, it was worth the risk. It’s on the main card. It was a week later. That one made sense.”
Anders decimated Natal in the first round, then beat Markus Perez to close out 2017, bringing his record to 10-0.
Machida, though he’s lost four of his last five, is a different than Perez and Natal. The former light heavyweight champion has beaten the likes of Randy Couture, Dan Henderson, Mauricio Rua, Tito Ortiz and Rashad Evans, champions all.
At 39, he’s still dangerous, both in retreat, where he’s an expert at turning defense into offense in the blink of an eye, and when charging forward with blistering speed. But his three consecutive losses, all finishes, give Team Anders confidence.
It’s taken some time to get here, to a place where the legends of the sport aren’t idols to hold up as examples, but rather targets for conquest. Along the way, Anders has had to reinvent his body for the challenges he would face. In every interview he does, it’s assumed his conditioning comes from a life on the gridiron. In truth, football had created an athlete entirely unsuited for the challenges of MMA.
“The conditioning pyramid was upside down,” Conolley says. “He had to learn to go at an intense pace for longer than 10 seconds, which is the longest you’ll see a football play last. It’s a huge change but a transition he’s made really well, thanks to the speed of his recovery.
“According to the UFC Performance Institute, he floats from the striking energy system to the grappling energy system better than anyone. He is the most in-shape athlete, for MMA, on their roster. He’s not going to be the best endurance athlete. He’s never going to be the best sprinter. But he is the best at going from grappling to striking with ease and recovering.”
Anders never looks tired, even as the workout reaches an end and everyone else shows signs of being human. His teammates take turns doing their best Machida impressions, with lightweight Matt Elkins proving most effective. They switch out every five minutes. Anders, the willing victim, works seven straight rounds. In the minute between, Conolley offers advice and demonstrates techniques, like an “unstoppable” uppercut from the clinch and a no-look cross that the left-handed Anders masters quickly.
“That would have hit, if your god-damn left foot had been on the mat,” Conolley yells at one point. “You were up like a ballerina when you threw that s–t.”
They work hard, but this isn’t the kind of sparring that you’d see in traditional MMA gyms, especially in the bad old days. There is never a sense that anyone wants to hurt the man across from him. This is about learning, not proving how tough you are.
“We train very intelligently here,” Anders says. “In football, every play, every game, you’re getting rattled. If you play on the line or as a linebacker, you’re getting smacked every play. In here, we only spar once a week, and we’re not in here trying to kill each other. For longevity, if you can train at a place where they actually care about you, you can do MMA for a very long time. Whereas in the NFL, at 30, I’d be considered old.”
Forty-five minutes later, the team gathers around Conolley for a military-style after-action review. Anders, soon to be on his way to Brazil, offers his home to Oti so he can minimize his commute in the final week of his training. Only one rule is in place.
“No girls,” Anders says.
The moment is typical of Anders, who Conolley says works hard to make sure all his teammates are included, mentioning them often in television interviews and making sure he’s just one among many.
“All the guys are super stoked for him,” Conolley says. “There is no jealousy. They want to see him succeed. The guy fought a five-round war with Brendan Allen on a [Friday night] last year. We flew home on Sunday. On Monday, he was here for practice because we had three guys getting ready for fights. And he knew he needed to be here as a body for them. And he came in here to help them.”
As Anders leaves to change, his coach is more willing to share praise instead of critique. At first, he feared, Anders was moving forward in his career too quickly. But every day, he sees things that tell him Anders has the potential to be special.
“He’s constantly developing,” Conolley says. “That’s the frightening thing. He’s just two fights in with the UFC, and he’s headlining an event. And he hasn’t even begun. He has so much more to do. There’s a lot more weapons we can add to his arsenal, and he’s getting better every time out. Perfecting the use of a weapon and just firing that bitch are two different things.
“He’s just now perfecting some of his weapons. He’s processing information and able to make reads. He’s making feints and setting traps. There’s levels to this s–t. And he’s moving to that next level.”
Anders knows all about levels. In college football, he competed at the highest one. Likewise, he knows if he wants to reach the pinnacle of MMA, every bout going forward will be a big fight against a big name.
He’s unconcerned.
“Some guys, you see their heart beating in their chest. Looking at their body language and their demeanor, you see the uncertainty,” Anders says. “I don’t really feel pressure. I’m fixin’ to go down and play an away game in Brazil, which I’d equate to going to Death Valley at LSU. A lot of people fold in those situations. But it kind of helps me focus a little bit more. I thrive under that pressure. That’s proven. And I’m happy to prove it again to Machida and to Brazil.”
Jonathan Snowden covers Combat Sports for Bleacher Report.
Ronda Rousey’s first appearance in WWE wasn’t exactly a towering home run, but it will do for now.
In the wake of her disastrous second straight UFC loss in December 2016, many MMA fans suspected Rousey might wash up on the shores of professional wrest…
Ronda Rousey’s first appearance in WWE wasn’t exactly a towering home run, but it will do for now.
In the wake of her disastrous second straight UFC loss in December 2016, many MMA fans suspected Rousey might wash up on the shores of professional wrestling eventually. It was no great surprise, then, to see her debut in WWE following Sunday’s Royal Rumble, just in time for the final push toward Wrestlemania 34 on April 8.
Rousey didn’t wrestle or even speak during her brief appearance at the Rumble, and she didn’t appear at all on the next night’s episode of Monday Night Raw.
Publicly, she’s resolute, telling ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne that she’s in wrestling for the foreseeable future.
“This is my life now,” Rousey said. “First priority on my timeline for the next several years.”
If that’s true, then perhaps the blueprint for Rousey’s best-case scenario has already been drawn up by another former UFC champion: Brock Lesnar.
Since winning the NCAA Division I national heavyweight wrestling championship for the University of Minnesota in 2000, Lesnar’s own athletic life has been a fairly nomadic one. He’s essentially hopped back and forth between the WWE and UFC for the last nine years and—excepting a failed attempt to make it to the NFL in 2004—he’s been undeniably successful everywhere he’s landed.
At 40, the Webster, South Dakota, native’s star is still so bright, he can pretty much come and go as he pleases. The UFC will always take Lesnar when it can get him, and so will the WWE. The man is welcome wherever he decides to be, and his performance contract can always be amended to make it work.
If Rousey wants to make it in pro wrestling, then Lesnar makes a good role model.
Her life story doesn’t perfectly mirror Lesnar’s, but the broad strokes are close enough. After an amateur career as a world-class judoka, her rise to the top of the MMA world was just as meteoric. She doubled as UFC 135-pound champion and its biggest mainstream star from February 2013-November 2015, until back-to-back losses to Holly Holm and Amanda Nunes sent her into a tailspin.
After spending the majority of the last two years away from the limelight, her sudden re-emergence in WWE could end up benefitting both parties.
For Rousey, a lifelong pro-wrestling fan, it gives her the chance to fulfill a childhood dream while simultaneously making a lot of money and perhaps beginning to rehabilitate her image as a fighter. While her two losses dealt a serious blow to her reputation in the eyes of MMA fans, the WWE will still welcome her as a conquering destroyer.
For the wrestling promotion, it gets a bankable PPV star to advertise in its biggest event of the year. If Rousey can convince even a fraction of the people who followed her MMA career to either buy WrestleMania on PPV or sign up for the WWE’s digital streaming service, then the company can likely count her signing as a significant win.
If she can pull off the transition and truly become a “full-time” wrestler, maybe she can become the Lesnar of WWE’s women’s division.
Perhaps she will rapidly rise to the top and become a champion in both sports and sports entertainment, just as Lesnar did.
Perhaps WWE will be able to mask her relative inexperience and use her legitimate fighting chops to present her as an unstoppable wrecking machine.
Perhaps her natural athleticism and passion for WWE will help her win over her new peers.
Maybe, also like Lesnar, she can continue to make periodic UFC appearances.
Rousey refused to close the book on her involvement with MMA during this week’s interview with Shelburne. While she admitted she hasn’t really followed the women’s bantamweight division since she’s been gone and still seemed so shaken by her losses to Holm and Nunes that she declined to discuss them, she left the door wide open for a return.
Clearly, the UFC would love to have her. She maintains a cozy relationship with company president Dana White and assumedly with new ownership at Endeavor. With UFC PPV numbers on the decline during 2017, you can bet the organization would jump at the chance to put on a Rousey fight whenever it could do so.
Such an arrangement would likely be better for Rousey, too, given that she could sit back and be selective about her opponents, rather than perennially taking on the 135-pound champion or No. 1 contender.
Still, we shouldn’t underestimate the challenge of making the jump to WWE. By joining the biggest wrestling company in the world during its highest-profile time of the year, Rousey is being cast into the deep end of the pool with very little experience to draw on.
Even Lesnar spent some time in WWE’s developmental system before making the jump to the main roster.
Rousey has not been given that luxury.
A year or two from now, it’s possible her experimental dive into WWE will already be over, branded a dreadful failure.
But if we can ever look back on her experience there and compare Rousey to Lesnar, then it will have been a smashing success.
If you didn’t think Daniel Cormier was over with the fans after UFC 220, you best believe he will be now.
In a bombshell early Friday evening, the UFC announced Cormier would jump up in weight to fight reigning heavyweight king Stipe Miocic at UF…
If you didn’t think Daniel Cormier was over with the fans after UFC 220, you best believe he will be now.
In a bombshell early Friday evening, the UFC announced Cormier would jump up in weight to fight reigning heavyweight king Stipe Miocic at UFC 226 in July.
Miocic demolished the highly-touted Francis Ngannou to retain his title, also at UFC 220, and it took a mere six days for he and Cormier to decide they wanted to know who was better among them.
Beyond shaking the sport to its core, the fight is a chance for Cormier to finish repurposing a legacy that has enjoyed a late-life makeover in the past year.
He lost his light heavyweight title to Jon Jones last summer at UFC 214 in a fight where he was cast as an unlikely villain.
After being badly stopped by Jones, he delivered a memorable soliloquy in the cage through tears. It humanized him.
Jones then famously failed his second drug test in three fights and Cormier was given his title back. It only made him hungrier.
He continued appearing on UFC broadcasts and doing an increasingly good job as an analyst, color commentator and interviewer.
It all culminated in the UFC 220 performance, where he swaggered through challenger Volkan Oezdemir as the Boston faithful lapped it up. The arena itself shook with chants of “DC! DC! DC!” as he pounded his way to another world title win—his third defence, or first, depending on your perception of the Jones saga.
At 38-years-old and in his 22nd professional bout, Cormier had arrived. And now, less than a week later, he is rolling that momentum into the biggest test of his sporting life.
Bigger than the Olympics.
Bigger than Jones.
Bigger than anything.
By taking on Miocic so willingly, taking him on after years of saying heavyweight was for his teammate Cain Velasquez to own, taking him on so soon after he put an official expiration date on his career, Cormier is sending a message.
This is about his legacy now, and that legacy will be one of greatness or bust.
It will not be about his trials and tribulations, Jones or whatever anyone else comes up with. It will be about his decisions and on his terms.
That’s admirable in a way not much in MMA is admirable anymore.
Where many in the sport are obsessed with Twitter beefs, Instagramming private jets and the elusive “money fight,” Cormier is obsessed with making people remember his name for competitive glories.
And who better to do it against than Miocic?
The only man in Boston to come close to getting the welcome Cormier did was the Clevelander, a part-time firefighter who blends blue collar and black-and-blue in a way no one else before him has. He is the epitome of hard work paying off, work done by keeping his chin down and letting his actions do the talking.
The closest he’s ever gotten to showing people what he really thinks of a situation was snatching his title belt from Dana White after he dispatched Ngannou so that his coach could crown him, which he later insisted was only a matter of respect.
It’s probably not any wonder that “stoic” is hidden in the man’s name.
Now he’ll serve as the perfect foil to Cormier as he attempts to prove that he’s the baddest man on the planet.
The stakes for Miocic are very real as well: A win and he’ll defend the heavyweight title an unprecedented fourth time over a former Olympian and Strikeforce Heavyweight Grand Prix winner. One who, it bares reminding, was 13-0 as a heavyweight before dropping to 205-pounds and becoming a champion there.
Beating Cormier makes him a legend if he isn’t already, a laid back Midwestern boy done good in the world of professional fisticuffs.
The leadup will surely be about respect and honor, the fight about skill and will.
It’s the opportunity Cormier has dreamt of for years, even when he didn’t realize it.
Champion versus champion, the apex of the sport in a fight for a legacy he never could have imagined would look this way after the things he’s been through, the epitome of “anyone, anytime, any place.”
A belt over each shoulder and a ride off into the sunset, undeniable as one of the best to ever do it.
Yoel Romero went to Australia and buried Luke Rockhold in the Outback.