You’ve got to have more than an interesting angle or a tremendous background in one discipline to excel. Longevity requires a blend of many elements, and we’ve got them broken down for you here.
Option #1: Winning (a.k.a. Captain Obvious)
This one is a no-brainer, at least it should be.
At the end of the day, you could be the most popular fighter in the sport, but if you go on a lengthy losing streak, the chances of sticking around get smaller and smaller.
Option #2: Becoming a Fan Favorite (a.k.a. The Gladiator Hypothesis)
To bastardize a quality quote from Oscar-winning Russell Crowe film, if you win the crowd, you’ll win a lengthy career.
Guys like Jardine and Liddell are perfect examples as previously stated; fan favorites who were afforded more chances to right the ship than your average fighter. Perhaps an even better example is Clay The Carpenter Guida.
Option #3: Becoming Larger than Life (a.k.a. The Tito Ortiz Scenario)
The Huntington Beach Bad Boy hasn’t won a fight since 2006, hasn’t beaten someone other than Ken Shamrock since UFC 59, but earlier this year, there was Ortiz, slated opposite Antonio Rogerio Nogueira in the main event of Fight Night 24 in Seattle.
Say what you will about the former light heavyweight champion, but give the man his due: no one has been able to remain relevant while being completely irrelevant for as long as Ortiz.
Option #4: Keep Earning Bonus Checks (a.k.a. The Chris Lytle Method)
This one kind of plays into the If you win the crowd element, in that the guys who take home bonus checks are usually doing something that gets the crowd on their feet. No one has mastered this tactic better than Chris Lytle.
Since losing to Matt Serra at the close of TUF Season 4, Lytle switched up his style, took a more aggressive approach and collected bonuses in eight of his 13 fights, including five Fight of the Night awards. At one point, he won three straight for his battles with Paul Taylor, Marcus Davis and Kevin Burns.
Option #5: Dropping Down (a.k.a. The Current Trend)
Changing weight classes is the hot trend in MMA right now. It’s the baseball jackets and all-black watches of career choices for mixed martial artists.
Dropping down a division has become a means of injecting new life into a career that has stalled for one reason or another.
Option #6: Be a Late Replacement (a.k.a. Training Camp? What Training Camp?)
The UFC has an unwritten rule, or at least I think they do.
Whenever someone accepts a replacement role in a bout on short notice, they get themselves another fight, almost regardless of how the previous outing went down. Todd Brown stepped up to face Tim Boetsch at UFC 117 without much advance warning, and suffered just the second loss of his career for his troubles. Despite the uneventful showing, there was Brown, seven months later, standing opposite Igor Pokrajac on the second Versus show.
Option #7: Achieve Legendary Status (a.k.a. The Randy Couture Rule)
If Couture wanted to fight until he was 73-years-old, the UFC would have to let him. After all, he’s Randy Couture.
When you make a career out of proving people wrong and becoming a legend in the sport, you’re allowed to go out on your own terms. It would take a serious string of bad performances for Dana White to give Couture the I think the time has come speech he undoubtedly delivered to Chuck Liddell before and after UFC 115.
