With two straight UFC wins in the first round, a stellar training team, and an Arizona State wrestling pedigree, you wouldn’t be out of line if you deemed CB Dollaway as the favorite heading into his UFC 100 bout against Tom Lawlor this weekend. But don’t expect the Ultimate Fighter season seven finalist to let such talk to get to his head. And if you ask him why, his answer is simple.
“I just watch the UFC,” said Dollaway. “Time and time again, things happen. As an example, look at Georges St-Pierre and Matt Serra. There have been plenty of upsets and things that shouldn’t happen happen all the time in the UFC. If you don’t go in there focused and knowing that you’re in a fight, you can wind up another statistic.”
Few people know that better than the 25-year old Dollaway, who entered the TUF7 house as a heavy favorite thanks to his college wrestling history and 6-0 pro MMA record. He lived up to the hype early on, taking out David Baggett, Nick Klein, and Cale Yarbrough. But then he ran into unheralded Amir Sadollah in the semifinals and was submitted in the third round. The ouster of Jesse Taylor from the competition gave Dollaway a second chance, and he made the most of it, earning a shot in the June 2008 finals by beating Tim Credeur, but again, it was Sadollah sending Dollaway to defeat with an armbar.
“Obviously I suffered two losses to Amir Sadollah and those are great examples – you mess up for a quick second and you’re submitted, and anyone can catch you,” said Dollaway. “Every time you go out there, the other guy has trained just like you and all it takes is one punch with those small gloves and it can end your night or change the momentum of the fight. You’ve got to go in there and be ready to go, and if you don’t want to lose, you’d better stay focused.”
So Dollaway, despite recent wins over Taylor and Mike Massenzio - the latter coming on one of the biggest UFC cards of the year, UFC 92 – is firmly focused on the fighter in front of him in Lawlor, and he knows that the TUF8 alumnus isn’t coming to Vegas to be a stepping stone. What the Floridian is going to bring into the Octagon that night is another story though.
“He has a sound wrestling background, and I would expect he’s gonna come out and probably try to wrestle me, but other than that, the biggest difficulty is not knowing what he’s gonna do,” said Dollaway. “I’m probably a better wrestler than him, so I don’t know if he will come out and try to wrestle me or come out and start swinging for the fences. You really don’t know what his strategy is gonna be, so you just have to feel it out once you get in there.”
It’s always interesting trying to figure out what’s going to happen when two styles collide, especially when they’re the same styles. But history has shown that when two quality wrestlers collide (Dollaway being a former All-American for ASU and Lawlor having won three NCWA National titles), they will usually decide to stand and trade. Dollaway likes that idea, especially considering that it may lead to a Fight of The Night bonus.
“Fighting a wrestler’s a little more fun because you actually do get a chance to stand up and strike a little bit sometimes,” he said. “With a striker, you’re probably gonna want to get him down and spend most of the fight on the ground, but you never know how it’s gonna turn out. Me and Tom might end up standing and banging it out the whole fight. Sometimes when you have two good wrestlers, they don’t worry about trying to take each other down, and they just swing for the fences. Getting Fight of the Night at UFC 100 would be pretty sweet.”
Getting a third consecutive win wouldn’t be too shabby either, and if he does notch Octagon victory number four, that will lift the UFC tally from his ASU teammates to 12-2, an amazing record from a quartet (Dollaway, Aaron Simpson, Ryan Bader, Cain Velasquez) that has been pushing each other since their college days.
“The four of us – me, Cain Velasquez, Ryan Bader, and Aaron Simpson – we were all each other’s wrestling partners there (at Arizona State) and we were all driving to make each other better every day, and we were just having wars in the wrestling room every day,” recalled Dollaway. “Now we’re doing the same thing with me, Ryan and Aaron here at Arizona Combat Sports and we’re pushing each other every day. You hear guys complaining sometimes that they can’t find training partners and always having to travel to find different camps, and it makes it real easy for us that every time we go in there, we know it’s gonna be a tough day.”
Oddly enough, while Velasquez (who now trains with the American Kickboxing Academy in San Jose) knew that MMA was the next step for him, Dollaway and Bader weren’t so sure about their athletic careers after graduation. In fact, they weren’t even sure there would be any.
“Cain knew he was going to fight right after he graduated and he went to AKA,” said Dollaway. “Me and Bader, once we were done wrestling, we thought we were probably done competing. I think a lot of it was that we were just burned out on wrestling. I had been doing it for 18 years of my life, and I just wanted to be done with it.”
But once Dollaway got exposed to mixed martial arts and the number of disciplines involved, he was hooked, and he got the urge to compete again.
“I learn something new every day and I can watch my UFC fights and see myself progress from my first fight to the last one to see how much better I’ve gotten,” said Dollaway. “It’s a good feeling. In wrestling sometimes, you can never really tell once you get to a certain level. It seems like you’re stuck and just not getting any better. This makes it fun again.”
Winning is even more enjoyable, but Dollaway knows that if he trains hard and stays focused, the victories will eventually fall into place. As for the future, he’s taking it a day at a time.
“I just want to make sure I’m ready (before taking the next step),” he said, “and I want to get all the experience I can. I’m still relatively young compared to a lot of guys in the sport, so I want to make sure I put in my time and do everything right.”
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