Submitted by admin on Wed, 04/16/2008 - 14:01.
Written by: www.mmamadness.com
For UFC Legend Jens Pulver, it seemed like the end of the road. He had just dropped his second straight, a submission loss to BJ Penn. The prior loss wasn’t much better – a KO at the hands of unknown Joe Lauzon.
But where other fighters would give up, Pulver made a plan. “I went to Dana and I said ‘Hey, I want to help build this [the WEC] and I want to be a part of this.’” By “staying under the Zuffa umbrella,” as Pulver puts it, he gained the ability to revive his career and be a part of something big.
The revival came first, in the form of a dominating first round victory against top featherweight Cub Swanson. Pulver recognized the opportunity that he held prior to the fight. “For me, it was big because I didn’t want to lose three fights. I’d lost to BJ and Lauzon and I was like ‘come on!’ I didn’t want to go 0-3 so the biggest thing was I needed to know that I could still compete.”
With a sound mental attitude in place, Pulver had just one thing left to do: capitalize. “Patience was my game plan. I wanted to let him try to take me down. If he shot in, the plan was to punish him and lock in the guillotine. I needed to lay back, be cool, calm, collected, and if I got to a point where I’m weak, just keep attacking. I didn’t even throw one punch.”
Jens didn’t need that one punch as he (keeping true to his plan) calmly locked in an anaconda choke 35 seconds into the bout.
With his career revived, Jens looked to be a part of something bigger. He’ll do just that on June 1st when he takes on reigning champion Urijah Faber in the ARCO arena. “A bunch of 145 pounders selling out an arena? What’s bigger than that?”
