The signs at the end of the road...

Roger Huerta didn't stick around very long after his loss to Eddie Alvarez. As I walked into the cage to interview Eddie, he was already on his way out. He was, understandably, devastated. He had just been dominated for two one-sided rounds and had been stopped for the first time in his career. He was physically beaten up and was distraught as well. He had gambled heavily on this fight and had lost everything. As I passed him at the cage door I saw a look on his face that I recalled seeing once before on a defeated fighter.

I was ringside doing the international feed for the first Affliction fight when Fedor demolished Tim Sylvia in the first round of their highly anticipated heavyweight showdown. The look on the face of Tim Sylvia after that fight was the same one I saw on the face of a defeated Roger Huerta. It wasn't the fact that he was blown out of the water, or that it had been a heavily hyped fight, it was the fact that he discovered where he ranked, how far he could rise in the annals of MMA, and it was not to #1.

While it can be extremely painful in the end, it is the ultimate goal of every fighter to answer 2 questions throughout the course of their career: how far can I go in this sport? and, for the ones who get to the top, how long can I stay there? The reason it's painful is that the vast majority of fighters aspire to be a champion, but only a handful actually will. As a result, there is an inevitable, painful realization for them that they wont ever get to the ultimate goal, and that realization is usually the result of a fairly one-sided beating. At the end of the Affliction fight Tim Sylvia realized that when the book of MMA history is written, he will be remembered as a championship heavyweight who, even at the height of his career, was always 2nd to the legendary Fedor. He understood his final resting place in the MMA hierarchy, and that is never an easy thing to face.

Roger Huerta is an extremely popular and entertaining fighter. He is personable, good-looking, and is one of the most recognizable figures in the sport, but he is not, and will most likely never be, an elite lightweight. He had his chances to be sure, he took on 3 of the best in the division: Kenny Florian, Gray Maynard, and Eddie Alvarez, and each time he fell short. Only the Gray Maynard fight was comparatively close, and the only beating he took was at the hands of Alvarez. He had come close, but elite status eluded him.

The problem is that most fighters can make an entire career out of being pretty good. The UFC is full of middling gatekeepers that will never crack the top-ten, even one who fell to Roger Huerta, Clay Guida, is still drawing a paycheck. Huerta is exciting and marketable, so what's the big deal if he cant beat the best? The promotional difficulty of Roger Huerta is that he received a LOT of hype at the beginning of his career. With hype comes scrutiny, many people who follow the sport knew that he had been fed a diet of GBNDs (game but not dangerous), guys that would bang with Roger and make an entertaining fight, but who didnt have the skill set to kill the golden goose. His potential was something of a negative, he had attracted too much attention to gate-keep (a-la Clay Guida or Kurt Pellegrino) and was in the divisional equivalent of a shark tank. The bubble could only hold for so long. Clay Guida can go on fighting for years without a title shot because no one EXPECTS very much from him, a LOT was expected of Roger Huerta.

Lets face it, the guy was managed REALLY well. The whole game plan was to build him up and keep him away from the upper levels of the sport. A good manager, Monte Cox in this case, knows what kind of fighter he has. Its his job to make sure that he faces the right fighter at the right time. Monte knew that Roger couldnt beat the best, so he kept him away from that level for as long as he could, but Roger wanted Kenny Florian and left Monte to pursue the fight. Five fights and four losses later, Roger finds himself in a tough spot. Due to his popularity he is used to commanding top dollar, so its going to be hard for him to find promoters willing to pay what he is used to getting. Japan is a tough market as well, as his exposure here will be of little value overseas.

After his fight I had one of his fans tweet me and say that he can still turn it around, as he is only 27. The first problem is that a 27 year-old isnt exactly a spring chicken in the fight world. True, you can last a lot longer in MMA than you can in boxing, but more than a few fighters have seen their best days by 25. Also, the psychological effects of this loss may be a bit too much to overcome. That look at the end of the fight said it all to me, Huerta saw the chasm between himself, and the best of in the sport. It will take a serious re-evaluation and re-dedication to change his training around and get over that gap.

I like Roger and as a fan I hope he goes for it...