Brandon Vera doesn’t remember any black cats crossing his path or breaking any mirrors, but, then again, he has a very selective memory these days.
After choking out Assuerio Silva at UFC 60 and then peppering former heavyweight champ Frank Mir into defeat with haymakers at UFC 65 to raise his professional record to a perfect 8-0, everything about “The Truth” seemed cut and dry. These were not only wins, they were definitive wins.
But a funny thing happened to Vera on a way to his title shot. Things got real hazy, real fast.
Vera broke his hand in the first round with his penultimate bout with Tim Sylvia at UFC 77, dropping a unanimous decision that would have bolted him into a title shot; followed by last month’s controversial stoppage against Fabricio Werdum at UFC 85 in London, which also could have pogo’d his status for a match with interim champ Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira.
So you have to forgive him for not being exactly mirthful heading into his bout this Saturday (Spike TV 9pm ET / 6pm PT) with three-time All-American wrestler Reese Andy. These are the things he remembers—these past two fights which, to him at least, carry more asterisks than a dozen Texas time shares.
And he’s seeing ghosts.
“Fabricio’s in my head,” he says. “I’m thinking about Reese Andy, about getting punched in the face by Reese Andy and all he’s going to do and all of a sudden Fabricio jumps in the ring. All of a sudden, he’s there.”
One of the reasons Vera can’t shake the visage of Werdum from popping up in his mind is that he feels—just as many spectators felt—the fight was stopped prematurely. Werdum fully mounted Vera with half a minute to go in the first round and was wailing away on a survival mode Vera when a “miscommunication” happened between the fighter and referee Dan Miragliotta, who was leaning in to try and gauge intelligent defense.
“I said ‘I’m okay, I’m okay,’ but apparently he heard ‘okay, stop the fight.’ I mean, out of all the wrestling tournaments and jiu-jitsu matches, nobody’s ever said ‘okay’ for anything to be over. You know? Help. I’m dying. Stop. Please no. There’s a whole bunch of other words I could have said for that.”
So, to get rid of that bad taste in his mouth, Vera is doing what any desperate fighter anxious for redemption might do. He’s cutting a bunch of weight to fight light heavy (205lbs), and is taking a bout on short notice against a guy he’s studied only through available YouTube clips, the 7-1 Andy.
Though names like Wanderlei Silva and Lyoto Machida were rumored as possible opponents for the 6-foot-3 Vera at light heavy, taking the relatively unknown IFL star seemed like a better fit for the short term. Machida, he said, would require a whole training period because of his casual unorthodox style, which he deems “weird.”
But in Andy it’s not like Vera is getting dished up a third-rate stumblebum. The 35-year-old vet comes from a heralded wrestling background from the University of Wyoming, where he was a Division I All-American and is an inductee of the Cowboy’s Hall of Fame, as well as a participant in the Abu Dhabi World Championships. He decisioned Team Quest’s Krzysztof Soszynski and brutalized Renzo Gracie pupil Jamal Patterson. In other words, he’s a dangerous man looking to prove himself in the UFC, and in Vera, Andy smells blood in the water.
‘The only thing that makes me nervous about Reese is that he has nothing to lose, and sometimes that’s all somebody needs to get them to the next level. That’s the only thing that makes me nervous.”
Well, that and that Andy is a natural born opportunist who loves to gamble (he has a fetish for poker) and isn’t afraid to let his hands go.
Despite a few nerves at the prospect of shedding weight on the fly—“if I’m walking around eating Cheetos and ice cream and am at my natural weight, I’m 235 pounds”—Vera says that he is much looser coming into this fight than his last few (where he admits to getting sick with nerves). The reason?
‘I found a lot of guys who want to train hard again and beat the [hell] out of me,” he says. “I have found guys who want to whup my ass. I am 0-2 in my last two showings. I’ve got a lot to prove, so I got Crazy Bob (Cook) at AKA in San Jose, and Jason Lambert, Matt Stansell, Gary Padilla and a lot of other guys who want to just kick my ass. I think I’m looser going into this fight because I know the fight will not be as hard as my training has been.”
Does he worry about feeling different at such an unfamiliar weight?
“It might be different—I keep waiting for it to be different. I don’t know. When Mike Swick said he cut down to 185 he felt different. Some people say when they first cut to 205 they feel weird. Hopefully I don’t feel funny the night of the fight. That would suck if it all changes the night of the fight.”
One thing that wouldn’t suck for Vera is getting off the proverbial schnide, even if he has no intentions of staying at 205 for the long haul, and he envisions the fight going to the ground a few times before “The Truth” resurfaces.
“I see Reese Andy taking me down, and me getting back up. Him taking me down [again], and me getting back up and submitting him. That’s how I see it going down.”
Come Saturday, July 19, if you squint, you can sort of see a resemblance between UFC newcomer Reese Andy and Fabricio Werdum. Yet when you’re a disgruntled Brandon Vera, they’re virtually indistinguishable.
Want to Leave a Comment?