Dec-9-2009

Alan Belcher - The Hunted and The Hunter

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By Thomas Gerbasi

If Wilson Gouveia was the superstitious type, he may be thinking about the fact that this Saturday he’s going to become the fourth American Top Team fighter to face Alan Belcher, and that the previous three – Jorge Santiago, Kalib Starnes, and Denis Kang – were all finished by ‘The Talent’.

Ah, but that’s only MMA math at work. It doesn’t really mean anything when Gouveia and Belcher step into the Octagon this weekend, right? Or does it?

“I know (ATT founder Ricardo) Liborio and every time I see him, he’s always super nice to me, and I know that he has a lot of respect for me,” said Belcher. “But I do use that as an edge going into a fight, especially now that I’ve got three against them.”

But there is the flip side of the coin as well, and that’s that the coaches in Coconut Creek, Florida have had ample time to dissect the Arkansas native’s game, making him even more of a target for their top middleweight, Gouveia. Luckily for Belcher, he’s not only aware of this probability, but he’s preparing for it.

“They’re really gonna try to pick me apart and hopefully they overthink it and I can use that against them,” he said. “But my plan definitely has to change because I expect they’re trying to read me. I change every fight, but there are a couple of things about me that are pretty easy to figure out. I’ve got good fundamental boxing, fast hands, a fast jab, and I punish everybody with low kicks. So I’ve got to find a way to change it up and surprise them.”

With nine bouts in the UFC, you would figure that there isn’t much left to figure out about any fighter, but when you’re Belcher and only 25 years old, it’s clear that we haven’t yet seen everything he can do in combat.

“Physically, my peak or my prime, whatever you want to call it, is coming soon,” said Belcher, who is 5-4 in the Octagon and 13-5 overall. “I’m taking advantage of getting a strength coach that is my favorite one I’ve ever worked with (Lyle Henley). He’s made me a lot faster and stronger and I felt like that was slipping away. I used to rely on my speed and explosiveness and then I felt like man, I’ve kinda been going off what I had and not really working on it. This time, I worked on that so much that I think people are gonna be able to see a big difference in my power and the way that I can push the fight, and I think that may be the key.”

Yet when you’re young and basically learning on the job in the biggest organization in mixed martial arts, inconsistency can often rear its ugly head, and it certainly has in Belcher’s case. On some nights, like when he submitted Sean Salmon or KOed Jorge Santiago, he’s looked unbeatable. On others, as in his losses to Kendall Grove and Jason Day, he seemed to be a different fighter. Sometimes, this Jekyll and Hyde act would go on in the same fight, and this inconsistency hurt him in July, when he dropped a controversial split decision to Yoshihiro Akiyama at UFC 100. And while it was an exciting battle that earned him a Fight of The Night bonus, that was a minor consolation.

“Let’s put it this way – if I wouldn’t have got fight of the night, I would have made a lot bigger fuss about it and would have been a lot angrier and a lot more bitter than I am,” said Belcher. “But don’t get me wrong, I’m still angry and bitter now. I feel like that should have been my third straight win – I haven’t won three straight in the UFC and I took that third fight against a really good opponent and I beat his butt for three rounds and I lost.”

Belcher claims to have watched the Akiyama fight “a hundred times” since that summer night, and it still bothers him that he lost. Yet at the same time, he admits that the bout – one of the best of 2009 – was close.

“I’m not gonna say they (the judges) are blind and that anyone who watched that knows that I won. Of course not. It depends on who’s watching it and what they’re looking at. It was a hard one to judge, but it seems obvious that I won.”

Then he chuckles.

“I’m biased.”

He is, but that’s good, and the Akiyama fight was definitely one that could have gone either way. But regardless of the outcome, Belcher did take some lessons from the fight while gaining new respect for the Asian superstar, whose UFC debut was met with tremendous fanfare.

“He came back when I knocked him down and really showed that he’s got a lot of heart and that he’s not just a worldwide celebrity and a pretty boy,” said Belcher of Akiyama. “He’s a real fighter, and yeah, he surprised me. I beat the heck out of his legs, I had his eye closed, and my mistake is that I should have put out a little more effort to close the show, but I still feel like I did the best I could. I’m learning each fight at a time how to win better, and the longer I’m in this game, the more it’s gonna get worse for my opponents. I’m just gonna keep finding ways to win.”

That’s not what prospective opponents want to hear out of Belcher, as the more experience he gets, the better he will be when the bell rings. And in Gouveia, he’s fighting someone who could be his twin when it comes to putting on exciting fights, being able to battle it out on the feet or the mat, and yes, the “I” word – inconsistency. Belcher plans on separating himself from his twin and the middleweight pack this weekend though.

“Everyone knows Gouveia’s tough, they know I’m tough; they know I’m skilled, they know he’s skilled, but this is the one where if I can show that I’m that much ahead of him everywhere, that will give me that boost and will put me in a different category. I think I’m gonna have a breakthrough in this fight, and I’m starting on the path that I want to be on.”

And more than three years after a 22-year old Belcher stepped into the Octagon for the first time against Yushin Okami, it looks like he’s finally figured out how to train, how to eat, how to fight, and yeah, how to have fun with the life he has chosen for himself.

“The first couple years were rough,” he admits. “I put a lot of pressure on myself, had a lot of ups and downs and some really deep depressive months, but I figured out a way to enjoy this a little bit more and not put so much pressure on myself. I don’t want to turn into one of those guys that’s like ‘if I lose, I did the best I could, but it’s part of the game.’ You can’t really beat yourself up about this. I’m just now starting to have fun, and that’s really what it’s all about.”