Issue 085
February 2012
Five wins and counting inside the last 12 months, Donald ‘Cowboy’ Cerrone has gone from WEC star to genuine UFC title contender in style
Tough, powerful, fast, exciting, and a full-blown, knee-slapping, lip-smacking guarantee of fireworks, no one has made a greater impression than Donald ‘Cowboy’ Cerrone in 2011. The UFC lightweight striker went a massive 5-0 leading up to this year’s Fighters Only World MMA Awards, and picked up the title of ‘Breakthrough Fighter of the Year’ to prove it. For years a standout in the UFC’s sister promotion, 2011 was the year Cerrone bucked out of WEC obscurity and into the bright lights of UFC glory.
“The big moment for me this year was when us WEC guys came into the UFC. That helped me to get my mind right. I found my mojo,” drawls Cerrone, cracking the kind of smile reserved only for a man with a bellyful of pride and hard-won accomplishment.
It’s been quite the wild ride for the Greg Jackson product during the 12-month FO World MMA Awards voting period. Cerrone bagged five straight, the last four inside the Octagon following the WEC’s absorption into the UFC. And, he’s no lay ‘n’ pray artist either. In fact, three of those four UFC successes have included some variety of fight-night bonus.
After signing off from the WEC with a triangle submission of Chris Horodecki in December 2010, ‘Cowboy’ debuted in the big show in February with another second-round tapout, this time rear-naked choking Brit Paul Kelly in Las Vegas in a contest that earned the UFC 126 ‘Fight of the Night’ check.
A UFC 131 points victory over Vagner Rocha in Canada in June was followed eight weeks later with a crushing first-round TKO of touted Charles Oliveira at UFC Live in Milwaukee, and with it the ‘Knockout of the Night’ prize. And, he completed the hat-trick of bonuses at UFC 137 against Denis Siver back in Las Vegas in October, when an opening round rear naked choke put paid to the fiery German’s own hot streak.
“I’ve not changed anything in relation to my training or my training partners,” reveals Cerrone, “it’s just the sports psychology side of things that has changed. The mental aspect of the game, getting my finger out and assessing what do I have to do to come alive. And, s**t, it seems like I’ve found it.”
He’s also finding a shining-silver ‘Breakthrough Fighter of the Year’ statuette on his mantle when he wakes up every morning. To own it he beat competition from a peaking former US Marine (Brian Stann), an underdog finalist Olympian (Daniel Cormier), a UFC bantamweight title challenger (Demetrious Johnson) and a rising NCAA champion wrestler (Phil Davis). With a complete cleansing of mental doubts – likely to have surfaced with the help of three short-fallen attempts to take WEC lightweight gold between 2009 and 2010 – comes a clarity of vision. A vision that extends an entire year into the future.
“If you’d have asked me 12 months ago where I would be right now I’d have had no idea. I just wasn’t right; my head wasn’t right. But ask me now where I’ll be a year next year and I’m gonna be champion of the world. I know it. I feel it.”
