Anthony Pettis, Once Heir to UFC Greatness, Now Fights Just to Stay in the Mix

Considering how things have gone lately, it’s easy to forget how good Anthony Pettis used to be.

There was a time not so long ago when Pettis was largely regarded as the future of the lightweight division. He was the white-hot rookie set to pick up where guys like BJ Penn, Frankie Edgar and Benson Henderson left off.

With his good looks and flashy striking style, maybe he had a chance to be bigger and better than any of them.

But when Pettis takes on Edson Barboza Saturday at UFC 197, there will be no title on the line—and there hasn’t really even been any media attention to speak of leading up to their bout. Pettis will be fighting merely to try to avoid his third loss in a row and stay relevant in the organization’s most competitive weight class.

Flash back a few years, however, and your memory is quickly jogged about the guy UFC President Dana White once told CBS Sports Radio’s Jim Rome (via MMA Junkie) could be “the pound-for-pound best fighter in the world, if the kid [could] stay healthy.”

Despite the fact that he'd already missed significant time due to injury by the summer of 2013, Pettis appeared to be on his way to a career for the ages. Three consecutive first-round stoppages over Joe Lauzon, Donald Cerrone and Henderson had won him the 155-pound title and advanced his record to 17-2 overall (4-1 UFC).

It looked as though Pettis—just 26 years old when he defeated Henderson with an armbar to nab the championship at UFC 164—was leaps and bounds ahead of the next best competition.

The UFC's PR team seemed primed to blast him to the stratosphere as the promotion’s next big star.

Remember that? Remember the custom suits? Remember the “Showtime kick”? Remember the Wheaties box?

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Funny thing about stardom, though.

In a sport as unforgiving as MMA, it can all go away in an awful hurry.

Such was the case for Pettis, who spent nearly all of 2014 on the shelf, first with a knee injury and then serving as a coach on Season 20 of The Ultimate Fighter alongside Gilbert Melendez.

Even when his return went well—Pettis rebounded from a tough first round to submit Melendez in the second—it felt as though things were starting to sag.

In the wake of that victory, the wheels completely fell off the Pettis hype wagon. At UFC 185 in March 2015, he suffered a unanimous-decision loss to Rafael Dos Anjos that cost him his belt and shattered his finely coiffed aura as the UFC’s golden child.

Afterward, he sat out the rest of the year, again due to injuries.

On January 17, 2016, Pettis returned to the Octagon, though in a slightly reduced capacity compared to when he left. His comeback fight was the co-main event of a free-TV card that was headlined by Dominick Cruz’s bantamweight title victory over TJ Dillashaw.

Things did not go as planned for Pettis, either. For the first time in his career, he lost back-to-back fights, coughing up a split decision to Eddie Alvarez.

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It was a close fight, if not necessarily an exciting one. According to MMA Decisions, collected media scorecards showed nearly an even divide between Alvarez and Pettis, but the former Bellator MMA champion got the nod from the only judges who actually mattered.

The two losses left Pettis in uncharted and unenviable waters. He had squandered his tremendous momentum with lackluster performances and an inability to stay off the disabled list.

His status as the 155-pound division’s likable young gun also no longer really fit. As Pettis approaches this bout against Barboza, he does so as a 29-year-old veteran who is just trying to keep his head above water.

He’s not past his prime by any stretch of the imagination. Heck, he may not have even reached his athletic prime yet. But any notion of Pettis as a youngster with all the time in the world to mature and get over his injury woes must now be long gone.

At this age, in this division, a trio of consecutive losses wouldn’t be the end of him, but it would be the end of Pettis as a Top 10 lightweight—at least for now.

It’s possible the fighter himself understands the gravity of his current situation, too.

Leading up to this matchup with Barboza, Pettis decamped from his longtime home at the Roufusport fight team in Milwaukee and spent some time training at the Jackson-Winkeljohn academy in New Mexico. That’s becoming the go-to move for athletes who know they have a must-win fight coming up.

A look around the Internet as of this writing also reveals that Pettis didn’t do many—or perhaps any—interviews leading up to this bout.

That could be because, as the third fight from the top of a card featuring a pair of title bouts, he didn’t make the cut for the UFC’s usual media rounds. Or it could speak to a bunker mentality. Perhaps Pettis understands that this fight is so important that he cleared his schedule in order to focus only on the outcome.

For Pettis, however, the days when just bringing the excitement was good enough are long gone.

This is a guy who just needs to win fights. Otherwise, he might end up trading his place on a cereal box for the side of a milk carton.