The List: When losses aren’t really losses

For too long, our writers’ hyper-specific arguments have been confined to the private corridors of the Internet. Welcome to The List, where we take their instant message bickerings, add a little polish, and make them public. Today, in the wake of Alexander Gustafsson’s courageous, if unsuccessful, bid for the UFC light-heavyweight title, we look at fights in which the loser didn’t really lose.

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1. Chael Sonnen’s first fight with Anderson Silva, because he bloodied the god

Chael Sonnen and Anderson Silva, UFC 117

Steven Marrocco: To watch circa 2010 Anderson Silva get thrashed by Chael Sonnen was to see the facade of the sport’s best crack and almost crumble inside 20 minutes.

Silva might have drawn the wrath of fans and the UFC for not performing to the best of his abilities a couple times prior to that, but until that August night, those abilities had never been cast into doubt in the octagon. No one had really given him a tough fight. (Demian Maia’s late surge in the UFC 112 debacle owed more to Silva’s competitive ennui.)

All of the sudden, though, here was Sonnen, a mid-card guy known to many as “the guy who screamed when Renato ‘Babalu’ Sobral heel-hooked him,” doing the impossible. Or rather, doing exactly what he quite colorfully said he was going to do, which was using his wrestling to ground the master striker and pound his face into the canvas. We knew not at that moment Sonnen was aided by a broken rib Silva suffered prior to the fight. Sonnen’s takedowns, one after the other, represented one of the sport’s most sacred cows simply getting his butt whipped.

It was Sonnen who would end up crumbling, as before in the WEC against Paulo Filho, under the pressure of keeping his momentum, and Silva would show unbreakable will in securing a triangle-armbar in the fifth round. But the loss would mint “The American Gangster” as someone who rose to the occasion, who did what he said he was going to do against a guy who was supposed to maul him.

It would turn him into a headliner. It would also refine his act as his era’s definitive heel, a role he studied intently growing up. He would go on to squander his career capital with several poor decisions out of the cage, but he won so much more than he lost when he tapped at UFC 117.

2. ‘Shogun’ Rua’s decision loss to Lyoto Machida, because he wuz robbed

Lyoto Machida and Mauricio Rua, UFC 104

Ben Fowlkes: When is a loss really a win? How about when the dude who lost should have won. That’s what happened to Mauricio Rua in his first fight for Lyoto Machida’s UFC light-heavyweight title at UFC 104 in 2009.

Looking back, this fight seems like a pivotal moment in our collective understanding of MMA judging. It was the fight in which Machida’s elusiveness supposedly outweighed Rua’s violence-ness. It was the fight in which, after being roundly criticized for calling the wrong guy the winner, judge Cecil Peoples defended himself by insisting that leg kicks “certainly” don’t finish fights (except for those times when they do). It was the fight in which we first started to suspect that “octagon control” was a phrase that could mean whatever you wanted it to mean.

It was also a fight in which “Shogun” got screwed out of a win and a title. You know that’s the case because Machida’s very next title defense was a rematch with Rua at UFC 113, which is not the kind of thing that usually happens after a clear and uncontroversial win for the champ. It was kind of the UFC’s way of telling us that the judges got it wrong, so why not just ignore them and try this thing again?

Fortunately for Rua, he didn’t need the scorecards in the second meeting. He knocked Machida out in the first round, thus bringing an end to the short-lived Machida era. In a perfect world, he would have celebrated by kicking Peoples in the leg.

3. Rory MacDonald’s second loss to Robbie Lawler, because it was ‘Fight of the Ever’

Rory MacDonald and Robbie Lawler, UFC 189

Mike Bohn: Rory MacDonald took a beating of otherworldly measures from Robbie Lawler in their rematch for the UFC welterweight championship at UFC 189 earlier this year.

MacDonald not only left the octagon with a broken nose and foot in the fifth-round knockout loss, but he also left with the respect of the sport’s spectators because he pushed champ Lawler to his absolute limit. In what many consider the current “Fight of the Year,” described by UFC President Dana White as his “Fight of the Ever,” MacDonald and Lawler went back-and-forth for nearly 25 epic minutes.

Lawler defeated MacDonald by split decision at UFC 167 in November 2013 and didn’t want to leave the fight in the judges’ hands again. The title fight came down to the wire, and MacDonald held a 3-1 edge on all three scorecards going into the fifth round.

“Ruthless” then showed why he’s the king of the rematch. He improved to 4-0 when facing an opponent for the second time when he crushed MacDonald’s already-broken nose with a final shot that sent the Canadian crashing to the canvas in agony.

Sporting a severely split lip and covered in both his own blood and MacDonald’s, Lawler finished the job to keep the title and move to 7-1 since he returned to the UFC a little more than two years ago.

When a fighter has two losses to a given champion – as Miesha Tate, Joseph Benavidez and Renan Barao do, for example – he or she is typically put way on the back burner in the title discussion. MacDonald’s remarkable effort in defeat put him in a unique position in which few, if any, would complain if he ended up in the octagon with Lawler again.

4. Nick Diaz’s first fight with K.J. Noons, because no one seems to remember he got embarrassed

K.J. Noons and Nick Diaz

Dann Stupp: It was 2007, the upstart EliteXC promotion was nearly a full year into a short but memorable run as a major promotion, and Nick Diaz was the Nick Diaz we still know today.

Kevin “Kimbo Slice” Ferguson had just “submitted” Bo Cantrell in 19 seconds in the co-headliner, and “EliteXC: Renegade” was about to wrap up at American Bank Center in Corpus Christi, Texas, with a fight for the organization’s inaugural lightweight (160-pound) title.

Diaz, a hefty 4-1 favorite over pro boxer/MMA fighter K.J. Noons, was looking to claim some gold and cement his status as one of EliteXC’s key stars, joining the likes of “Kimbo,” Gina Carano, Frank Shamrock, Murilo Rua and the rest of the organization’s strangely intriguing motley crew of characters.

However, unlike some of the fights my coworkers relive above, Diaz not only loss, but he lost in convincing fashion. Yet, we seem to remember the asterisk of that fight – the defeat was officially the result of a doctor’s stoppage due to a cut – and not what led to it.

Quite simply, Diaz got worked. Noons’ head and footwork was a thing of beauty. He stuffed takedowns was ease, and he smoothly escaped Diaz’s only real submission attempt. He blasted the 209er with a knee to the face, and he dropped him with a right and then sent his mouthpiece flying with another. Midway through the round, Noons’ knee opened a deep gash in the substantial scar tissue around Diaz’s eye. The doctor allowed the fight to continue after a mid-round check, but once that lopsided first round ended, he called off the bout (much to the anger of the Texas crowd), and Noons was declared the winner and new champion.

Yet, all we seem to remember these days is that, 1) Diaz lost a fight to Noons due to a cut, and, 2) Three years (and one in-cage brawl and a “don’t be scared, homie” quip) later, he got his revenge in a hard-fought five-rounder. We just seem to forget that part about Diaz getting totally worked before the doctor’s stoppage (seriously, go watch the fight).

In some ways, though, this was Diaz’s time to shine. The cult hero flipped off Noons, he flipped off the doctor, he flipped off the cameras, and he stormed out of the cage with his boys. Noons won the fight, and Diaz got the applause and all the attention afterward.

More importantly, it started an impressive revival for Diaz, who went on an 11-fight winning streak, headlined an EliteXC show on network television, claimed and then made a string of successul Strikeforce title defenses, and then got an invitation back to the UFC, where he was an instant headliner and title challenger.

Not bad for a guy who got his butt kicked by K.J. Noons that one time.