‘Showtime’ Arrives

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For most Americans, the traditional Black Friday after Thanksgiving represents a chance to do holiday shopping and take advantage of discounts. For lightweight title challenger Anthony Pettis, this year’s outing was a stark realization of how much difference a year can make. With three impressive televised wins in the WEC in 2010, what was expected to be a low-profile shopping outing for the aptly-named “Showtime” turned into something else.

“Last year, I went Christmas shopping on Black Friday. Nobody knew who I was. This year, I took like 20 pictures before I even got in the store,” he says. “I know why this is coming; I know why I get this. It’s because of dedication and hard work. The sky’s the limit. I don’t want to get caught up in this. I want to be a world champ and be best in the world. I take it day-by-day, but it’s definitely a different lifestyle.”

Pettis, 23, faces WEC lightweight champion Benson Henderson in the organization’s final event, WEC 53 “Henderson vs. Pettis,” on Thursday at the Jobing.com Arena in Glendale, Ariz. It’s a fitting outré for the WEC, pitting two explosive, dynamic lightweights in a finale before the promotion is folded into the UFC. Like Pettis, Henderson has exhibited the new breed aura increasingly prevalent in mixed martial arts; they are both young, able to improvise on the fly and hard-nosed competitors.

Pettis emerged from relative obscurity in 2010 to become the final challenger for a WEC belt. He knows it will not be easy, but like many of his WEC cohorts making the jump, he also looks at the chance to compete on the game’s biggest stage as another breakout opportunity.

“Henderson’s a tough fighter. He’s good everywhere. This isn’t gonna be an easy fight,” Pettis says. “But we just haven’t had our chance yet, us WEC guys. He’s just a really good wrestler, and he looks to finish fights. I don’t quit, and he don’t quit. It’s gonna be a war.”

After starting tae kwon do at age 5, Pettis competed readily in the sport, including tournaments. He started training MMA when he was 19. Three months later, he turned professional on his 20th birthday. When he showed up at Duke Roufus’ academy in Milwaukee, he caught the trainer’s eye.

“He was constantly at our classes. He was working around a school schedule and his family’s tae kwon do school,” says Roufus. “He’s very hard working and a real martial artist.”

Which means what?

“A real martial artist is someone who will actually take and assess their weaknesses and work on them and wants to keep learning,” explains Roufus, who held several world kickboxing titles in his heyday and has emerged in recent years as one of the sport’s top trainers. “The worst thing that happens is people get in a comfort zone one place and don’t want to learn in the other. You don’t know until they actually fight. I see potential in people, their physical and mental attributes, their spiritual attributes, a lot of different things. Anthony has made constant improvements and wants to train with the best wrestlers, kickboxers [and] Brazilian jiu-jitsu [players]. He has that constant work ethic.”

Against Henderson, Pettis faces some of the same questions he dealt with against Shane Roller, whom he submitted in his last bout, via triangle, in the closing moments of a hard-fought encounter. Though he never wrestled until he started training MMA, he showed a good grasp of the discipline in dealing with the potent Roller, a three-time All-American at grappling powerhouse Oklahoma State University. Pettis got the better of the tieups and takedown battles in an impressive display.

Entering the match, he was 3-1 in the WEC but had become known for his striking, despite scoring triangle choke submissions against Mike Campbell and Alex Karalexis. He earned “Knockout of the Night” picturesque head kick of Danny Castillo at WEC 47. A controversial decision loss to veteran scrapper Bart Palaszewski remains the only blemish on the Pettis resume.

“The thing coming into the Roller fight was everybody said I had no wrestling, but I never got to implement my wrestling [before that],” says Pettis, who trains with Olympic wrestler Ben Askren. “My game plan is … I don’t go in like I’m gonna do A, B and C. I go in and want to be a better fighter. I react to what he does. A guy like Roller, I knew I had to watch for takedowns, so it tightened me up, though I felt I opened up a lot more. I kinda held back, but now I know I can do takedowns.”

Pettis credits Roufus for his evolution.

“Duke has helped me out tremendously,” he says. “When I came to him, I was a tae kwon do black belt and a really good athlete. Duke turned me into an MMA fighter. He didn’t change my style. He handed me a couple things that made me really effective. He’s been through what I’m going through, and he shares a lot with me about things, both in and out of the cage.”

Pettis likes to adlib. The most memorable move in the Roller fight was something he invented on the fly. After landing a nifty kick in the first round, dropping his to his waist, only to bring his right leg up out of nowhere to whack Roller in the head, Pettis modified the approach on a second attack. Dropping down again, he did a full 360-degree turn on the mat and then used the same hand to boost himself up for another kick that landed clean to the dome once more. To martial arts aficionados, it looked like a capoeira move, but Pettis laughs in explaining how it came about. One has to feel a little empathy for anybody trying to figure out where Pettis is coming from next. He’s here, he’s there, and then he’s belting his opponent from an angle that was not supposed to exist.

“Everybody asks me if that was a capoeira move,” he says, referencing the fighting style popularized by Brazilian slaves and disguised as dance, according to some historians. “I was setting up for a jumping spin kick, so I went to pull guard, and it was a mixture of both. So I kind of improvised.”