Illustration: Ben Duffy/Sherdog.com
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UFC 223 available for order on Amazon Prime (Prime Video PPV)
UFC 223 on Saturday in Brooklyn, New York, still offers just about everything I crave as a fight fan. The lightweight championship will hang in the balance for Khabib Nurmagomedov, as he meets Al Iaquinta in the makeshift main event. In the co-headliner, Joanna Jedrzejczyk, at worst the second greatest female fighter of all-time, attempts to avenge the only blemish on her professional record in a rematch with women’s strawweight champion Rose Namajunas.
There are also exciting prospects and emerging contenders in well-thought-out matches. Zabit Magomedsharipov will pit his bizarre and frightening “all spinning stuff, all the time” skills against Kyle Bochniak in an attempt to go 3-0 in the Ultimate Fighting Championship. There are other fights that advance the sport’s overall narrative, whether we’re talking about human-interest stories or the simple this-match-makes-sense sporting angle.
With all that said, my attention was caught this week by the organic story of onetime MMA poster boy Anthony Pettis. When I say Pettis went from the front of the Wheaties box to the back of the milk carton, I’m of course not being literal or even one step removed from literal. There has been no missing-person report filed on Pettis, the man, so I assume he’s somewhere in Brooklyn at the moment, reeling at the events of the last 48 hours. Nor is there any real mystery as to his professional whereabouts. It isn’t as though he’s an Ultimate Fighting Championship washout, laboring in the hinterlands of regional promotions. Pettis, the fighter, is under contract with the UFC, where he is 2-2 in his last four fights.
No, when I ask “Where did Anthony Pettis go?” I’m thinking back fondly on the man who tore through the lightweight division from 2012 to 2014, the quicksilver wizard who made the impossible look effortless. Not the World Extreme Cagefighting Pettis, he of the fabled “Showtime kick,” but the developed fighter who appeared to have solved his problems with wrestlers, allowing the full measure of his offensive creativity to run wild. After a decision loss to Clay Guida in his UFC debut, Pettis outwrestled Jeremy Stephens to a decision victory, then stopped Joe Lauzon, Donald Cerrone, Benson Henderson and Gilbert Melendez. The last three were all first-round finishes over top-10 opponents. Henderson and Melendez were two of the greatest lightweights ever, both in or near the primes of their careers. It may be the most impressive string of consecutive performances by a fighter ever, considering the level of competition and the way in which Pettis won. I would absolutely argue that his five-fight winning streak represents the most impressive, creative and diverse sustained display of offensive skill in MMA history.
Pettis’ appearance on the Wheaties box did not feel premature or hubristic at the time. He was arguably the most dominant fighter in the sport. He was, without argument, the most exciting champion. He was good-looking. He had a compelling back story. He was a polite, soft-spoken public figure -- exactly the type of athlete a breakfast cereal maker could trust not to embarrass the brand. He had it all. He was not even 28 years old.
Of course, it didn’t pan out that way. Pettis’ cereal box was unveiled immediately before the Melendez fight. In his very next fight, he lost the UFC lightweight title to Rafael dos Anjos, sparking a 2-5 run in which Pettis has looked brilliant only very occasionally and his losses have felt as inevitable as his victories once did.
I will not attempt to diagnose Pettis’ sudden and drastic decline. Better strategic and tactical minds than my own, presumably including those in his own fight camp, have tried, so far without success. Nor will I attempt to psychoanalyze the man. While it’s apparent to the observer that the smooth confidence that once characterized his in-cage demeanor has been replaced by diffidence and occasional desperation, only he knows what is in his head and heart. MMA fandom and media are stocked with armchair psychoanalysts without me adding my own unqualified observations.
What I will say is that Pettis has time. He is only 31 years old. Even in the weight class in which he makes his living, where superhuman fast-twitch reflexes are the order of the day, 31 is not old. He is younger than three of Sherdog.com’s current top-10 lightweights, including Tony Ferguson. He is less than a year older than Michael Chiesa, who was to have been his opponent this weekend before the fight was scrapped due to Chiesa being cut by broken glass in Thursday’s bus incident. He is only two years older than Nurmagomedov, the man he was briefly scheduled to fight after Max Holloway failed to be medically cleared.
Whatever combination of factors led to Pettis’ current state -- incipient age, psychology, opposing fighters and coaches spotting holes in his once-bulletproof game -- there’s still time to figure it out. As someone who loves a good comeback story, I’m hoping he does.
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