Josh Koscheck has never been the most popular fighter with the UFC fanbase.The former No. 1 contender to the welterweight crown has enjoyed a love/hate relationship with the MMA community spawning from his days on the original season of The Ultimate Fi…
Josh Koscheck has never been the most popular fighter with the UFC fanbase.
The former No. 1 contender to the welterweight crown has enjoyed a love/hate relationship with the MMA community spawning from his days on the original season of The Ultimate Fighter. That being said, the villain role has never seemed to bother Koscheck.
The former NCAA Division I wrestling champion brings his “black hat” back into the Octagon for the first time in nine months when he faces Robbie Lawler this Saturday night at UFC 157. The bout will be Koscheck’s first appearance since dropping a close decision to surging contender Johny Hendricks at UFC on Fox 3, where Lawler’s return to the Octagon has been more than eight years in the making.
While MMA fans have always shown their distaste for Koscheck, it appears his lack of popularity also spills over to his fellow fighter…at least in the case of Ian McCall.
During a recent video breakdown of the upcoming throwdown between Koscheck and Lawler, “Uncle Creepy” told Bleacher Report’s own Jeremy Botter he hopes the Strikeforce convert “knocks the f*** out of Koscheck.”
While the flyweight staple ultimately picked Koscheck to win this weekend’s tilt, he had no problems adding a few more choice words for the UFC veteran.
After McCall said, “nobody likes Koscheck,” he went on to add the perennial contender was “always the bridesmaid and never the bride.”
Check out the video below as McCall goes unfiltered and breaks down the upcoming matchup at UFC 157.
UFC 157 features an interesting welterweight clash between Josh Koscheck and Robbie Lawler.Lawler makes his UFC return by dropping back to the welterweight division. Koscheck returns to the Octagon after an extended period away from the cage following …
UFC 157 features an interesting welterweight clash between Josh Koscheck and Robbie Lawler.
Lawler makes his UFC return by dropping back to the welterweight division. Koscheck returns to the Octagon after an extended period away from the cage following a loss to Johny Hendricks in May 2012. The two veterans are attempting to make one last run at the title.
This is one of the most interesting fights on the card, and one that has a chance to collect a post-fight bonus check.
Here is how the welterweight action breaks down heading into UFC 157.
It doesn’t seem like all that long ago that Robbie Lawler was fighting for the first time in the UFC as a name to watch from the Miletich camp, blasting opponents off their feet. Lawler was the new kid on the block, a training part…
It doesn’t seem like all that long ago that Robbie Lawler was fighting for the first time in the UFC as a name to watch from the Miletich camp, blasting opponents off their feet.
Lawler was the new kid on the block, a training partner to welterweight champion Matt Hughes, and it seemed logical that he would be the man to take the handoff from Hughes as the next great champion.
On Feb. 23 of this year, at UFC 157, Lawler will be stepping back into the Octagon for the first time since 2004, now an “old man” in the game, set against Josh Koscheck.
Talk about a rough “welcome home.”
Still, Koscheck isn’t going to bring anything into the cage that Lawler hasn’t seen before; as dynamic as the sport and its fighters have become, a takedown is still a takedown and an overhand right is still an overhand right.
Given the names in the division—Koscheck, Jon Fitch, Johny Hendricks, Martin Kampmann, Rory MacDonald, Carlos Condit—it’s hard to imagine Lawler standing out, really.
But upon careful reconsideration, he does begin to stand out, if for no other reason that he’s a contradiction in so many terms: a youthful veteran, an established newcomer, a quiet fighter.
And he’s better now than he was the first go-round in the UFC.
Lawler has a serious test in front of him with Koscheck, but win or lose, odds are he’s going to get his feet back under him and find his equilibrium within the division, and when he does, he could rise up the ranks for a shot at Georges St. Pierre’s title.
None of this is to say that Lawler isn’t a beatable fighter, but at 30 years old, he’s still got a lot he brings to the party, including some serious physical power and explosiveness.
Anytime someone looks at the welterweight division they see it in parts as the murderers’ row it is, with GSP playing the part of capable warden, putting down any uprisings with a kind of no-risk mechanical efficiency that belies the depth of the division.
Lawler matches up well with nearly all of the top welterweights and he possesses the kind of power that could knock any of them out cold.
And having fought many of the past years as a legitimate middleweight, Lawler is going to be a very big, powerful man in the ring at 170.
On paper, Lawler is an improbable threat to the title; most of his losses seem to stem from being outworked on the mat and he’s been submitted five times.
But most of the men who submitted him—Jake Shields, Jason Miller, Ronaldo Souza—are among some of the best submission artists in the game; a threat he won’t be facing against GSP.
All of this conjecture is really based around central notion, being that a highly motivated and excited Lawler is capable of beating anyone in the division on any given night—especially if they are foolish enough to stand and trade with him, like Melvin Manhoef was.
It’s been a long time since we’ve seen Lawler look like he was honestly enthused to be fighting, but sometimes coming home can bring back the memories of better days and rekindle the joy of riding hard and fighting harder.
If there is any place for aspirations, it’s the UFC, and for Lawler, stepping down into the welterweight division, sans all the fanfare he was afforded as a younger man in the Octagon, could be the perfect formula for an awakening.
After all, he’s in a prime position; no one is expecting much out of him and most, while acknowledging his presence, have him somewhere out of the corner of their eye, standing by the gate.
Given that this is a sport where nothing is given, Lawler has a real chance to take it all by force; much as it’s the punch you don’t see coming that knocks you out, it’s also the threat you don’t see honestly that runs you over.
But he’s going to have to be more than he has been in recent years and exactly what he was once upon a time, before he became disenchanted with life and reckless in the cage.
Josh Koscheck returns to the Octagon for the first time since May to welcome Robbie Lawler back to the organization and division.Koscheck dropped a split decision to Johny Hendricks back at UFC on FOX: Diaz vs. Miller. The win would have elevated him b…
Josh Koscheck returns to the Octagon for the first time since May to welcome Robbie Lawler back to the organization and division.
Koscheck dropped a split decision to Johny Hendricks back at UFC on FOX: Diaz vs. Miller. The win would have elevated him back into title contention. Now he will try to get things going once again in 2013.
Lawler will be back inside the Octagon for the first time since UFC 50 back in 2004. He has dropped three of his last four bouts, but will hope a return to 170 pounds will give him a fresh start as the calendar turns.
This is how the battle between the two hard-throwing welterweights stacks up.
Though Lawler’s recent stint in Strikeforce suggested that the HIT Squad member’s best days are behind him — he won just three of eight fights for the promotion since 2009, and is coming off a decision loss to Lorenz Larkin — “Ruthless” hasn’t lost his savage knockout power, which helped him earn classic victories over Melvin Manhoef and Matt Lindland. (Fun fact: Since leaving the UFC after a middleweight loss to Evan Tanner at UFC 50, Lawler has earned all of his 11 victories by stoppage, with 10 coming via KO/TKO.)
Though Lawler’s recent stint in Strikeforce suggested that the HIT Squad member’s best days are behind him — he won just three of eight fights for the promotion since 2009, and is coming off a decision loss to Lorenz Larkin — “Ruthless” hasn’t lost his savage knockout power, which helped him earn classic victories over Melvin Manhoef and Matt Lindland. (Fun fact: Since leaving the UFC after a middleweight loss to Evan Tanner at UFC 50, Lawler has earned all of his 11 victories by stoppage, with 10 coming via KO/TKO.)
Josh Koscheck is coming off a loss as well, dropping a split-decision to Johny Hendricks in May, but he’ll surely be considered a strong favorite in this matchup, as he’s remained competitive with the top welterweights in the UFC — not to mention the fact that Lawler’s drop to his old weight class could wear him out before the fight. So is Robbie dead meat, or is Kos going night-night?
The entire MMA world was buzzing when the announcement came, sudden as a heart attack, that the Ultimate Fighting Championship would soon make a huge leap forward into the mainstream. Media cheerleaders swooned, even as the promotion made it clear that…
The entire MMA world was buzzing when the announcement came, sudden as a heart attack, that the Ultimate Fighting Championship would soon make a huge leap forward into the mainstream. Media cheerleaders swooned, even as the promotion made it clear that just a single fight would air on television during this debut show. But that bout, according to owner Lorenzo Fertitta, was a chance to let the general public “know about the UFC and its fighters and understand the product.”
Sound familiar?
It should. It’s the story of the UFC’s debut on Fox last year.
The catch?
It’s also the story of the UFC’s original television debut, a June 25, 2002 broadcast of The Best Damn Sports Show, Period on Fox Sports Net.
For UFC fans in 2002, this was a seismic moment, shaking the entire sport of MMA to its very core. That sounds awfully dramatic, I know, but in 2002 MMA in America was still a very iffy venture. The UFC, the flag bearer of the sport since its 1993 debut, nearly went bankrupt at the turn of the century as owner Bob Meyrowitz fought a desperate battle, not to gain an audience, but rather against legislators and cable companies just for the right to exist.
From Puerto Rico to New York and most everywhere in between, Meyrowitz battled to escape the bed he had helped make for himself, trapped by early marketing that identified the sport as a bloody spectacle, death always looming just out of camera frame.
After eight years, he didn’t have any fight left in him, selling the company to Las Vegas casino moguls Lorenzo and Frank Fertitta.
Under the Fertittas, and their consigliereDana White, there was progress at a breakneck pace. The hurdles, whether regulatory or cable, seemed to melt away as the two brothers flexed their bank book and their connections.
The UFC, in just months, was holding shows in the mecca of professional fisticuffs, Las Vegas, Nevada, and was widely available again on pay-per-view. But the Brinks trucks filled with cash, the ones that seemed inevitable at the time, never arrived. The promotion floundered and, like Meyrowitz before them, the Ferittas were soon swimming in a sea of red.
The solution, it soon became clear, was television.
Free television, not just PPV, which limited the audience to fans who were already diehards. The UFC was convinced that if they could only get their product in front of people, success would follow as a matter of course. The search for a broadcast partner became the company’s top priority—a last ditch effort to rescue the promotion and, by proxy, the entire sport.
It was this sense of desperation that led to UFC 37.5, so named because it wasn’t conceptualized and executed until after the company had already begun planning and promoting UFC 38 in London. It was not an ideal time for a show, but when Fox Sports Net said “jump” Fertitta and his team were happy to say “how high?”
It was too late in the game to book one of the major arenas around the country, so instead of the MGM Grand or the Mandalay Bay, the card was held in the swanky Bellagio, a casino on the strip that, lacking an arena of its own, had to make due with their spacious Grand Ballroom, a 45,000 square-foot site that was plenty big enough to comfortably fit both the UFC Octagon and 3,700 of the company’s most raucous fans.
To the dismay of many, the network didn’t want an entire fight card, just a single bout.
It was a challenge, then, to decide how best to utilize this opportunity, this one chance to show the world (or at least the 150,000 viewers tuning in to Fox Sports Net) exactly what this sport was all about.
UFC President White, however, had the perfect man in mind for the job.
It seems ludicrous to consider now, but Robbie Lawler, a man who hasn’t fought in the promotion since 2004 and seems to be on the tail end of his career at just 30 years of age, was once the UFC’s golden boy.
Just 19 when White personally signed him after an impressive showing at a minor show in Hawaii, Lawler was handsome, muscular and had hands of stone. Comparing him to a young Mike Tyson, Dana called the move “a Christmas present to myself.”
And so it was that Lawler, despite having fought a grueling bout with Aaron Riley barely a month earlier at UFC 37, found himself hand selected to represent his entire industry on national television for the first time.
Although the current UFC mythology claims Fox Sports and the UFC picked which bout to air only after the fights were in the can, reporting at the time in Full Contact Fighter makes it clear that Lawler‘s fight with Steve Berger had already been selected for broadcast “well before the opening bell.”
White himself acknowledged as much, telling reporters after the fight that “As I was sitting here when the fight started, I realized how much pressure I put on him when he was preparing for that fight.”
Luckily, the young man, then all of 20 years old, delivered in a big way. After a back-and-forth first round, one that showcased the breadth of technique that makes MMA, well, MMA, Lawler got the highlight-reel knockout the UFC desperately needed, dropping Berger with a series of punches and landing five more on the ground to force the stoppage.
For Fox Sports Net officials, the show was an eye-opener. Originally described by White as “standoffish,” the event’s success (drawing what White claimed was the second biggest audience in The Best Damn Sports Show, Period‘s history) led to a shift in attitudes—and other opportunities with the network.
They filled in for boxing on Sunday Night Fights broadcasts later that year with taped programming, doing, Fertitta said, double the numbers boxing did in the same slot. The Best Damn Sports Show, Period provided an outlet for Tito Ortiz and Ken Shamrock to hype their main event at UFC 40, an event that turned around the UFC’s PPV business in a major way.
Yet, a long term deal couldn’t be reached.
The Fox Sports Net deal, in the wake of what would follow on Spike TV and now Fox, is just a blip in the UFC’s television history, albeit an important one. Going forward, the company could show other TV executives exactly what the sport would look and feel like on mainstream television and also point to a track record of success.
It opened the door for everything that followed, both for the UFC and their myriad of competitors, helping create the boom that opened the door wide for the UFC to challenge boxing for the hearts and minds of the world’s fight fans.
Josh Koscheck has never been the most popular fighter with the UFC fanbase.
