UFC 181: Gilbert Melendez Gets 2nd (Maybe Last?) Chance to Prove He's Best
If you’re Gilbert Melendez, you must be pretty happy with how it all worked out.
In quieter moments, perhaps you can even marvel at your own good fortune.
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When Melendez takes on Anthony Pettis on Saturday at UFC 181, it will mark his second opportunity to win UFC gold in just three career fights inside the Octagon.
That would be a remarkable feat for anyone, but the fact it’s happening in the stacked lightweight division—where guys like Khabib Nurmagomedov and Myles Jury can run off a half-dozen straight UFC wins and still have to wait their turn—makes Melendez’s persistent contender status all the more impressive.
Especially considering that just a few years ago, it was unclear if he’d ever even get his shot.
Before Eddie Alvarez and Ben Askren made being an outcast cool, Melendez was the original man in exile. He spent six years fighting primarily in Strikeforce, twice winning the smaller organization’s 155-pound title and successfully defending it six times. His trilogy of fights against Josh Thomson was epic, and by the end of his run among Scott Coker’s band of misfit toys, he was on the short list of guys who could conceivably be the No. 1 lightweight in the world.
Since arriving in the UFC, though, there have been bumps in the road.
He brought considerable hype with him into the Octagon during 2013, but has since been largely eclipsed by other Strikeforce alumni like Ronda Rousey and Daniel Cormier. At 32 years old, Saturday night’s fight may well represent his last best chance to rebalance the scales.
As Strikeforce’s last reigning 155-pound champ, Melendez was awarded a title shot in his UFC debut. He was coming off 11 months on the shelf due to a shoulder injury when he fought Benson Henderson on Fox last April, and Melendez lost. It would’ve been a tough assignment for anybody, but at least he made the most of it, going wire-to-wire with the champion before dropping a tight split decision that many observers believed could’ve gone his way.
“I really thought I won,” Melendez told MMAJunkie.com's Ben Fowlkes this week. “I think the majority of people who watched it thought I won.”
But after easily outslugging Diego Sanchez at UFC 166, another lengthy period of inactivity ensued. A proposed bout with Nurmagomedov fell apart, and it was then reported that Melendez was poised to exit the UFC as quickly as he’d entered it, having agreed to terms on a new contract with Bellator MMA.
He only re-upped after the UFC matched Bellator’s muscle with a deal MMAFighting.com’s Shaun Al-Shatti wrote "will likely make Melendez one of the highest-paid fighters in the current mixed martial arts landscape."
Among other things, Melendez’s deal guarantees that at least 75 percent of his fights are on pay-per-view. Al-Shatti also wrote that his "contracted pay-per-view points will kick in at a lower minimum buyrate than for any contract in UFC history, meaning Melendez will still earn pay-per-view point income on an event that underperforms at the box office."
Soon after the new contract was official, the fight company also announced he would score a coaching gig on Season 20 of The Ultimate Fighter and Saturday’s title shot against Pettis.
And so here we are.
For Melendez, this nifty bit of negotiation should probably be considered the biggest victory of his career. In just over a year-and-a-half, he’s gone from UFC outsider to major player, on the doorstep of a second title shot in MMA’s most competitive division, all with the ripe-old UFC record of 1-1.
By the end of this weekend, Melendez will have gotten two more chances to become UFC lightweight champion than top contenders Nurmagomedov, Jury, Donald Cerrone and Rafael dos Anjos. One more than divisional stalwart Sanchez or teammate Nate Diaz.
Not to mention, his timing suddenly seems downright fortuitous.
Pettis, after all, is also coming off a 16-month absence while he rehabbed his own knee injury. If Melendez is going to take a shot at dethroning the 27-year-old phenom, now seems about as good a time as any.
Yet the crowded nature of the lightweight division could just as easily serve as a caution to Melendez. If he loses this one—and he’s currently going off as nearly a 2-1 underdog, according to Odds Shark—it’s tough to imagine him getting a third chance at the title any time soon.
“My perspective now is, I know this will probably be my last chance at a title,” Melendez told Fowlkes. “If it’s not, it will at least be a couple of years before I get another shot at it. I realize I’m in the late third quarter of my career, and this is my chance. This is my chance to not only perform, but to really just go for it.”
A loss could effectively cast him in the same boat as Henderson—as an A-list fighter who is nonetheless locked out of the championship scene for the foreseeable future.
Perhaps Melendez’s double title shots and new contract already make him one of this division’s biggest winners. But to live up to the sparkling potential he once displayed in Strikeforce, getting the W on Saturday still seems like the most important thing.
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