"He’s the guy," the new WSOF lightweight champ says. And Gaethje, like everyone in the Rocky Mountain region, joins in the Thatch chorus. But it’s out there, and it’ll only get worse the more successful he is (the cruel nature of the fight game). You get the sense that the word "expectation" both fuels and worries him - it’s his muse and the bane of his existence. I want to make sure I live up to those expectations." And even if I lose, that people go, ‘man, that was a good fight.’ As long as I have people saying, ‘that was a great fight,’ then I’ll be alright. "If I lose, that’s fine, but I want to make sure that every fight I have that it’s a good fight that people remember. "And, really, that’s really the only fear I have," he says. I think that’s the biggest fear for me…coming up short. What I do worry about the most is living up to some of my fans or the people who expect greatness out of me. "I don’t get nervous about the fighting, I don’t get nervous about the crowds. "I think the hardest part for me is not letting people down," he says. I want to come through.' - Brandon Thatch 'I don’t get nervous about the fighting, I don’t get nervous about the crowds. But the hunch is strong that Thatch is the future of the 170-pound weight class, even if those types of dream-big comments make him uneasy. Thatch will tell you the greatest pressure he faces isn’t necessarily to win rather than to simply put on a memorable fight. There was so much adrenalin, all those endorphins, that I was like, screw it - I had a beer afterwards and felt great." "I felt it, but I didn’t really feel it until the next day. "Actually, I don’t know how the shoulder injury happened," Thatch says. He also got a tidy little hematoma that night in Brazil which, if there are knocks to be found, point to over-eagerness on his part. At that moment he looked like one of those double-jointed contortionists who perform tricks with their socketry. It appeared as though it might have happened when he squeezed free of the clinch shortly before the knee that did Thiago in. Thatch suffered a torn labrum in the Thiago fight, which will keep him out around six months all told. On a sunny day in mid-January, as WSOF’s Justin Gaethje is getting his last hard workout in at Grudge before he’ll win the lightweight belt against Richard Patishnock, Thatch is standing next to Wittman with his arm in a sling shouting encouraging things. But there’s real conviction in his voice, proud unstifled steady conviction. He’s biased, of course, because he’s one of the carousel coaches that Thatch uses - along with Elevation’s Leister Bowling and Christian Allen - in greater Denver. Wittman, who runs the Grudge Training Center in Arvada, is unblinking as he’s saying it. "Guaranteed world champion," Trevor Wittman says. And even though Thiago and Justin Edwards are sample-sized glimpses, the question becomes…just how good can Thatch be? So far he’s made martial combat look a little too easy. It’s not just the way he’s doing it, but the speed, the poise, the power, the absolute efficiency. In a dozen fights he has finished off 11 guys in the first round. The knees, in fact, were being thrown furiously throughout - it was Ben Saunders crossed with post-apocalyptic Thunderdome.Īnd that was just what Brandon Thatch being Brandon Thatch. He finished Thiago in a little over two minutes after landing a nasty left knee into the hollow of Thiago’s rib cage. Less than three months later he went to Brazil, where Paulo Thiago has the clout of a national hero as a member of the special forces unit BOPE, and played the role of Krampus at Christmas. Thatch debuted in the UFC that same August month, also as a feature on the prelims, and - like McGregor - took home knockout of the night honors. There’s something about that 6-foot-2 stretch of human dystopia that feels pretty true. Boston, which is forever associated with Leprechauns and anything shamrock green, all but shutdown for a McGregor prelim in August when he fought Max Holloway.īut in embracing tomorrow’s stars in the present, the one name that perhaps didn’t register with such bombast as McGregor’s but still made good solid ripples was Brandon Thatch - the mohawked welterweight who in his spare times spins fire. It was a shame to see his momentum cut off just as it got rolling. He went 2-0 in 2013, and might have gone for more if he didn’t shred his ACL. It was something about the bow tie with the waxy whiskers and skinny jeans that got the ball rolling, but his fighting ability was no small side effect. In all the talk of breakout stars in 2013, the Irishman Conor McGregor caught the torrent.
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