Matt Brown Finds Renewed Life Once Again With UFC Contract

You've probably heard that in 2001, Matt Brown, now a longtime contender in the UFC welterweight division, was just some aimless punk in a small town in Ohio who was legally dead for more than a minute after overdosing on heroin. Perhaps just as impressive, in 2010 Brown lost three straight fights in the UFC, all by submission, which should have made him clinically dead in the eyes of the UFC, arguably a sterner taskmaster even than death—but somehow he managed to not get himself cut.

Yesterday, six years after that dark period and eight years and 22 fights into his UFC career, Brown was rewarded for his bizarre tenacity with a new eight-fight deal, a contract that should see the 35-year-old through the end of his fighting career. I say "should" because this is Matt Brown we're talking about and it would be a fool who bet against his still being around when he's 40 or even 50. Who or what would have the temerity to tell him to stop if Death itself couldn't do it?

What's really remarkable about yesterday's news is that such a large and sweeping deal would get made by the UFC with Brown coming off arguably the most deflating and convincing loss of his career, a Brazilian jiu-jitsu masterclass put on by Demian Maia that saw Brown, a striker born and bred, on the ground and paralyzed for nearly 15 minutes and ended with a cold inevitability near the end of round three when Maia finally caught Brown in the rear-naked choke he'd been working for all night. It wasn't an embarrassing loss for Brown, but it must have been a humbling one. To be a proud and fearless brawler, a self-proclaimed warrior of the old school, the man who took Robbie Lawler and Johny Hendricks five full rounds back to back in what amounted to one 50-minute fistfight, reduced to playing defensive jiu-jitsu for 15 minutes against arguably the greatest grappler in MMA history must have taken something out of his soul. Surely even a man who defied death found rolling with Demian Maia a singularly suffocating and deflating experience.

But what makes Matt Brown so perfect, and arguably the reason the UFC rewarded him with such a long contract despite his advanced age and recent loss, is that he wanted the fight with Maia, not because it would move him up the welterweight rankings or because it would be the most lucrative fight available, but because Maia's jiu-jitsu genius represented the Ohio native's greatest possible challenge as a competitor, the "biggest mountain" he could climb, he said. "I don't want the 10,000-foot mountain. I want the 15,000-foot mountain."

So it's no wonder then that the UFC would do whatever it took to keep Matt Brown in the UFC for as long as it possibly could. Yes, he's one of the few fighters on the roster who can guarantee an exciting fight every time and yes he's got a compelling biography (one made for Fox promos) and yes somehow he manages to sound not entirely ridiculous when he compares himself to a medieval warrior with a sword in his hand. But why the UFC needs Matt Brown is because he represents some strange and singular force and disposition otherwise not found in the promotion, a depth and darkness—a man with a sense of philosophical, even poetic fatalism that can only be earned through a rough life lived and can't be simulated (as many one argue it could) through wrestling drills or long runs or draining weight cuts. Other fighters who talk about training and fighting in terms of death are cheating that word and fooling themselves. Misery isn't death. Death is something other, something mysterious. And being willing to die isn't dying.

Having died once literally and then nearly once promotionally and then dragged through the simulated slow death that is a grappling match with Demian Maia, Brown knows this. He feels it in his blood, I bet. And as a result, losses mean less to him than other, arguably better fighters because he knows they're just metaphors for the one great loss, and that there's no need to fear them when something sublime—something like poetry and life—can be touched by daring to risk them.

And for that he deserves a new contract.