Tag: Roy Nelson

Now this was a heavyweight fight.

For better and worse.

As two of the UFC’s most colorful big men, Josh Barnett and Roy Nelson each emptied his complete bag of tricks on Saturday in Japan at Fight Night 75. Nothing fancy, just a couple of old warhorses letting it all hang out during a surprisingly fun, surprisingly strategic but predictably lowdown, greasy battle over almost absolutely nothing.

When it was over, Barnett won a clear-cut unanimous decision (50-45, 48-47 x 2), though the spoils of victory likely amount to little more than the chance to move a step or two up the UFC’s specious official rankings.

With new heavyweight champion Fabricio Werdum on the shelf until next year and contenders already stacked four or five deep, the 37-year-old Barnett remains on the outside looking in for the foreseeable future. He’d need another quality win to join the pack and two or three to climb anywhere near the top.

But this matchup with Nelson was never about the heavyweight pecking order. This was two men with more than 70 fights between them—not to mention similarly unruly personal philosophies—putting on a show for the UFC’s yearly stopover at the legendary Saitama Super Arena.

The important thing, Barnett said when it was over, was the satisfaction of a job well done.

“It’s not about belts, it’s about the way people fight,” he told UFC play-by-play announcer Jon Anik inside the cage. “Roy Nelson fights like he means it. He’s the kind of people we need in the UFC. That’s what people want to see. I gave Roy everything I had. He took it and came back.”

With a 637-day stretch of inactivity distancing him from a tough loss to Travis Browne at UFC 168, Barnett returned to the Octagon looking re-energized. He weighed in at a svelte 239 pounds—some 15 pounds lighter than for his last two UFC appearances—and the major topic of his pre-fight conversations was how hard he’d trained to get prepared.

Nelson was not svelte and did not fill up interviews with talk of his intense training. He tipped the scales at a typically roly-poly 261 and entered as more than a 2-1 underdog, according to Odds Shark. Even the analysis on Fox Sports 1 boiled Nelson’s chances of winning down to some simple pre-fight bullet points: stay out of the clinch and throw the right hand.

Yet Nelson proved slightly cagier than oddsmakers, analysts or even Barnett anticipated.

This may have been the most measured and technical fight of Big Country’s UFC career. He surprised Barnett with a few takedowns and, if nothing else, piled up some riding time in the early going. He countered well with uppercuts and landed several of those hard right hands, just none flush enough to really put Barnett in trouble.

Nelson even tried a head kick or two.

As the fight wore on, however, Barnett’s conditioning and pace proved too much. The former UFC heavyweight champion fought much of the bout from a southpaw stance to mitigate Nelson’s power. His forward pressure was relentless, and his fluid punching combinations found their mark with more frequency and from longer range than Nelson’s.

Barnett’s best work went to the body. He punished Nelson’s rotund midsection with slapping punches, thudding kicks and stabbing knees. He used many of them to bully the shorter fighter back against the fence and into the clinch, where Barnett is among the best operators in the world.

He wore Nelson down on the inside and by the end had set a couple of impressive and unexpected company records, according to official UFC statistician Michael Carroll:

In the extra fourth and fifth rounds—hardly necessary for most heavyweight bouts—things got sweaty. The action bogged down, and the fight company’s hot cageside mics broadcast every huff and puff to a television audience already weary from five mostly irrelevant undercard bouts.

As the final horn sounded, both Barnett and Nelson stopped cold in the middle of the cage, bent over, put their hands on their knees and just breathed.

Nobody puked. We were probably lucky for that.

Barnett conducted much of his post-fight interview with Anik in Japanese. This victory marked a successful return to the country where he spent the bulk of his MMA career fighting in Pride FC and where he frequently works as a professional wrestler.

And so we were left feeling unexpectedly charitable about these guys’ prospects. Neither Barnett nor Nelson is going to be UFC champion, but at least they proved they can still tell a compelling story over the course of five rounds.

Even at 1-5 in his last six bouts, Nelson is likely safe from the chopping block. Such is life for heavyweights, and such is policy now for the UFC, which must be as concerned with keeping talent away from its stateside competitors as filling its ranks with new contenders.

Likewise, with all the old-timers currently kicking around the heavyweight division, Barnett—while frequently inactive and occasionally disinterested—isn’t going to be irrelevant anytime soon.

No matter what happens, future fights against fellow veterans such as Mark Hunt, Andrei Arlovski and even Alistair Overeem will likely always be there for him.

Assuming another two-year break isn’t in his immediate plans.

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You get the impression neither Josh Barnett nor Roy Nelson is knocking on the door of a UFC heavyweight title shot these days.

You also get the distinct impression both guys are pretty cool with that.

Despite the fact both retain respectable rankings in the puddle-shallow 265-pound division—the 37-year-old Barnett is No. 8 while Nelson, who is 39, is ranked No. 11—their very existence feels independent of the heavyweight rat race.

And, yes, that’s absolutely meant as a compliment to this pair of MMA iconoclasts as they enter the twilight of their long, strange careers. It means fans continue to follow and care about them despite the fact neither is about to climb aboard a bullet train to the top.

It also means their main event at Saturday’s UFC Fight Night 75 is a pretty weird fight—one that manages to boast few, if any relevant stakes while still being somehow totally perfect.

The Warmaster né Babyfaced Assassin vs. Big Country?

In Japan?

Yes, we will absolutely watch that and probably enjoy every minute—or more likely every fleeting second—until it’s over, regardless of what it means.

Or what it doesn’t.

Barnett comes in off the longest layoff of his career, idle some 637 days since his first-round technical knockout loss to Travis Browne at UFC 168. As is his practice, he kept busy in the meantime, becoming Metamoris heavyweight submission grappling champion and taking up a color commentary gig on American broadcasts of New Japan Pro Wrestling.

He’s always been a man of eclectic interests—muscle cars, heavy metal, Magic the Gathering—and usually gives the impression he could really take or leave this MMA thing. Serially nomadic, he spent the heart of his fighting career banished from the UFC and appearing in far-flung promotions like Pride Fighting Championships, Strikeforce, Affliction, World Victory Road and Dream, among others.

When the UFC bought Strikeforce in 2011, Barnett’s world suddenly got a lot smaller. Perhaps after years of telling himself he didn’t need the promotional giant to have a successful fighting career, he realized the jig was up. For a time, it seemed to re-energize him, and he stormed out of the gate with a first-round knockout victory over Frank Mir at UFC 164.

Between the Strikeforce cage and the Octagon, he fought three times in 2013, his most of any year since 2008. The last one was that rough defeat by Browne, and after taking nearly two years to collect himself, this bout with Nelson shapes up as our best chance to see where Barnett’s head is at, to gauge his level of interest.

Could be he knows that too.

“I don’t really have anything personal with Roy particularly,” Barnett told Ariel Helwani on The MMA Hour this week, “but I do have something personal against myself and my last performance. My last fight was not acceptable for me in any way, shape or form, and I have a really bad taste in my mouth over that, and I want to make sure I go above and beyond in this fight.”

By contrast, Nelson is at least willing to pay lip service to the title hunt. He recently pointed out to the Las Vegas Sun’s Case Keefer that nobody is ever totally out of the running for No. 1 contender status in the heavyweight division.

“As long as you string up two good wins, you’re right there for the belt,” Nelson said. “Like this fight, I’m ripe for the belt. You’re always in title contention just because you’re a heavyweight. Heavyweights, we switch that role left and right as long as the champions fight.”

While he’s right about the eternally chaotic nature of the 265-pound weight class, Nelson doesn’t tell the whole tale here, either. The truth is, there’s a valid discussion going on right now about the heavyweight title picture and the battle to be a top contender—and that conversation doesn’t really include him or Barnett.

Nelson enters this bout just 1-4 dating back to April 2013, so it’s actually been a minute since he’s been able to “string up two good wins.” It’s probably out of his reach to be “ripe for the belt” before late 2016 at the earliest.

That has everything to do with not only Nelson’s recent record, but also the fact new champion Fabricio Werdum is already slated for an immediate rematch against Cain Velasquez. A crowd of guys including Junior dos Santos, Alistair Overeem, Ben Rothwell and Stipe Miocic are jockeying to be next up.

So, if anything, Nelson needs a win here just to hold his spot.

During the lead-up to this bout, he’s criticized the UFC for booking Werdum and Velasquez in a do-over. Then again, criticizing stuff is basically Nelson’s career MO. He’s practically the UFC’s official contrarian, and the attitude has made him memorable, if nothing else.

Despite Barnett’s assurances there was no personal animosity between them, Nelson also took to social media to mock the former UFC champion for his multiple past drug test failures:

So, grudge match?

Nah.

Barnett appeared to take Nelson’s jibes in stride.

“I look at it as a toddler with a butter knife trying to challenge a Viking with a battle axe,” he told Helwani. “You just have to laugh, pat him on his head and move on when it comes to that sort of thing.”

It’s somehow fitting that this fight is happening in Japan, especially just a week removed from Spike TV’s announcement that former Pride boss Nobuyuki Sakakibara is returning to MMA.

There’s just something of an old-school Pride vibe surrounding it, even though it will go down inside the UFC cage and under America’s standard unified rules.

Perhaps it’s the singular nature of the matchup, the fact this fight exists outside of any real storyline or conventional stakes. The winner moves up the heavyweight ranks an inch or two, while the loser likely remains in stasis.

Nobody is fighting for his job.

Nobody has a tremendous amount of ground to gain or lose.

Maybe it’s just that a well-known professional wrestler will fight an overweight brawler with a black-belt-level jiu jitsu game he almost never uses. This tandem will make for some good copy. Fireworks will ensue. Someone will win, someone will lose.

Nothing will change.

When it’s over, both guys will just go on about the business of being themselves.

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