Weidman Fighting Back to the Top

It all started with a spin kick.

Chris Weidman met Luke Rockhold in an anticipated middleweight title bout at UFC 194 in December 2015. The two were closely matched, and the first two rounds of the bout proved as much. Weidman, the defending champion, was the early aggressor, taking Rockhold’s back before putting him on the mat. Then Rockhold roared back with a pair of guillotine attempts and hard strikes. One judge scored it a round a piece, while the others placed Rockhold ahead two rounds to none. Although Weidman had begun to fall behind on the scorecards, it was still anyone’s fight.

Weidman returned in the third round wanting to pressure Rockhold. He wrestled briefly, but found his best success with kicks to Rockhold’s body. With ninety seconds remaining in the round, whether with cruel intentions or only wanting to give his opponent one more thing to think about, Weidman spun for a kick. This was a surprise. A wrestler at his core, Weidman had scored knockout victories – including one of the most famous knockouts in the sport’s history – but he was hardly known as a dynamic striker.

The spin was slow and Rockhold timed it, grabbing a hold of Weidman’s body and dragging him to the floor. He took mount with a minute remaining and went to work. Rockhold ravaged Weidman with punches and elbows, bloodying the champion in landing dozens upon dozens of unanswered blows until the end of the round.

The fight did not officially end there, but it would have been to Weidman’s benefit if it had. Rockhold stopped him in the fourth round to take the title, ending Weidman’s impressive reign by capitalizing on one unwise decision.

More than a year and a half later, Weidman is still fighting to stop the fall put into motion by that spin kick. On top of the world’s two years ago as the UFC middleweight champion, Weidman has lost three consecutive bouts, all by stoppage. Although his record may not reflect it, Weidman proved his ability to compete at the highest level in each of the three bouts, and he still has the ability to claw his way back to a championship match. Before he can do that though, he needs to halt the fall, and the opportunity to do so awaits him on Saturday.

That Weidman has found himself in such a streak of misfortune so quickly would have been unthinkable two years ago. He had ridden a wave of success for his entire UFC career until the bout with Rockhold.

From the moment he entered the UFC in March 2011 as a late substitute for Rafael Natal against Alessio Sakara, Weidman was tabbed as a future champion. He beat Sakara with ease, and then submitted two additional opponents in the first round before the year was over.

In January 2012, he was given the biggest opportunity of his career. The UFC had been forced to shuffle around the card for its second Fox event, leaving former title challenger Damian Maia without an opponent. Weidman, although well above the middleweight limit, accepted the 185-pound match after UFC matchmaker Joe Silva refused Weidman’s offer of making it a catch-weight bout. He badly depleted himself in the weight cut, but made the weight and beat Maia by decision in a terrible fight.

That win took him another step forward, leading to a main event bout with contender Mark Munoz. Weidman dominated the fight and stopped Munoz in the second round, establishing himself as a top middleweight contender.

However, Weidman was neither the UFC’s nor reigning champion Anderson Silva’s first, second, or third choice as a title challenger. Silva, in addition to mentioning outlandish options like Cung Le, hoped for a big fight with Georges St-Pierre or former light heavyweight champion Rashad Evans. The UFC liked the idea of a Silva vs. St-Pierre super-fight, as well as the potential of a match between Silva and light heavyweight champion Jon Jones, but there were hurdles in front of both bouts. Michael Bisping was prime for the spot, but he fell out of contention with a January 2013 loss to Vitor Belfort.

Weidman was as undesirable as a challenger got for Silva. He was less than a known quantity to the masses, and Silva, who turned 38 years old in 2013, was looking for big fights before his career inevitably wound down. For any champion looking to make money, Weidman represented their worst nightmare: unknown and really good. Just how good was yet to be seen, which may have been the scariest part.

The St-Pierre and Jones fights never got close. Le never had a prayer to get the spot. Evans lost in February 2013 and stayed up at light heavyweight. That left Weidman as Silva’s best title challenger, and so UFC made the fight.

Weidman’s second round knockout over Anderson Silva is one of the most famous finishes in the history of the sport. In his tenth professional fight, Weidman ended Silva’s 17-fight win streak and his nearly seven year long title reign. Although the result was not completely unforeseen, the method and circumstances made it a shock. UFC booked an immediate rematch, figuring it would be one of the two or three biggest fights in company history. Weidman won that one too, and although the end was somewhat fluky with Silva breaking his leg on a checked kick, Weidman looked even better in the rematch than he did in the first bout.

The new champion followed up with a successful defense over Lyoto Machida in one of the best fights of 2014. Next, he steamrolled Vitor Belfort. Although Weidman couldn’t be called a dominant champion, he was certainly an impressive one.

Then he lost to Luke Rockhold. A year later, after a good first round, he ate a knee from hell courtesy of Yoel Romero and fell to the canvas. Five months after that, he lost in controversy to Gerard Mousasi.

Chris Weidman is 33 years old. Now is the time to make another run, because he’s unlikely to make physical gains going forward. On Saturday, he faces Kelvin Gastelum, who has looked excellent in his past two bouts, but is stuck in the unfortunate position of being a little too big for welterweight and a little to short in stature for a big middleweight run. If Weidman can’t turn things around against Gastelum, a four-fight hole is a deep one to dig out of. No fighter has lost four or more consecutive UFC bouts and rejuvenated his career to challenge for a championship afterward.

Weidman still has the name, and he appears to still have the ability. A victory on Saturday would put him back in the game, and a win after that would earn his entry into serious conversation.

The spin kick doesn’t need to be the beginning of Weidman’s downfall; it could only be the beginning of a blip on an otherwise excellent career.

Dan Plunkett has covered MMA for 411Mania since 2008. You can reach him by email at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter @Dan_Plunkett.