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.
