Cain Velasquez might have walked out of the Toyota Center in Houston as the reigning king of UFC, but some fans are still questioning his credentials as the baddest motherfucker on the planet. Dan Steadman writes.
Midway through Neal Stephenson’s pioneering 1992 cyberpunk novel Snow Crash, the lead character (with the totally unselfconscious name of Hiro Protagonist) inspires the following passage:
“Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, and devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad.”
Walking into the Octagon at UFC 166 in Houston, Texas, Brazilian UFC fighter Junior Dos Santos undoubtedly felt like the baddest motherfucker in the world, and with good reason – he’s the only man on the planet to ever deliver a loss to his opponent, the reigning heavyweight champion Cain Velasquez – and via first round knockout no less – to win the championship in November 2011; and while he lost the rematch and the championship in December 2012, it was via decision following a gruelling five round tangle. Clearly there was Unfinished Business.
But as Snow Crash proves, there’s usually someone badder:
“Hiro used to feel that way, too, but then he ran into Raven*, In a way, this is liberating. He no longer has to worry about trying to be the baddest motherfucker in the world. The position is taken.”
Over the course of four-and-a-half rounds, Velasquez showed why he’s a class above the rest of the heavyweight division, and why he deserves the title of the baddest motherfucker in the world. His wrestling skill closed any gap that Dos Santos could eke out, and Dos Santos found himself pressed against the cage for most of the bout. And with movement being controlled, Velasquez went to work, landing 123 strikes (one more than Dos Santos was able to even throw), and laid down a comprehensive beating on Dos Santos.
So clinical was his display, midway through the third round referee Herb Dean was within a millisecond of stopping the fight, placing his hand on Velasquez – many pundits think that he should have followed his instinct and halted proceedings; instead the fight continued until the inevitable happened and Dean ended it in the fifth round with under two minutes left on the clock. It might have been classed a mercy stoppage, as Dean pulled Velasquez off the bloodied and bruised Dos Santos.
So there we have it – the proud Mexican-American Velasquez is the baddest motherfucker in the world.
To emphasise the point, the short list of contenders all seem to have something lacking – Daniel Cormier easily won a unanimous decision against Roy Nelson the same night to become the #1 contender, but his unexciting grappling and unwillingness to finish the fight meant the Texan crowd turned against him, but the bigger issue is that Cormier and Velasquez are training partners and friends, and the two don’t want to compete against each other.
Which means that Velasquez’s next challenger is all but certain to be Fabricio Werdum, another Brazilian fighter, but he’s seven years older than Dos Santos and with a less impressive record – it should be a good fight, but Velasquez is likely to be an unbackable favourite. Beyond those two, you have Antonio “Bigfoot” Silva – a man Velasquez has defeated twice already, both times in the first round; the resurgent Gabriel Gonzaga, who won his fight at UFC 166 with ease, but he’s 34 years old, tends to go on small losing streaks and was already beaten by Dos Santos three years ago; and who else – Dos Santos for a fourth time?
But here’s the thing, if Velasquez is so dominant, and his challengers seemingly non-existent, why do so many fans and critics alike believe that he’s not yet a complete fighter? Yes, he did completely overwhelm Dos Santos, but even as his face was being turned into hamburger, the Brazilian still had a punching chance, and almost capitalised on a couple of occasions. Even with the sold-out Houston crowd being filled with Mexican fans supporting him, Velasquez still managed to get more than a smattering of boos as early as the second round for his reluctance to finish the fight. For all his supremacy in the fight, it appears the jury may still be out on Velasquez, and until a fighter is found who can truly test him, it may remain so.
Sometimes the problem with being the baddest motherfucker in the world is that there’s always someone gunning for the position, but could a bigger problem occur when there’s no one gunning at all?
*Why is Raven the baddest motherfucker in the world in Snow Crash? He’s a 7-foot tall Aleutian harpooner with a knack for making blades out of glass, who also has a nuclear bomb in his motorbike’s sidecar remotely synced to his brain activity. If his brain activity stops, the bomb goes off. It is a sci-fi book.
