#19: Robbie Lawler
Photo by Josh Hedges/Zuffa LLC/Zuffa LLC via Getty Images
All things being fair, Robbie Lawler’s last relevant appearance probably should’ve been the shellacking he took at the hands of Lorenz Larkin to conclude his middling Strikeforce career. It was a sight I’ll always remember from Robbie. Covered in blood, with multiple cuts on the top of his head, Lawler just walked away, shaking his head. Resting his hands on the cage, head down, he looked more annoyed than exhausted. He hadn’t been hurt much in the previous fifteen minutes, though that doesn’t mean he wasn’t soaking up damage. He’d buzzed Larkin early in their fight, to which Larkin had quickly recovered and stymied Lawler’s aggression. It was the look of a man uninterested in what he was doing or where he was at in his career.
There are competitors and there are fighters, and fighters like Robbie Lawler have no business winning championships. Despite becoming a fan-favorite upon his return, most modern fans likely don’t remember how nomadic Lawler was after his early departure from the UFC. During a fairly long stint at middleweight, Robbie looked more like an out-of-shape welterweight than a natural 185er. With a spotty 28-14 record, Robbie Lawler is likely to be one of the more controversial entries on this list.
He wasn’t adept at winning the same way Georges St-Pierre was, but he was someone who intrinsically understood fighting better than anyone. Tactics came naturally to him. For someone with his kind of longevity, you don’t make it that far without possessing an iron chin and some fairly tight defense. Lawler had both. Even during his aimless days, you can tell what Lawler was looking for in specific moments. Check right hook, thudding jab, winging the power left. Parry and slip the jab, throw back, etc. Robbie knew how to take angles in the pocket, how to fence, how to brawl. His game made sense. When opponents fought Lawler’s fight, they would almost always lose quite brutally.
Lawler never cared that much, until he did. Wins and losses were all part of the game. He didn’t like wrestlers or grapplers; they never let him have any fun. Strategy was out of the question. The man just wants to fight. For such an inherently talented fighter with such a natural sense for reading opponents and countering their tendencies with enormous power, Lawler never wanted to be told how to do what he loved to do.
When did he start caring? It wasn’t the unceremonious conclusion of his first UFC tenure, an upset submission loss to Evan Tanner. Nor was it the fairly short-term run as EliteXC middleweight champion, where every fight played out pretty much the same. His win-one-lose-one pattern in Strikeforce bore that suspicion out. The fighters who locked Lawler in combat were folded. Those who approached the one-note action fighter with a bit of tact generally figured him out. Jacare Souza, Renato Sobral, Jake Shields. Not worth caring.
For my money, it was the final minute of the first Johny Hendricks bout. 24 minutes into a stone cold classic, Hendricks cinched the victory in the final sixty seconds with a double-leg takedown along the fence. “What the hell was that about?” Lawler’s frustrated expression seemed to indicate. “Seriously?” Against a high-volume opponent willing to stand in the pocket with him for the entire fight and after going strike-for-strike until the very end, Hendricks had secured the victory in the most vilifying manner possible. Robbie had finally regained direction in his career, impressively earning his way to a UFC title shot to the surprise of everyone. Even after being given his fight for 98% of the bout, he had let victory slip through his fingers at the last moment. Typical Lawler.
Except it wasn’t. What followed was something no one could’ve predicted: maturity. In a rebounding fight against Jake Ellenberger just a few months later, Lawler methodically walked down the right-handed wrestleboxer (a classic welterweight archetype), beating him senseless him for two and a half rounds before netting the TKO. His output never waned. Ellenberger scored a takedown once or twice, and Lawler characteristically smiled and laughed at the attempt. Unlike his briny days at middleweight, he stayed focused, scrambled with more urgency, and went back to work. He couldn’t let himself have too much fun. For the first time in his career, he wanted to win.
Subtle wrinkles in Lawler’s technical game were unveiled. An inherent understanding and application of rhythm. A furthered ability to gradate power, not simply to hurt an opponent, but to steal momentum and secure rounds. With such an emphasis on hand fighting and layered defensive maneuvers in the pocket, Lawler could afford to wade into his opponent’s danger zone for rounds at a time without getting hit particularly clean. As a stout, physical athlete, welterweights had an extremely difficult time overpowering Lawler, a combination of technically improved takedown defense and corporeal aggression denying them.
Unlike GSP, Robbie needed to take breaks from time to time in championship fights. In his title reign, he got better at showing more and giving less during his downtime. Rory MacDonald would attempt to poke and prod at Lawler with his jab and throw snap kicks to Robbie’s midsection, but he would have a difficult time landing with consistency. Hendricks had a preternaturally tough time hitting Lawler’s head in their first fight, as Lawler exhibited some of the very best head movement + hand fighting defense I’ve ever seen in MMA. Matt Brown was primarily acclaimed for a sneaky, dimensional clinch game. Lawler didn’t care. On clinch breaks, he would slam knees and short hooks to the Ohio native’s body, making it clear that Brown’s usual safety net wouldn’t be safe at all.
Robbie needed time and space to compute the data an opponent gave him. Once Lawler found the opening, he was terrifying. Rory MacDonald was a great fighter in his own right, but his striking arsenal was often clinical to a fault. Against someone who forced the pocket, his game could quickly become undone. Early in their first fight, Rory attempted an over-the-top elbow from his rear hand. Lawler blocked the elbow, saw an opening, and shelved the read in the back of his mind. Later in the fight, Rory threw the same elbow and Lawler countered with a thudding left hook from his hip to the Canadian’s jaw.
After two rounds of elusively defending in the pocket and making reads against Johny Hendricks in their first championship fight, Robbie found his mark. Hendricks threw his arching power left over the top, turning with the punch, and ending up with all of his weight on his front leg. Lawler rolled with the first punch, tossing his right hook out to check Hendricks’ lead shoulder before torquing all of his weight into a shovel left hook to Hendricks’ chin. For the next ten minutes, Robbie would box the hell out of Hendricks, laughing sadistically when his opponent attempted to hit him back.
Eventually, Lawler and Hendricks fought their way through four rounds in the rematch by the end of 2014. Scorecards were up in the air, and both men needed to cinch the win. Robbie’s longtime coach, Matt Pena, told him straight, “Hey buddy, we’re back where we were in March.” The decision still hovered in the air, as did Lawler’s gas tank, which failed him at the tail end of the first bout. Only this time, Robbie wasn’t about to let the fight run away from him. He was much too angry to let that happen again.
In the final minute, after being pressed against the cage for much of the round, Lawler’s berserk meter hit capacity. Walking down the champion, throwing every ounce of his power into every punch and kick, with an expression of unmitigated fury in his eyes. Lawler wasn’t about to let Hendricks hold on for dear life in the waning moments. The final bell rang, Hendricks turned to walk back to his corner, but Lawler stayed in Hendricks’ face. He wasn’t calm. He was still furious. He wanted to fight.
In the summer of 2015, one of the sport’s greatest & most historically important fights took place at UFC 189 and it featured Robbie Lawler at the helm. Staring across the cage was former opponent, Rory MacDonald, who had finally earned his way to the championship that he seemed destined for since before his debut. For the first round, Lawler hung back. He let Rory jab, teep, and fence at range, giving up the first frame to the judges. It wouldn’t matter; Lawler was going to knock him out. When Robbie’s lead hand unveiled itself in Round 2, the fight looked as good as over. A crunching jab mashed the nose of the Canadian into a vermilion faucet. Again and again.
The second was clean for Lawler, and the next round appeared to be going the same way, until Rory found a read of his very own. MacDonald has been throwing diligent snap kicks to Lawler’s body, so eventually Rory decided to play with Robbie’s expectations. A round kick to the head from Rory’s long, bladed stance had Robbie on watery legs in the closing seconds of the third. Now it was Rory’s turn to surge. Backing the older man into the fence, the measured, reserved prospect let everything fly. Often times, Rory’s commitment to safety and insularity within a fight cost him the excitement of fans. With Lawler hurt, Rory was a rabid dog on a bone. Slicing clinch elbows, flying knees, high kicks. Blood leaked down Lawler’s abdomen as he stumbled back to his corner at the end of the round. Robbie spent his entire career looking for someone to give him a fight. Here it was, and he was losing.
More jabs. More head kicks and elbows. Rory’s eye sockets were swelled from being punched, and blood stained his nose like a sloppily painted mask. The right side of Lawler’s face was hideously disfigured, with a sizable chunk of his upper lip being ripped off in combat, leaving a triangular canyon in a deep shade of burgundy. The bell sounded. The fourth round ended. Lawler exhaled a cloud of blood onto the speckled canvas. Neither man turned away. They just stared past the blood and bruises. They stared at the work they had accomplished against their opponent; likely considering just how many years they might have hacked off the other. The referee got between the men and ushered them back to their corners, but Lawler and MacDonald stared through the ref. There was little to keep these men standing besides pride and ego. There may not be a more iconic image in the history of MMA. It was great and it was horrible.
In the end, MacDonald couldn’t withstand the hellacious damage Lawler had been inflicting. The young Canadian, ahead on the scorecards, appeared much older than he did at the beginning of the fight when he crumpled in the final frame. Lawler roared like a man possessed, his screams drowned out from the cheers of the arena. Veins bulging from his traps, mouth drooling a mixture of blood and saliva, Robbie Lawler marched around the cage like a wild animal marking his territory.
“That wasn’t one punch! That was years of fighting right there coming to fruition!”
Robbie never cared about winning, until he decided to. Once he did, his willpower within a fight was awesome and horrifying. He was never destined for a long title reign at the top. In all fairness, he shouldn’t have ever been destined for a title reign in the first place. Lawler was a lot of things in his career; star prospect, busted prospect, nomad, journeyman, action fighter. Champion never should’ve been one of them. And yet, the sight of a war-torn Lawler with the belt around his waist feels inexorably right.