Sport category: Fighters Joe Stevenson Excited About Fighting Again
Date: 30-03-2006 22:25
Joe Stevenson is in rare form – not just with his fight game, which will be necessary for him to be successful in his April 6th bout with Josh Neer on the Ultimate Fight Night show at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, but with his one-liners, which were flying out at a breakneck pace as he made his way to practice last week.
When reminded of this, he just chuckles. “I got a lot of ‘em.”
With a victory in the welterweight division of ‘The Ultimate Fighter’ last November and the UFC contract that comes with it, a wife, three boys, and a new lease on a career he thought was over before he got the call to appear on the reality series, he can afford to laugh and feel good about life. It’s about as good as you can feel in a hurt business like this.
“Having my kids see me on TV, and my friends and family saying ‘good job’ because I’ve accomplished something, that feels good,” said Stevenson of life after TUF2.
Fighting professionally since he was 16, Stevenson paid his dues on the local show circuit, jumped up to promotions like King of The Cage and Gladiator Challenge, but the call to the big show – the UFC never came. About to leave the fight game behind and move on with his life, he earned a berth on ‘The Ultimate Fighter’ and the rest is history.
Now, at 23, he’s seen as one of the UFC’s rising stars, and with the 155-pound weight class back in the organization, he’s even more excited about a drop to the lightweight division and possible world championship honors.
“I’m pretty excited about the lightweight class, and I think I’m going to drop down immediately after this fight to ’55,” said Stevenson. “I’m as happy as a fat kid that found a piece of candy in his pocket.”
And for someone who was on the fence about whether he still even wanted to fight a while ago, the return of the lightweights has also re-lit Stevenson’s competitive fire.
“I’m sitting there like, ‘okay, this is great – 170 is a great weight, how long am I really gonna do this?’ But 55’s come around and I’m starting to get excited again because there’s something where I can have immediate, great success, whereas at ’70, the path I had to go was Mount Everest. Now I have a big hill in front of me, but nothing like at 70. Half the guys are gonna go back down to ’55 and when you look at it this way, I feel that if I accomplish what I need to in the ‘55s, I’m just better equipped to go back to 170.”
But all this is speculation at this point because Stevenson first has a stern test in front of him next Thursday in the tough as nails Neer.
“He is a tough guy,” concurs Stevenson. “You get that from everyone – he’s not great at this or that, but he’s tough.”
Neer is also in a situation where he’s got nothing to lose. Stevenson’s the ‘name’ in the bout, the guy expected to win in his first fight after winning ‘The Ultimate Fighter’. All the pressure’s on him. If Neer loses, well, he was supposed to, so now he can go in there with all guns blazing and try to shock the MMA world and silence the doubters. That’s a lot for Stevenson to have to deal with.
“In any facet of life that would be a dangerous circumstance,” he admits. “It’s like a mouse is stuck against the wall and a snake is trying to eat it, and then pretty soon the mouse snaps and attacks the snake. Or your house is burning down and your kids are inside the house – you’re gonna run inside and do superhuman things.”
“But I’m not comparing that to that, I’m just saying that he doesn’t have a chance.”
Stevenson waits for the laughter to subside before explaining himself.
“Just like he takes it that way, I take it that way,” he said. “This money is the money I’m gonna use to feed my kids and send them to college. As much as he thinks that he has nothing to lose and that he’s gonna give it all out there, I have everything to lose and I’m gonna give it all out there.”
So he’s comfortable as being the ‘reality show guy’ and having a target on his back from fighters who have come up the more traditional way?
“Yeah, bring it,” he said. “I don’t really like fighting; I just do it because I’m decent at it. But when someone wants a piece of me, it makes it so much easier to get a fire under your butt.”
Stevenson would have had an all-out inferno going if his original opponent for this match – Chris Brennan – had been secured for the bout. So was it disappointing that he won’t have the opportunity to avenge one of his early career defeats?
“Of course it was,” he said. “Can I sit here and blame him for not wanting to get destroyed by me? Nooo. I can’t. He can retire and say ‘I beat Joe Stevenson.’ I don’t know what type of man he’s gonna feel like saying, ‘well, he was 17 years old and I never gave him a rematch,’ but that’s his thing.”
Stevenson’s ‘thing’ right now is preparing for the first fight of the rest of his career on April 6th, and even though he’s a relative newcomer to the UFC, the respect for his ground game is widespread throughout the sport. How does he keep it sharp?
“I roll with people like Jay Hieron, Sam Morgan, and Marc Laimon on a daily basis,” he said. “If you’re green, you grow, and if you’re ripe, you rot, and about once a month I do learn something new.”
And his opponents’ respect for his ground attack also gives him the opportunity to sharpen other aspects of his game.
“If you’re so intimidating at one thing, you can now go other avenues,” said Stevenson. “I can start working on my standup and not really worry about it going to the ground for a while. Certain opponents you want to fight certain ways, and this opens up a lot of different opportunities.”
Opportunities. They’re what every fighter dreams of, and now Joe Stevenson has a world full of them. That makes the pain of training and fighting worth it, and they’re what keeps him striving for the top.
“I love to practice,” he said. “It’s just a lot harder with a baby and a wife and other things, which always seem to happen to me. But I’m still excited – there’s nothing like seeing a billboard of me. (Laughs) I called my mom, ‘you’ve got to see this.’ I’m excited, and I’m just talking about that level to where I may be in pain, but I can’t even feel it because of the fun and excitement that I’m having.”
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