Jens Pulver should consider immediate retirement
There was once fighter who gave BJ Penn his first hard fight inside the octagon. That fighter is nicknamed the “Lil’ Evil” because he does his best to unleash h**l towards his opponents. He was fast and equipped with excellent wrestling skills. He could simply choose where to take the fight but most notable of all, were his powerful fists which was his bread and butter. His name is Jens Pulver, the first ever UFC lightweight champion.
But the dominant Pulver disappeared a long time ago, about 8 to 11 years. He has suffered eight losses out of his 10 recent fights, six of those were consecutive and seven ended either by submission or KO. Looking at his record, it is obvious that Pulver is only a shell of his former self. He's a fighter who can no longer deliver but still continues to fight for reasons he only knows.
If there is one fighter that can retire Jens Pulver, it is Jens Pulver. Aside from his body, the other thing that is hurting is his legacy. MMA, being such a young sport, still has a vast room to grow. Fighters are constantly learning, growing stronger and getting quicker. Pulver is old-school and fighters in his weight division have simply caught up beyond his abilities. Unlike some old fighters like the ageless Randy Couture, Lil’ Evil is an old dog incapable of learning new tricks.
The lightweight division in any organization is stacked with fighters of enormous talent and potential. The fitness and technical skills of many of these fighters are quite surprising. FIghters like Frankie Edgar, Penn, and Kenny Florian of the UFC, and the lightweights/featherweights of lesser organizations, namely Urijah Faber, Mike Brown, and Jose Aldo are amazing fighters in their own right. Some of them are still very young and haven’t even reached the peak of their abilities. Odds are against the struggling Pulver. How can he keep up with the competition, only Pulver knows, and many will agree that his knowledge is merely a miscalculation.
Pulver is like Chuck Liddell in many aspects. He’d rather get hurt in a fight than fade quietly into the limelight. Yet unlike Liddell, who was somewhat forced to retire by UFC president Dana White because he was losing too much, Pulver is still tolerated to fight in more forgiving organizations. He’s still a big name after all.
This is not saying that old-timers can’t possibly adapt to the highly evolving MMA game. Couture has proven that it can be done. But Pulver’s case is seemingly hopeless. Overtime his chin has degraded to glass and his submission defence has never improved. He is a sucker for the guillotine choke. Half of his losses are from knockouts and the other half are from submission finishes. Only once has he lost via decision. In other words, if he gets beat, he gets beat up and finished.
In fairness to Pulver, he still has the power in his fists but it is not enough to defeat a decent fighter with a strategy. Opponents will just have to take the fight to ground and exploit Pulver’s weakness in submission grappling. Fighting him standing up is also a good bargain as he is easy to hit and can't take a punch the way he used to.
For Pulver fans, seeing him take an embarrassing beating is heartbreaking. Some just want to see him get beat up. The age of 35 is actually not that old but in the case of Jens Pulver, he is a very old 35-year-old MMA fighter. It shows in the way he fights. His fight record speaks for itself.
Pulver had already made his mark in MMA history but it is evident that he’ll never get what he once had.
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