Nov-16-2009

Amir Sadollah and the Fickle Nature of Thick and Thin

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By Chuck Mindenhall

You talk about your ups and downs, Amir Sadollah has already cornered the market on career yo-yoing. After improbably winning the The Ultimate Fighter 7 as a middleweight over the favored CB Dollaway, the 29-year-old Sadollah had established himself as a sort of come-from-behind Houdini. Since then, he’s had two separate bouts with Nick Catone cancelled after suffering injuries during training camp—a leg infection first, then a broken clavicle—which resulted in a very long 14-month absence from the Octagon.

That’s a bad scenario for a guy with only two official fights on his resume to that point.

Worse—and maybe there’s somebody jabbing a pin into a doll with a very stylish mullet out there—his glorious return to the cage against Johny Hendricks as a welterweight at UFC 101 ended ingloriously, and in controversy. The upstart Hendricks was awarded a TKO finish of Sadollah just 29 seconds in, which many thought was a premature referee stoppage. Talk about buzzkill, sure, but don’t talk about fatalism to Sadollah.

“It’s definitely something I’ve thought about a lot,” he says of the bout. “The only conclusion I’ve come to is that I just try and make that fight an experience that I can learn as much as possible from. My feelings of what could, or should have happened are kind of immaterial at this point. The only thing that matters is what you do with it.”

When Sadollah steps into the Octagon once again at UFC 106 on November 21 in Las Vegas to face Phil Baroni, it will be 17 months to the day after he beat Dollaway. To say he’s jonesing for a victory would be an understatement, but Sadollah is nothing if not resilient. For one thing, he has trained (and trained and trained) for the moment he can get back in there and wreck somebody else’s night. For another, well, he has come a long way from being a surgical technologist back in Virginia. He has landed a moonlighting gig as the host of Spike TV’s TUF Aftermath, and so keeps his place held in public consciousness.

If you’re wondering about a segue in broadcasting, relax—he does not idolize the likes of Vin Scully and Bob Costas.

“I’ve heard people imply or ask if this is something I’m planning on doing, but it’s really at this point nothing more than a little side gig,” he says. “It’s something cool that I enjoy doing, and I’m glad to have the opportunity to do something on the side like that, and it’s just a change of pace from the normal day. Am I planning on starting a broadcasting career after this next fight? Absolutely not. I don’t really like thinking about anything other than fighting. Anything afterwards—whether I do something on TV, or go back to school, or try to live off of social security for the rest of my life—I don’t know.”

Right, and with the “New York Badass” on the docket there’s really no time for flights of fancy. Sadollah, who has trained with Baroni before at Xtreme Couture in Las Vegas and respects him tremendously, knows one thing is sure: Fireworks.

“I’m stoked about the fight,” he says. “Baroni’s obviously a veteran and he’s been around forever. I think it’s going to be a good fight—a great fight for me. I think stylistically it’s guaranteed to be very exciting. I’m glad they gave me the fight; it’s an opportunity for me to prove myself. I mean, every fight in the UFC is an opportunity to prove yourself.”

What Sadollah (2-1) anticipates is simpler than it sounds: “I think he’s going to try and punch me in the face,” he predicts. Baroni (13-11), an MMA stalwart that never shies away from exchanging, will be looking to regain his winning ways in the UFC, having last fought against Pete Sell way back in early 2005 at UFC 51 (he lost via guillotine choke).

Where is Sadollah concerned? Hey, come what may—bring the whole grab bag of tricks, he’ll be ready.

“My theory on fighting is to never train or thing of just one way,” he says. “Even for somebody like [Baroni] who has a pretty documented fight history and you feel you’re pretty familiar with what’s going to happen, you never know, he can come out and pull guard.”

That the fight was moved to the main card has caught Sadollah’s attention, but only barely—he sounds like Coach Norman Dale from the movie Hoosiers when you ask him about it, a man with no time for anything superfluous.

“Obviously the Octagon is the same, whether you’re on the prelim card or the main card,” he says in trademark wry humor. “But it’s obviously cool to be on the main card and get that exposure, and to be in front of more people. But at the end of the day it doesn’t really change much.”

It doesn’t, but winning would help change some hard luck feelings in a hurry. The injuries that kept him out for so long Sadollah—who can turn lemons to lemonade with the best of them—used to train and evolve his game, but the aftertaste of that Hendricks fight can only be washed away with a solid performance.

“For me, it was just unsatisfying,” he says. “And nobody likes an unsatisfying ending, you know?”

But everybody driven by a competitive spirit loves a challenge, and that’s where Sadollah smiles with that deep duality of his when talking about his own rocky start—a start that, at bottom, he can’t help embracing warmly in spite of all its detours.

“Rocky start is putting it nicely,” he says. “For sure, part of me wishes it didn’t have to be so hard . . . and another part of me, the part that enjoys being a fighter, is the same part that likes when it’s not the easy route. I know I have work to do, and it’s a hard road ahead of me—and you know what? I kind of like it.”