QUINTET Ultra: Gilbert Melendez
Fronted by Nick Diaz, Nate Diaz, Gilbert Melendez and Jake Shields, the Skrap Pack was the collective face of Strikeforce for unrelenting striking, legendary brawls, unshakable toughness, short fuses and a dissatisfaction with taking a fight to decision.
“I think there’s an attitude that we have or a culture or a mindset,” Gilbert Melendez said. “Nate (Diaz) says it all the time, ‘kill or be killed’ and we’re the type of guys when we compete we come right at you and we try to finish a fight and we come to fight where a lot of people try to come out and have a point match or come out and avoid the confrontation to somehow slip by going through a match without even fighting.”
Some of the most famous moments in Strikeforce history are centered around the Skrap Pack’s emotion and brawling meeting in and out of the cage. Whether it was letting “Mayhem” Miller know how wasn’t welcome inside the cage or another spat with him backstage, Stockton’s team was ready for sparks to fly at the drop of a hat.
The four made no effort to fight the reputation of 209 street fighters.
Jacare Is Feeling Happy And Dangerous
“If I’m happy, it’s hard to beat me,” said Souza. “I’m strong, I trained hard, my training camp was great, I brought some guys to help me and I want to show all my skills inside the Octagon.”
It’s a nice change from Souza’s demeanor after his April loss to Jack Hermansson. The five-round decision loss wasn’t a blowout by any means, but Souza appeared listless at times, perhaps the product of too many years of punishing weight cuts that only got worse as he reached his late 30s. And when the dust settled after the defeat, taking away all the momentum from his UFC 230 knockout of Chris Weidman, the 39-year-old decided that it was time for a change. Make that several changes.
MORE SAO PAULO: Main Event Preview | Blachowicz Fighting For Poland | Watch on ESPN+ | Fight By Fight Preview
“I got burned out,” he admits. “Four months ago and I had to change everything in my life. I changed my training camp, I changed some other stuff in my life, and right now I’m happy.”
He’s also able to eat again. Not like a fat kid, but better than he has in the lead-up to a fight.
“The weight cut stressed me because I have to lose too many pounds and I cut that stress out from my life right now and I feel great to fight at light heavyweight,” said Souza. “It’s a great opportunity for me to fight against a tough fighter and I’m ready. I’ve got something for him and I believe I will win this fight.”
Moving to 205 pounds has been the “in” thing for middleweights over the last couple years, and while it worked well for Anthony Smith and Thiago Santos, both of whom earned world title shots against champion Jon Jones, it wasn’t a positive move for former champs Weidman and Luke Rockhold, as each was knocked out in their light heavyweight debuts.
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“Jacare” is the tiebreaker, and he is intent on coming out on the winning side in Sao Paulo.
“He’s a big guy, he’s tough, but fighting at light heavyweight is great for me,” said Souza. “I don’t have to lose much weight, I can eat a little bit more, and I’m a little bit happier because when I eat less food, it’s hard. The last two days before I fight at middleweight, it’s hard to sleep, but this time, everything’s going to be different. 205 is great for me.”
There’s really no substitute for going into a fight with a fresh start and a positive mindset, and Souza has both as he preps for Poland’s Blachowicz, the No. 6-ranked contender who can join Dominick Reyes and Corey Anderson on the short list for a 2020 shot at Jones. In his last bout, Blachowicz spoiled Rockhold’s move up with a Performance of the Night knockout, but Souza believes he has what it takes to avoid that fate and send his opponent home having to regroup and restart his title run.
“I’m fast, I have good jiu-jitsu and I will surprise him because I’m the real deal,” said the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu specialist. “I want to use all my skills and my power, and I have to use everything to beat this guy because he’s tough. But I’m ready.”
With a win, Jacare becomes an instant player in his new weight class, and if he gets by Blachowicz, a showdown with Jones is certainly an intriguing one, but that’s looking too far ahead for him.
“The gold is on my mind, but I have to put all my focus on Jan,” he said. “He’s a tough fighter. I need to respect his power, he’s a top contender in the division, but I don’t care. I want to go there and beat him.”
It’s enough to make Souza smile.
“This is great for me,” he said. “Fighting in my hometown, in a new weight class, in a main event against a top fighter like Jan is a great opportunity for me and I’m happy because everything’s changed in my life. I just have to go there and beat Jan and that will make me more happy. When I think about this, my mind is blown. Let’s go.”
LFA Gave Holm Needed Experience
It was the 15th and final knockout of Franklin’s career and his only Knockout of the Night bonus.
Rich Franklin is now a UFC Hall of Famer and many cite his fight with Liddell as a legendary performance on the biggest stage and a career-defining demonstration of what makes mixed martial artists a special breed.
But what if the fight didn’t end in the closing seconds of the first round? Would Franklin’s corner have thrown in the towel? And what if the stage was smaller? Would the fight have been worth powering through in a smaller promotion where it would be just as easy to explain that you broke your arm and lost?
The questions can go on forever and we’ll never know what “Ace” would have done because history will never be re-written to address any hypothetical scenario.
As for Holly Holm, the questions were all answered in her seventh career MMA bout at LFA 30.
After an 11-year professional boxing career that landed Holm almost every accolade she could garner, Holm stepped away from the sweet science with a 33-2-3 record in order to pursue a mixed martial arts career full-time.
Holly Holm found immediate success in the sport and it wouldn’t be long before “The Preacher’s Daughter” found herself in one of the top regional promotions in LFA, where she would fight for the inaugural LFA women’s bantamweight title against a very game Juliana Werner in April 2014.
“It’s definitely something I’m proud of as far as a milestone,” Holm said. “It was my first five-round fight, it was a title fight, it wasn’t the UFC title, but it was my first title fight in MMA. That was the moment where I was like, ‘I’m fighting for a title in MMA. This is something I wanted to do.’ I knew that I was on the road to the best of the best.”
Training camp, travel and warmup went according to plan and the 6-0 Holm was ready to complete yet another finish, this time for MMA gold.
“This girl came from a Muay Thai background and Muay Thai fights are tough,” Holm said. “You kind of beat your body up in those. I knew she’d be really tough, and I knew I had to perform well in order for the UFC to want to sign me.”
While weathering the storm for the first few minutes, Holm found out exactly what she was made of when a perfectly-read head kick attempt by Werner was blocked by Holm which might have caused more damage than absorbing the Thai striker’s shot.
“It wasn’t even the hardest kick, it hit just right and I heard a snap in my arm and I remember thinking, ‘Did I just break my arm?’ I kind of moved my wrist around and I could hear it clicking,” Holm recalls.
Trucking through the rest of the round was a balance between “I’m still okay” and survival mode for Holm. Avoiding using the broken left arm in a battle with a Thai fighter is a juggle in itself. Openings that Holm may now hesitate going after instead of attacking seem to get bigger, as opportunities for the perfect strike are few and far between. The other chainsaw Holm was juggling was not showing the pain. The second there’s blood in the water, the fight is as good as over for the wounded fighter, so favoring the arm in any way could spell the end.
The first round came to a close and Holm survived the first storm as she went back to her corner but realized communication and game plan were now going to be a serious issue if she wanted to continue to fight.
“Since the TV was there, I was kind of afraid to say anything to my coaches because I didn’t want them to video it and then the commentators to say something like, ‘Did she just say she broke her arm?’” Holm said. “Then a doctor would come in and stop the fight and I knew it was either a broken arm and a win or a broken arm and a loss.”
As a decorated boxer, one of Holm’s biggest weapons had now been taken away from her. She couldn’t express it to her corner and was now at even bigger risk of falling victim to a head kick KO.
“Finally after the third round I was able to say something,” Holm said. “What my team was telling me to do wasn’t really going along with how I was feeling because of my arm and finally nobody was right there so I told Mr. Winkeljohn, ‘Just between you and me I think my arm’s broken.’ He said, ‘How bad?’ I said, ‘I can still fight.’ At least that way our communication would be in line.”
In the fourth round, Holm showed even more fight, possibly due to the relief of telling her coaches about her injury or possibly the shift in game plan now that her coaches finally knew what they were working with. Whatever it was, something was working.
Somewhere in that fourth round, Winkeljohn was able to relay Holm’s message to coach Greg Jackson, who gave her a simple message filled with understanding, tough love and the key to Holm’s first MMA title.
“He [Jackson] he pointed at my arm and said, ‘This is already how it is and it’s already going to hurt but when she comes in I still want you to make her pay for it. Just do it,’” Holm recalls.
The re-energized Holm went into the fifth with a plan to not only win, but to finish the fight in the face of a broken left arm. With only five more minutes of the painful hell she had found herself in, “The Preacher’s Daughter” began to let the left hand loose a little more, and before you know it, a head kick took Werner down and Holm finished her with strikes on the ground.
Sound familiar?
It wasn’t the top of the mountain. It wasn’t the title she was comfortable resting her hat on, but with one arm, Holly Holm had put on a performance of a lifetime. Being willed to victory by toughness from herself and her corner, the Jackson-Wink crew expected nothing short of what their new champion delivered.
“My coaches already know what I want,” Holm said. “They know I want to win with whatever it takes so they’re on board with me. I’m glad they’re in there just encouraging me to go. It’s already broken. What’re you going to do about it at that point? You already have to go get it fixed. You might as well try and win a fight in the meantime.”
Holm would never fight for LFA again. 10 months after winning the LFA title, she found herself an undefeated prospect making her debut in the UFC against Raquel Pennington.
While she never got a chance to defend her LFA crown, Holm proved that she was one of the baddest women on the planet that Albuquerque night and gave LFA fans a performance very few human beings on the planet would ever attempt to duplicate.
Holly “The Preacher’s Daughter” Holm. A sure-shot face on the LFA legends’ Mount Rushmore.
Andrea Lee Has Always Been On The Rise
Candidates in this range can be identified by, but are not limited to, blond hair, a cowboy hat, a southern drawl and a BJJ brown belt.
Andrea Lee is a four fight UFC veteran with a 3-1 record in the Octagon. Taking unanimous decision wins over Ashlee Evans-Smith, Montana De La Rosa and Veronica Macedo in a Fight of the Night performance, Lee has proved herself a rising contender in the UFC’s flyweight division.
Yet it wasn’t her UFC showings that solely put Lee on the map; she has been turning heads her whole career. In fact, since her second fight, she was running the show at flyweight for Invicta FC and the fans have been locked in ever since.
“There’s a lot of fans out there who have seen my fights from Invicta,” Lee said. “I seem to get that one the most. People will come up and be like, ‘Hey! The first time I saw you was your Shannon Sinn fight for Invicta!’ I always get people that are huge Invicta fans as well as fans of LFA.”
In fights two, three and four for Lee, she went 2-1 in the promotion losing only to future UFC star Roxanne Modafferi in a razor-thin split decision. With a strong showing but no 125-pound division yet in the UFC, Lee made the transition to Legacy FC in a strong outing against Ariel Beck. All the parts seemed to be moving seamlessly when Beck put her arm in the wrong place at the wrong time and Lee made a “W” out of it.
It was a strong first showing and Lee went back to Invicta for a couple fights before LFA came calling for a chance at a belt only a stone’s throw from Lee’s Louisiana stomping grounds.
“I had quite a few fights early in my career that I really enjoyed,” Lee said. “My fight with Ariel Beck was a lot of fun but I think the one that stands out the most would probably be Heather Bassett. I was fighting in front of my hometown, so I was just thinking, I’m not going out there and getting embarrassed.”
While stakes were as high as they’d ever been for Lee and with many familiar sets of eyes on her, she stepped in the cage feeling free of any negative connotations that may come with elevated expectations.
Round one was an onslaught of strikes from Lee, who decided promptly that a win wasn’t enough but that a KO was the plan. When the strategy hadn’t worked in the first round, Lee went out guns blazing in the second round too.
“I was going all out because I wanted a knockout, but as the rounds go on and the more fatigue sets in, I knew my power was going to go down as the rounds went by,” Lee said. “Sometimes you end up second guessing yourself, but I knew I was loading up on some of my shots and even hit her with some elbows. She was just tough.”
Through the first two rounds it couldn’t have been choreographed any more perfectly for Lee. From the strikes to the defense, to the pressure, to the conditioning, nothing was going wrong.
No real pressure was ever put on her either. After two rounds it was textbook training gone right and a performance she was pleased with every step of the way.
“I just think it was pretty exciting the whole fight,” Lee said. “My movement and everything, I could just tell I was on and I was just crisp. I felt like I was on point. I felt unstoppable.”
When Bassett was still standing after Lee’s flawless efforts, Lee decided a change needed to be made. The fatigue that was at first threatening the KO in front of her family and friends was looking to have now eliminated the possibility altogether. Despite the improbability of the KO, Lee never had to resort to desperate haymakers. Instead, she just used another very sharp weapon.
“I made up my mind that as soon as I got the opportunity, I’m going to take this down to the ground and get a sub,” Lee said. “I knew I had already done so much damage that getting a submission probably wouldn’t be that hard.”
Just the way she drew it up, a shot led to a takedown which led to the perfect chain of events that she had envisioned only moments prior. One misplaced arm by Bassett and the finish was only seconds away.
“I remember thinking how I needed to inch my way up into high mount and she happened to be wrapping her arms around my back,” Lee said. “And that as soon as she does that then I’m going to step in and pin the arm and I remember everything working out perfectly. That doesn’t normally happen in a fight. I was thinking a couple of steps ahead and baiting her into that and it actually went how I wanted it.”
Bassett tapped and Lee got to raise her first professional title belt in front of her family and friends, making her a force in the 125-pound division with or without the UFC.
Lee went back to Invicta a few months later and came back to LFA to successfully defend her title a few months after that. With UFC bouts both in front of and behind her, Lee still looks back at her LFA title fight with admiration for her performance and who she is as a fighter when she’s in peak form. It sometimes even serves as an inspiration to herself when things just don’t feel like they’re adding up.
“Sometimes you go so long without watching yourself fight that you forget who you are as a fighter,” Lee said. “Sometimes I re-watch my fights just so I can remind myself. When you watch, sometimes you’ll go back and realize, ‘Whoa. I’m pretty good.’ Sometimes you don’t always feel that way, so when I watch I’ll think to myself that I need to go back to that.”
With an 11-3 record, the ninth-ranked flyweight contender has plenty of confidence boosters at her disposal and more than likely many more inspiring performances to come. With LFA’s library now exclusively on UFC FIGHT PASS, 13 out of the 14 “KGB” fights are only a click away.
Catch Lee’s title fight and all her other career-defining LFA performances ONLY on UFC FIGHT PASS!
Simon Earns UFC Shot Through LFA Success
Back in 2016, Simon, a -420 favorite, came out swinging against Anderson dos Santos, stuffing takedowns and putting the fight on the canvas himself, but after absolutely dominating, Simon ate a shot in the second round that took him to the ground, and it was a matter of seconds before his neck was exposed. A warrior to the end, Simon refused to tap, suffering a second-round defeat.
With two bounce back performances, Simon grabbed the attention of the UFC, and just over a year later, Simon would find himself on DWCS with a chance to effectively erase the memory of his lone loss if could earn a contract with the sport’s biggest promotion.
Simon earned a split decision victory over Donavon Frelow in August 2017 that got Dana White’s attention, but it wasn’t the killer performance he was looking for.
After a failed title shot and a failed chance to shine and earn a UFC contract, it was a reluctant trip back to the drawing board when LFA came calling with a title opportunity that Simon couldn’t turn away.
“At that point I had the mentality that I just want to prove that I belong in the UFC, so I felt like fighting for a title at the LFA was the next best thing,” Simon said. “I knew that if I could go out there and win that, then you can’t really deny me.”
Simon walked into a title fight with UFC veteran Chico Camus only four months after his DWCS performance, eager to make the LFA his last stop before the Octagon. Simon introduced himself to LFA with a performance so dominant, he won the vacant LFA bantamweight title.
Yet it was a draining reality when the phone call from the UFC still had not come.
“I definitely got exhausted,” Simon said. “Especially after I went in and had a five-round battle with Chico Camus and had a 10-8 round against him and I proved I belonged and I still didn’t get a call after that. Going into the Chico fight there was plenty of motivation, plenty of spark, so when I didn’t get it after that one and I had to defend my LFA title, I felt like I was backed into a corner.”
A phone call to his mother followed his title-winning performance, as the most disappointed champion in MMA found out he would be defending his LFA title again four months later at LFA 36.
It was the payoff pitch for Simon’s career. Much like DWCS, winning alone didn’t guarantee Simon his dream contract from the UFC, but a loss would push the hopes even further out of reach. The options were win big or call it a career.
With his career on the line, Simon mowed through Vinicius Zani in only 59 seconds. It would mark the third fastest finish in his career and the only title defense necessary.
As quickly as Simon finished Zani, he was in the UFC, making his debut against Merab Dvalishvili in April 2018.
It was a longer road to the big show than he expected, but he appreciates the platform he had with the LFA to get there.
“In the LFA you’re fighting the top-level competition,” Simon said. “As an up and comer, it’s a little scary because you know you’re fighting other killers, other prospects who are right about to get signed too. In MMA you never know what’s going to happen. You know you’re going in there to fight top level competition so that’s the good thing and the bad thing about it.”
Simon stuck it out and turned the high stress, high risk into a high reward.
With the LFA as the newest addition to UFC FIGHT PASS, we are your one stop shop for over half of the fights in Simon’s 17-fight career!
