Dec-23-2006

Chris Leben – Revenge Now, Redemption Later

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By Thomas Gerbasi

Like a lot of people, Chris Leben was shocked when his Team Quest teammate Ed Herman got dismantled and submitted by Jason MacDonald in just 2:43 of the first round in October, but unlike many, Leben gets a chance to get a measure of revenge for his buddy when he faces MacDonald this Saturday at UFC 66.

Well, at least that’s the handy hook for us media types, who are always looking for the juiciest angle for a story.  Is it legit though?

“I’d say yes and no,” said Leben.  “Eddie’s a stablemate of mine and he’s also one of my best friends and he’s a really good fighter.  I think he went out and put on a lackluster performance from the way he usually fights, but I want to show him (MacDonald) that Eddie’s just as good as me and I’m gonna go out there and whip his ass, so that way I can get a little redemption for Herman, absolutely.  But at the same time, it’s one on one when they close the gate, and I’m fighting for myself just as much.”

It’s an interesting situation for Leben to be in.  Not only is he making his pay-per-view debut, he’s doing it against a fighter who looked spectacular in his last fight, but whose career has also been up and down to this point.  How do you prepare for a guy who has been both Jekyll and Hyde in competition?

“Obviously you prepare as if the good one’s gonna show up,” said Leben.  “I’m training for the toughest Jason MacDonald there is, but yeah, guys like that are dangerous because when you go out there and beat ‘em, everybody goes ‘yeah, but he’s got this many losses.’  But then you look at his record and he choked out Joe Doerksen and beat other good guys too.  So these are the kind of guys you need to beat in your career, but you can’t take them lightly.”

Despite his erratic history though, MacDonald is the real deal and just another in the string of tough fighters faced by Leben, who still hasn’t gotten the respect due to a scrapper who has never shied away from a challenge in his UFC career.  Of course, with that ‘anyone, anywhere’ attitude, eventually you’ll run into someone who won’t cooperate.  For Leben, that someone was current UFC middleweight champion Anderson Silva, who handed him his first Octagon loss via a first round stoppage in June.

It was a devastating setback, one that would have put many fighters on the shelf for months as they tried to rebuild a shattered psyche, but Leben being Leben, he requested an immediate return to the Octagon and got it less than two months later against Brazil’s Jorge Santiago, who ‘The Crippler’ knocked out in the second round.  Was he gun-shy at all in his comeback bout?

“Not really,” he said.  “It seems that a lot of people were really concerned about that with me, and I don’t know why.  I’m a fighter and I go out there to fight.  The bottom line is, if you drive a car long enough, you’re gonna get in a wreck.  And every great fighter has a loss somewhere along the way in his career – every real champ that I can think of.”

And truth be told, many were surprised that Leben did come back the way he did, either because of the nature of the loss to Silva or because they were just looking for a reason to denigrate the 26-year old Oregon native, who has compiled a stellar 16-2 mixed martial arts record.

“Those who doubted me, I hope I surprised them,” said Leben.  “It seems like there’s a lot of guys out there, a lot of fans of the sport that aren’t fans of mine.  No matter what I do, they seem to find a way to go, ‘oh well, he’s still not that good.’  I hope I surprised those guys.”

That’s shocking and sad in itself, because at the end of the day, Leben’s the type of fighter you should cheer for, mainly because he’ll fight anyone and he always comes to war on fight night.

“To be honest, it doesn’t matter to me,” he admits.  “There are a lot of people like that in the world and the important thing to me is: do they care?  I don’t care if they like me or don’t like me – I have my friends and family and they all love me, that’s the important thing.  Whether or not the fans like me or don’t like me, I don’t care, as long as it’s one of the two.  If they’re not concerned, if I’m just some everyday Ultimate Fighter that says ‘I’ll fight anybody’ and doesn’t talk any trash, and just goes out and grounds and pounds and nobody cares if they win or lose, then I’m concerned.  If people don’t care whether I win or lose, then I’m concerned.  As long as they care one way or another, that’s fine with me.”

Well, everyone can agree on that point – love him or hate him, you want to see Leben fight, and if he wins on Saturday against MacDonald, he hopes that 2007 will bring the type of fights which will finally earn him not only respect, but possibly some redemption in the form of a title fight rematch with Silva.  But to get there, he’ll have to keep winning and get some high-profile scalps on his belt.  

“I try to stay off the internet, but people always bring it to me (laughs) and tell me, and it sounds like people are talking about me and Rich (Franklin) mixing it up,” said Leben of his plans for 2007.  “I don’t know, but I wouldn’t mind stepping in there with Rich.  I’m not afraid of fighting him and I think it would be a great and exciting fight for the fans.”

With Chris Leben, it usually is.