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He will never shake the mental picture people have of him as the precocious “Phenom”, all flailing fists and devastating speed and power, the likes of which took out Tra Telligman, Scott Ferrozzo, Tank Abbott, and Wanderlei Silva in the early days of the UFC. If you tell him this, he simply chuckles before admitting that he does turn back the clock on his own occasionally.
“I watch them sometimes,” said Belfort of his first UFC bouts. “But I don’t like to see myself on video.”
He doesn’t like to live in the past either. After his 44 second knockout of Silva at Ultimate Brazil in 1998, 20 fights have taken place over the ensuing 12 years. He’s not the same fighter he was back then, and he’s quick to point out that he’s better now, in all aspects of his life.
“I know I’m capable of using my experience now,” he said, making it clear that while the power and speed remains, the reckless part of his personality and fighting style is gone. “It’s part of the job. Sometimes you can score a touchdown, sometimes you can’t. But we always can do better. We have to be a better man, a better athlete, a better father, a better everything every day. We always have to improve.”
Yet sometimes more important than improving is persevering, something Belfort had to do after a horrific stretch from late 2004 through 2006 where he had to deal with the kidnapping of his sister (one of her kidnappers confessed to her murder in 2007) as he lost five of seven bouts. He eventually rebounded, and beginning with his 2007 knockout of Ivan Serati, Belfort went on a five fight winning streak that he will carry into his first UFC title fight since 2004. It’s been a rollercoaster ride to say the least, so when his original bout with Silva at UFC 108 was postponed due to an injury suffered by the champion, Belfort merely shook it off.
“It is what it is, you cannot change the facts,” he said. “I don’t see the bad side, I always try to look at the good side. Here we are again and we’re gonna fight.”
Some would say that this is a reflection of the maturity that comes with being 33, a family man, and someone who has walked through fire and yet emerged intact. Belfort credits his faith.
“Your faith has to kick in every day,” he said. “Our lives are not made by one event. It’s a road, it’s a journey. You have to keep your faith and your discipline every day.”
He will need it all Saturday against one of the most dominant fighters in the history of the sport, a champion with a record number of middleweight title defenses and an unbeaten 12-0 slate in the Octagon. Belfort doesn’t have much to say about Silva, simply cutting it down to “Anderson is a pretty tough fighter. He’s improving every time he steps in the Octagon, and he’s the champion.”
Even when pressed and asked whether he saw Silva slipping at all in a 2010 campaign that saw him lackluster in victory over Demian Maia and forced to dig into his bag of tricks to pull out a last round win over Chael Sonnen, Belfort keeps his cards close to the vest.
“I hope so, but I’m not predicting anything,” he said. “I’m going there to fight and do my best. I’m not going to take anything away from him. I’m gonna go there to fight.”
That humble attitude is in stark contrast to the teenage Belfort. As he told me before his second fight with Randy Couture in 2004, “I was totally out of focus. I wasn’t training, I was thinking I was the greatest and that nobody could beat me.”
Those days are over. Despite a recent change in trainers, with Shawn Tompkins leaving the fold, Belfort remains committed in the Xtreme Couture gym in Las Vegas, focused on the task ahead of him and the opportunity to join Couture and BJ Penn as the only fighters to win UFC world titles in two different weight classes. And many believe that if anyone has the talent to dethrone “The Spider”, it’s Belfort.
“That’s good to hear that people think that,” he said. “I know I can beat him if I’m ready when I step into the Octagon. It’s just a matter of doing what you’re capable of doing, and I think I’m capable to go there and fight and get the win. I’m very confident and I’m gonna try to accomplish this.”
If he does, it will be an exclamation point on a career that had so much promise, then disappointment, and now promise again. But win or lose, Vitor Belfort isn’t done yet; not by a longshot.
“I always live for the future,” he said. “I’m always looking forward to what is next, and what is next is the title. I’m very happy I have this opportunity, and I’m training hard, I’m doing my job, so on February 5th I can put everything I’m doing now in action. I want to leave the Octagon saying that I did everything I could. I know I’m fighting a champion, a guy who’s one of the best, pound for pound, in the world, and I’m prepared to go in there and do my thing. And that’s the point of life. You have to be better than yesterday.”
“I look at it one fight at a time,” says Bader. “My goal is to be the champion, and if you look at what it takes to achieve that in the 205 division, it could be pretty daunting. But if you take it one fight at a time and just train for the fighter in front of you and just go out like it’s any other fight, you’ll get there.”
Training for Jones has been a challenge. After all, how many guys out there have an 84 inch reach and the technique that Jones brings to the table, including vicious elbows that have resulted in some of the most impressive ground and pound in the division?
“I’m not scared of him,” says Bader. “That’s one thing, I’m not going to fight him scared. He’s fought some really tough guys but every fighter is different. I’m different than Matt Hamill, than (Brandon) Vera, than (Vladimir) Matyushenko; we all present our own problems. For me, I’m a tough wrestler. I have the mental capacity to make it a dogfight and take it in deep water. With my wrestling combined with my knockout power, I bring a lot to the table and even more than what you’ve seen in my last couple of fights.”
A two-time All American wrestler at Arizona State University, Bader thought he was through being an athlete after graduating college. The years of training and cutting weight took their toll, and Ryan went the 9 to 5 route, taking a job as a telecommunications salesman in a business-to-business company.
Six months later he discovered MMA.
“I felt like I hit a plateau with wrestling,” he said. “It was fun but it wasn’t there any more for me. I wasn’t getting much better. When I found MMA I learned something new every day and felt like every day I walked into the gym I was getting better.”
The progress Bader saw in the gym quickly translated to success in the cage, and after going 7-0 in smaller shows that included slamming an opponent in a cement floor ring in Mexico for a knockout victory, the Reno, Nevada native caught his second wind, and he eventually found himself on national television competing on The Ultimate Fighter, Season 8.
Since defeating Vinny Magalhaes in the finale and winning a UFC contract, Bader has gone 4-0 inside the Octagon, with key victories over Antonio Rogerio Nogueira and Jones’ teammate, Keith Jardine. A victory over Jones would catapult Bader into the top five of one of the most stacked divisions in all of MMA.
“This is a huge fight for me,” says Bader. “It has a lot of implications for my career, but it’s just another fight, he’s just another fighter. I put pressure on myself for every fight. I’m highly competitive. When I was fighting in smaller shows and wrestling matches, to the Ultimate Fighter and now huge fights like this, I train the same. I’m my biggest critic and I want to go out there and not only win, I want to be exciting.”
With unpredictable spinning elbows and impressive Greco Roman throws, Jon Jones is known for being exciting, but Bader says he’s got some tricks of his own that Jones needs to watch out for.
“Obviously I’m not going to give away my game plan, but if the opportunity presents itself in the second or third round, you’ll see some interesting stuff from me,” he says. “We are pretty much opposite fighters. He’s got unorthodox technique, he’s very long, we have totally different bodies, and we couldn’t be any further apart. The only thing I would say is similar is the wrestling. I feel with my wrestling and my boxing, my ability to take him down and knock him out presents a lot of problems. I’m just working on mixing it up well. He’s obviously a great fighter too and he brings a lot to the table. I’m going to stay tight, use my wrestling and boxing and throw some kicks and knees in there.”
To help prepare for the imposing reach that Jones possesses, Bader worked with Kyle Kingsbury, who faces Ricardo Romero at UFC 126. At 6’4” tall and with a good 79 inch reach, Kingsbury presented a lot of the same scenarios that Bader will see against Jones.
“He’s a lot bigger than Jon Jones, but he’s lanky and tall with long arms so I got to work on getting inside, and he kept me honest, not walking straight in with punches because he’s got ten inches on me,” says Bader. “He was throwing some different stuff and it was nice to work with him just to feel that length and that size.”
Bader said he also did a lot of MMA sparring for this camp, with all of his opponents actively trying to emulate the unpredictable moves Jones is known for.
“We’ve had a fresh guy in there with me every minute and they were instructed to throw some of the techniques that Jon likes to throw at me so I’ve been getting used to seeing those types of things.”
For Bader, being undefeated in MMA and facing his toughest challenge to date doesn’t add any extra pressure to keep his record unblemished, because he’s got his eye on the big picture.
“He’s got all the hype and everything but if you put any one of those top ten guys in front of me it’s going to be a dog fight,” he says. “It’s a highly competitive division. When you start looking at those names and who I have to go through to reach my goal, you’ve got to take one fight at a time. It’s a hard division but that’s where I want to be.”
Ben Askren delivered a dominant wrestling performance Thursday en route to winning the Bellator welterweight title. Now he wants to develop a striking game that would help him finish opponents like former champ Lyman Good, who battled him for the full 25 minutes.
“I’ve only been punching stuff for about a year. Literally,” said Askren, who wrestled in the 2008 Olympics. “I didn’t start boxing or hitting anything until September of 2009. I heard [Good’s] corner taunting me with, ‘He punches like a girl.’ Maybe I do now, but I ain’t always going to punch like a girl. There’s a lot of places that I can get better. I can punch harder. I can finish better on top.”
Askren repeatedly passed into mount, but he couldn’t put Good away. He tried an arm-triangle choke in the first that Good used to reverse position. Through the later rounds Askren chose to pepper his opponent from mount rather than risk losing position.
“It may not be the most exciting strategy, but it’s a solid strategy,” Askren said. “I was landing blows and staying busy.”
At one point in the fourth round, though, referee Kevin Mulhall stepped in while Askren had mount and restarted the fight on the feet. Askren said he’d never seen a fighter stood up from mount.
“If you’re active, they’re not supposed to stand you up, especially in such a dominant position,” Askren said. “I didn’t really understand that, but you can’t take a second to dwell on that. … I got back up and said, ‘OK, gotta take him down again.’ Didn’t really dwell on it at all.”
The takedowns were there for Askren all night long. Even if Good stopped the initial drive, he couldn’t prevent the follow-ups. Still, Good fought to the end and nearly stole the fight. With less than two minutes remaining, he drilled Askren with an upkick and squeezed a triangle choke on the stunned fighter. Askren eventually escaped.
“The upkick didn’t really hurt at all, but the triangle was close,” Askren acknowledged. “It was fairly tight, but I just kept fighting. I knew I wasn’t going to tap. That just wasn’t going to happen.”
The kick looked like it hurt. By the end of the fight, Askren’s face was bruised and swollen. He might not have finished his opponent, but the 26-year-old relative newcomer to MMA had earned 25 minutes’ worth of valuable experience.
“I’m pretty happy with my performance,” Askren said. “I knew one time in my career I’d have to go the full five rounds and show people what kind of heart I had. I’m just glad people got to see that I got heart. Didn’t I tell them I won’t stop?”
