Issue 114

May 2014

Can Teixeira keep his nine-year win streak going and build on Alex Gustafsson’s game plan to usurp the champion, or has ‘Bones’ learnt from his last defence? 

Many fight fans will first have heard of upcoming UFC light heavyweight title challenger Glover Teixeira in early 2007 when a former opponent of his, Rameau Thierry Sokoudjou, stunningly flattened Pride FC stars Antonio Rogerio Nogueira and Ricardo Arona.

It looked as if a new 205lb star had burst on to the scene yet, just a few months earlier, the heavy-handed African had himself been squashed inside two minutes (WEC 24) by the Brazilian known chiefly, if at all, as Chuck Liddell’s sparring partner.  

As Teixeira’s own winning streak grew (he’s now 22-2) more and more people took notice. But lacking the proper documentation to compete in the US, he was packed off to Brazil where he fought for three years while trying to arrange a work visa to return to San Luis Obispo, California. Teixeira went 10-0 on home soil (nine inside the distance) and earned plenty of hype as the division’s best-kept secret.

Visa issues sorted out, he finally made his UFC debut in May 2012, obliterating the durable Kyle Kingsbury inside two minutes. A superb first appearance, Teixeira was back in the Octagon, and back in Brazil that October, giving Fabio Maldonado a ferocious, uncomfortable-to-watch two-round savaging. 

He went 3-0 in 2013, clearly beating the aged Quinton Jackson in a Fox co-main event over three rounds, that showcased his wrestling ability, and finishing both James Te Huna and Ryan Bader in the first, the former via a ‘Submission of the Night’ guillotine and the latter by a ‘Knockout of the Night’ pummelling.  

Five UFC fights, five convincing wins, equals a title shot for Glover, but a closer look at his wins reveals a few worries in going up against long-reigning champion Jon Jones (19-1). Getting careless, Teixeira was almost KO’ed by Maldonado in what would have been one of the greatest comebacks of all time. While Bader clearly hurt him twice in their sub-three-minute brawl before a seemingly out-of-it Teixeira landed a huge left hook counter that spelled doom for the American.

As devastating as the 34-year-old can be, he can definitely be hit, and hurt. And that could mean disaster against Jones.

For all his skill and a long run of dominant performances, ‘Bones’ needs to reassert his lofty position in the pound-for-pound rankings in this fight, having been on the brink of defeat in his last three outings.  

In their September 2012 fight, Vitor Belfort (whose very status as challenger was more than questionable) came just millimetres away from a stunning first-round armbar submission victory. And eight months later, Chael Sonnen – an even more unlikely challenger – almost dethroned Jones in the flukiest of ways. If he wasn’t TKO’d with 27 seconds left in the first, the fight would have been stopped due to Jones’ grotesquely injured toe, handing Sonnen the TKO and the title.

Most recently, and a year on from the Belfort fight, Jones faced Sweden’s Alexander Gustafsson, a man whose perceived inferiority as a challenger contributed to a disappointingly low number of pay-per-view buys for the company and made him a rank outsider with the oddsmakers.

Yet Gustafsson came incredibly close to actually taking Jones’ title. In the Sixth Annual Fighters Only World MMA Awards ‘Fight of the Year,’ Gustafsson used his wrestling, crisp striking, long limbs, stamina and sheer guts to give Jones the toughest battle of his life over five dramatic rounds.

The champion eventually won a close, debatable unanimous decision and significantly, in his fifth-round onslaught, showed that even exhausted, bloodied and battered, the man who normally makes it all look so easy could dig deep in the later rounds and go all out for a finish.

Jones has since said he came back too quickly from the toe injury in the Sonnen fight and so wanted to make sure he was fully fit to take on Teixeira, which helps explain the numerous announcements and subsequent postponements of 

this fight.  

If Jones really is injury-free, motivated and not looking past the power-punching Brazilian, Teixeira may be in for a very painful evening’s work at the hands, and elbows, and knees, and feet, of one of the greatest fighters the sport has ever seen.