MMANEWSLEAK Exclusive:
The fight game, perhaps like no other, is all about “what have you done for me lately”. Quite frequently, when a fighter loses, the sky can literally be falling. For Nate Marquardt, the questions are beginning to mount; and unfortunately, those questions are not really deserved. Nate “The Great” has put together an impressive record (30-10-2) for more than 10 years of fighting.
But in every fighter’s career there are fights that can break a fighter, and for Marquardt that fight may have been the Chael Sonnen fight in February 2010 at UFC 109.
Sonnen dominated Marquardt and it looks like Sonnen may have walked away with more than a win in that fight; Sonnen may have taken Marquardt’s will to compete.
While Marquardt has not always been the most explosive and exciting fighter to step into the Octagon, he has been dominating in fights and knows what he needs to do to get to and win at the “elite” level in the sport.
The problem is that Marquardt has been questioning his desire/motivation to train. That became evident during his fight with Sonnen (UFC 109) and again with Okami (UFC 122). Speaking specifically about UFC 122, Marquardt never really pressed the action. As Marquardt said in the post-fight press conference, he felt like he was landing the harder punches but that he wasn’t putting combinations together.
Watching Marquardt fight it seemed apparent that the fight was there for Marquardt to win, all he had to do was dictate the pace, throw combinations. And while Marquardt talked about the opportunity to redeem his loss to middleweight champion Anderson Silva, there is no doubt that the level of intensity Marquardt gave in the Okami fight, well, let’s just say that it wasn’t championship level.
Now the question is, who does Marquardt fight to get back in contention? Many people say that he’s at least 3 fights away from another title shot – that means about 14 to 16 months away from a title shot. The better question is, who does he fight to get back into the mix?
It’s not likely that there will be a rematch with Sonnen any time soon and another loss, no matter to whom, could be devastating to Marquardt’s chances for a title shot. What is more likely to occur is that the UFC will give Marquardt a “gift” for a fight in order to get Marquardt back onto the winning track. Marquardt is a great guy and a highly skilled fighter – but he needs to have the same epiphany that Kenny Florian had – he needs to come into fights with a fire, intensityand with bad intentions for his opponent. Marquardt has tried to be “business like” in his approach – some one needs to tell Marquardt that this is a fight not a negotiation.
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