Outside Source
Cain Velasquez had a brief but dominant run at the top of the heavyweight division. | Dave Mandel/Sherdog.com
While Cain Velasquez enjoyed a pair of title reigns in the UFC, he didn’t have the longevity of some of the sport’s other top heavyweights.
His MMA career came to an end after UFC on ESPN 1, when he suffered a knee injury in a first-round stoppage loss to Francis Ngannou on Feb. 17, 2019. That loss came on the heels of what had been nearly a three-year layoff, as Velasquez was hindered by knee and back ailments during the latter portion of his promotional tenure.
Advertisement
His peak from 2009 to 2013 was among the most memorable heavyweight runs in MMA history. The American Kickboxing Academy product bested the likes of Cheick Kongo, Ben Rothwell, Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira, Brock Lesnar, Antonio Silva (twice) and Junior dos Santos (twice) while twice holding UFC gold. Despite his accomplishments, the mounting injuries make Velasquez something of a “what if” story in the sport.
AKA teammate Daniel Cormier has no doubt where Velasquez would stand if he had enjoyed a little more good fortune with his health.
“The best. I’ve never seen anything like it. I still today have not seen anything like it,” he said on the The Weekly Scraps podcast. “The training, the skill set, the ability — he really could do it all. If he didn’t have all those injuries, he would be by far the greatest heavyweight of all time. No one would beat him.”
Cormier: Velasquez Was a ‘Monster’
Cormier attributed Velasquez’s injury history to a tendency to overtrain.
“He was one of those kids who had nothing — he had so little that when he would get mixed up with people, no matter what they told him to do, he would do,” Cormier said. “So if the strength coach told him to leg press 800 pounds, he did it. He’d leg press 800 pounds. He just did everything, bro. He was a monster. He just worked and he worked and he worked. And he worked himself into injury after injury after injury.”
Earlier this year, Velasquez was sentenced to five years in prison after pleading no contest to attempted murder, felony assault and additional gun charges stemming from a February 2022 incident in which the former fighter fired a gun at a truck containing multiple people. During a high-speed chase, Velasquez shot at the vehicle containing Harry Goularte, who was accused of molesting Velasquez’s son. One of the shots hit and injured Goularte’s stepfather, Paul Bender. He was credited for 1,283 days of time served during sentencing and could be eligible for parole as early as March 2026.
This article first appeared at Recent News on Sherdog.com
Help support MMACrazies.com when you shop Amazon by starting your online Amazon shopping at MMACrazies.com/recommends/amazon. You are not charged extra, but we receive a small and very helpful commission on everything you purchase. Thanks for thinking of us every time you shop at Amazon.
