Jorge Santiago: A Middleweight You Should Know

Lately I’ve noticed that a lot o people have absolutely no idea the names of fighters who are not in the UFC.  You say names like Aoki, Hansen, Overeem, and Misaki and people think that for some reason those fighters aren’t worth their time. 

One such fighter who should be on the minds of MMA fans is Jorge Santiago.

If the name sounds familiar it’s because he had a short-lived career in the UFC. Jorge won his first fight but went on to lose to Chris Leben and Alan Belcher. Although not successful inside the octagon, Santiago has since grown into one of MMA's a top 10 Middleweight fighters.

A product of the famed American Top Team in Florida, Santiago is on a nine-fight win streak and recently won the Sengoku Middleweight title by beating the “Grabaka Hitman” Kazuo Misaki, who at the time was considered a top 10 fighter himself. 

The native of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil nearly left the fight game to be a teacher at the famed camp after some tough fights in the UFC. In a recent interview on TAGG Radio he stated that after the loss to Alan Belcher on UFC Fight Night 7 in 2006 he was at a real crossroads. 

“I was like, 'you know what, I'm going to take this as the most serious thing ever.' I think that was what gave me more focus on the job." 

In this current form, Santiago has ended all nine of his fights by either TKO or submission.  At the end of 2007 Jorge won a one-day four-man middleweight tournament, winning both by KO. The first came 24 seconds into the fight by KO’ing Sean Salmon with a flying knee. The second was a knee to the body to KO Trevor Prangley.   

The year 2008 was a true breakout year for him as he won the Sengoku middleweight tournament. Winning the tournament led to a huge matchup versus Misaki, and during the aforementioned interview Santiago stated that that fight was his toughest ever. 

"The guy is so tough. We couldn't hold him in the first or second round.”  

The fight was not going Santiago’s way till the submission which left Misaki unconscious and Santiago the victor with only 94 seconds left in the fight.

With 2009 kicked off with such a great start, one wonders what could be next for Santiago. 

As he puts it, "In my mind now, it's just trying to get to the next step—and from there try and look for the other top-10 guys. (I want to) get them all and fight the hard fighters to get my name."   

It isn’t without cause for him to have a second go-around in the UFC. 

Until then, there are a lot of possible matchups out there for him.  Within Strikeforce we could see a possible match against Frank Trigg, or even the middleweight champion Cung-Le.

Regardless, Jorge Santiago is a force in the Middleweight division and a name that we all should look out for in the future.