If Keith Jardine (Pictures) is anything, he's a realist.
"I've worked my own way up and I've gotten good fights because I'm an entertaining fighter, but they never intended me to win any of these fights," Jardine said of UFC matchmakers. "I'm kind of like the blue collar guy, and nobody really knows if I'm for real or not because I haven't had the big marketing machine behind me yet. Which is just fine by me."
Jardine is a curious breed, a cerebral, elusive, soft-spoken man who roars like mad with his fists and feet once the cage door shuts. He doesn't seek out attention, and worries about whether giving interviews too close to a fight will corrupt his focus. After all, he isn't thinking about a recent loss, or even a recent win, unless someone asks him about it.
"I'm a real simple guy," he said. "I keep a low profile, I like simple things. You know, coffee shops, reading books, watching movies. Big movie buff. That kind of thing. I don't need to be a superstar."
Jardine's father came from a family of miners, his mother from a family of loggers. He wrestled in high school and junior college in the San Fernando Valley, and eventually moved to New Mexico to finish up college. It was there he discovered submission grappling and linked with Albuquerque-based fight guru Greg Jackson. Jardine grew to love striking, and began noticing that another fighter, Wanderlei Silva, projected a manner and intensity similar to his. "The Axe Murderer" was making a mythical name for himself in Japan, and Jardine was impressed.
"Everybody thought he was the Mike Tyson of the sport for a while. Who could beat Wanderlei? He was killing everybody," Jardine said. "Just how intense he was and fierce he was and, more than anything, mentally strong. You never saw him break before. Even if things weren't going his way, he was fine and he would just keep coming back."
Things definitely weren't going Jardine's way last May when he crashed to the mat, his mouthpiece sent flying, at the losing end of a blitz from the unknown and since-discredited Houston Alexander (Pictures) at UFC 71. But Jardine scored the ultimate rebound, a jaw-dropping split decision win over Chuck Liddell. Though Jardine absorbed significant facial damage -- he was a dozen or so punches away from resembling The Toxic Avenger -- he dropped Liddell in the second round with a punch and continued the pressure for the rest of the fight, using leg and body kicks to great effect.
Greg Jackson remembers his charge feeling drained yet quietly satisfied with that September fight. He'd taken trademark shots from Liddell and came back to snatch victory. That meant it was time for the requisite all-night celebration on the strip, right?
That's just not Jardine's style.
"I think he was just tired that night. He fought hard," Jackson said. "My memories of that night is Keith kept saying, ‘I'm glad that's over. I'm tired.' The next day, he was a lot happier. The next day he was elated. It was great. Every time we win, especially against a legend like Chuck, it's something special. We were glad to have it happen."
Three months later, Jardine was glued to the screen like everyone else as the man he'd just defeated collided with Silva, the same fighter whose heart in the Pride rings Jardine had so admired. After one of the most spirited fights in UFC history, Liddell's hand was raised in decision, and suddenly it appeared that Jardine and Silva were on a collision course. And that Jardine just might beat him.
"(Silva's) fight with Liddell was I thought one of the best fights I've ever seen," Jardine said. "He had an incredible layoff. It was his first time in the Octagon. I'm sure he had the UFC jitters. I'm pretty sure we didn't see the best Wanderlei Silva that night. Here, his second fight with his back against the wall, I'm sure we're going to see the best possible Wanderlei Silva right now."
From the sounds of it, Jackson and Jardine have trained for the Silva that terrorized fighters like Quinton Jackson (Pictures) and Kazushi Sakuraba (Pictures) at the turn of the decade. Though Silva has acknowledged he might be too small for his weight class and is also coming off three straight losses, he is as motivated as ever to take opponents' heads off. His aura remains. Vegas odds heavily favor Silva, even though he's coming off a loss to Liddell and Jardine is coming off a win over Liddell.
"The Chuck fight for me never existed. It's all about the next fight," said Jackson, who said Silva represents "a different math problem to solve" than Liddell did. "Silva's a very, very strong puncher, and he just fires off the one-two shots every time you get close to him. Nobody really fights like him."
It may not be possible to mimic Silva, but Jardine certainly brings the same hunger for the knockout.
"Every single punch he throws is a knockout punch, and they come from really weird angles. He's not a very orthodox boxer," Jardine said. "He just throws these punches coming from anywhere and any one of them can put you down. … I blew it against Houston, which is going to happen because that's the way I fight. I'm not a points fighter. I get hit more than most fighters because that's the way I like to fight, and I'm having fun doing that."
He really is having fun doing this, leaving the Octagon with a bloody face and purplish contusions.
"He loves the war," Jackson said. "He loves to be cut up and have bruises. I'm telling you its crazy, but the guy likes it. Some fighters, they love all the attention. Some fighters just love the war. Keith is one of those who just loves the war."
With the all-business persona he's developed, it's kind of funny to think that Jardine's entrée into the UFC was on a reality show characterized at the time by drunken hijinks and high school-esque smack talking. But for Jardine, who lost to now close friend Rashad Evans (Pictures) via decision on the show, it was competing as a heavyweight on season two of "The Ultimate Fighter" that crystallized the type of fighter he was going to be.
"I got a lesson real early on when I was on that show," Jardine said. "Once the cameras were on, people started to act differently and be somebody they weren't. That really turned me off, and ever since then I'm really cautious against that. I don't watch that reality show anymore. People were just trying to get their name out and get recognized. It works for some people, but it's just not me. People who like me like me because I'm just a simple, humble guy."
And, he hopes, because he's a "Mean" guy. Jardine recently launched a line of colorful "Mean" brand fight clothing and a Web site, www.meanstyle.com. He plans to wear his custom gear to the cage Saturday at the MGM Grand Garden Arena.
"It's different than what anybody's doing right now," Jardine said. "There's no skulls, there's no guns, there's no goblins, there's no things like that. It's just real simple, retro kind of looking, cool colors. I'm pretty proud of it. I sacrificed a lot of money actually for this fight just because I decided to wear my own shirt into the ring and see if this thing can fly or not. It's kind of stressful, too, because if you look at what I get paid and everything, I get paid a lot more in sponsorships than I do on my UFC contract."
That's Jardine, marching to his own beat. A lot of people tell him he should be bothered by the fact that he beat Forrest Griffin in the first round yet Griffin is fighting before him for the light heavyweight title, or that he should feel slighted that he wasn't asked to coach on the current season of "The Ultimate Fighter."
But Keith Jardine is a realist. He recognizes which opportunities are before him and which ones aren't, and he chooses to focus on the former.
"I got an opportunity here to string two wins together against the greatest fighters of all time," said Jardine, who is motivated by the fact that no fighter has wins over both Liddell and Silva on his record. "To me, that means more than a title. In the context of history, it's a lot greater than that. I understand the game. The UFC doesn't have anything invested in me. I didn't win the reality show. I'm a very expendable fighter for them. I understand that. People think I should be mad, but I'm pretty excited. In the context of history, this Silva fight seems like it means a lot more than a title fight."