“Trust me when I tell you that night has only made Matt stronger, made him hungry again,” said his trainer Duff Holmes. “It pissed him off!”
Saturday night in Las Vegas will be headlined by two TUF veterans, Jardine from Season Two and Hamill (Season 3,) and while Hamill enters a winner of eight of his 10 MMA bouts (7-2 in the UFC), Jardine could be fighting for his UFC life. The Dean of Mean holds wins over Brandon Vera, Chuck Liddell and Forrest Griffin. He’s also lost his last three to Quinton Jackson, Thiago Silva and Ryan Bader, the latter two by vicious knockout, and was blasted by Wanderlei Silva and Houston Alexander.
At 15-7-1 Jardine is just 6-6 in the UFC. His unorthodox style and bulldog mentality will drive opponents nuts. His weakness is a glass chin that’s seen him hit the deck five times. Immediately after returning from Australia and the Bader fight, Jardine was back training at Jackson’s Submission Fighting with Greg Jackson stating his approach will be anything but “win or else.” Throughout his career it’s been hard to predict which Jardine will show up on fight night. If it’s the one that arrives to Las Vegas with his UFC career on the line, he might be at his most dangerous.
“I expect Jardine to have a ‘do or die’ attitude which will be a bigger challenge for me and I’m ready to prove myself this fight,” Hamill said.
Because it’s early and late in his career, a win could spark Hamill, 33, to a run up the loaded light-heavyweight division, and a loss tumbling to the middle of the shuffle. Once known solely as a wrestler, Hamill has won all but one of his fights (Seth Petruzelli) via knockout or TKO, one reason why Holmes argues he’s yet to reach his summit.
“Matt entered TUF 3 with absolutely no amateur MMA experience,” Holmes said. “There aren’t many guys who can just walk into a UFC career like that. If you look back at all Matt’s fights, he does something new in every one of them. Matt’s peak is a long way off. He will be a viable athlete in this sport for as long as he wants to due to his fighting style and amazing fan base.
“A title shot is something he wants and regardless of what happens in this fight Matt is the type of guy who won’t ever stop until he gets what he wants. I’ve said before how proud I was of the way he hung in there [against Jones] after suffering the shoulder injury. A win here will erase all that and put him back on track.”
Until Franklin’s kick smashed his liver and Holmes called him out for a lack of focus, even suggesting he meet with a sports psychologist, Hamill was on track to potential stardom. He left RIT a three-time NCAA Division III National Champion and won a silver medal in Greco-Roman wrestling and gold in freestyle wrestling at the 2001 Summer Deaflympics. Like Hamill, Bader is a collegiate wrestling champion who used his foundation to neutralize Jardine before taking him out. Reviewing tape of the fight Holmes learned a lot about Jardine and noticed close similarities between Bader and his fighter, their ability to take it opponents without a ground game to match.
“This fight was easy for us to study because when I’m studying a fighter I like to study their training partners as well,” Holmes said. “I feel you can learn a lot about a fighter when you see what he’s used to dealing with on an everyday basis. Not only did we study Rashad (Evans) but they actually faced each other on TUF, so we took a very close look at that fight as well.”
Win or lose, “Hamill the Movie,” a documentary chronicling Hamill’s early life through the end of college, will be released this fall. “There are still a few tweaks that are being made,” Hamill said. “I’m very excited to show people what my life has been like in a nutshell and how far I’ve been able to come.”
The Hammer has come further than anyone could have imagined, but if you think he’s finished your lessons are far from complete. Hamill wants it all and if he can further dictate the terms the beating Jones gave him will be the start of a sequel, one that ends with him as a champion.