The ballad of Spencer 'King' Fisher

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By Chuck Mindenhall

Spencer Fisher fights with the work ethic of an amphetamine, but he’s not usually a jittery type—in fact, it’s near impossible to unnerve him under ordinary circumstances. Yet recently, a couple of events have been . . . a little unordinary. For starters, there was Germany, when Fisher stepped in the Octagon with one of the legends of mixed martial arts, Caol Uno, at UFC 99.

Uno is an icon to Fisher. It was like the proverbial pupil being asked to surpass his master.

'My last fight I was pretty nervous, because it was against a guy who I’d watched since I started doing this whole thing,' he says. 'It was really nerve-racking to fight Caol, because he was someone I’d watched on television. He’s a crafty veteran, he’s been in there with everybody, and I was happy to get the win.'

In fact, Uno has intricate personal links to Fisher’s beginnings in MMA. The night before Fisher picked up and moved to Iowa to start training with the Miletich Fighting Systems, Jens Pulver had just defeated Uno to win the lightweight belt in Atlantic City. That fight is forever synonymous with his pledge to mixed martial arts, and it speaks volumes for the kind of person he is to pack up and move with no safety nets in place. That was the day after UFC 30, back in 2001.

But even stepping into the Octagon against an icon like Uno wasn’t as throttling mentally as what he encountered one day out on the prairie . . .

'My wife was eight months pregnant climbing a deer stand,' he says almost jubilantly. 'People say, hey, how does she watch your fights?—try watching your wife who’s eight months pregnant climb a deer stand! Now that’s nerve-racking.'

Wait, wait, wait. If that sounds in the least bit alarming, let him finish.

'We’re hillbillies man,' he says. 'We all love hunting, even my girls. It’s a chance to get outside and hang out and they love it. Hopefully when I’m done fighting I can hook up as a hunting guide or something like that. It’s a passion of mine.'

Given the mutton chops, the frequent shout-outs to Johnny Cash, the accent, and his teetering-on-unhealthy love of pro wrestler Ric Flair, okay—that all makes sense. Shooting deer is really pretty tame in the context of things.

But if things go his way, Spencer 'King' Fisher’s ambitious hunting dreams can keep until he gets a chance to try on that lightweight belt. The scrappy 33-year-old North Carolina native has been slogging it out a long time in the UFC, going back to UFC Fight Night 2 in 2005 when he choked out Thiago Alves. Admirably, he’s been fighting the brand names of the sport using his one fluent discipline: Guts. (Note: He is also an excellent boxer).

Perhaps it’s inevitable that the war cry from Davenport these days is . . . hey, why not me?

First things first though. When Fisher (23-4) steps back in the cage next at UFC 104 in Los Angeles on October 24, it’ll be against another wily veteran who’s been around the block a few times. Joe 'Daddy' Stevenson, the Ultimate Fighter Season 2 winner, has over 40 professional fights and a whole lot of that old wrestler’s pluck. It’s that aspect that concerns Fisher, who says the 'chink in [his] armor' has always been wrestling (Frank Edgar, et al).

It’s not wishful thinking but reinforced will that, in a clash of lightweight stalwarts looking for avenues into title contention, Fisher will be looking to turn things into a typical bouncing-off-the-chain-links maelstrom. It’s his roughneck nature to go in for fists and fury rather than sprawls and pillaring.

'I just want to go out there and out-box him and just beat him up wherever we go,' he says. 'I definitely prefer to keep the fight standing, but you know he’s going to be diving at my shoelaces. Who knows, he may come out and surprise me and try and out-box me, so good for him. But I think he’s going to try and single-leg me and run me into the cage, and that’s what his whole game plan is.'

Even if things go to the mat, Fisher says he has his designs, just as he did with Uno, who attempted numerous takedowns but achieved only two this past June. Experience against guys like Sam Stout and Hermes Franca has taught him a few things about how to keep things in his favor. With cardio like a hummingbird, nobody gets things back to the feet more rapidly than Fisher. His simple plan is to get up if he gets taken down, and whenever Stevenson shoots to feed him something painful with his hands.

'I’ve always relied on being a better striker than the other guy and working my way back up and knocking the guy out,' he says. 'That’s what I’ve done in the past - just outwork the person. It falls on me to get back up or to stop the takedown to begin with.'

Though whenever his name appears on a fight card you can bank on things getting crazy in the cage, Fisher isn’t content to just put on exciting fights for the long haul. The idea is to string together enough wins to get a shot at that title. That’s where he sees Stevenson as a bit of a gatekeeper; the last two guys who have beaten Stevenson—Kenny Florian and Diego Sanchez—gained title shots.

'Getting a title shot is the goal,' he says. 'Of course I want to make a living and do this and continue to fight, but at some point you’ve got to say, hey, what did I do with my career? Do I do it all just for a paycheck or was I wanting to be somebody?'

With wins against Alves, Matt Wiman, Jeremy Stephens, Sam Stout and Caol Uno already on his resume, it’d be hard to argue he isn’t already somebody. And then again, it’s hard to get a read on a guy who hunts deer with a wife who’s eight months pregnant.

'Of course, I like to surprise people and I like highlight fights,' he says. 'I know Joe’s training hard, but he’s got to be careful . . . by the end of the night I might take him down. The only thing that’s true about Spencer Fisher is that nothing’s for sure.'

True.