Nov-16-2009

Finally, Phil Baroni is coming home

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By Michael DiSanto

To say that the last decade has been a rollercoaster ride for welterweight contender Phil Baroni is a bit of an understatement.

Actually, it is a gross understatement.

“I think about my career a lot,” a subdued Baroni said. “The ‘what ifs’ and ‘what could have beens.’ What if the decision had gone my way in the first [Matt] Lindland fight? What if the referee hadn’t illegally allowed [Evan] Tanner’s corner to clean and tend to the cut during the first round of our first bout? What if I hadn’t gotten a little too excited with [referee Larry] Landless? What if I hadn’t fallen into that stupid guillotine choke against Pete Sell? Then reality hits, and I forget about all that, because none of it matters anymore. I’ve just got to move forward.”

Baroni has a point. The “New York Bad Ass” burst into the mixed martial arts world like a superstar in the making, scoring highlight-reel knockouts in four of his first six fights. Lots of fighters find success early, principally because their management coddles them, matching them up with weekend warriors, barroom brawlers, one-dimensional fighters, and anybody else who is an easy win in order to build their man’s confidence and his base of experience before truly testing him against top guys. But Baroni’s success was different.

Not surprisingly, the NYBA, who has never wanted for outward confidence, eschewed the traditional path to stardom by stepping straight into the heart of darkness. His second career bout was in the UFC, a hard-fought decision win over Curtis Stout. His fourth bout was against a former Olympic Silver Medalist in wrestling, Matt Lindland. Though he lost that bout by majority decision, many, including this writer, thought that the bout could have easily been scored a draw.

Baroni lost on the judges’ cards that night, but he absolutely won in the court of popular opinion. It was obvious during the bout that the former Olympian wanted nothing to do with actually fighting the cocky Long Islander. That endeared the fans to Baroni because the vocal majority showed up at the MGM Grand Garden Arena that night to watch two guys throw down, something the well-muscled middleweight puncher begged his opponent to participate in to no avail.

It was his next two bouts, however, that truly turned the NYBA into a bona fide UFC star. Six months after the Lindland fight, Baroni stepped into the Octagon for his fifth professional fight sporting a 3-1 record. His opponent, Amar Suloev, had just gone the distance with fearsome striker Chuck Liddell in a light heavyweight bout and decided to try his hand in the division 20 lbs to the south, where many thought the Armenian mixed martial artist would find tremendous success.

That wasn’t the case when he faced Baroni.

“That was a great fight, one of my best,” Baroni recalled proudly. “Suloev was like some scary savage monster coming into the middleweight division to take over. He was supposed to walk through me. I guess I forgot to read the memo.”

Baroni did indeed forget to read the memo. It took him a mere two minutes and 55 seconds to leave his opponent lying unconscious against the cage after a vicious assault of right hands on the ground. It was a great win, though one that he easily eclipsed in his next bout.

Facing Dave Menne, who was only a few months removed from his reign as UFC Middleweight Champion, Baroni gave fans the single most impressive performance of his career. Twelve seconds into the opening round, Baroni landed a grazing right hand that dazed his opponent. Smelling blood, Baroni attacked with a 14-punch combination thrown in just over three seconds, the final seven of which hit the bull’s eye.

Menne was out cold halfway through the salvo, but the punches were coming with such speed and precision that the force of the shots actually held him up on his feet against the cage. The finality of the knockout was surpassed only by the beauty of the technique. The UFC hadn’t seen punches thrown with that same blend of speed and accuracy since a 19-year-old phenom named Vitor Belfort first entered the Octagon.

“You know, I almost wish that fight had never taken place,” he revealed, much to this writer’s surprise. “Fans expect me to win every fight like that. Hey, I try to do just that, but crazy knockouts like that don’t come along very often for a reason. Everything has to fall perfectly into place. It’s like Alex Rodriguez hitting three homeruns in a game. He can’t do that every night, even though he would like to.”

The clip of Baroni knocking out Dave Menne has to be one of the greatest knockouts in the history of the sport. It was also the pinnacle of his UFC career to date.

Injuries, a suspension following the fracas with Landless and four consecutive losses not only brought knockout specialist crashing back down to earth from the high of the Menne fight, they cost him his job. A few days after getting submitted by Pete Sell in the closing seconds of a bout that he had been completely dominating up until that point, Baroni received a call that he never thought would happen.

“It’s never easy losing your job, whether you’re a plumber, teacher or a professional fighter,” Baroni said. “You don’t plan for that to happen, so there is a period of ‘what’s next?’ I’d been fighting in the biggest and best MMA promotion in the world for the past four years and earning good money in the process. That was taken away from me after the Sell fight. It was a business decision. I understood that. But I wasn’t going to just lie down sulk about it. I had to find a way to keep paying the mortgage and rebuild my career in the process.”

After submitting an unheralded foe in a small local show, Baroni opted to sign with PRIDE Fighting Championships and compete in the Land of the Rising Sun. Remember that we are talking about mid-2005 at this point, long before the owners of the UFC purchased Japan’s biggest MMA promotion. PRIDE was then largely focused on promoting Japanese competitors, particularly in the lighter weight classes, so Baroni wasn’t signed to be the new box office hit. He was signed as a fall guy to help build one of Japan’s biggest fighting stars, Ikuhisa Minowa, who was fresh off wins over heavyweights Gilbert Yvel and Stefan Leko. Surely he would beat the much smaller Baroni.

Again, someone forgot to give Baroni the memo.

“I was never very good at reading anyway,” he laughed.

Baroni’s PRIDE debut started just as PRIDE officials hoped. He seemed a bit gun shy early, and Minowa took full advantage. As the fight wore on, however, the action turned into a good old-fashioned gunfight, with both men planting their feet and exchanging bombs for what seemed like hours, though it was actually only a few minutes.

“We were both completely exhausted,” Baroni recalled. “In the second round, it was really a question of who wanted it more. I refused to go down. I refused to quit, even though I didn’t feel like I could move any more. I was literally that tired. But I knew that he was at least as tired as me, so I kept punching. My career depended on it.”

Just under two minutes into the second round, the NYBA found pay dirt, landing a massive right hand that dropped his Japanese foe like the proverbial bad habit. Baroni followed up the knockdown with a series of soccer kicks and stomps to the head, both legal under PRIDE’s rules. The referee had no choice but to stop the fight.

“Nobody expected me to win that fight, nobody. That is why I got so emotional afterward,” he admitted. “I felt like this humongous monkey has just been lifted off my back. I had just won in front of the largest live crowd of my career. I really needed that one to get my career back on track.”

The win over Minowa was the start of a very successful six-fight run in PRIDE, one that returned Baroni to virtually every middleweight Top 10 list. The rollercoaster ride, however, was not yet complete. Not by a long shot.

“I left PRIDE for the opportunity to face former UFC champion Frank Shamrock,” Baroni explained. “This guy was a legend among the fans, so beating him would open up doors previously closed to me. I also thought that beating him was the quickest way back to the UFC. “

Despite putting forth a truly timeless effort, a win wasn’t in the cards for the NYBA. Shamrock was in the zone that night, and Baroni fought valiantly, but he simply came up short. He followed that fight with two consecutive losses and Baroni once again found himself dropped from every Top 10 list. More significantly, he was once again searching for answers on how things could go so far astray.

“When you lose a few fights in a row, you begin questioning everything about yourself—your trainers, your training techniques, yourself, everything,” he admitted. “You want to be able to put a finger on why you were losing so that you can fix it and fix the results. Those were some dark days. I was asking myself a lot of questions—a lot.”

Baroni’s conclusion was that he was simply giving up too much size and, more importantly, reach against modern middleweights. The game, in his opinion, had evolved since he first burst onto the scene at UFC 30 back on February 23, 2001. Guys were now cutting more and more weight and it seemed like the average height for a top middleweight had gone from 5’9 or so to 6’1 or 6’2. In fact, Baroni, who stands 5’9, realized that he wasn’t even all that tall for a welterweight. So, the answer for him was an easy one.

“I decided to basically cut off one of my legs and drop welterweight,” he laughed. “Actually, the cut was easier than most people probably think. I was carrying a lot of unnecessary muscle. This isn’t bodybuilding; it is professional MMA. Plus, I had stopped cutting from over 200 lbs for fights, like I used to back in my early UFC days, and was keeping my bodyweight around 190 lbs. I thought that I would be able to keep all of my punching power at welterweight, and by shedding some of the unnecessary muscle, I thought that my cardiovascular conditioning would improve, as well.”

The results were exactly what he had hoped for, as Baroni debuted in the division (well, it was a catchweight bout at 175 lbs, but that is close enough) with a one-punch knockout win in London. Two more wins solidified the move to welterweight for Baroni and reestablished him as a contender, though this time in the welterweight division.

Yet, something was still missing from his career. It didn’t take long for him to realize that it was his ever-present desire to return to the place where it all started for him—the UFC.

“Honestly, everything I had done up to that point—going over to Japan and beating PRIDE’s top guys, dropping to welterweight, taking the Shamrock fight, all of it—was about setting up a return to the UFC at some point down the road,” he said.

That opportunity finally arose a couple of months ago when he received word that UFC brass was interested in signing him to a multi-fight deal to compete in the welterweight division. Baroni was like a kid on Christmas when he signed the contract, sending out text messages and calling those close to him with the news.

Not long after he agreed to terms on his UFC contract, Baroni learned the identity of his first opponent—winner of the seventh installment of The Ultimate Fighter, Amir Sadollah. From a matchup perspective, Sadollah is the perfect opponent for a fan-friendly fight. He is a Thai-style fighter with good Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, though only marginal takedown skills, so this is a fight should unfold largely on the feet, unless Baroni, who was a collegiate wrestler, decides to take the action to the ground.

In other words, this should be a shootout at the OK Corral, an opportunity the NYBA relishes against any opponent.

“It should be a fun fight,” Baroni acknowledged, without offering more when asked how the fight would unfold.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, stop right there. A fun fight? That is it? What happened to the entertaining rants, cautionary warnings to his opponents and all the other quotables that made Baroni one of the best interview subjects over the years?

“Look, I’ve said it all already,” Baroni said. “The trash talking is starting to sound like a broken record, even to me. Nothing that I say is going to affect the outcome of the fight. Nothing he says is going to affect the outcome of the fight. There is no need to hype it up because he is a big name among the fans after winning the reality show. I’m coming to reestablish myself in the UFC at his expense, and I’m sure he is coming to do the exact same thing at my expense, since he lost his last bout.”

Huh? Not even one little “I’m going to send his jaw into the tenth row” sound bite?

“I’m done with all that, at least for now,” he said. “I’m not focused on that stuff. I’m focused on my training. I’ve got a tremendous opportunity in front of me, and I’m doing everything that I can to properly prepare so that I can take full advantage of it.”

Proper preparation for this fight included relocating his training camp back to the American Kickboxing Academy in San Jose, California under the watchful eye of top trainer Javier Mendez.

“My best performances over the last few years have come after spending quality time with Jav and the guys at AKA,” Baroni explained. “I get to spar with three of the top five welterweights in the world. No other gym in the world can offer the same quality of welterweights. Josh Koscheck, Mike Swick and Jon Fitch are all preparing for upcoming fights, so this is the perfect place for me to get top, top training.”

With those words, Baroni paused for a moment, reflecting internally on his time spent with Mendez and the guys at AKA. For the first time in a long, long time, Baroni feels like he is part of a tight-knit team, one that he trusts unconditionally. That is something that virtually all fighters need in order to reach their full potential.

“You know, the one regret that I have looking back is that I didn’t seek out Jav’s training earlier,” he said softly, as if he was talking to himself. “He is a former champion kickboxer and a great trainer, so he understands the sport from both sides of the coin. Plus, the guys here have really rallied behind me to help me prepare and get back to the top of my game. I’ve never really had that kind of support from so many top guys. Jav, Kos, Swick, Fitch and the rest of the crew at AKA have been great, even though I’m the low man on the totem pole. I cannot thank them enough.”

Baroni’s time at AKA appears to have really paid off because he talks with a quiet confidence that is very unusual for the brash knockout artist. His bout with Sadollah is right around the corner, and though Sadollah isn’t the biggest name on his resume, this may very well be the biggest fight of his career because of what is at stake. A spectacular win probably propels him back into the limelight that he enjoyed years ago, though a win in any fashion reestablishes him as a welterweight mainstay, which appears to be his main focus.

“I’ve been thinking about this moment since the day that Zuffa released me back in early 2005,” Baroni said. “The UFC is my home, and I’m ready to come home again.”