Issue 180
July 2019
The former MMA star looks back at five defining fights and ponders a near-death experience and what might have been had one epic clash gone the other way.
1. Robbie Lawler, Icon Sport: Epic
This is my personal number one life-changing fight for me. That fight changed my life as a whole. He split my nose open. He blacked me out. I was breathing blood when I went to the hospital. He almost killed me. No, I’m not exaggerating. This fight was really violent. Mind you, at the time I was winning the fight on the scorecards. It was the fourth round. I was really tired. I wanted to take a break. I was going to step into the corner, cover up and take a break for a minute. He threw a five-punch combo and four of them hit me. That was it. Lights out. That was a fight that really changed me.
2. Renato Verissimo, UFC 50
My son was there. It was the first time he was at a live fight with me. I had a broken nose when I went in. I hid it from the doctors so I could compete. I got caught in that triangle and there was a point where I thought I was going to have to tap out. Frank Mir was on commentary. He was yelling at me about the way I was throwing elbows from the top onto Verissimo’s head. It was this whole surreal moment. There was a lot of stuff attached to this fight personally for me. I was getting beat in the first but was able to make it through the round, recover and I came out in the second round and won the fight.
3. Fabiano Iga, Pride 8
This was the first time I fought in Japan. We basically lived forty minutes away from each other in California but we had to fly all the way to Japan to fight each other. The environment was a little nerve racking. I had been wrestling internationally for a long time and big crowds don’t usually bother me but when I walked out there and saw 34,000 plus fans, I thought this was the most people that have ever watched me do anything in my entire life. I just walked down the stairs and went in there and did my thing.
4. Hayato Sakurai, Shooto: R.E.A.D Final
He is still one of the biggest named guys out there. He’s my first MMA loss. For a guy that I was beating up and pushing around, I was a way better man. I didn’t understand that when you hit you need to cover up. I just kept attacking. As a result he dropped me three times. There was a standing eight TKO count back then in Shooto. That was it. I got knocked down three times and the fight was over. I never heard of that rule before. I didn’t understand it. What are you talking about? Let’s keep going. If you watch that fight you see me after the fight saying ‘What the hell? Let’s keep going.’ And there is no way I should be fighting in that moment.
5. Matt Hughes, UFC 52
That’s the only fight anybody wants to talk about. Nobody cares about anything else. Nobody cares about any other fight. It’s the only fight from the old era that is still in the montage that the UFC shows in the arena to open live events. If I would have won I would be a millionaire. People look back at their lives and think if I turned right this is the path I would take or if I turn left this is the path I go down. If I had turned right and won that fight I would have been a millionaire. My confidence would have been so high. My ego would have been so big. I would have been unstoppable for a while. That was when the champions were still making money. I would have got a piece of the Pay per View and locker room bonuses that would have set me up for the rest of my life. There were opportunities already set in motion for whoever won that fight. Matt happened to win it. That one fight, that one moment, could have changed everything for me. If Buster Douglas wouldn’t have beat Mike Tyson how would their careers have changed? If I would have beat Matt Hughes how would our careers have been different? It’s all conjecture now.
