Reinvigorated at 135, constant underdog George Roop has championship aspirations

One of the great things about George Roop is that he really has no desire to sugarcoat things.

The UFC bantamweight, in 12 fights spread out over two UFC stints and time in the WEC, has been a favorite basically once. And even in that fight, against Dave Kaplan at UFC 98, the line opened up dead even.

Against Brian Bowles this past Saturday at UFC 160, Roop was back in familiar territory – getting ready to walk out for a fight he wasn’t supposed to win against a 3-to-1 favorite and a former champion, at that.

And he came out and did something that also has become familiar to him. He upset Bowles with a second-round TKO.

Fifteen minutes after the fight, Roop (14-9-1 MMA, 4-5 UFC) strolled out of his dressing room and down a back hallway at MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas like he’d barely broken a sweat against Bowles (10-3 MMA, 2-2 UFC), a former WEC bantamweight champion.

But with Roop, it seems there’s no reason to keep things polite. Starting a question with, “It seems like a lot of people may have overlooked you in this fight …” will get you called on the carpet because Roop knows how things are.

“Let’s keep it real, man. I was overlooked,” he told MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com). “That’s just the honest truth. I was a very big underdog in this fight, just like I am in a lot. I always fight top 10 guys, and I always go in there and put on a fight.”

Roop’s upset didn’t come easily. He was doing well in the first round, but the hard-hitting Bowles clocked him with a right hand, and then took advantage on the ground with a guillotine choke that Roop was fortunate to be able to survive to get to the second round.

Once there, Roop said he could tell Bowles may have been out of gas. Bowles was fighting for the first time in 18 months. But Roop said he trained for that scenario to happen, anyway.

“I felt a lot of his power go away in the second round, and once I started establishing a little bit better range, I just knew I had him in my pocket then,” Roop said. “Not that he’d been out for so long, but going back and looking at all of his fights. That’s the kind of fighter I am. I’m a grinder, and my cardio is my strongest aspect. I feel like any time a fight goes to a decision, I have the upper hand.”

But guess what? Roop didn’t need that decision. Just good old-fashioned hands.

Roop started working kicks early in the second, and after a few jabs his corner saw the writing on the wall. A jab put Bowles on the canvas, and Roop quickly took advantage, landing big fists until Bowles turtled up and Herb Dean shut things down.

“It was a good fight – it was pretty much how I planned the fight to go, although I thought it would go to a decision,” Roop said. “I’m always ready for a three-round war, although I do look for the finish all the time. So I thought I absolutely dominated the first round up until the last minute when he caught me with a good punch and got a real tight choke in and finished in dominant position. I felt confident going into the second round, knowing that I did so well in the first round. But the first round was pretty close. I think he could’ve possibly stolen that first round, but I knew that I was going to get the next two.”

And Bowles did indeed take that first round on all three judges’ scorecards. So Roop just wound up putting himself in a position for it to not matter, just like in a few other fights no one expected him to win.

Against “The Korean Zombie,” Chan Sung Jung, a massive head kick at WEC 51 might have been shrugged off as some kind of lucky shot landing. But after a loss to Mark Hominick, he returned against Josh Grispi, a 6-to-1 favorite, and stopped him in the third.

So this stuff is nothing new to Roop. It’s just been a matter of stringing a few of them together in a row – which is what he needs to get over that hump from a middle-of-the-pack bantamweight to a legitimate contender in the division.

“I train hard, and it’s not always about how bad do you want the fight, it’s about how hard of work you put in in the gym,” Roop said. “I never take it easy. I’m very happy I have two in a row, but that’s not even close. I’m not satisfied. Not even close.

“I want to be the champion, and I know everybody says that and I know that’s a pretty cliche thing to say. But I feel like I’ve been able to reinvent myself here at 135 pounds and I’ve beaten some good competitors already.”

Don’t underestimate the importance of two straight wins for Roop. That’s something the Season 8 vet of “The Ultimate Fighter” hasn’t had since 2008 when he had a three-fight win streak before going on the show.

These wins, against Reuben Duran and Bowles, came at bantamweight after dropping back down from featherweight, where he had been since a January 2010 loss to Eddie Wineland. At 145 pounds, he was fighting a pretty ridiculous slate of opponents, including Jung, Hominick, Hatsu Hioki and Cub Swanson. And he went 2-3-1 in that stretch.

But back at bantamweight, despite being one of the division’s biggest fighters at 6-foot-1, he feels reinvigorated. Add to that feeling far more at home training in Tucson, Ariz., than when he was training at Xtreme Couture for a spell in Las Vegas, and he believes he’s starting to hit on a winning formula.

“I started my career with the UFC and I’ve grown as a fighter with the UFC,” he said. “I’ve matured, I’m back home in Tucson, where I have a lot of support, and the reason I moved back up to 145 from 135 after Wineland is it was the hardest cut I’ve ever done in my life. I never wanted to do it ever again. But once I got a good support system around me and I knew I could definitely make the cut healthily, I felt like it was a good move for me. Being back home in Tucson has geared me for that.”

At 2-0 in 2013 with the pair of upsets, Roop said he’d like to go on a run this year. The Bowles fight came just 10 weeks after he outpointed Duran at UFC 158 in Montreal.

So start lining them up. As long as he has time to get down to 135 pounds, he appears ready to make his presence felt.

“I’m completely healthy,” he said. “Another 10 weeks, I think I could be healthy with another weight cut. I’ll look to fight two more times this year, but I’d be happy even if it was one.”

And that seems to be typical George Roop, not taking anything for granted, taking things as they come – and just go ahead and underestimate him.

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