It’s time again for another edition of MMA Origins, and this time I’m looking at a fighter who I’ve actually had the pleasure of watching through his whole MMA career to date, including his pre-UFC days, brief as they were. He was one of the most hyped prospects in MMA history and he lived up to every word that was said about him – including, in the end, some of the more negative aspects.
This is the story of former UFC Heavyweight champion Cain Velasquez.
The Prophecy
I want to say 2006 was the first time I heard about a man named Cain Velasquez. I can’t be too sure of the actual date but I know exactly what the circumstances were. Back then I was heavily into MMA radio shows – this was a time largely before Podcasts – and one of my favourites was Beatdown Radio with TJ De Santis. His guest on the fateful edition was Josh Thomson.
Thomson was at the time coming off a very brief run in PRIDE. He’d subsequently signed not with the UFC, but with a small, upstart Californian promotion that would go on to much more fame. The promotion was, of course, StrikeForce, and while they did debut with the first ever legal MMA show in California, they weren’t making the waves that they would from 2009 onwards. I forget what the interview with De Santis was actually about, but I do know that Thomson was asked about his training camp, American Kickboxing Academy.
The Punk told De Santis that AKA had a guy training with them who hadn’t even made his MMA debut, and yet he was so good that Thomson was sure he’d end up as the best Heavyweight on the planet some day. My ears immediately pricked up. The guy’s name was Cain Velasquez.
Apparently, Cain had quite the wrestling background – he was an NCAA Division I All-American out of Arizona State University; he was recognized as one of the best wrestlers in his weight class in the country, and although he hadn’t won the Division I title, people in the know said that a lot of that was down to him having to wrestle Steve Mocco and Cole Konrad, both once-in-a-lifetime type talents.
Little more was said, but I was interested nonetheless. In October 2006, Velasquez made his MMA debut under the StrikeForce banner, fighting on the undercard of a show headlined by Tank Abbott (in 2006!) vs. Paul Buentello. His opponent was named Jesse Fujarczyk, a classic first opponent if ever there was one – he had a record of 2-1, but his lone loss had come to WWE star Daniel Puder. The fight lasted a little under two minutes before Cain was able to pick up the win via TKO, following a takedown and some heavy ground-and-pound. At the time, I couldn’t even track the video down, settling for still photos on Sherdog instead.
Velasquez looked nothing like I’d imagined; while the likes of Fedor Emelianenko and Tim Sylvia had taught me that the best fighters weren’t all freakishly muscular like Mark Coleman, Cain was an odd one – body-wise he looked like a regular guy who maybe trained in the gym a few times a week. His head, though, told another story. It was huge, like a fire hydrant, and he had a look about him that screamed intimidation. He instantly reminded me, in fact, of the Jake the Muss character from the movie Once Were Warriors. Obviously Cain’s from a Mexican background, not a Maori one, but that intimidation factor felt similar in looks at least.
The Lost Years
Two months after his debut, Cain would fight again, and this time it was in the ring. BodogFight was the new promotion in town, run by eccentric billionaire Calvin Ayre seemingly as a way to push his online gambling site. But Ayre threw a tonne of money into the promotion, even signing Fedor Emelianenko as a one-off to face Matt Lindland. And all of the shows were available to watch on Bodog.com.
Velasquez was chosen to fight on Bodog’s ‘Clash of the Nations’, the idea being that over two shows in two days, a series of fights would be held with the winners then going on to be matched against each other at a Bodog PPV show in 2007. His opponent was Jeremiah Constant – a fascinating choice as not only did Constant have far more experience (he was 4-0) but he was also a strong wrestler himself, coming out of Oklahoma State as an NCAA Division II wrestler and fighting out of Team Quest alongside wrestlers like Matt Lindland and Dan Henderson.
This time, I was able to find the fight online easily thanks to Bodog’s website, and it was an interesting one indeed. Filled with tremendous wrestling exchanges between the two men, two things became pretty clear to me. One was that Velasquez was willing to push a pace that few Heavyweights were capable of – basically breaking Constant in a round with his relentless pressure – and two, despite his form not being perfect, Cain’s striking was absolutely non-stop and seemed hellish for his opponent. Despite putting up more of a fight than Fujarczyk, Constant was finished in the first round too.
After the Constant fight, Velasquez was supposed to face off with former PRIDE fighter Roman Zentsov at the afore-mentioned Bodog PPV. It would’ve been super-interesting because of the experience gap – Zentsov had 25 fights at the time and although his record was so-so, he’d been in there with truly world-class fighters like Fabricio Werdum, Gilbert Yvel and Alistair Overeem.
In early 2007 though, it was announced that Velasquez had broken his hand and was out of the fight – the first time that the injury bug raised its head for Cain. The Bodog show, headlined by the Fedor vs. Lindland match, went ahead in April without him – Zentsov beat Kristof Midoux instead – and suddenly all went quiet on the Cain front. The Bodog promotion died quietly later in 2007 and Velasquez was left without a contract.
The prospect
Despite constantly Googling his name throughout 2007 to find out about any upcoming fights, it seemed like Cain Velasquez had somehow slipped through the cracks. Maybe he wasn’t as good as Thomson had made him out to be? Like a bolt from the blue, though, that all changed.
In early 2008, a brief announcement was posted onto UFC.com to announce a handful of undercard fights for UFC 83 – the first UFC show in Canada, headlined by the rematch between Georges St-Pierre and Matt Serra. One of the fights announced was a Heavyweight match pitting Velasquez against a fellow debutant, Australian Brad Morris.
At just 2-0, Velasquez was in the UFC. But how?
The rumour was that the reason for Cain’s long layoff was that nobody on the regional scene wanted to fight him, such was his reputation. Realising that racking up wins on that scene was the only way to get Cain into the UFC, his coaches at AKA – Javier Mendes and ‘Crazy’ Bob Cook – were concerned with this. And so they decided on another strategy. From all sources, they invited UFC president Dana White to watch the team train, and Dana saw Cain in action, apparently dominating a pair of top UFC fighters in Paul Buentello and Brandon Vera.
Velasquez was signed on the spot.
When UFC 83 came around in April 2008, the Velasquez/Morris fight was hardly considered a marquee one. Only hardcore fans cared about this Heavyweight prospect making his debut, and the fight went on second. Morris – a fellow Bodog veteran – had the experience advantage and was bringing a solid 10-2 record to the table, but instantly – right after a left hook dropped him face first – it was clear he was wildly overmatched. Displaying much-improved striking from the Constant fight, Velasquez beat the Aussie down mercilessly, ending the fight in just over two minutes. If anything, the fight was stopped criminally late.
Despite announcers Mike Goldberg and Kenny Florian somehow butchering his name – “Ky-an” they called him – it was a tremendous debut. But despite the win, the hype train never really picked up outside of the hardcore fanbase. It was probably due to a combination of Morris not being the best opponent, and the fact that around the same time we saw the debuts of two Heavyweights who took more of the spotlight; Shane Carwin – a hulking wrestler with brutal knockout power – and Brock Lesnar, the former WWE superstar turned fighter.
In a division that was suddenly gaining more intrigue, Velasquez was firmly the dark horse.
The dark horse
Just three months after his debut, Cain was back in the Octagon. This time he was matched with a fellow wrestler in Jake O’Brien. Although O’Brien hadn’t really earned the respect of the fans – he was nicknamed the ‘Irish Blanket’ due to his penchant for lay-and-pray – he was definitely a tough test for the young prospect. In 2007 he’d upset former PRIDE star Heath Herring, and in early 2008 he’d given Andrei Arlovski some problems before succumbing to a second-round TKO.
Hardcore fans wondered how Cain would deal with O’Brien’s wrestling game, but they needn’t have worried. Somehow the fight was almost as one-sided as the Morris beatdown; Cain secured a takedown, smashed through O’Brien’s guard and then locked up the favourite position of legendary Welterweight Matt Hughes – the mounted crucifix. From there he began to drop bombs, O’Brien’s head was bounced off the canvas, and Velasquez had another two-minute win.
This time, the message was clear – Cain Velasquez was for real.
It was shortly after this that Cain’s UFC career was almost derailed for good. Signed to fight newcomer Mostapha Al-Turk at December 2008’s Fight for the Troops show, Cain was first sidelined with an injury. And then things went really haywire. The UFC’s first video game was due out in 2009 and Zuffa were asking all of the fighters to sign over their image rights in perpetuity. AKA’s fighters – outside of Mike Swick, who remained loyal to Zuffa – refused, and so Dana White cut all of them, Velasquez included.
Thankfully, cooler heads prevailed, the AKA side eventually backed down, and Cain and company were back in the UFC almost as quickly as they’d supposedly left. The incident hasn’t really been touched on since, even when Velasquez was revealed as part of the MMAAA organisation late last year, and it stands as probably the only time the UFC brass weren’t behind him.
Rather than facing Al-Turk, Velasquez was instead booked in February 2009 against debuting Bosnian kickboxer Denis Stojnic. It sounded like an odd fight – Stojnic was 5-1 and hadn’t really fought anyone of note to get into the UFC – but the word going around was that the same issue that plagued Cain outside the UFC was happening inside it, too – nobody wanted to fight him.
As it turned out, Stojnic was tougher than people gave him credit for. A squat fighter who was built like a brick outhouse, Stojnic was the first man to make it out of the first round with Cain despite Velasquez throwing everything but the kitchen sink at him, this time displaying a massively enhanced kickboxing game, putting together some incredibly technical combinations that mixed in knees and leg kicks to go with his punches. Eventually, the Bosnian gave up the ghost in the second round, but he didn’t seem truly hurt when the fight was stopped, and for the first time, Cain was faced with criticism from the fans.
Pillow fists
The theory was that while Velasquez had probably the best cardio in the division and one of the best wrestling games, he just didn’t have the punching power to go along with it. Even Joe Rogan got on the bandwagon, saying that Cain’s punches didn’t make the same thudding, Octagon-shaking impact as Carwin or Lesnar’s. Cain’s 2009 didn’t do much to challenge that theory, to be fair.
First, there was the Cheick Kongo fight. Despite beating a ranked opponent for the first time and doing it in dominant fashion – Cain ragdolled the huge Frenchman, and even broke a record for the amount of strikes landed in a UFC Heavyweight fight – all the detractors could talk about was the fact that he wasn’t able to stop Kongo despite all of the shots he landed. That, and the fact that Kongo dropped him three times – ignoring the fact that Cain casually shrugged off these shots from a decorated kickboxer and came back to smash him to pieces.
Then there was the Ben Rothwell fight. Rothwell was an acquisition from the Affliction crash and had a reputation largely for two things – hitting like a truck and being insanely tough. Cain didn’t take one single clean shot from him and beat the hell out of him in the first round, more than anyone had ever done to Rothwell before. But when the fight was stopped in the second – referee Steve Mazzagatti had even warned Big Ben between rounds that he couldn’t let him take much more punishment – people claimed it was an early stoppage because Rothwell was on his feet at the time and wasn’t cleanly knocked out.
Pillow fists. That’s what they said Cain had. In 2010, that theory would be blown out of the water for good.
To The Top
As 2009 ended and 2010 began, Heavyweight was somewhat of a logjam, largely due to the fact that champion Brock Lesnar – who had beaten Frank Mir at UFC 100 to become the undisputed champ – was out of action with his first bout of diverticulitis and nobody was sure how long he’d be gone for. And at the time there were four contenders: Velasquez, his fellow unbeaten fighter Shane Carwin, and veterans Mir and Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira.
In the end, the UFC matched Carwin with Mir in an interim title fight, and so Cain was left with Nogueira, who had bounced back from a bad 2008 to beat Randy Couture in a great fight in 2009. Nog looked the same way he did in his PRIDE run again – much leaner, and much more durable. The fight was announced as the main event of UFC 108 – 2010’s first card – until Nogueira was forced out with a staph infection. So it was rescheduled for the UFC’s Australian debut – UFC 110 – and it was expected to be a close fight.
To say that was wrong would be an understatement.
Nogueira came into the fight in fantastic shape, but he was no match for Cain’s striking, which appeared to have improved by light years again. This version of Cain looked like a crisp boxer, using head movement to slip the Brazilian’s punches and tagging him with hard shots from the off. At just over the two-minute mark – two minutes yet again – Velasquez landed with a monstrous combination, dodging a Nogueira jab and delivering a left-right-left that dropped the legend. He followed by bouncing Nogueira’s head off the ground until he was completely unconscious.
Suddenly nobody was mentioning pillow fists anymore.
The fight put Velasquez in line for a title shot, but the title picture had to sort itself out first. In the end, it was Lesnar who came out on top, beating Carwin (who’d beaten Mir) in a hell of a fight to set up what looked like arguably the greatest Heavyweight title fight in UFC history, on paper at least. The unbeaten challenger against the champion, perhaps the most athletically gifted fighter in the division who would have a big size advantage. Undoubtedly, it was the biggest fight of 2010.
Destiny
The UFC decided to make Lesnar/Velasquez the main event of October’s UFC 121, meaning Cain had to wait eight months for his shot, the longest layoff of his UFC career to that point. The event was also set to take place in Anaheim, California – close to Cain’s base at AKA and also close enough for a large Hispanic fanbase to attend the show.
The UFC was heavily pushing the Hispanic angle, claiming that Cain – actually born in California, albeit to Mexican parents – could become the first Mexican Heavyweight champion. Hardcore fans scoffed at the idea but it seemed like the Hispanic fanbase took hold of the idea and ran with it. Cain was far more popular than Lesnar in the building.
The fight itself split the MMA fanbase almost down the middle; hardcore fans – as well as fellow fighters – seemed to be leaning towards Velasquez. I was with them. My feeling was that he was a far superior striker and Lesnar hadn’t looked good early on in the Carwin fight, wilting under heavy punches, but Carwin had gassed out before he could finish, and gassing was the last thing anyone expected Cain to do. I also figured the wrestling side of things would cancel itself out – sure, Lesnar was an NCAA Division I champion, but then he’d never had to face Mocco or Konrad. And Cain was also training with Olympic wrestler Daniel Cormier in preparation – the first time DC’s name was really heard in the MMA world in fact.
The other camp was behind Lesnar, feeling that he was the superior athlete, a better wrestler, and much larger – cutting to make the 265lbs limit while Cain was walking in – with bodyfat – at around 240lbs. Their argument was largely based on sheer power overcoming a massive deficiency in skill.
They were horribly wrong.
Lesnar came out fast, looking to use his size, and managed to take Cain down early. Velasquez popped up with relative ease though and then defended another takedown attempt, before going for one of his own. The challenger was successful, dumping Lesnar with a single leg, and then the beatdown began. Lesnar ate some punches to the head, and then as he stood, Cain met him with a right hand that sent him stumbling out of control across the cage. Unlike Carwin, Velasquez didn’t go wild and picked his shots instead. By this point, it was painfully clear that Brock was horribly overmatched. He ended up being knocked down twice before Cain sealed the deal with a flurry on the ground, just over four minutes into the first round.
Lesnar looked like he’d been hit under the left eye by a machete. The bullying champion of the division had been absolutely slaughtered. The king is dead, long live the king. Or so we thought.
Losing the crown
The packed schedule that Cain had kept up to that point would end at UFC 121. It was revealed that he’d torn his rotator cuff in beating Lesnar, and the likelihood was that he’d be out for some time. It turned out to be just over a year before he’d step into the cage again.
This time the opponent was Brazilian striker Junior Dos Santos – riding a winning streak of seven fights with five knockouts – and the fight would headline the UFC’s first show on Fox, their network television debut. It was the biggest stage imaginable.
Like with the Lesnar fight, the match was seen as possibly the best Heavyweight title fight in UFC history. Most fans felt that Cain would have the grappling advantage, but JDS would hold the cards if the fight remained standing. Personally, I was giving Cain the advantages everywhere – I pointed to the fact that Dos Santos, while a tremendous MMA boxer, had a tendency to repeat the same combinations in his fights, while Cain threw more varied combinations, mixed in knees and kicks better, and had the threat of the takedown in his arsenal too.
What we didn’t know coming in was that Velasquez had both re-injured his rotator cuff, and partially torn his ACL. How much of a factor that played we’ll never know, as the fight was basically over before it began. JDS fought one of the best fights of his life, opening up Cain with punches to the body that set up a haymaker overhand right from the Chuck Liddell playbook. The punch caught Velasquez clean on the temple and sent him crashing down. Suddenly, the champion – the unbeaten fighter who was supposed to be as dominant as Fedor Emelianenko had been for years – was uncrowned, showing vulnerability for the first time in his career.
With a vengeance
After some time healing the injuries, it was time for Velasquez to attempt to climb the mountain all over again. First up was supposed to be Frank Mir at UFC 146, but due to a positive drug test for Alistair Overeem, Mir was shifted up into a title fight with Dos Santos and so Cain was faced instead with giant Strikeforce import ‘Bigfoot’ Silva.
The fight was a massacre, one of the bloodiest in UFC history. One takedown was all it took to plant the big man on his back and from there Cain went to work, pounding Bigfoot bloody, like a lion tearing apart a larger wildebeest. The fight was mercifully stopped in the first round and Mike Goldberg summed up everyone’s thoughts by stating that Cain was ready to get his title back.
Dos Santos duly lived up to his end of the bargain, knocking Mir out in the second round of their fight and so the rematch was made for UFC 155, the final show of 2012. Unlike the first fight, it felt like most fans were picking Dos Santos this time, the obvious reason being the knockout just over a year prior. Me? Not so much. I felt that the knee injury, in particular, had hampered Cain’s movement in the first fight and probably prevented him from pushing the pace he’d wanted to. Plus, the knockout shot was the sort of haymaker that doesn’t always land.
On this occasion, Cain wasted no time. Rather than attempting to strike from the outside with JDS, he was shooting for takedowns from the off. Dos Santos was able to defend the first few attempts well, but it was clear that the idea maybe wasn’t to get JDS down, but more to tire him out. Halfway through the first round, the champion appeared to be breathing heavily, and shortly – after setting his strikes up by clinching and driving Dos Santos into the fence – Cain landed a crushing right hand that would’ve finished most fighters off. As it was, Dos Santos survived the shot and the follow-up barrage, but realistically the fight was over from that moment onwards.
The round was a 10-8 and the following rounds went in a similar fashion. Dos Santos was simply unable to hold up to the pressure that Cain put him under, the insane pace that was being pushed like no other Heavyweight had ever pushed before. Velasquez mixed his takedowns, clinch work and striking together seamlessly. In the end, JDS showed nothing outside of a granite chin.
The king had taken back his crown.
The trilogy
2013 was a weird year for Cain in a lot of ways, mainly due to the fact that essentially, he repeated 2012. His first defence came in May, and it turned out to be against a familiar foe. Alistair Overeem was expected to take the title shot with a win over Bigfoot Silva but ended up the victim of a famous upset and so – in a fight that was barely even interesting, given what had happened just a year prior – Bigfoot ended up with the unlikely title shot.
This time Cain finished him off even quicker, dropping him with a left-right combo as he lumbered forward. The fight had been a mismatch on paper and it was a mismatch in execution. Once that was done with, most fans expected Fabricio Werdum to be named as the next contender, but instead, the UFC booked another rematch, this time the trilogy bout with Dos Santos.
For me, the third Velasquez/Dos Santos fight – at UFC 166 in October 2013 – simply came too soon. After all, the second fight had been a one-sided beatdown and really, with just one win since Dos Santos hadn’t truly earned his shot. But then again, Cain had only won one fight before earning his own rematch and the UFC had always loved the idea of trilogies, probably due to Dana White’s boxing background. At any rate, the fight was on.
The tagline for UFC 166 was ‘History will be written by the winner’, and it would be Velasquez whose name ended up in the history books. This time he slightly tweaked his gameplan from UFC 155, pushing the same pace but rather than shooting for a lot of takedowns, he was able to force Dos Santos into the fence – negating the Brazilian’s boxing game – and roughed him up from the clinch instead. The key to this was Cain’s fantastic use of what is crudely known as “head-mashing” – basically using the forehead to grind into the opponent in order to control them on the fence. Velasquez looked like prime Randy Couture on speed.
The fight was a one-sided beatdown and the third round, in particular, was vicious – Dos Santos went down, knocked silly by a right hook, and his head was bounced off the ground by Cain’s follow-up punches. Somehow, referee, Herb Dean let the fight continue though and JDS – showing the heart of a lion – survived into the fifth before finally giving up the ghost; a failed guillotine attempt lead to Cain smashing his head down into the mat and his body simply couldn’t take any more.
It was the type of beating that could be seen as career-altering. If there were any doubt as to whom the better man was, it was totally erased that night.
The derailing
As 2013 ended it seemed like Velasquez was back to where he’d been post-Lesnar, the unstoppable champion and perhaps the heir to the throne vacated back in 2010 by the great Fedor Emelianenko. Fedor had been recognised as the best Heavyweight in MMA history to that point but now – with two wins over JDS to go along with the rest of his accomplishments – Cain was beginning to catch up.
The only thing seemingly threatening him was his penchant for picking up injuries. Journalist Dave Meltzer – a big supporter of Cain since his early days and a San Jose native himself, familiar with the American Kickboxing Academy – had been quoted on numerous occasions as saying that the only thing stopping Cain from becoming the greatest Heavyweight of all time would be his injury proneness. In his early UFC career Cain had kept up a solid schedule of fights but after UFC 166, things would go completely haywire for him on that front.
It’s still a major question as to what caused – and indeed, is still causing – him so many injury problems. Theories abounded, from blaming AKA’s hard sparring tendencies to Cain’s own questionable methods in the weight room. Whatever the reason, after UFC 166 Velasquez was sidelined again, this time with a torn labrum.
To take advantage of the fact that he’d be on the shelf for some time, the UFC announced that he’d be coaching the inaugural season of TUF: Latin America, featuring fighters from Mexico against non-Brazilians from South America. The opposing coach would be the top contender, Fabricio Werdum, and the two would fight at UFC 180 in the UFC’s Mexico City debut. To give a bit of perspective on the length of Cain’s injury, the show was scheduled for November 2014 – over a year after he’d beaten Dos Santos.
As it turned out, he couldn’t make that date even. Three weeks before the show Velasquez was forced out with a torn meniscus and sprained MCL. Werdum fought and beat Mark Hunt for an interim title instead, and eventually, the Velasquez fight was scheduled for June 2015 – a massive twenty months since Cain had last set foot in the cage. And like the first booking, the fight would take place in Mexico City.
On paper, the Werdum pairing seemed to favour Velasquez; although the Brazilian presented some problems, namely the best ground game in the division, Velasquez had of course blown through Nogueira – a similar fighter – years prior, outboxing him and never allowing the fight to hit the mat. Werdum’s stand-up had definitely improved over the years but he still didn’t quite look like a natural kickboxer. For me, the fight was tailor-made for another Velasquez beatdown.
The elephant in the room turned out to be one of the biggest shockers in MMA history. Ever since his debut, Velasquez’s biggest strength had been his cardio, the fact that he could put on a pace that no other Heavyweight was able to match.
He came out like a house on fire against Werdum, tagging him over and over in the first round, but the Brazilian showed his veteran wiliness, slipping a lot of the heavier blows and using a plum clinch masterfully to avoid being punished in the clinch the way that JDS had been. Cain won the first round but everyone seemed shocked when he was the one breathing heavily in his corner.
It turned out that he’d made a fatal error in his training camp. While Werdum had come to Mexico City much earlier in order to acclimatise himself to the massive elevation – some 2250m above sea level – Cain had not, choosing to trust in his conditioning. And suddenly, it became clear that his biggest strength was totally failing him. The champion came into the second round with no steam on his punches at all and became a walking heavy bag for Werdum, who seemingly couldn’t believe his luck.
He punished Cain throughout the round like nobody had done before but couldn’t quite find the finishing blow. When Cain decided to switch things up in the third, though, sensing the fight slipping away, Werdum moved for the kill. A sloppy takedown attempt saw Cain leave his head out and the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu master slapped on a tight guillotine. Seconds later Cain had to tap out.
Dethroned again
The way Velasquez lost in Mexico City came as such a surprise that it spawned its own meme amongst the online MMA fanbase – namely “Sea Level Cain”, the idea that Velasquez minus the altitude was still unbeatable. UFC President Dana White apparently bought into the idea too and booked an immediate rematch between the two – albeit seven months later in February 2016, due to – what else? – Cain needing some time off to heal nagging injuries.
It was the injury bug that bit again and prevented the rematch from ever happening. About two weeks before the fight was set to take place, Cain again had to withdraw. This time it was a back injury that had struck him down. It seemed more than ever like Dave Meltzer’s thoughts were going to be true, that injuries would indeed prevent Cain from fulfilling his potential, even if he’d achieved an incredible amount already. The UFC booked a new opponent for Werdum – Stipe Miocic, a similar fighter to Velasquez in a lot of ways – and in what was almost a tantalising glimpse of what could’ve been for Cain in a rematch, Miocic knocked Werdum out to steal away the title.
Velasquez would finally make a return over a year after he’d lost the title. Rather than getting an immediate title shot he was instead matched with Travis Browne, once a top contender, now seemingly on a slide of his own, at UFC 200. The fight would open the main card.
And suddenly, it was 2010 all over again. The old Cain was back, moving around the cage comfortably, pushing a torrid pace, beating Browne up from the clinch and even busting out some new chops – namely a pair of crazy wheel kicks – that set up a crushing right hand that lead to another first round TKO. Browne never stood a chance.
It looked like it would only be a matter of time before Cain held the title again.
Back to the future?
As 2016 came to its end, the UFC announced that rather than a title fight, Velasquez would instead finally get the Werdum fight that had been cancelled earlier in the year. Miocic had held onto his title in his first defence against Alistair Overeem, but he wanted some time off after a heavy schedule in 2016. So the Werdum rematch made sense, with the winner going on to fight for the belt in 2017. And that’s when things got weird.
Firstly, on a fateful November night, Velasquez – along with fellow UFC stars George St-Pierre, Donald Cerrone, TJ Dillashaw and Tim Kennedy, as well as former Bellator head honcho Bjorn Rebney – were announced as the founding members of the MMAAA, a fighter’s association looking to level the playing field with the UFC, at a big press conference.
Velasquez’s involvement seemed odd in a lot of ways. After all, the UFC – outside of 2008’s AKA incident – had always been supportive of him, giving him a massive push as a star and plenty of opportunities. It was only when Cain took the mic that things became a little clearer. He didn’t mention fighter pay or fighter treatment – his whole spiel was about his injury history, revealing he’d had seven major surgeries since beginning his UFC tenure and he had his eighth booked for after the Werdum fight. His demand, if you could call it that? A health care policy. And really, if any fighter was warranted in asking for that, it was Cain Velasquez.
Unfortunately, things didn’t quite go that way. While the MMAAA and their goals went a little quiet after the press conference, evidently someone within the Nevada State Athletic Commission was listening to what Cain was saying. And they clearly didn’t like the idea of a guy who needed immediate surgery fighting at UFC 207. So despite claiming he was ready to fight, just days before the show it was revealed that he’d been pulled from the card; the NSAC had determined him unfit to fight due to his ongoing back issues.
A bang or a whimper?
Since his removal from UFC 207, we’ve barely heard a peep from Cain. A recent Twitter statement revealed that he’d had back surgery in January, but a timeline for his return was unable to be provided, although he did say that he wanted to fight the winner of the upcoming title fight between Miocic and Dos Santos.
And so we return to that Meltzer quote, really. For me, a healthy Cain Velasquez is still the best Heavyweight on the planet right now. And I’m not knocking Miocic – who’s a fantastic talent in his own right – but realistically, I can’t see an area where he has an advantage over a healthy Cain. Stipe’s wrestling is great, but Cain’s is better, and on the feet, I’d argue Velasquez is the better, more varied striker too. And nobody has cardio like Sea Level Cain. The big question is simply his health. Can a guy who’s now had eight surgeries and has been fighting professionally – mostly at the top of the game too – for ten years really get back to the form that saw him crush the likes of Lesnar, Dos Santos and Nogueira?
And if he can’t return to form and either decides to hang it up for good – or worse, comes back a shadow of his former self and ends up losing to the likes of Miocic – what is his legacy? For all his accomplishments, right now it’s hard to argue that he’s surpassed Fedor, despite arguably having a stronger list of opponents when you look at them in hindsight.
Maybe his legacy is simply this – whether he comes back to form or doesn’t, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Heavyweight as good as Cain was at his absolute peak – either the Lesnar fight or the second JDS fight, take your pick. I think that Cain destroys everyone from peak Fedor to peak Nogueira to peak Cro Cop. And maybe that does indeed make him the best Heavyweight in MMA history even if his legacy may not quite end up showing that. I’m glad I got to see him from the beginning of his career and I hope we get much more from him, even if that’s just a fool’s hope.
Until next time.....
