I didn’t believe in Fabricio Werdum; not back in 2010 when I walked into HP Pavilion. And why should I have? The stoic Russian (is there another kind?), the silent destroyer of Stary Oskol, the Last Emperor, Fedor Emelianenko was the Baddest Heavyweight of All Time. He hadn’t lost in 30 fights, in 10 years. He was the 10-1 favorite. And what was Werdum? A gangly, awkward jiu-jitsu ace with a nickname as goofy as his personality: Vai Cavalo – The “Go Horse.” Werdum’s walk-in was a party, a conga-line of jubilant Brazilians, dancing and laughing. It all made sense, of course: there was no way he was going to beat Emelianenko, so you might as well have a good time? It was certainly different than Fedor’s walkout – an orchestral march fitting in majesty for the Czar of Combat. The stage was set, the cage locked, and the heavyweights collided. What happened in the minute and nine seconds after the bell rang is cannon – Fabricio sits to guard after eating one of Fedor’s murderball punches, Fedor follows down, and the trap is sprung. Long, horse-like legs locked tight around Fedor’s neck. Oxygen became precious. Time stopped. Each member of the crowd had their own internal grappling match with disbelief. And then there was one solemn tap. Fedor had lost. Fabricio had won. The Russians walked to the exits, quietly and stoically. The Brazilians left as they came, laughing and dancing in a conga line. I didn’t believe in Fabricio Werdum, and I was wrong.
So six years passed, and, oh, how did the Go Horse go. After the win over Fedor, he lost a bizarre and boring decision to the escaped laboratory experiment that was Overeem. Beside that aberration, he crushed - smashing Roy Nelson, Big Nog, Travis Browne, Mark Hunt, and capping the run off with a submission of Cain Velasquez. And now I believed in Fabricio Werdum, the Heavyweight Champion of the World. More than that, I was beginning to come around to the thesis that, improbable and strange as it was to think, that perhaps Werdum would prove not only horse but GOAT. Who else but he? Had he not knocked off all other contenders? Cain Velasquez, Big Nog, even the great Fedor Emelianenko, definitive stoppage wins over all of them. Could this rubber-faced clown of a goofy Brazilian really hold the mantle of the Baddest Man of All Time? The greatest heavyweight to ever don the tiny gloves? That was how I sold his first title defense to my friends. I listed his myriad achievements and confidently picked him as a favorite over Stipe Miocic, the Croat from Cleveland. Miocic was a firefighter, a wrestler, a boxer, and a baseball player – an all-around workhorse of an athlete and fighter. Stipe also seemed pretty awesome – with a self-confidence that seemed almost vacuous. To me he seemed Forrest Gump-like. When I think of Stipe, I think of something King Mo once said about Johny Hendricks – “Johny’s too dumb to get tired.” I wonder if something similar is not true of Miocic. So it was not as though I discounted the American. No, I simply believed in Werdum.
Well, goddamnit, turns out I am wrong about everything. Miocic faceplanted Werdum with a fadeaway cross, a “get-away from me” punch that caught Werdum coming in – nay, charging in. As Jack Slack says, striking is about creating collisions, and even if Stipe’s fist only weighed a pound, Werdum had brought all 240 pounds of his mass crashing into the appendage. Lights out. It was a long way from 6’4” to the canvas, and somewhere on that trip Fabricio Werdum left our world and entered the Land of Wind and Ghosts. And New Heavyweight Champion of the World, Stipe Miocic. “Was it supposed to happen that way?” my friends, new to the sport and these figures, asked me. “I thought Werdum was really good.”
So did I.
What did I learn here? Never bet on heavyweight MMA. It’s a coin toss. The human body is just not designed to take striking damage from a 250+ pound person. It’s a sword fight. Whoever strikes first blood probably wins. Don’t bother making predictions about who comes out unscathed, just wait to enjoy the show.
And what of Vai Cavalo? Is he still in the running for the best heavyweight of all time?
No. Fedor Emelianenko is the best heavyweight of all time. But I’m always wrong about everything. Are you really going to take my word for it?