Cody Garbrandt, Radiohead, and Magical Moments in Time
Trying to put Garbrandt's championship-winning masterpiece at UFC 207 into perspective with the help of a terrific band that had a similar transcendent moment once upon a time
On December 30, 2016 at UFC 207, Cody Garbrandt crafted a masterpiece.
For five rounds, the charismatic challenger and burgeoning star styled on Dominick Cruz, long the standard-bearer for the bantamweight division. For more than a decade, only injury could knock cruz from atop the 135-pound weight class, and whenever it did, Cruz eventually returned to reclaim his position.
But this night, in front of a capacity crowd at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada, Garbrandt made Cruz look slow, ineffective, and completely outmatched. He bobbed and weaved as the champion pressed forward in his off-rhythm manner, slipping shots from odd angles and landing return fire almost at will. He hit Cruz more frequently and more flush than anyone had in years, and when he made the champion miss, he let him know about it.
At one point, Garbrandt evaded a flurry of strikes, took a step back, and delivered a quick pop-and-lock routine to show he was in complete control.
He swept the scorecards and claimed the UFC bantamweight title, completing his undefeated march to the top of the division with the kind of eye-opening performance that made everyone think that the 25-year-old titleholder could potentially lord over the division for a considerable amount of time.
This past weekend, Cody Garbrandt dropped a unanimous decision to Rob Font, with two officials giving the New England Cartel member all five rounds; it was his fourth loss in five appearances since his championship-winning masterpiece.
Over the course of the 25-minute affair, Garbrandt had only a handful of positive moments, and when he did land, Font was there to answer in triplicate, stuffing his long, crisp jab in his opponent’s face with tremendous accuracy and frequency.
There was no dancing from Garbrandt.
The defensive mastery he displayed against Cruz was replaced by the far more static, far less effective approach he showed to differing degrees in every fight before and every fight since.
He looked to counter, to coil into attack position and punish Font for getting too close, but the streaking contender was wise to his wants and effective in his approach, stepping back when Garbrandt yearned for him to step in, keeping the fight at a range that allowed him to land regularly and avoid the type of prolonged exchanges where the heavy-handed former champion needed only to land one clubbing blow to shift momentum back into his favor.
At times, Garbrandt looked at odds with himself, stuck in a tug-of-war between sticking to the tactical game plan and taking his chances with getting into a firefight. More often than naught, the game plan won out, leaving the now 29-year-old moving backwards, eating range attacks, and waiting for opportunities to counter that rarely materialized.
Less than five years after looking primed to rule the division for a considerable amount of time, Garbrandt stood in the center of the Octagon, saddled with his fourth loss in five outings; his place in the divisional hierarchy as uncertain as it has ever been.
Cody Garbrandt is a very good fighter; you don’t win championship gold in the UFC without being good at your craft and one of the absolute best in your weight class.
But as time continues to progress, it’s becoming more clear that Garbrandt’s performance against Cruz is an outlier — a one-off moment in time that should be viewed as a special evening, and not the level anyone should expect to see “No Love” return to in future fights.
That’s not a knock on the former champion either — it’s merely an acknowledgment that he shouldn’t be viewed through the prism of “When can he get back to the form he showed against Cruz?” and instead should be recognized for the fighter he’s been in pretty much every other fight before or after that special night in Las Vegas almost five years ago.
Think of it this way:
Radiohead have always been a really, really good band with a loyal, faithful following.
Their first album, Pablo Honey, contains arguably their most well-known single, “Creep,” and the follow-up record, The Bends, is a no-skips masterpiece.
Then in 1997, Radiohead released OK Computer and they blew up. People that had never listened to Radiohead before were all about Thom Yorke’s drawn out vocals and Jonny Greenwood’s riffs.
In that moment, Radiohead was the biggest band in the world and it felt like it would remain that way for a number of years.
It didn’t. It never does.
Radiohead is still a really, really good band with a loyal, faithful following and a diverse catalogue with albums that have garnered more critical praise than some of their earlier efforts. They’re no longer the biggest band in the world, but they’re still super-talented and turning out tremendous music, even though their biggest individual moment is now a faded memory.
That’s kind of what it feels like with Garbrandt.
Beating Cruz was his OK Computer moment and while there is still the potential for him to deliver a Kid A or In Rainbows, or have fights that remind everyone of those early days when “High and Dry” or “Just” made it clear he was going to be in that championship mix real soon, that singular, breakthrough, “capture the attention of everyone in the industry” moment has come and gone and needs be recognized for what it was and not something the former champion can conjure up every time he steps into the Octagon.
Moving on from transcendent efforts like that is difficult because it’s the signature moment that sticks in your head when you think of a fighter; that’s how breathtaking Garbrandt’s performance against Cruz was at UFC 207.
What often makes it more difficult at times is that there are myriad ways to talk your way out of making that conclusion sooner.
Because the majority of his fight before that were quick finishes and he was still so early in his career, that breathtaking effort felt, in the moment, like it could be the Team Alpha Male talent reaching the next stage of his evolution. It wasn’t difficult to picture Garbrandt becoming a more technical, defensively-sound fighter that used head movement, footwork, and his overall speed to frustrate opponents while making the most of his shots.
And even coming off his losses to TJ Dillashaw, one could overlook the departure from the approach that works so well against Cruz as a function of Garbrandt fighting emotionally; the heated rivalry getting the better of him and the desire to finish his former teammate causing him to get drawn into a gun fight that he should have avoided.
But his fight against Pedro Munhoz was the first real sign that the Cruz effort was an anomaly and something we likely wouldn’t see again.
There was no beef, no reason to get emotional and sucked into a slugfest, and yet there was Garbrandt, chasing a knockout, firing hooks as he looked to find a shot that put Munhoz on the canvas, only to be spun to the floor himself. The head movement, footwork, and fluidity that made the Cruz performance so special was replaced by Garbrandt standing his ground, looking to go shot-for-shot against a steely Brazilian with a superior ability to take a punch.
He looked better in his return to action last summer against Raphael Assuncao, flashing the speed that has long been one of his signature traits and collecting a highlight reel, walk-off finish, but even there, against a low-output, methodical fighter like Assuncao, the defensive wizardry he exhibited against Cruz was nowhere to be seen.
He earned a positive result and showed he’s still a dangerous, capable fighter in the talent-rich bantamweight division, but for the second consecutive fight, the brilliance he showed against Cruz wasn’t there, and it became harder to see it returning.
Last weekend’s fight against Font was the final confirmation, as the New England resident picked Garbrandt apart with a steady diet of sharp jabs and measured right hands, beating him with simple, technical striking that the former champion either couldn’t or didn’t avoid.
Watching the fight with Font last weekend with the Cruz fight logged in your memory bank, readily available every time Garbrandt crosses the threshold into the UFC cage, it’s hard to process how he could slip and evade and dance around so many of the off-angle, off-beat offerings directed his way by the long-time divisional ruler, yet couldn’t get out of the way of Font’s arrow-straight jab or the right that often followed.
Now, Font certainly deserves a ton of credit for having one of the very best jabs in the UFC, getting his range and timing down quickly, and making Garbrandt eat the second-most shots ever in a UFC bantamweight fight.
And it has to be noted that Garbrandt endured a nasty bout of COVID-19 last year, dealing with blood clots, brain fog, and pneumonia, all of which very well could have hindered his preparation and his conditioning going into and during this fight.
That being said, it still just feels strange to see.
It’s strange to see someone that was capable of putting forth that performance now look nothing at all like that fighter defensively, and struggling overall.
Again, he’s still a very good fighter and the losses since UFC 207 have come against elite competition — and he had very good moments in a couple of those fights as well — but that moment where Garbrandt was the undisputed best fighter in the bantamweight division and appeared to be on a path to superstardom now stands as a magical one-off where everything fell perfectly into place.