Dan Hardy said he didn’t want a boring fight, and Chris Lytle promised he to hold up his end of the bargain. Other than that, the only promise Lytle made to the man he’ll meet in the main event of Sunday’s UFC on Versus 5 event is that he won’t spend 15 minutes holding Hardy on the ground trying to dry hump him.
“I’m not at all going to say there’s not going to be any kind of submission attempts in there — that’s the not the promise,” said Lytle when we spoke earlier in the week. “The promise is — I’m going to try to submit him, and when I do that, that is going to give him opportunities to (a) submit me or (b) get back to his feet.
“There’s not going to be a thing where I’m just going to be body-body-head now control position; I’m not going to do that. I don’t like watching that and I definitely don’t like doing that. I’ve had it done to me and don’t like when it’s done to me. I feel like, `Get up and fight or do something.’ That’s how I feel about it.”
Not that anyone expected a boring fight from Lytle. It’s no longer in the man’s makeup. The soon-to-be 37-year-old had an epiphany following his loss to Matt Serra in the finals of The Ultimate Fighter Season 4: The Comebacks and has stuck to it throughout the thirteen fights that have followed.
“I always go out there now with one goal and one goal in mind — to end the fight as soon as I can. I’m not saying whether that’s going to be with a knockout punch or if that’s going to be with a submission, but I’m never going out there thinking, `I’m going to try and win this decision.’ If I ever do that again I’ll probably quit.
“Last time I did that when I fought Matt the first time, all I thought about was not letting him take me down. I didn’t care about what it would look like. I didn’t fight to win, I fought to not lose, and I’d rather not fight than do that. I didn’t go out there and fight the way I know I’m capable of — I didn’t put it on the line — and I lost, so that was about as bad as a feeling as you can have with fighting. It cost me a lot, so I decided that I was never going to do that again no matter what, and I don’t feel like I have since then.”
He certainly hasn’t.
Lytle has put together an 8-5 record since losing to Serra, climbing back into contention on the heels of a four-fight winning streak that was halted by Brian Ebersole in his last appearance. But there’s much more to Lytle than his record, as he’s transformed himself into one of the most consistently exciting fighters in the welterweight division.
He’s taken home eight Fight Night bonuses in that time, including five Fight of the Night awards. Lytle attributes his success to finding the right approach in the cage and having a few abilities that are beneficial in his line of work.
“I’m a firm believer that fighters shouldn’t pick their style; their style should pick them. If I go out there and say I’m going to try and out jab people, and be slick and move, I’m not necessarily the fastest guy out there, you know what I mean? And my arms aren’t super-long, so certain things might be taken away from me.
“I’ve been fortunate that I’ve been blessed with an ability to take a punch and an ability to not take clean punches too often; a lot of them are glancing blows. I’ve got kind of an awkward style — I’ve cultivated that over the years — and that’s one of my assets now. I know how to do that and not get punched even though I come forward all the time. I try to utilize my strengths and I think that’s one of them.”
While manufacturing the right style and being blessed with an adamantium chin have helped Lytle have the exciting bouts he’s now become known for — which have in turn led to a bevy of bonuses — one thing he hasn’t done is enter into any backstage pacts with his opponent.
“I’ve heard talk about that,” Lytle says with a laugh at the mention of a back room handshake agreement with Davis to keep the fight standing heading into their fight at UFC 93. “I’ve never had a conversation with anybody who says that; that’s never been stated, that’s never been negotiated. That’s never gonna be said to me. I don’t necessarily know if that’s right.
“That’s a part of it — there’s always a risk of a takedown in there. When you’re overly aggressive on your feet, you run the risk of being taken down. I’ve worked for many years trying to cultivate a style that makes it harder for that, but no matter what, if you’re aggressive, you run the risk of getting taken down.
“I go out there and just tell people — what I’m saying is that if I take you down, I’m not just sitting there trying to play safe; I’m going to go for the finish no matter what. So if you try and take me down, I’m going to try for the finish. If I take you down, I’m going to try for the finish.
Dan Hardy
“If we don’t go to the ground, I’m trying to knock you out, and that’s what I like about Dan — he’s going to try to knock my head off. If that’s the case, I feel like I’m going to get some opportunities to try to knock his head off, and that’s the kind of fight I like.”
It’s also the kind of fight the UFC hopes materializes from pairing the Indiana senatorial hopeful with the back-into-a-corner Brit in Sunday’s main event. In addition to looking forward to meeting Hardy in the cage, Lytle is genuinely honored to be headlining the event, and wants to give his employers a reason to book him in the final bout of another card in the future.
“I meant when I said that I take pride in the fact that the UFC felt enough about me to put me in the main event,” reiterates Lytle, touching upon something he’d said both earlier in the conversation and during last week’s conference call. “I take that seriously. There’s no way I want to go out there and make them say, `Well, that was a big mistake on our part. Never going to have Chris is the main event again.’ I want them to be like, `Dude, I want this guy.’ I want people to hear that I’m going to be on the card and decide I’m renting this, I’m watching this or whatever.
“What I think they’re doing with these free cards that they’re putting on on Sunday nights is brilliant. They’re going to be watching the free fights on TV, and when they do, they want a fight that people are going to be like, `I’ve gotta see this.’ To think that they’re thinking, `Hey, we should put Chris and Dan Hardy in there; people are gonna wanna see that’ that’s huge to me.
“It really means that a lot that what I’ve been doing, consciously or subconsciously, saying, `I just wanna fight; I’m just going to go out, leave it all out there and whatever happens happens,’ I’m just glad to see that they understand that, they appreciate that, and they like that.”
Not only does Lytle want to put on a good performance for the fans and his employers, but he wants to inspire other fighters to follow his lead and embrace the entertainment side of the sport as well.
“I’m hoping that some other fighters will say, `You know what? I’ve lost a couple fights, I’ve won some fights, but it’s about more than just going out there and trying to eek out a victory.’ It’s a sport, but at the same time, this is entertainment. I want to be entertained when I watch fights. Nobody watches the croquette finals or badminton because they’re not entertaining.
“The bottom line is they want to get as many people to watch this as possible. This is the entertainment business at the same time. It is a sport, but you have to have people there to watch it to make this work. People want to see whoever get knocked out, and that’s building up the next card. It’s Marketing 101 and it’s what needs to be done.”
Class will be in session Sunday night in Milwaukee.
