Two UFC bouts in two weeks? Maybe Cerrone should ask someone who's done it

Chris Leben

The hours and days that followed Chris Leben’s TKO victory over Aaron Simpson in Las Vegas in June 2010 were pretty typical, the way he remembers it.

First, he celebrated the way he usually did after a win, which included “the one big party night in Vegas,” as Leben told MMAjunkie.

“Then I went home, me and my wife ordered a large pizza, ate the whole thing, and then (UFC matchmaker) Joe Silva was calling me in the morning,” Leben (22-12 MMA, 12-10 UFC) said.

What Silva asked him to do was something that no fighter in the modern era of the UFC had done – fight two UFC bouts in two weeks. It’s the same feat that Donald Cerrone (25-6 MMA, 13-3 UFC) will attempt to repeat on Sunday, when he faces former UFC lightweight champion Benson Henderson (21-4 MMA 9-2 UFC) in UFC Fight Night 59’s FOX Sports 1-televised co-headliner just 15 days after his unanimous-decision victory over Myles Jury at UFC 182 on Jan. 3.

For Cerrone, who’s talked openly in the past about his struggles with the mental game, the quick turnaround would seem to alleviate at least a few of his usual concerns. With the next fight coming so soon after the last, there’s no time to overthink things or stress himself out, which Cerrone has described as the worst part of preparing for a fight.

“If I just met you at a bar and fought you, it’s a whole lot different,” Cerrone told MMAjunkie in September. “But there’s a lot of what-ifs and expectations (with a pre-planned UFC bout). It kind of wears on you a little bit.”

That’s not an uncommon concern, even for the professional tough guys of MMA, said Xtreme Couture head coach Robert Follis. The anticipation, the weeks and sometimes months of dwelling on the fight and the opponent, that’s where a lot fighters beat themselves, he said.

“It’s like the difference between someone telling you, ‘That’s it; we’re going to fight right now,’ and them telling you, ‘OK, we’re going to meet back here in six weeks and fight,’” Follis said. “You’re going to go home and, I don’t care who you are, a part of you is going to be wondering, ‘Why does he want to wait six weeks? What’s going to happen in six weeks?’ That can stress you out.”

It’s true that getting back into the cage so quickly and on short notice can eliminate some of those stressors, Leben said. But what you gain on the mental side, you might give up on the physical end.

That’s what he found out when he went straight from his second-round TKO of Simpson at The Ultimate Fighter 11 Finale to a bout with Yoshihiro Akiyama at UFC 116 just 14 days later. Since that time, two other fighters have attempted similar feats in the UFC, with Dustin Pague fighting twice in the span of 14 days, and Chas Skelly doing the same in 13 days.

Although Leben admitted that, when he first got the offer, he “really didn’t want to take that fight,” there were some advantages to making the quick turnaround.

“It is easier in a lot of ways,” Leben said. “It’s also harder in a lot of ways. Mentally, it’s easier because you don’t have time to stress. You’ve got a week to train and then boom, you’re there again, and it’s like deja vu. You just did this. Really, it’s kind of nice in that aspect. You watch tape on the guy one time, you go in, and figure out your game plan, train for four or five days at home, and then the next thing you know, you’re on an airplane.”

Donald Cerrone

The problem, Leben added, was that his entire training camp for the Simpson fight had been built around the goal of bringing his body to the absolute limit of what it could handle just in time for fight night, with the understanding that he’d have time to rest and recover once the fight was over.

“You really can’t peak twice in that short a time,” Leben said. “My body was falling apart preparing for that Akiyama fight. I remember doing some drills and almost breaking down in tears because I was hurting so bad. But what do you expect when you already went through a full training camp? It’s already a tightrope walk as it is, wondering if you’re overtrained or undertrained, could you do a little more and be better, or will you just end up hurting yourself? To do all that and then, when you’re supposed to take a break, to take another fight, that’s tough.

“And you know the other guy has been training for weeks with this certain date in mind,” Leben added. “Here you’ve just fought and are trying to get back on the horse, so the deck is really stacked against you.”

So why did Leben do it? The money played a big part, naturally. He received “a nice little bonus” from the UFC for stepping in on short notice so soon after his previous fight, he said, and he also took home official bonuses in each fight – $25,000 for “Knockout of the Night” against Simpson, and $75,000 for “Fight of the Night” against Akiyama. The financial implications, Leben said, were “a major motivating factor in that decision.”

For Leben, the gamble worked out just about as well as it could have. Two weeks after knocking out Simpson, he submitted Akiyama with a third-round triangle choke after a wild, seesaw fight that, to his memory, “was more a drunken bar brawl” than a technical masterpiece. And yes, Leben will admit now, the fact that he won both fights probably makes it easier for him to look back on it as a positive, though physically taxing experience. Then again, he suspects that winning the first one made it easier in some ways for him to win the second.

“Mentally, you probably have the upper hand, especially coming off a win,” Leben said. “That momentum, believing you’re going to win, that’s such a huge part of fighting. I think that really plays a role because you have that in your mind, that feeling like, ‘Hey, I just won. I’m a winner.’ You don’t have a chance to doubt yourself.”

In that sense, Cerrone’s decision to fight an old foe like Henderson so soon after a win could be a genius move to get over a psychological hurdle. If he had too much time to think about it, Cerrone might be tempted to dwell on the fact that Henderson already has two wins over him. He might put himself in a bad place mentally before his feet ever touch the canvas. This way, he comes in fresh off a win over Jury, feeling unstoppable.

It may very well result in another win for Cerrone, Leben acknowledged, but there is one unforeseen and unintended consequence that comes with doing it that way. If he beats Henderson, Cerrone shouldn’t expect people to remember too much about his fight with Jury. For some reason, grouping them so close together seems to encourage fans to forget the first and only remember the second, which is a shame, in a way.

“Because, man, when I fought Aaron Simpson, I thought that was a great fight,” Leben said. “He was undefeated at the time, and I did well. But the second fight, the Akiyama fight, because it was this wild, back-and-forth fight, it kind of overshadowed it. I never heard about that Aaron Simpson fight ever again. No one ever mentions that fight to me. Not ever.”

For more on UFC Fight Night 59, check out the UFC Rumors section of the site.