Todd “Hard Work” Duffee
By Josh Stein on Aug 30, 2009
After running across a UFC.com article titled “Silva (95 Seconds) and Marquardt (21 Seconds) are UFC 102′s Knockout Kings,” I had a few questions.
The first is: Why did the UFC hired someone who doesn’t know that 7 is less than 95 to write their articles?
The second is: Will Todd Duffee (5-0 MMA, 1-0 UFC) be remembered?
Of course, Duffee’s continued career in the UFC will depend a great deal on how he’s remembered. After all, the guy may be a future UFC Hall-of-Famer, and we just don’t know it yet. Still, looking at the history of the UFC’s fastest knockout artists, there are a lot of questions about what will become of Duffee.
That said, the man has a lot to prove, but he’s definitely capable of going far.
In Brazil, Duffee put away UFC vet and dreadlock connoisseur Assuerio Silva.
Certainly, Duffee, the freshly crowned Usain Bolt of Pain, is going to be carrying a lot of hype, but one really needs to look at the history of the record to realize that the pressure is not necessarily something that’s taken fighters to the top.
As previously mentioned, the immediate predecessors of Duffee, Don Frye (20-7-1-1 MMA, 9-1 UFC) and James Irvin (14-5-0-1 MMA, 4-3 UFC), never fought for a UFC title, and while their UFC knockouts were incredible and memorable, neither managed to ride the wave for long. Irvin, it’s worth mentioning, is the only fighter to have posted a record knockout outside of his debut (as the two previous record holders were also debuting at the time they set their marks).
So Duffee has been lumped in with a group of fighters who haven’t ever won a UFC title, though as one of five, there’s certainly the potential to be an outlier. However, given that Duffee is going to be at a decided size disadvantage when fighting many UFC heavyweights, he’ll have to display some substantial technical skills if he’s going to make a run at the title. That’s not to say he can’t (training with American Top Team, the tools are around him), but we haven’t seen the skills yet, beyond the power to knock somebody out with a jab (though that’s a damn useful skill).
The record holder before Frye set the eight second mark at UFC 8 was Dave Beneteau (6-5-1 MMA, 3-3 UFC), a fighter that (unless you have a weird fixation on the history of the sport, as I do) you’ve probably never heard of. Beneteau, a Canadian wrestler who was an alternate at UFC 5, posted a shocking 21 second knockout in his alternate bout and was pulled into the tournament to replace Jon Hess (1-1 MMA, 1-0 UFC), when Hess was forced to withdraw from the tournament with a hand injury. Beneteau beat well respected fighter Todd Medina (7-8-0-1 MMA, 1-1 UFC) and then lost to Dan Severn (86-16-7 MMA, 9-4 UFC) in the finals.
The first record holder (and the man who set the record in the first UFC fight in history), the Flying Dutchman Gerard Gordeau (2-2 MMA, 2-1 UFC), set the record in a tournament appearance, like both Beneteau and Frye, and (like Beneteau) ended up finishing second in the tournament. His 26 second knockout of Teila Tuli may not have stood as a record for even a half-dozen events, but the fight is definitely a classic display of fantastic kicks and the sickening logic between mouthguard regulations.
So, while Duffee is in the ranks of a few UFC legends in Gordeau ad Frye, it remains to be seen whether Gordeau will be able to transcend the greatest disability of this group, the lack of a single title belt. Whether he manages to or not, his hands will certainly command monstrous and deserved respect in the UFC heavyweight division.
Filed Under: MMA
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This is a ridiculously pointless article.
Well fewer than one in five UFC fighters ever get a title belt. Therefore a sample size of five is way too few to draw any sort of relevance to future title contentions.
The point is that the fighters who knock out their first UFC opponent quickly (and for four of these guys, it was their first opponent in the Octagon) don’t always have long term success in the cage in terms of claiming a belt.
Of course, you have fighters like Frye who might very well have been UFC champions (as Frye was a two time tournament winner with only one UFC loss before he left to fight other places).
It’s not about sample size with respect to the UFC, it’s about the relevance of the record with respect to long term career advancement.
“So Duffee has been lumped in with a group of fighters who haven’t ever won a UFC title, though as one of five, there’s certainly the potential to be an outlier.”
“it remains to be seen whether (Duffee) will be able to transcend the greatest disability of this group, the lack of a single title belt.”
The author clearly lumps Duffee into a “group” and then discusses the implications of belonging to that group. Which is stupid. The group is too small to say anything about Duffee’s potential.
The correct tack for the article would have been to point out that the group as a whole is too small and varied to draw any relevant conclusions about, and leave it at that.
The article makes about as much sense as discussing Thiago Silva’s title potential as a function of having the last name Silva. Record KO time is a statistical fluke.
Michael: The article is clearly discussing fighters who were artificially hyped up because of fast KO’s.
All of Duffee’s wins are from KO’s and his only amateur loss was because of a broken hand. He has the potential to break the trend. What else are you reading?
During the post-fight interviews, Duffee quickly dismissed any and all of the hype. He realized that he didn’t show anything in the octagon and really wanted to challenge himself as a fighter.
I totally agree with his outlook.
———
“You can’t evaluate that performance . . . I think it definitely helped build the hype machine that’s already been behind me – unwarranted, . . . but I still feel like I need to go out there and get tested. But it did feel great. Yeah, I want every fight to end in five seconds with my hand raised. Everyone does. But, I’m in this to find out about myself. You find out something new about yourself every time.
To me, my performance wasn’t any more impressive than what Gabriel Gonzaga came out and did tonight. And it’s definitely not any more impressive than Randy Couture and Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira. That’s historical. Those guys are history. What I did, it’s just a statistic, and it will be broken.” – Todd Duffee
Humble in victory and explosive in the cage. That’s what we like to see. He’s got potential for sure.
duffee repped it og style, YA HEARD!!!
+1 on Mike in the box’s rational…
And “Duffee is going to be at a decided size disadvantage when fighting many UFC heavyweights” isnt all that accurate. 6’3″/260 is not that far off Lesnar, is taller and heavier than Fedor, and is almost the same size as #1 contender in UFC. Also both taller and heavier than Velasquez, Couture, Nog, and Mir. the Only person much bigger than him is Rogers.
mils, he weighed in at 251 for this fight and looked in much better shape than the pictures I saw from the bout with Assuerio Silva.
There’s a definite size gap between Duffee and a lot of these younger heavyweights. Of the six heavyweights outside of the main event (and I’m leaving Couture and Nogueira out because those aren’t guys that are going to be in the UFC long term, in my opinion, while the others, discounting McCully, probably are), Duffee was the second smallest. He weighed in heavier than McCully, that’s it.
He’d have given up 7 pounds to Tuchscherer, 8 to Gonzaga and 9 to Russow, but that’s not my point. I actually think that, as a result of Duffee’s athleticism, the size wouldn’t matter.
I do think it matters if he’s going to ever looking at taking a title from a guy like Lesnar or Carwin, and there are going to be a lot more of those enormous true heavyweights coming in. It’ll be interesting to see how Duffee does dealing with that competition.
Your weight analogy is irrelevant. Lean body mass is what counts… packing on a ton of fat is not going to to give a boost in strength. If Duffee wanted to put on more weight he could easily pack on another 20 pounds of fat. Technicality will beat raw strength – GSP. GO watch the fight where Anderson Silva knock out Forrest Griffin.
Raw strength wins in certain situations as well. Look at Lesnar’s win over Mir.