Five minutes flies by in a flash, at least in most contexts. It’s the length of time it takes to heat a standard microwave dinner.
Five minutes is fleeting. Five minutes is transitory. What’s five minutes?
But for UFC challenger Robbie Lawler, five minutes on March 15, 2014 was ultimately unforgettable.
For four rounds at UFC 171, Lawler—in the midst of an inexplicable and improbable comeback after seemingly falling right off the MMA map—battled Johny Hendricks in thrilling even-Steven fashion. On every scorecard, the two were even going into the final frame.
Lawler, in no uncertain terms, didn’t get the job done.
With 300 seconds separating him from fulfilling what once seemed like his destiny, he simply stopped performing. When it mattered most, it was Hendricks—after taking a drubbing in Round 4—who picked himself up and earned a shiny gold belt. He joined the immortals.
Lawler did what he’s done throughout his career—he failed to rise to the occasion when the stakes were at their highest.
“Johny is a competitor and Johny knows how to win,” Lawler told UFC.com’s Duane Finley. “That’s what I need to do. I need to figure out a way to win rounds and dominate the fight so that it’s my hand that is raised at the end. I worked on a lot of things since our first fight and I’m physically and mentally ready to go. I’m coming in fully ready to dominate.”
It’s become a pattern in Lawler‘s career. Every time he reaches a turning point, that moment that could send him careening toward a new level of success and glory, he can’t quite pull it off.
It happened first against Pete Spratt way back at UFC 42, a three-fight winning streak stopped in its tracks, the first loss in a backslide that saw him fall right out of the promotion. In the midst of his second act, it happened again, with Jason Miller and Jake Shields choking off his ambitions in brutal losses three years apart.
And then there was Hendricks.
“I should’ve done more in the fight and thrown more punches, thrown more kicks and took him out,” he said immediately following the fight, dejection written on his face at a press conference streamed to the world. “I don’t know. It’s easy to look back now and look at the things you should’ve done.”
Counting him out, however, seems a fool’s game. Over the years, he’s developed his craft in countless ways, evolving from a frenetic and frantic puncher as a kid to a surprisingly sophisticated striker in his latter years.
“Stubborn is not giving up and coming back every day when stuff is rough and not easy. I guess I want to be stubborn,” Lawler told me earlier this year. “I’m a grinder. You just wake up every day and get after it. I was banged up here and there. There was a time it felt like I just couldn’t get healthy. But I kept learning. It would have been easy to give up and do something else. It would have been easy to give up. To say, ‘This is hard. Maybe I shouldn’t do this anymore.’ What I thought was, ‘I’m in it. And I’m going to stay in it until I can’t do it anymore.’ Everything I’ve been through, it’s just made me a stronger individual, plain and simple.”
Bloody Elbow’s striking expert Connor Ruebusch explains what makes him such a difficult challenge for opponents:
The real key to the effectiveness of these punches is Lawler‘s manipulation of rhythm. By throwing slow, predictable strikes first, Lawler establishes a rhythm–a tempo that is subconsciously picked up by his foe. This makes the follow-up punches very difficult to predict or defend, as they are thrown completely off rhythm, shooting in at three times the speed. …
Lawler uses his constant slow, rhythmic movements to coerce his opponent into matching his rhythm, at which point he abruptly changes the tempo and surprises them with his deceptive speed and power.
There’s little doubt Lawler has the tools to win any fight in the welterweight division. He can hit Hendricks—and hurt him. That isn’t conjecture. We’ve all seen it.
The question, then, is whether he can do it mentally. Can Lawler reach inside himself and give his best performance on the biggest night of his life?
Most fighters never get a shot at the UFC title. Lawler went nearly 13 years, toiling as a journeyman at shows big and small to arrive at that moment. This time, just nine months separate his greatest failure from a second opportunity at redemption.
There may not be another.
With all that swirling around in his head, Lawler has seemingly maintained his equilibrium. Yes, Saturday’s UFC 181 fight matters. It matters a lot. But all he can do is what he does. It’s a simple philosophy, but one that has carried him a long distance in one of the world’s most difficult sports.
“I just go out there and do what I do best, and that’s fight,” Lawler told Bleacher Report’s Finley. “I let my hands and feet go and try to finish fights. I guess fans appreciate that, and that’s what I always looked up to when I watched martial arts and boxing growing up. I always appreciated guys who went out there looking to finish and gave it their all. That’s what I’m looking to do every time I go out there.”
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