By Thomas Gerbasi
Paul Buentello isn’t one to go around talking trash or tooting his own horn from the rooftops – it’s just not ‘The Headhunter’s style.
But a little more than a week away from his first fight since losing to UFC heavyweight champion Andrei Arlovski last October, Buentello has a strong statement to make to the mixed martial arts world:
“I haven’t gone anywhere,” he said. “I want people to know that after my UFC 55 loss I’m still here, I’m still enjoying this fight game, and I’m still getting stronger and stronger.”
We would expect nothing less from the Amarillo native, who has made a career of showing up to fight and leaving it all in the ring, win or lose. But against Arlovski, that aggressiveness cost him – big time. And he knows it.
“The one thing I would change (about the Arlovski fight) is my aggressiveness,” he admits. “I was too aggressive and I think that’s what ran me into the problem. I should have sat back and felt it out a little more.”
‘The problem’ was Arlovski’s stiff right hand, which shot through Buentello’s defenses and sent him face-first to the canvas just moments into their heavyweight title match.
Referee John McCarthy halted the bout at the 15-second mark. It’s about as devastating a loss as you can find – and on pay-per-view no less, even though most fighters will readily admit that a fight that ends that quickly is more a case of catching a foe cold than anything else. But Buentello, who refused to make excuses about the loss after the fight, still took it hard.
“The tough part for me is not being able to show what I was made of,” he said. “Everybody’s counting me out because of 15 seconds when I didn’t get my time to shine. The big man upstairs didn’t want me to shine and took it away, and that’s probably the hardest part – convincing people that that’s not me.”
Some fighters don’t recover from losses like that, opting to walk off into the sunset rather than chalking it up as a bad night and getting back into the gym and into a fight as soon as possible. Buentello, who headed back to Amarillo after the Arlovski fight for his usual post-fight downtime (he trains for fights at the American Kickboxing Academy in San Jose, California), took his time off and was soon ready to get back into training. As he says, “there was no problem getting back into it.”
“The only recovery time I needed was to say ‘I made some mistakes and I’ve just got to go back and do it again,’” said Buentello. “I’ve been in this position before. I’ve been in a position where I lost three in a row and lost fights that I should have won, so it’s nothing different to me. It’s part of the game and I’ve just got to live with it and go forward.”
With that attitude, Buentello – one of the game’s true class acts – will probably live to be 100, as he’s not going to get himself stressed out about things that are already in the past, and thus can’t be controlled. But what he says is true; he’s been through some rough times in the fight game and was still able to move forward with hard work, dedication, and fight-ending power in his hands.
He doesn’t forget the string when he dropped three fights in a row (to Ricco Rodriguez, Sam Sotello, and Nate Schroeder) in 2001, the 2003 loss to Bobby Hoffman (later avenged) that detoured his trip to the UFC until 2005, and now this defeat.
But he’s always persevered, and when he faces Gilbert Aldana on February 4th’s UFC 57 show, he’ll be the older and wiser veteran taking on a young gun making his debut in the big show. And if it seems like it was only yesterday when Buentello was stepping into the Octagon for the first time, it is, as his debut UFC win against Justin Eilers came almost a year to the day of his bout next week against Eilers.
“What’s interesting about this fight is that he’s making his debut, and it seems not so long ago that I was making my debut in the same show,” said Buentello. “I know he’s gonna come out hard, so I’m anticipating that he’s gonna come out swinging for the fences. It’s pretty exciting on my side because he’s gonna come out and bang.”
Aldana hasn’t seen the second round in his five-fight stint in mixed martial arts, with less than four minutes of combined fight time. It goes without saying that he’ll be looking for the knockout against Buentello, but as tough as Aldana has been previously, stepping into the Octagon for the first time has a way of altering your mental and physical state significantly. Buentello knows you never forget the first time.
“I was just trying to make a statement in the big show and show why I belonged there,” said Buentello, who made his UFC debut eight years into his career. “That’s what was going through my head. For me, it was eight years getting there; for him, it hasn’t been that long so it isn’t really a fulfillment of a dream like it was for me. This is the World Series of mixed martial arts, and it’s hard to tell what he’s going through, but when I went through it, it was pretty nerve-racking. But I just went in there with good composure and went forward with it.”
Buentello knocked out Eilers in the first round that night, followed it up with a submission victory over Kevin Jordan four months later, but then saw his 2005 end on a sour note with the loss to Arlovski. But Buentello, who is one of those ‘glass is half full’ guys, doesn’t see 2005 as a year of ups and downs, just ups.
“My last year has been really fun because I’m actually enjoying fighting now,” said Buentello. “It’s a little easier to make ends meet with fighting and with sponsors and stuff like that. All the years in the past it was sort of mind boggling with how I was gonna make it in a fight and whether the fight would lead me to the UFC. I wouldn’t say I had ups and downs (in 2005); I’m just enjoying fighting and having fun with it, so it’s pretty much on the up and up with me.”
He’s planning on keeping things on an upward swing this year, knowing that getting back into the title picture won’t be easy. To get there, he’s going to have to win, and win impressively, whenever he fights.
“I guess I’m probably gonna have to win three in a row and see where the heavyweight division’s at,” said Buentello. “My main focus is just to win, and I’ll be back there. This should be my year, so I think I’ll be back in title contention by the end of the year.”
And he’s gonna get there doing it the way he always has…
“I’m just gonna keep going for the head shots.”
Heh, I used that gif for a YTMND: http://insomniacurearlovski.ytmnd.com/
Nice!
I try and make gifs right after the big fights feel free to download em and put em anywhere. I’ve made dozens of gifs over the past few years but so far I’ve only managed to put a few into the gallery. Check it out here.