The new UFC doesn’t have time for a slow build. Show some star power, flash a bolt of charisma, illustrate a hint of uncommon talent, and the machine will find you.
Say what you will about the UFC’s new Moneyweight Era (and there are plenty of critics around every corner), but never has opportunity been so abundant for young fighters as it has been in 2016. And in the year’s penultimate day, Cody Garbrandt stands to be its latest and biggest beneficiary.
At the start of the year, he was an unranked bantamweight prospect who occasionally suffered through having his debit card declined while trying to buy a simple coffee. He may finish the year as the world champion. All he has to do is solve the riddle that is Dominick Cruz, a man whose fancy footwork and slippery striking occasionally seems to defy physics.
It may take a lightning strike to put a bow on his story, but if you think it’s too much, too soon, Garbrandt’s history suggests he may well be up to the moment. Back in 2007, he won the 112-pound high school state championship in wrestling-rich Ohio. As a freshman.
“I’m a born fighter,” he said during a recent media lunch in Los Angeles. I’m bred to do this. I have nothing else. This is all I know, is fighting. And it’s all I’ve ever known.”
He’s not exaggerating much. Born into a family with four brothers and three sisters with a father who was often imprisoned, he started boxing at the age of four under his uncle Robert Meese, mostly sparring with a brother. He began an amateur career at age 14 and reportedly compiled a gaudy record of 32-1. Locally, in blue-collar Uhrichsville, Ohio, he became known for his scrapping, regularly participating in street fights.
One of those fights has become part of Garbrandt’s legend. Involved in a wild melee at age 19, he was stabbed in the leg, an injury that required 12 staples to close.
The incident was part of a personal reckoning that forced him to take his future more seriously. Although he’d gained the certification necessary to work as a coal miner, he couldn’t shake the idea that he was meant to fight. Trips to the Team Alpha Male gym in Sacramento bolstered his belief and launched his career.
Since then, he’s been a speeding bullet, 10-0 with nine knockouts on the strength of the kind of crushing power that is rarely seen at weights below 155 pounds.
That is the hook to Garbrandt’s potential stardom.
In its short history, the UFC’s bantamweight division has never been a major draw on its own. For all of his technical brilliance as well as an ability to verbally eviscerate opponents, Cruz has never been able to draw the amount of attention that he deserves.
For example, when he reclaimed the bantamweight title in January, the event drew an average of 2.28 million viewers, according to MMA Fighting. That’s a strong number, but in an anomaly, the Cruz-TJ Dillashaw main event title fight was out-rated by another fight on the card, a heavyweight matchup between Matt Mitrione and Travis Browne.
So far, Garbrandt has produced the kind of highlight-reel knockouts that make people take notice. It’s not a be-all and end-all for building buzz and cultivating an audience, but it’s a great starting point.
It’s also a style that contrasts perfectly with that of Cruz, who works the angles, flusters opponents with his timing, and rarely exchanges long enough to stay in range of counterfire. In the history of the UFC, no one has been harder to hit than Cruz, who dodges 72.1 percent of significant strikes, according to FightMetric.
Still, for Garbrandt, all it takes is one.
Landing it will be the challenge of his career, but Garbrandt’s aggression often overshadows some unnoticed subtleties in his striking game. He characterizes himself as a “finesse brawler” who prizes accuracy, and if you saw his knockout of Thomas Almeida, for example, you’ll see his patience in landing the closer—a short but pulverizing right hook. He hop-steps in, setting his distance perfectly, and then flashes great technique with an extremely fast direct-line punch.
“I know in the back of my mind that I have the one-punch knockout power and I could end it at any time, and he doesn’t,” he said. “He knows that he has to dance around, skate, evade the pressure, evade someone’s that’s fast and that is a knockout artist for five rounds. That’s hard to do, especially how old he is, he’s had two ACL surgeries, he doesn't move the way he used to move.”
Garbrandt also has a card to play in his back pocket, his wrestling background that has so far never been used. While there’s no question he prefers to let his hands go, with the championship at stake, he may bust out a surprise, at least to give Cruz something to think about.
More than just a title fight, this matchup becomes part of the referendum on the new matchmaking philosophy within the organization. There is an argument to be made that this is too much, too soon. Garbrandt obviously disagrees. Given his history, a sudden case of stardom would suit him just fine.
By the end of Friday night, critics will either have more evidence or be silenced, at least temporarily. Garbrandt may sink under the pressure of sudden expectations, or he may reward the company’s belief in him. The outcome—literally and figuratively—lies in his hands.
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