Fabrico Werdum looks to prove he's as good as best nights, not as bad as worst

It’s been almost seven years since Fabricio Werdum lost a decision to Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira in the 2006 PRIDE open weight grand prix, and a lot has changed.

For one thing, PRIDE is but a memory. So are the days when Nogueira was the unfinishable, unsubmittable zombie warrior of MMA’s heavyweight division.

But a lot has changed for Werdum as well, and that loss is one of the big reasons why.

“The first time I fought [Nogueira] I was mostly just a jiu-jitsu fighter,” Werdum told MMAjunkie.com (mmajunkie.com) through an interpreter. “Ever since that fight I felt like I had to evolve.”

The fruits of that labor were on display just last year when Werdum made his return to the UFC with a dominant decision victory over heavyweight contender Roy Nelson at UFC 143. For three rounds, Werdum battered Nelson on the feet, showing off a striking game that he’d only hinted at in previous fights.

To many fight fans, Werdum’s growth as a fighter was a pleasant surprise. For Werdum, it was the reward for years worth of work, and it came at just the right time.

“I was very excited about coming back to the UFC, and that moment was so important that I trained a lot for it, prepared a lot for it,” Werdum said. “I already had my Muay Thai game, but I never had an opportunity to showcase it. I felt like with Roy Nelson, it made for that big comeback. I got to actually show the world that I have a standup game as well as my jiu-jitsu.”

But as impressive as that performance was, it stood in glaring contrast to his previous outing, when he lost a lackluster decision to Alistair Overeem in the Strikeforce heavyweight grand prix. It was a fight that saw Werdum open up only briefly in striking exchanges before falling to his back and openly pleading at times for Overeem to crawl into his guard. When he followed that up with a pummeling of Nelson in his return to the UFC, it left many fans wondering who this new Werdum was and why he didn’t show up for the Overeem fight.

According to Werdum, the real culprit in his loss to Overeem was overtraining. He’d trained so hard and so long for the opening round bout of the Strikeforce tournament, that by the time fight night rolled around he didn’t have much left in the tank.

“I think I went a little overboard,” Werdum said. “I always felt like I was 100 percent mentally there, but my body wasn’t really responding to my movements. I felt weak. In my mind I wanted to stay up, but I felt so physically weak that my only resource at that point was getting him to go to my guard. It was really a lack of physical resources in that fight.”

The timing of that loss was both unfortunate and yet strangely fortuitous for Werdum. On one hand, it halted the momentum he’d gained from submitting Fedor Emelianenko in one of the biggest upsets in MMA history back in June of 2010. It also leant more credence to claims that Werdum’s big problem was not just a lack of diversity in his game, but inconsistency.

After all, that loss to Overeem snapped the first three-fight win streak he’d had since moving into the big leagues of MMA. He was a fighter who could look brilliant one night, then stunningly mediocre another. As he added more tools to his arsenal, the problem with Werdum wasn’t that he couldn’t put it all together, but that he couldn’t keep it that way.

But there was an upside to losing that fight. Once he was eliminated from the Strikeforce tournament, it cleared the way for him to return to the UFC. After decisioning Nelson and then running over Mike Russow at UFC 147, he now has the makings of a streak. If he can just get past Nogueira in their rematch at the UFC of FUEL TV 10 event in Fortaleza, Brazil this Saturday night, he might even have the makings of a title shot. Or so he hopes, anyway.

“I see myself with the top fighters,” Werdum said. “I don’t usually go by rankings. I try to guide myself by what the fans say. I feel like I’m in the top five in the world in the division. I feel like I’m ready to fight for the belt.”

First, though, there’s Nogueira to think about. And it’s true, he’s not the fighter he used to be. He’s older, slower. We’ve seen him knocked out and we’ve seen him tapped out. He’s taken the hits and endured the surgeries and now even this Frankenstein’s monster of a heavyweight is starting to show signs of wear.

Still he has those magic nights every now and then. He practically limps to the cage to start, then somehow ends up being carried around in triumph on his coaches’ shoulders by the end of it.

A win over him now might not mean exactly what it would have in 2006, Werdum admitted.

“But ‘Big Nog’ is ‘Big Nog,’” Werdum said. “He’s a fighter with a lot of history, and he continues to make history. He’s not just any fighter. He’s a very special guy. Beating him would mean a big step forward.”

It might also prove that Werdum is finally capable of a little consistency, which would be a big step all by itself.

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