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BY JACOB DEBETS
JUL 18, 2019
Editor’s note: The views and opinions expressed below are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Sherdog.com, its affiliates and sponsors or its parent company, Evolve Media.
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On Saturday night, Urijah Faber marched into his first non-title Ultimate Fighting Championship bout where he was pegged as the underdog. Ricky Simon, the 26-year old upstart with a 3-0 record in the organisation and a Legacy Fighting Alliance strap having only recently been mounted in his trophy case, waited patiently on the opposite side of the Octagon. The overwhelming feeling of the audience -- if not in the Golden 1 Center -- was one of resignation.
Simon was a 4-to-1 favorite, and there was every reason to suspect this was not going to be the homecoming Sacramento was pulling for. Even if you ignored Simon’s 15-1 record and credentials, the storyline of a 40-year old Faber scoring an electrifying win, two and a half years removed from his swan song, is one the Fight Gods have always been reluctant to manifest. Simon was going to do to Faber what Yair Rodriguez did to B.J. Penn and Francis Ngannou did to Cain Velasquez, and after it was all said and done, we were going to collectively admonish ourselves for believing in an alternate scenario.
But Faber did pull out the victory, in all of 46 seconds, and in one of the most bizarre reversals of fortune has thrust himself into the orbit of dual bantamweight and flyweight champion Henry Cejudo. After he successfully dispatched the streaking Marlon Moraes back at UFC 238 in June, the man who recently anointed himself “Triple C” outlined a hitlist of 135-pounders that he wanted to defend his second strap against, which included “The California Kid.” The storyline between him and Cejudo may be less compelling than former Team Alpha Male fixture “Joey two-times,” who’s campaigning to rematch the champ down at 125 pounds, and deserving challengers -- among them Petr Yan and Aljamain Sterling -- abound at 135. But Faber is undoubtedly the most popular figure on the shortlist, and if history is any guide, the UFC will closely consider slotting the former World Extreme Cagefighting champion into the title-challenger position, to hell with the rankings.
And that, moreso than his TKO over Simon, is the story: after all these years and failed title shots -- four in the UFC, three more before that after he lost his WEC strap to Mike Thomas Brown -- Faber still has a way of capturing our imagination.
Read more at https://www.sherdog.com/news/articl...uld-Let-it-Move-On-158597#Yz9aYp64f33Pwodl.99
