Three Years After Home Invasion, Scars Remain for Brandon Vera and Lloyd Irvin

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Brandon VeraSomething like this, maybe you never really get over it. Maybe you're not supposed to.

You wake up in the middle of the night to find two men with guns in your house -- men who obviously arrived there with a plan, and one which may or may not involve leaving living witnesses to their crime -- and right then your whole world has been altered in ways you can't fully comprehend just yet.

"To this day, I'm still paranoid," said MMA trainer Lloyd Irvin, who, along with his wife and young son, as well as UFC light heavyweight Brandon Vera, lived this nightmare just a little over three years ago. "It changed our whole lives, how we think about life, about our families, about security and how we stay safe -- everything."

For Vera, it also changed the way he thinks about his MMA career, and not necessarily in any way that's helpful for a man who makes his living fighting other men inside a cage on Saturday nights. Lately, he's begun to realize that what happened in Irvin's house that night didn't truly end there, and maybe it has more to do with what's happened to him ever since than he originally allowed himself to believe.

The story, which is now practically a part of MMA lore, goes like this: Lloyd Irvin woke up in the pre-dawn hours of October 4, 2008 to find that two armed men had broken into his suburban Maryland home and were standing over him as he slept. They instructed him to get up and join them as they rounded up the home's other occupants, which included Irvin's wife and son, who was then just four years old, as well as Vera, who was staying with Irvin while he did his pre-fight training camp at Irvin's gym.




While one of the men held Vera and Irvin's family at gunpoint, the other led Irvin into a back bedroom. That's when Irvin saw his opening and took it, grabbing for the gun, ejecting the ammunition clip, and wrestling the weapon away from the gunman. Disarmed, the man shouted out a warning to his accomplice and they both fled the house, leaving Irvin, his family, and Vera all unharmed, but badly shaken.

"My son is still traumatized to this day," said Irvin, who added that both he and his family sought professional psychiatric help after the incident. "We just got him back sleeping in his own room about four or five months ago. About two years ago we got him back in his room for about 30 days, and then one incident where these deer set off the alarm outside the house, after that it went downhill again."

For Vera, the damage was slightly more subtle. He and Irvin flew to England for the fight with Jardine as scheduled, and he tried his best to carry on as if nothing had happened. He lost the fight via split decision, but that was only the beginning.

"I remember after that fight, going in to train would suck," Vera said. "I'd be looking at the clock, waiting to leave. Sometimes I didn't want to go two or three-a-days. I'd be arguing with my coaches or slacking off. I honestly think that it had to do with that home invasion."

It wasn't just that he was emotionally traumatized, Vera said, though of course he was. But it was more that, once he realized how easily and suddenly his life could have ended, spending hours in a gym every day didn't seem like such a good use of his time.

"After that, I don't think MMA was number one in my life anymore," said Vera. "After that home invasion, I was like, hey, I could have been dead today, and there's still so much I want to do. There's so much I want to experience, so much I want to do with my wife. MMA just wasn't the number one priority in my life anymore. Without me knowing, my life rearranged itself."

In theory, this isn't such a bad revelation. If this were a movie script, it might be just the kind of catalyst that forces the main character to examine his priorities and put the right things first in life. He starts leaving the office early to take long walks in the park. He calls his mother. Everything works out in the end.

In real life, it didn't happen that way for Vera. Instead of reveling in the impermanence of life, he grew paranoid. As Irvin put it, "[Vera] got really into guns and security and stuff."

Not that Irvin was exactly ready to give himself over to the worst impulses of his fellow man, either.

"I did some really crazy stuff at the house for home protection," he said. That included not only a security system that would present a challenge to the Mission: Impossible team, but also a permit to carry a concealed handgun, which isn't easy to get in Maryland. "For a while I had a protection company follow my wife around," Irvin added. "It was crazy times."

As Vera put it, what bothered him most was that he'd left himself so vulnerable, and he never wanted to make the same mistake again.

"They were professionals," he said. "It was this feeling that I'd been caught out there, no weapon in my hand, no dogs, no gun. I just got caught slipping."

But as Vera grew more concerned with his own safety and struggled to put his new list of priorities in perspective, his career inside the cage suffered. He won two straight after the Jardine loss, then dropped fights to Randy Couture and Jon Jones before being dominated by Thiago Silva and getting cut by the UFC following his third loss in a row.

As Vera explained, that's when he knew he'd lost "it."

"People keep asking me what it is," he said. "But if you've never lost it, there's no way I can explain what it is."

Following his dismissal from the UFC, Vera embarked on a road trip across the U.S., teaching seminars at gyms along the way, he said. He drove 8,500 miles in all, and "somewhere along those 8,500 miles is where I found it again."

"Watching an 11-year-old kid take an adult seminar and do better than the adults because he was so serious and so hungry to learn, it made me happy again," he said. "It brought me back to that place."

Vera was also aided by some delayed, though no less satisfying justice. Police arrested a suspect in the home invasion case that they believed was linked to multiple murders in similar situations -- a man the local police chief deemed a "serial killer" -- who will now spend the rest of his life in prison following sentencing, Irvin said.

On one hand, it shook Vera to know that, had his longtime coach not disarmed the man, they would almost certainly have been killed that night. On the other, Vera said, "I think maybe it was something in my life that I couldn't get past until those guys got caught."

Vera got a reprieve in his professional life as well when, nearly three months after the loss to Silva, the Nevada State Athletic Commission revealed that Silva had submitted a sample for testing that was "inconsistent with human urine." Silva would later cop to steroid use and Vera's loss would be changed to a no contest. The UFC would also opt to give him another chance in light of this information, welcoming him back to face Eliot Marshall at UFC 137 in Las Vegas this Saturday night.

"It's not a new chapter; it's a whole new book," said Vera. "The path I was on before, I don't know where I was going or where I got lost. Somewhere I made a left when I should have made a right. I don't know, but I lost it, and now I've found it."

The change is apparent to Irvin, too, who has had Vera back in his gym in Maryland for a full training camp for the first time since the home invasion incident in 2008. Vera never came out and told him that he'd been hesitant to return because of what happened that night in his house, Irvin said, "but I had a good sense of that. I personally didn't really want to be in my own house sometimes because of it, so I understood."

Now Vera is not only back training with him, Irvin said, but he's actually doing the work because he wants to, rather than simply going through the motions because he has to.

"He's in the gym 40 minutes or an hour before his training time is supposed to start. He's putting the time in and enjoying it more," said Irvin. "It used to be that if he had a bad training day or a bad day in the gym he'd just keep going forward or whatever. Now he'll text you at midnight asking, 'The half-guard sweep didn't work, is my hand in the wrong position?'"

If there was anybody who could understand Vera's lack of motivation after the home invasion, it was Irvin. The same trauma had touched his life, and still lurks there somewhere under the surface, he said.

"The reality that we could have been dead right then, it makes you think all sorts of things about life and what it means and what you haven't done yet. When we were being held hostage...you ever see the movies where a guy will go through this montage of his whole life and everything he's done? That really happened in my mind."

Now that Vera has worked through some of his issues and is back to training like the man he used to be in the gym, Irvin is "one hundred percent" confident of victory against Marshall, he said.

"If Brandon follows the game plan and does what he's supposed to do, Eliot's going to know in the first round, this is wrong, that something's not right, because this is not where he's supposed to be. Then he'll be forced to do some things that we're anticipating, and Brandon will get the victory. I have no doubt in my mind about that."

For Vera, the weight of the expectations on him is something that he feels, but insists he isn't laboring under. This return to the UFC could easily be a one-shot deal, more of an audition for his old spot rather than a guaranteed second chance.

"I'm supposed to win this fight," he said. "I'm supposed to go in here and hurt Eliot bad. It's different. It's not added pressure, it's just that this is what I was supposed to be doing the whole time. It feels weird. I don't feel nervous anymore. I just feel like I'm supposed to go in here and whoop his ass."

Now, just a shade over three years since the incident that made him re-organize his entire life, Vera insists that he's back to doing the sport because he wants to, and not because he has to.

It's fitting then that he prepared for this return alongside the man who probably saved his life that night, and who knows all too well what he's struggled with ever since.

"Brandon's been with me for a long time, since before he got to the UFC and before everybody knew who he was," said Irvin. "He's not just a fighter to me, he's like a son and a student, and I love him. I just look forward to seeing him rise back up to the top."

 

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Source: http://mmafighting.com/2011/10/25/three-years-after-home-invasion-scars-remain-for-brandon-vera-a/

Tank Abbott Hiroyuki Abe Cyril Abidi  Daniel Acacio Bernard Ackah 

Smashing pumpkins: Show us your MMA carved pumpkins

Artist Ray Villafane created a pumpkin that reminds me of MMA's best punch-faces.

Smashing pumpkins: Show us your MMA carved pumpkins

That is an impressive work of art, particularly the flying pumpkin teeth. Could you do any better?

Here's the challenge. Create an MMA-inspired pumpkin and post it on the Cagewriter Facebook page. It can be a fighter, a fight, a logo, whatever. It just needs to be obviously related to mixed martial arts and made from a pumpkin, and not obscene, vulgar or otherwise inappropriate. We will award the best ones DVDs, fight programs and whatever else we can pull from the Cagewriter prize closet.

Read on to see some inspiration from recent fights via photographer Tracy Lee, or look through a collection of Cagewriter's exclusive pictures.

Smashing pumpkins: Show us your MMA carved pumpkins

Nam Phan and Leonard Garcia at UFC 136

Smashing pumpkins: Show us your MMA carved pumpkins

Gray Maynard and Frankie Edgar at UFC 136

Smashing pumpkins: Show us your MMA carved pumpkins

Chris Lytle and Dan Hardy at UFC on Versus 5.

Source: http://sports.yahoo.com/mma/blog/cagewriter/post/Smashing-pumpkins-Show-us-your-MMA-carved-pumpk?urn=mma-wp8429

Daniel Acacio Bernard Ackah  Terrance Aflague Yoshihiro Akiyama  Gilbert Aldana 

Jamie Varner Un-Retires, Returns for XFC Fight Because 'I'm a Man of My Word'

It might go down as one of the shortest retirements in the history of the sport. One month ago, after losing a decision to late replacement Dakota Cochrane at a Titan Fighting Championships event, Jamie Varner took to his Twitter to tell fans that he'd had enough.

"I gave fighting another shot I need 2 thank u guys 4 ur support! But I just don't have it anymore. Love u all but ull never c me fight again," Varner wrote.

A short time later, that message was removed. Shortly after that, Varner was back in the gym, preparing to have another go at it Friday night at an XFC event on HDNet. Maybe it just goes to show that you should never say never, even on Twitter.

"I think, honestly, I just made an emotional decision and an emotional remark," Varner told MMA Fighting this week. "I feel like I didn't perform very well in that last fight. The guy just overpowered me. He wasn't very good. I was much better than the guy, but I just got controlled. I didn't like that feeling, and I just thought maybe it was time for me to hang it up."

Of course, the former WEC lightweight champ didn't hold that opinion for very long. Once he started to think about it, Varner decided that maybe his passion for the sport hadn't evaporated after all. Maybe he'd just been hit with a few bad breaks, one right after another.

For starters, he said, his original opponent was pulled from the lineup just a few days before the bout. Then the replacement, Dakota Cochrane, couldn't make the lightweight limit, so Varner had to fight at welterweight despite the fact that he'd already completed the bulk of his weight cut to get down to 155 pounds.

After getting overpowered by a bigger opponent, Varner said, frustration briefly got the better of him. Hence the tweet.

"Then I took a week off, came home to talk to my trainers, and they were like, 'You shouldn't have even taken that fight.' It wasn't in my weight class, and too many factors played into that. Maybe I was a little overtrained, too. Who knows? But I prepared for one guy, got a completely different guy, and then it wasn't even in my weight class. I'm a lightweight. I have no business fighting a welterweight."

But it wasn't just a sober analysis of the need for weight classes that got Varner back in the cage so fast. Before the loss to Cochrane, he'd already signed to fight Nate Jolly on tonight's XFC event, so retiring would mean backing out of his contract, which he wasn't prepared to do, he said.

"XFC has been doing a lot of marketing, been doing a lot of social networking promoting this fight. The show must go on. Whether I have a good day or a bad day, the show must go on. I made a commitment, and I'm a man of my word."

If that sounds like a man who's feeling a little worn down, that's not too far off. Two fights in the span of a month will take a toll on anyone, especially when one of those fights is a surprise move up in weight that you never planned on making. But for Varner, the retracted retirement proclamation was also at least partially driven by a general sense of fight fatigue.

"I've been doing this sport for ten years," Varner explained. "I started training when I was 17, had my first fight when I was a senior in high school. I've been at it a long time. I started wrestling when I was 14, started boxing when I was 11. That's a long time -- 13 or 16 years -- of competition and cuts and all that."

At 27 years old, an age when most people are still working on getting established in a career, Varner is feeling the effects of his. Once the fight with Jolly is in the books, win or lose, he plans to take some time away and re-evaluate things. Maybe he'll take a couple pro boxing matches, he said, or do some grappling tournaments just to get the competitive juices flowing again.

Not only has his recent run of fights had him feeling like he's been "non-stop dieting," it's also left him "a little burnt out," he said. But against Jolly he sees a good opportunity to get the taste of that last defeat out of his mouth, so at least he can take some time off with a win under his belt.

"I know this guy is a very, very beatable guy. I'm bigger, I'm faster, I'm better in every position. I'm not too worried about what he brings to the table. If I go in there and perform to even half what I'm capable of, I should walk away with the W."

Whether he decides to stick around in the sport or just keep on walking afterwards, we'll have to wait and see.

 

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Source: http://mmafighting.com/2011/10/21/jamie-varner-un-retires-returns-for-xfc-fight-because-im-a-ma/

Alex Andrade  Jermaine Andrè  Yoji Anjo  Tank Abbott Hiroyuki Abe

MMA Link Parade

- Pat Barry and Mirko 'Cro Cop' Filipovic Sing a Duet. [Middle Easy]

- Texas Expands Drug Testing for UFC 136. [Sports Illustrated]

- New Legislation Would Give Wisconsin Towns Power to Make MMA Illegal. [Cage Potato]

- Zoila Gurgel tears ACL, forced to withdraw from Bellator 57 fight. [Five Ounces of Pain]

- The 20 Creepiest Fighters in the Sport's History. [Low Kick]

- More Surgery for Shane Carwin. [NBC Sports]

- Ed Soares: 'We'll Probably End Up Having To Fight Chael Sonnen Twice.' [MMA Convert]

- Joe Lauzon Challenges Anthony Pettis to a February Fight. [5th Round]

- Is UFC 137 Still Worth the Money Without GSP? [Bleacher Report]

- Victor Conte Talks Steroids in MMA & Boxing. [The Fight Nerd]

- Nick Diaz Must Make the Most of His Second Chance. [Sports Illustrated]

- Fabricio Werdum 'For Sure' Wants to Come Back to the UFC. [MMA Mania]

- Update on Fox-Direct TV contract dispute. [MMA Payout]

 

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Source: http://mmafighting.com/2011/10/21/mma-link-parade/

Cyril Abidi  Daniel Acacio Bernard Ackah  Terrance Aflague Yoshihiro Akiyama 

UFC 137 Preview: Hioki vs. Roop, Jorgensen vs. Curran

MMAFrenzy's coverage of UFC 137 continues as we kick off our preview of Saturday's main card with a pair of fights between featherweights Hatsu Hioki and George Roop, and bantamweights Scott Jorgenson and Jeff Curran. Stay tuned to MMAFrenzy.com each day this week as we take a look at new fight from UFC 137, leading up to the main event showdown between welterweight contenders BJ Penn and Nick Diaz.

Source: http://mmafrenzy.com/26440/ufc-137-preview-hioki-vs-roop-jorgensen-vs-curran/

Jimmy Ambriz Matt Andersen  Alex Andrade  Jermaine Andrè  Yoji Anjo 

Chael must battle Tito for the ?People?s Champ? moniker

Chael must battle Tito for the ?People?s Champ? moniker

After a busy summer, Tito Ortiz has had some time to think. That's not always a good thing with the loquacious former UFC light heavyweight champ.

Chael Sonnen recently stated that he's the "People's Champ," based on the fact that his loss against Anderson Silva at UFC 117 was less than legitimate. Now Ortiz wants a piece of that People's Champ pie.

"I showed that I'm able to compete against the best guys in the world, and I think that will help show people that if they believe in themselves, if they believe in their dream, they can accomplish anything," Ortiz said. "That's why I changed my name to 'The People's Champ.' I want everyone to know that I'm here for the fans. I want them to know that they can bounce back from anything.

In a video gaming story on ESPN.com, Ortiz pointed to a recent experience with fans as another reason for the name change.

"I signed over 15,000 autographs last weekend at the UFC fan expo," Ortiz tells me as we talk about his career resurgence, including a roster spot in the upcoming "UFC Undisputed 3" video game. "The first day I stood there for seven and a half hours. The second day I was there for over six hours. They had to kick me out. It was a lot of fun."

Based on his miracle win over Ryan Bader and fighting a heel in Rashad Evans at UFC 133, Ortiz did see a big transformation in his image. But is it enough, to make you call him the People's Champ? Or is there now a People's Champ for each weight division. I vote for Roy Nelson at heavyweight, Nick Diaz at 170, Melvin Guillard at 155

Source: http://sports.yahoo.com/mma/blog/cagewriter/post/Chael-must-battle-Tito-for-the-8216-People-82?urn=mma-wp8317

Thiago Alves  Andre Amade  Dean Amasinger  Jimmy Ambriz Matt Andersen 

Florian still a bridesmaid as Aldo defends belt at UFC 136

Florian still a bridesmaid as Aldo defends belt at UFC 136

Jose Aldo defended his featherweight championship with a decision over Kenny Florian at UFC 136 in Houston on Saturday. Aldo won the fight 49-46 on all three judges' cards.

Aldo also able to tag Florian in the first minutes of the bout, so Florian turned to takedowns. Aldo held off Florian's takedowns, but spent much of the round clinched against the fence defensively.

A tentative Aldo started the second round not throwing many of his patented leg kicks. As the round wore on, Aldo threw more of his kicks, but it was a tentative round for both fighters until Aldo tossed Florian's takedown attempt to the side, then landed a kick as Florian stood back up.

In the third round, Aldo became more comfortable, landing more kicks. Those kicks also set up strikes that damaged Florian. Aldo took Florian down in the third minute and moved to side control, then half-guard. Though Florian defended well, Aldo was in control. Florian escaped after Aldo wasn't able to accomplish much with the takedown, and the two finished the round in the clinch.

Florian returned to the clinch for much of the fourth round. When they were apart, Aldo got the better of their striking exchanges, but Florian had better Octagon control. As the fourth ended, Aldo smiled and gave the thumbs up to his cornermen, who advised him to stay away from the clinch and continue to kick low.

Unfortunately, he couldn't follow their directions early in the round, as Florian returned to the clinch. Florian slipped and fell to the ground. At first, he held off Aldo with upkicks, but Aldo found the right moment and got full guard. Florian defended the submission attempts and returned to his feet.

With two minutes left to go, Aldo pushed Florian against the fence until referee Dan Miragliotta separated them. Florian continued to try for the takedown that wasn't there the previous 23 minutes of the bout. Florian separated for a second to try to throw some home run punches, but then returned to the clinch.

After the fight, Aldo said through a translator that he was tentative on his kick because of Florian's takedowns. He also said that he came up with his gameplan after watching Florian's fight with B.J. Penn.

This was Florian's third time in a title fight, and his third loss. He tried for the lightweight title twice, against Penn and Sean Sherk. A drop down to featherweight opened the door for him to get another shot. With a loss in this bout, don't expect for Florian to get another shot at a belt. His record is 14-6.

Aldo successfully defended the UFC featherweight belt for the second time, as he beat Mark Hominck in a five-rounder at UFC 129. He first won this belt when the featherweight division was in the WEC, where he ran through the division on the way to the belt. Aldo's record now stands at 20-1.

Other popular stories on Yahoo! Sports:
? U.S. overcomes clumsy misses to give Klinsmann his first win
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Source: http://sports.yahoo.com/mma/blog/cagewriter/post/Florian-still-a-bridesmaid-as-Aldo-defends-belt-?urn=mma-wp7982

Gilbert Aldana  José Aldo  John Alessio  Houston Alexander Ricardo Almeida 

Bouldering Burbage photos

Finally a little sun! Yesterday I went climbing in Burbage (specifically Burbage south boulders) in the Peak District near Sheffield. I’m really glad I’ve got these boulders within 15 minutes of my home. Although in a climbing wall / gym I’m happy on 6a/6b the techniques on grit boulders are a different world: lots of smearing [...]

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/rock-climbing-blog/~3/cezufJsw-4w/philsheard

Bernard Ackah  Terrance Aflague Yoshihiro Akiyama  Gilbert Aldana  José Aldo