The fight game seldom works by osmosis.
History tells us Jorge Masvidal won’t magically absorb Donald Cerrone’s longstanding popularity or promotional push merely by defeating him via second-round TKO last Saturday at UFC on Fox 23.
Don’t expect Masvidal, then, to suddenly take Cerrone’s place as one of the fight company’s most visible and beloved bad boys. It just doesn’t work like that.
But perhaps Masvidal is on his way.
It’s at least possible that months or years from now we’ll look back at this win over Cerrone as a significant turning point in Masvidal’s long, up-and-down career.
Certainly, it counts as the 32-year-old Miami native’s biggest win to date in the UFC. In its immediate aftermath, amateur matchmakers are talking idly about future fights with some of the 170-pound division’s most recognizable faces—including Robbie Lawler and Nick or Nate Diaz.
Masvidal appears willing and able to ride that wave, brandishing a hard-nosed veteran pragmatism that should be easy for UFC fans to buy into.
"I fight wherever the money is, and I fight whoever they put in front of me," he told UFC.com’s Megan Olivi after disposing of Cerrone. "I ain’t got no brothers and no sisters in this game. My only concern is to feed my family, so whoever they put in front of me, that’s who gets taken down."
This is essentially an extension of the attitude Masvidal has flashed his entire career.
There is very early footage of him participating in the same Miami-based street fighting circles as Kimbo Slice. In all his years as a professional, he has never lost the bristling swagger of a back-alley brawler.
After defeating Cerone, he told UFC color commentator Brian Stann during his post-fight interview that "the real was back" in the welterweight division and publicly offered to put up $200,000 in a side bet with Dana White that the UFC president won’t be able to find an opponent that can beat him in his next fight.
Before we start thinking Masvidal is all bravado and no heart, though, it’s also worth listening to him relate this story to Olivi—who insists Masvidal is "one of the nicest guys in the game"—about talking with Cerrone’s grandmother after their fight:
It’s admittedly odd to feel like Masvidal is just now coming into his own after putting up a 9-4 record since coming to the UFC in 2013, after the company absorbed Strikeforce .
Clearly, however, this victory is making us see him in a new light.
Cerrone came into the pair’s co-main event bout in his hometown of Denver ranked No. 5 on the UFC’s official rankings. It was regarded as the final obstacle the Cowboy needed to clear to take his place among the division’s top title contenders.
By comparison, the 12th-ranked Masvidal was a good deal further away and was a slight underdog, according to OddsShark.
It wasn’t that people counted him out in this matchup, but most of the scenarios forecasting a Masvidal win called for a protracted fight and another in a long line of close decisions for him.
It was surprising—if not totally shocking—to see him drop Cerrone and appear to knock him out late in the first round. Their fight likely should’ve been stopped there, but referee Herb Dean stepped in just as the horn to end the round sounded and decided on the spot that Cerrone had been just barely saved by the bell.
It didn’t matter. Masvidal started the second round firing on all cylinders. He knocked Cerrone down again and poured on a barrage of follow-up punches, until Dean stepped in again to save the obviously shellshocked Cerrone just a minute into the stanza.
The victory dashed Cerrone’s four-fight win streak and surely excluded him from any immediate discussion of welterweight contenders. For Masvidal, it boosted him to 3-0 dating back to July 2016.
It also followed an increasingly visible pattern of his recent successes. Since moving up to 170 pounds during the summer of 2015, Masvidal has gone 4-2—with the pair of losses coming in split decisions to former lightweight champ Benson Henderson and the always dangerous Lorenz Larkin.
During his current tear, Masvidal has grown noticeably more aggressive. He’s always been regarded as a heavy-handed and skilled puncher. Now he appears to have discovered the urgency necessary to impose those abilities on his opponents.
Add in Masvidal’s durability and inherent refusal to quit—he hasn’t been finished since Toby Imada caught him in a Submission of the Year-caliber inverted triangle choke in Bellator in 2009—and he’s starting to look like a handful for anyone in the current welterweight landscape.
He’s still got some work to do, however.
Even after dashing Cerrone’s momentum, Masvidal likely won’t wind up on the short list of guys who might fight the winner of Tyron Woodley’s UFC 209 title rematch against Stephen Thompson.
Not yet anyway.
The trick for him will be to keep it going—and consistency has never been Masvidal’s forte.
For one reason or another, he has never put together an extended run of success. Even during the years he spent hopping around organizations like BodogFight, Bellator and finally Strikeforce, he was always the kind of fighter who would win a few and then drop one (usually by decision).
Aside from an eight-fight win streak from February 2006 to February 2008, he’s never won more than three fights in a row during his 44-bout career.
That will make it very interesting to see what happens next for him.
Historically, this would be the time that Masvidal lets down.
If he means to advance beyond the Cerrone victory and take his place among the true contenders at welterweight, he’ll need to do one thing he hasn't done in the past: win them all.
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