This is the first of a new series I’ll be writing for Sportskeeda called ‘Fall from Grace’ – the idea being to profile an MMA fighter who’s fallen on hard times in their career, look at exactly what led to their downward slide and whether they can recover from it or not.
As a disclaimer, I must add that in no way do I mean any disrespect to any of the fighters with this series. I’ve got the utmost respect for anyone who steps into the cage – even at an amateur level – and it’s more a look at what causes great fighters to decline rather than a fighter bashing-fest.
At the end of the day, it’s part and parcel of any sport that once-great athletes eventually decline. The reasons can be myriad and in MMA it’s often tricky to tell exactly who’s on a slide, given the matchmaking system and the unpredictability of the sport.
In this inaugural edition, I’m looking at a likely future UFC Hall of Famer and undoubtedly one of the best 205lbers to ever step into the Octagon, former UFC Light-Heavyweight Champion, Rashad Evans.
The Initial Rise and Fall
Rashad’s career is almost weird in a way, largely because he reached the top of the mountain very quickly, and was then knocked off the top almost as quickly as he reached the summit.
It was 2005 when we first saw Rashad on UFC programming as he was cast on the second series of The Ultimate Fighter. A Division I wrestler who narrowly missed out on All-American status, Rashad also happened to be the smallest man out of the Heavyweight cast.
According to most sources, Dana White wrote him off before the tapings even began, which made sense given that behemoths such as Brad Imes and Dan Christison were part of that TUF roster.
Rashad proved everyone wrong, though, as it turned out that his size disadvantage actually offered him an advantage in speed. He beat Tom Murphy, and then took apart favourites Mike Whitehead and Keith Jardine to secure his spot in the finals, where he beat the afore-mentioned Imes by decision.
Ironically enough, both Whitehead and Jardine would go on to regularly fight at 205lbs just like Rashad.
A drop to 205lbs and a series of wins followed, each looking more impressive than the last until a highlight reel knockout of Sean Salmon was the catalyst to push him to the next level. At UFC 73, Rashad was faced with former 205lbs champion Tito Ortiz, the biggest star of the pre-TUF era.
It proved to be a test that Rashad was unable to pass.
For the first time in his career, it seemed that his lack of size stood against him, as Ortiz dominated the early going with his takedowns and clinch work. Evans fought back in the later rounds, but it was only a deducted point for Ortiz (due to a fence grab) that allowed Rashad to come away with a draw.
A rematch with Ortiz seemed to be on the cards. Instead, Evans was matched with fellow TUF winner Michael Bisping. After a tough fight, Rashad came away with another decision win and then took just under a year off.
The layoff proved to be worth it.
Rashad returned to his first ever UFC main event, a fight with arguably the biggest star in company history to that point, former champion Chuck Liddell. Coming in, a lot of analysts gave Liddell the advantage, the belief being that he’d always dealt well with wrestlers like Rashad.
A monstrous overhand right from Rashad changed all that.
It turned out that again, speed was the key to Rashad’s success. Where in the past, Liddell had always been able to land the killer counterpunch, Rashad was simply too quick on the draw for him. It was the knockout that put Liddell’s career on the slide and set Rashad up for a title fight with fellow TUF star Forrest Griffin.
Again, it was speed and explosiveness that made the difference. Forrest took the first two rounds with his boxing and leg kicks, but in the third Rashad countered a kick with a jackhammer right hand. Heavy punches on the ground followed and Rashad Evans was the new UFC Light-Heavyweight champion, just three years after winning TUF.
Unfortunately for Rashad, his time at the top would prove to be fleeting. When a possible first defence against Quinton ‘Rampage’ Jackson was postponed due to a jaw injury to Rampage, the UFC booked Evans against fellow undefeated star, karate expert Lyoto Machida.
Yours truly felt that Rashad’s speed and explosiveness would give him the advantage again, but for the first time that wasn’t the case. Instead, Lyoto’s management of distance and his ability to spring in hit Evans and then spring back out exposed some flaws in Rashad’s game.
He couldn’t catch Lyoto with a big shot and he was unable to use his wrestling game at all. The fight also proved that his chin was nowhere near invulnerable. After a second round flurry, Rashad was unconscious and the UFC had another new champion.
Peak Rashad?
After the Machida fight, Evans took some time off to recover and found himself back on TUF, this time as a coach opposite now-bitter rival Quinton Jackson. It was expected that the two would fight at the conclusion of the season, and boy did the show build the feud well.
In my opinion, it was probably the best coaching feud in TUF history, even eclipsing Ortiz vs. Shamrock a few years beforehand.
The show ended in December 2009 but it would be some time before Rashad and Rampage would face off. Rampage went into a pseudo-retirement after filming The A-Team, leaving Rashad to fight Brazilian brawler Thiago Silva in the main event of UFC 108.
Rashad won a clear-cut decision, bringing back his wrestling game to go along with the striking chops he’d learned over the years following TUF. The Rampage fight was set up for May 2010’s UFC 114 and again, it was Rashad who came away with his hand raised, a huge right hand that almost took Rampage off his feet in the opening seconds setting the tone for the fight.
It was at this point that Rashad started taking a lot of criticism from the fans.
Similarly to his teammate at Greg Jackson’s, Georges St-Pierre, people began to claim Rashad was “fighting safe” by using his grappling more than his striking following the Machida loss.
To me this was nonsense – Rashad was fighting smart. He was using the speed and explosiveness he’d always had to not only set up his striking but in turn to use his striking to set up an always-excellent grappling game.
It could be said that 2010-11 was Rashad Evans’s peak.
The win over Rampage secured Rashad another title shot, but then things went a little awry. New champ Mauricio ‘Shogun’ Rua – who had beaten Machida – was forced out until 2011 with injuries. He was finally matched with Rashad in March at UFC 128, but then it was Rashad who had to withdraw with a knee injury.
It was the first time Rashad had ever pulled out of a UFC fight and it would prove to be fateful, as Rashad’s then-friend and training partner Jon Jones stepped in, smashed Rua to pieces and took the belt for himself.
Almost immediately, Rashad’s world turned upside down.
Promised a shot at Jones, Rashad ended up leaving his longtime camp at Greg Jackson’s due to the feeling that his trainer was now favouring the younger Champion. He formed his own team – eventually known as the Blackzilians – and an angrier Evans emerged at UFC 133 to fight old rival Tito Ortiz, stepping in at late notice when first Jones and then Phil Davis were unable to compete.
Evans looked leaner and meaner than ever, and this time Ortiz was no match for him. Rashad dispatched him in the second round following a vicious knee to the body. It was as if the skills he’d learned at Jackson’s were now being harnessed into a more violent style of fighting following his training with the likes of Tyrone Spong.
Again the Jones match was set up but again it was not to be, as a thumb injury briefly sidelined him. When he returned, he was faced with Davis – the best wrestler in the division on paper, an NCAA Division I champion. Rashad thoroughly outgrappled him for five rounds.
The injuries that had sidelined him didn’t seem to matter at all. He was on a collision course with Jones.
If MMA were a movie, then at UFC 145, Rashad would’ve overcome his younger rival to complete a storybook ending. It’s not Hollywood though and so it was Jones who came away with his hand raised following a tough but clear decision win.
For Rashad, it was back to the drawing board.
The decline begins
Jones vs. Evans took place in April 2012 and it would be almost a year before we’d see Rashad again. No injuries were reported during that time, so the likelihood is that Evans was simply honing his skills and biding his time.
A match against former PRIDE star Antonio Rogerio Nogueira was announced for UFC 156 and Evans was made the betting favourite with his speed, power and wrestling game favoured over Nogueira’s clean boxing and submission skills.
Instead, another chink in Rashad’s armour was revealed.
Where Machida had beaten Evans by managing distance, and Jones had won by abusing the shorter man with his freakish reach and outpowering him in the clinch, Nogueira won simply by having a more crisp jab. Rashad seemingly had no answer for the cleaner boxing game, even with his speed advantage.
It was the worst performance in Rashad’s career to that point and was the first real sign that a decline of his career might’ve begun.
A win over Chael Sonnen followed in November 2013, and the aggressive Rashad from the Ortiz fight appeared to be back. A February 2014 meeting with Daniel Cormier was set up and sounded like a genuinely intriguing fight.
That was when disaster really struck.
A knee injury forced Evans out of the fight and put him on the shelf “indefinitely”. He spent a year away before revealing he was still injured when a January 2015 fight with Alexander Gustafsson was proposed.
A February meeting with Glover Teixeira was also shelved when both men suffered injuries. For Rashad, it meant yet another period of over six months out.
When he finally returned to face Ryan Bader in October 2015, it had almost been two years since the Sonnen fight. Against Bader, he didn’t look like the same fighter at all. He was beaten to the punch by a man, who a few years ago, would’ve been considerably slower than Rashad, and it seemed like he was struggling to pull the trigger, too.
It could’ve been ring rust, but just a few months later he was knocked clean out by Glover Teixeira – another man who wouldn’t have come close to beating Rashad to the punch a handful of years ago.
Following the loss, Rashad took the same path that many before him have done – he decided to move down a weight class, to 185lbs, feeling he’d be better with a size advantage than the speed advantage he had – or used to have – over most of the 205lbs division.
The UFC then booked Rashad with Tim Kennedy, but twice the fight was cancelled due to a lingering – and still unknown – medical issue for Rashad, who claimed he’d fought with it for his entire career. No definitive answer has ever been suggested for what this issue is.
When the UFC found an athletic commission that would clear Evans – Texas – he was matched with Dan Kelly, a tough fighter with a cult following, largely due to the fact that he’s not the most athletically gifted fighter on the roster. In other words, fodder for the 2010/11 version of Rashad.
Instead, we saw the same gunshy Rashad who fought Ryan Bader. Kelly was able to beat him to the punch, stayed more active throughout the fight, and even took the former Champion down a handful of times.
Immediately after, fans were calling for Rashad’s retirement. He’s clearly declined from his peak, but what exactly caused that decline, and can it be turned around?
Speed, explosiveness and bad wheels
The old adage is that speed kills, and earlier in his career that was certainly the case with Rashad.
It was his surprising speed and his ability to close distance rapidly to either land a strike or hit a takedown that allowed him to beat great fighters like Liddell, Griffin and Ortiz. Having thunderous striking power probably helped too.
While he was beatable back then, as Machida proved, fighters able to manage distance like Lyoto were few and far between. And his only other loss during that timeframe to Jon Jones is hardly one to be ashamed of.
The Nogueira loss was a little harder to stomach, but Lil’ Nog always was a very capable boxer and for whatever reason, Rashad made the decision to fight him in his strongest area. That fight did expose some of Rashad’s issues with technical boxing – namely too much reliance on his speed – but didn’t really signal the beginning of the end.
I think his decline has really been caused by a combination of his injuries and his fighting mileage adding up.
As we all know, multiple knee injuries can easily strip an athlete of their explosiveness and their speed, particularly as they reach their late 30s as Rashad now has. And Rashad’s game was never truly built around being more technical than his opponents’, it was more that he had enough technique to allow his speed to do the damage.
In terms of fighting mileage, I think it’s quite clear now too that Rashad is not as aggressive as he once was and that makes sense as well – a fighter’s durability decreases with age and Rashad was never known for having a granite chin to begin with, although his recovery powers were second to none.
It makes sense for him to be less aggressive in order to protect a declining chin, but the problem then becomes that he no longer has the explosiveness to surprise opponents with a big shot on the counter.
At his peak, Rashad Evans was a phenomenal fighter and one of the best athletes to set foot inside the Octagon. Unfortunately for him his athletic peak, I feel, is now gone, and that means he can’t fight in the same way he used to.
Could he adapt his game? Possibly, but I think it’s doubtful – so much of his success was always built around him having a speed advantage and it’d be hard to change that at this point.
I think the best route for Rashad would probably be to hang it up. He belongs in the UFC Hall of Fame and he’s one of the best 205lbers in UFC and MMA history for my money, but this is a decline I don’t think he can turn around.
It’s not been a dramatic fall from grace, more a slow decline – almost the opposite of his rise up the ranks.
Agree? Disagree? Think Rashad can still turn it around? Let us know!
Until next time.....
Send us news tips at [email protected]
