On Matt "The Immortal" Brown

Matt Brown is all man.  More importantly, he is all fighter. 

Not long ago, I wrote a post titled "Natural Born Fighter."  It was about Yoel Romero.  Read it HERE.  In it, I wrote about how Yoel seemed to truly enjoy fighting.  He enjoyed hitting people, and he enjoyed getting hit.  The tougher a fight got, the more he seemed to enjoy it. Well that perfectly describes Matt Brown.

I first saw Matt "The Immortal" Brown on the 7th season of The Ultimate Fighter back in 2008.  Even back then, it was obvious that Matt wasn't in the house to play games.  He was there to fight.  The other contestants spoke of him in hushed tones.  They spoke of him with awe and reverence.  He won his first 2 fights on the show, stopping Josh Hall and then knocking out Jeremy May with a head kick, before he was stopped by eventual season winner, Amir Sadollah, by arm bar.  Even in the loss, Matt gave a good account of himself.

After entering the UFC, Brown went 5-5 in his first 10 fights in the UFC, though I still think he deserved the decision against Dong Hyun Kim.  His losses were all by submission or decision.  After that, he won his next 7 fights in a row.  The 7th was this past Saturday, against Eric Silva, in a fight that will likely be in the running for fight of the year.  Brown survived a vicious body kick and subsequent choke attempt by Silva for the first 3 minutes of the fight.  Many observers, including myself, thought Matt wouldn't make it out of that first round after seeing Silva fold him in half with the body kick.

But we forgot that Matt Brown is a real fighter.  Not a sportsman.  Not an athlete.  A fighter. Getting hurt simply warmed him up.  This is not to say that Brown is nonathletic or unsportsmanlike. He is both athletic and sportsmanlike.  But he is, at heart, a fighter. A fighter who fought his way out of the choke Silva had slapped around his throat. A fighter who then put a world class beating on the handsome Brazilian.  It was violent.  And it was technical. Every shot was calculated to hurt his opponent.  Every shot.  He didn't throw feints.  He didn't dance in and out of harm's way.  Instead, he gritted his teeth, waded forward and went to war.

Eric Silva tried to keep Brown at a distance, but "The Immortal" cut off the cage time and time again, forcing Silva to engage.  When he did, Brown smashed him with punches and crushing elbow strikes.  Though Silva had his moments, landing several more body shots that made Matt wince, it was Brown who did the most damage.  It was Brown who controlled the fight.  He broke Silva's body and he broke his will.  

In the third round, he straddled Silva's turtled-up body, and dropped sledgehammer fists and elbows on him until the referee had seen enough blood and put a stop to the carnage.

With the win, Matt Brown put himself one fight away from a title shot.  Indeed, he may get the title shot if the champion's next challenger gets injured.  Regardless, Matt Brown is sitting in a great position.

Let me go back to that whole Matt-Brown-is-a-real-fighter comment I've made a few times in this piece.  More and more, the mixed martial arts top ten rankings are being filled by guys who are phenomenal athletes and expert tacticians.  Guys with natural aptitudes, who found that punching came easy, or who found they had a knack for jiu-jitsu.  Perhaps they were blessed with natural strength and were persuaded to try out for their highschool wrestling team. Perhaps their strength was coupled with a strategical mind, one that could easily spot flaws in their opponents. And maybe they were also hard workers, willing to put in countless hours in training to hone their natural abilities.  These are the building blocks for champions.

But how many of them got into mixed martial arts because they simply loved to fight?  When the UFC first hit the scene in the early 90's, the participants were often guys who would have likely been fighting that weekend anyway, except they would be fighting illegally in a bar or in a parking lot.  Guys like Pat Smith, Harold Howard, Don Frye, and, of course, Tank Abbot seemed positively delighted to throw down at a moment's notice. No pay check required.

Matt Brown would have fit in quite well with that crowd. He shares their addiction for the rush that is unique to combat sports.  They can't find it in team sports like basketball or football.  In those sports, there's too many time-outs and too many other players that can alter the game's outcome.  They can't find it in individual sports like tennis, either, since there's little chance of getting hurt or of hurting someone else.  There's something about using one's own bare hands--indeed, one's whole body--to dominate another that can be intoxicating.  Euphoric. Matt Brown, undoubtedly, has been drunk on that feeling. He has shot it into his veins just as surely as he once shot heroin into them.  

The fact that Brown once nearly died from a heroin overdose reinforces how strong his discipline and determination have become. He is a man who clawed his way out of a hole--a hole that has claimed many less determined souls.  And he has to continue clawing his way out every day, because a single lapse in willpower could find him sliding hopelessly back into the abyss.

Keep clawing, Matt Brown.  Keep clawing.  

Until next time.