Following his first-round knockout of Uriah Hall in the co-main event of Saturday’s UFC Fight Night 94, Derek Brunson proclaimed himself ready for a title shot.
After dropping Hall with a left hand hard enough to prompt a referee stoppage just one minute and 41 seconds into their grudge match, Brunson strode around the cage flashing the internationally recognized sign language for “Give me that belt.”
He pressed his face close to the chain link and shouted to play-by-play man Jon Anik and color commentator Brian Stann that he wanted to fight the champion. Doubling down on that assertion during his post-fight interview, he told Anik: “I’m next in line, let’s go!”
A short time later, however, Brunson’s demands seemed to have softened.
“I’m pretty much game to fight anybody,” he said in a backstage media scrum, via MMAjunkie’s Matt Erickson and Ken Hathaway. “I’m down to fight anybody that’s going to move me up and help my career and get me closer to that title shot.”
This more measured outlook will be helpful for Brunson moving forward.
His short and sweet victory over Hall conclusively established him as the middleweight division’s most underrated contender, but he still faces a long climb to the top.
This isn’t exactly Brunson’s fault, of course. It’s true due to two factors that have been out of his control—the relatively low-profile nature of his current five-fight win streak and the longstanding logjam above him in the 185-pound rankings.
But as Bleacher Report’s Mike Chiappetta noticed on fight night, Brunson’s status as one of his division’s best-kept secretes isn’t long for this world:
Derek Brunson's quietly won 7 of his 8 UFC fights. How much longer can he stay under the radar? Strong win tonite. #UFCHildalgo
— Mike Chiappetta MMA (@MikeChiappetta) September 18, 2016
It’s high time, in fact, to give Brunson the chance to prove himself against some of the weight class’ better-known entities.
While the top five contenders hash out the pecking order during the rest of this year, give Brunson the winner of Gegard Mousasi’s UFC 204 bout with Vitor Belfort. Or pit him against the matching five consecutive victories of 25-year-old Australian prospect Robert Whittaker.
Whatever the matchup, though, it’s clear Brunson should be done scratching out wins on low-profile cable TV broadcasts and pay-per-view preliminaries. As a guy who fights fast and plays the interview game just as well, he’s ready for some better exposure.
All four of Brunson’s most recent wins have come via first-round TKO, but he’s still just starting to come into his own as a contender.
If the UFC means to make something out of him—and those recent results suggest it absolutely should—the organization needs to afford him his fair share of the spotlight.
On Saturday, the 32-year-old North Carolina native became the first man to finish Hall during his UFC career, but it went down at a relatively anonymous Fight Night event in Hidalgo, Texas. With a six-fight main card that ran until nearly 1 a.m. ET and aired opposite an uncharacteristically interesting weekend of early-season college football, it's likely destined for fairly tepid ratings.
Then there was the mildly controversial nature of the referee stoppage to further undermine Brunson’s momentum.
He and Hall had jawed in the press leading up to this bout, and it appeared as though both men wanted to start fast in their bout. When Brunson caught Hall with that left as his opponent attempted to circle away from him, Hall’s head snapped back and he dropped as if already unconscious.
Turtled on his side near the edge of the mat, Hall turned his face away from Brunson and ineffectually tried to ward off the coming barrage of punches by holding up one arm. It was enough to prompt referee Herb Dean to quickly halt the action.
After the stoppage, however, Hall popped right to his feet to protest the call, and the slow-motion replay showed most of Brunson’s punches on the ground missed their mark.
The Texas crowd booed it, though overall Dean was justified once you consider Hall’s body language and the fact that he mistakenly hooked one of the ref’s legs for a potential takedown as the fight ended.
Still, it didn’t totally make for the sort of highlight finish that was going to rocket Brunson to the top of anyone’s must-see lists.
“Nobody’s really thrilled when they go out there and get caught with a shot ... But if the ref doesn’t jump in I’m going to keep punching and it’s just going to be more damage,” Brunson said of Hall's protests, via MMAjunkie.
The win improved Brunson’s overall record to 16-3 and 7-1 in the UFC. So far, his only loss has been a third-round TKO at the hands of Yoel Romero in a bout Brunson had been winning for the first 11 minutes.
Earlier this year, Romero also failed a UFC drug test, though he settled for a shortened six-month suspension after tests confirmed a dietary supplement he’d been taking contained banned substances.
Romero’s suspension, along with injuries to top-ranked fighters like Chris Weidman and Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza, have put middleweight in a holding pattern during the second half of this year.
Michael Bisping unexpectedly won the title from Luke Rockhold in June, but his scheduled first title defense against 46-year-old Dan Henderson at UFC 204 feels more like a piece of curiosity matchmaking than a relevant fight between two elite fighters.
Weidman and Souza are finally healthy, Romero will soon be back in action and Rockhold is picking up the pieces after his loss to Bisping. Still, it will be early 2017 before everything gets sorted out.
That leaves a guy like Brunson mired somewhere in the middle for the foreseeable future. He came into this bout ranked No. 10—Hall was No. 9—and could move up as many as three spots after ending the bout via quick knockout.
Moving forward, the UFC will have to figure out how to get him some bigger fights in front of as many eyeballs as possible while the top half of the division gets its stuff together.
And Brunson? He just needs to keep winning them.
