The Hulk ready for title defence after warmup win and long rehab
Published Thursday December 4th, 2008
A 95-second warmup win over Marcus Hicks in September proved Roger (The Hulk) Hollett's surgically repaired knee is up to the test. Now Hollett puts his Maximum Fighting Championship title on the line Friday night against California light-heavyweight Emanuel Newton.
The 205-pounder from Halifax is featured in the main event of the aptly named "MFC 19: Long Time Coming" at the River Cree Resort and Casino in Enoch on the western edge of Edmonton.
Hollett was 7-0 and coming off an MFC title win over UFC veteran Victor Valimaki when he stepped into the ring Oct. 20, 2007, against Lew Polley. He was riding the kind of win streak that draws the attention of UFC matchmaker Joe Silva, especially when his three previous victories had come in 15 seconds, 20 seconds and 36 seconds (a KO of Edmonton Eskimos fullback Mike Maurer).
"We were well on our way. It was just some bad luck, that's all," Hollett said.
The Polley fight changed everything. Defending Polley's first takedown attempt, a sprawling Hollett tried to maintain his balance and both fighters came down on his knee, which bent sideways. Hollett heard a "big loud pop" as the collision "ripped the whole thing."
To rub salt in the wound, he lost the Extreme Cage Combat fight. He managed to hold his own on the ground but, when the referee stood both fighters up, his knee was completely unstable. Hollett knew he was in trouble. Polley won by TKO in four minutes two seconds.
He had torn his anterior and medial cruciate ligaments, as well as the meniscus. Doctors repaired the knee with a new double graft procedure that used two ACLs from cadavers.
Eight months of physio and rehab later, the knee is doing fine. In fact it felt so good during his recuperation that doctors had to hold Hollett back from fighting, to ensure he gave it time to heal.
Hicks was quick to test the joint.
"He actually caught it quite a few times really hard. And it held up great," Hollett said.
If there was a plus to the injury, Hollett (8-1) no longer has the pressure of an unbeaten record - something that is rare at the highest level of mixed martial arts.
But it has delayed his progress to the UFC. At a question-and-answer session with fans in Toronto last month, UFC president Dana White said he did not know of Hollett when asked by a fan.
Newton (10-3-1) turned heads in MFC circles when he choked out UFC veteran David Heath at MFC 18 in September. He is unbeaten in his last 10 outings (9-0-1) and has won his last four by submission. Hollett believes Newton will want to take the fight to the ground.
"I don't imagine he'll try to stand with me too much. He says he's going to but I think he'll change his mind," said Hollett.
Striking is in Hollett's blood, after all. His father, Ralph Hollett, was a Canadian middleweight boxing champion.
But the younger Hollett also has grappling skills. Five of his wins have come through submission and he just got his brown belt in jiu-jitsu.
Described as a predator, Hollett doesn't waste time in fights. None of his nine bouts have gone past the first round and only two have gone past the three-minute mark.
Also on Friday's card, Las Vegas-based Canadian welterweight John Alessio takes on England's Paul (Semtex) Daley.
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The UFC has fleshed out its Dec. 13 card for the finale of Season 8 of "The Ultimate Fighter," adding 12 more cast members on the undercard of the light-heavyweight final between Ryan Bader and Vinny Magalhaes and the lightweight final between Phillipe Nover and Efrain Escudero.
The other fights involving cast members are lightweights Junie Browning versus Dave Kaplan, John Polakowski versus Rolando Delgado, and George Roop versus Shane Nelson, and light-heavyweights Tom Lawlor versus Kyle Kingsbury, Jules Bruchez versus Eliot Marshall, and Shane Primm versus Krzysztof Soszynski, a Winnipeg native who now trains out of Temicula, Calif.
The Browning-Kaplan fight pits two of the more colourful characters from Season 8 against each other. Browning was almost turfed from the show twice over anger management issues while Kaplan, after a few cocktails, invited light-heavyweight Lawlor to test his jaw by slugging him. Lawlor did and Kaplan went down like a rock.
Also on the Dec. 13 card at The Palms in Las Vegas is middleweight Jason MacDonald of Red Deer, Alta, who takes on Wilson Gouveia. Welterweights Kevin Burns and Anthony Johnson meet in a rematch of their controversial fight in July when Johnson lost via TKO after taking an accidental poke in the eye.
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