Junior dos Santos learning to deal with critics and downsides of a public career
Junior dos Santos has spent the last seven-plus years fighting the toughest heavyweights in the world, and he has yet to lose back-to-back fights. He's 18-4 overall as a pro and 12-3 since joining the UFC with a stunning knockout of current champion Fabricio Werdum in 2008.
As he prepared at the American Top Team in Florida the last few months for his April 10 bout with Ben Rothwell, which he won by unanimous decision, dos Santos found himself agitated when he heard fans say he was washed up, no longer a contender, should consider retirement and other less-than-flattering things.
On Friday, he was his usual easy-going, jovial self as he discussed his win over Rothwell and the reaction to the first struggles of his career.
"Oh, the fans," he said, laughing. "Those fans. People love you when you're winning. The bad times? Well, they don't like to give you credit for anything you've done."
Dos Santos' 22 MMA fights mark the entirety of his athletic career, pro and amateur. He didn't wrestle or box as a child. He didn't compete in jiu-jitsu tournaments. He started to train in jiu-jitsu in order to lose weight when he was 21 and when he was 22, he had his first MMA fight.
Taken from that context, his rise is remarkable. He won the UFC heavyweight title in 2011, just five years afer he began in the sport, and has wins over four men (Werdum, Cain Velasquez, Shane Carwin and Frank Mir) who have held a version of the UFC heavyweight title.
But he entered the Rothwell fight with a 2-3 record in his previous five outings with questions surrounding his abiity to remain at or nor the top of the division swirling.
Dos Santos fought once in 2014 and once again in 2015, and inactivity is always the worst thing for a fighter. He was plagued by injuries and personal problems that led him to sit out the better part of two years.
It was really the first time he'd faced adversity and he concedes he found it challenging.
"I had so many injuries and there were so many things going on, bad things and I'll be honest, I didn't understand how to deal with bad things," he said. "I'm an emotional guy and I take everything so seriously. I get so emotional and I don't know how to deal with bad things, bad energy."
Some urged him to retire, mostly out of a misplaced sense of concern. He lost fights to Velasquez at UFC 155 on Dec. 29, 2012, and at UFC 166 on Oct. 19, 2013, and came out of the fight looking tremendously beaten up.
But he pointed out that he bruises and swells easily and that he'll suffer a hematoma just by bumping into a door knob in his home. He claims he wasn't badly beaten by Velasquez and pointed out he had a guillotine choke on Velasquez in the fifth round of their last bout.
"I'm being honest, I wasn't being hit that hard," he said. "He was hitting me a lot, and it made me look ugly with all of the swelling. He had a couple of good punches, but mostly, they weren't that hard. If he was hitting me that hard, I wouldn't have been able to recover. I would have been knocked out."
He attributed his loss in December to Alistair Overeem to difficulties he had with the game plan. He'd drilled all throughout camp on moving to his left to stay away from Overeem's kicks, a change in the way he normally fought. In camp, he thought the decision was smart.
But in the bout, he couldn't get his offense untracked moving that way.
"When you make a strategy and you train it at the gym and do everything you can, it's one thing," he said. "But when you're competing is when you're going to be able to see if it's going to work. ... The way it turned out against Alistair, I let him move free and go where he wanted."
It was a difficult time after that bout. He was 2-3 in his last five and many looked at him as a fighter on the decline or, even worse, washed up. But he beat Rothwell, one of the division's hottest fighters, and has wins over Werdum and Stipe Miocic, the men who will meet next month in Brazil for the title.
All of a sudden, things are looking different. He's only 32 and said he's nowhere near being done.
"I'm 32 years old and I can fight a lot longer," he said. "I still love what I do. My plan is to be like another Randy Couture or Dan Henderson, one of those guys. In my heart, I still believe I'm getting better. I really believe in my heart I'm going to be champion again.
"I look at the scenario in the heavyweight division and I can see myself beating those guys.I believe I'm going to give better and better performances because I'm still developing and I believe with all my heart I'll be the champion again."
