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Jens Pulver

Combat sport participants, more often than not, come from distressed backgrounds. Most people fortunate enough to have happy, healthy, well-cared-for upbringings don't relish the idea of a future built around getting punched in the face. Many fighters trace the origins of their careers to poverty, or abuse, or the loss of a family member. Many turned to combat sports as a way of coping with trauma.

When Jens Pulver was seven years old, having been physically abused since he was an infant, his alcoholic father put a shotgun in his mouth, stared him down, and told him he wasn't worth the bullets it would cost to kill him. He fought because he had to fight to survive. He turned to wrestling and boxing as a child to channel the anger and depression he couldn't escape. And he became a legend and a tragedy because, for better and worse alike, he never gave up.

When Pulver began his fighting career the world of mixed martial arts didn't yet have a place for people his size. The 5'7", 155-pound boxer whose stature and style earned him the nickname "Lil' Evil" existed when "Lightweight" was still considered 170-185 pounds. Pulver fought in underground contests before making his professional debut at the Bas Rutten Invitational--his first championship was his successful run of the BRI's third tournament, which he captured by knocking out future Ultimate Fighter winner Joe "Daddy" Stevenson who was, at the time, two weeks from turning 17. Pulver was training out of the infamous Lion's Den under the Shamrock brothers, but the moment that changed his life came instead from Bob Shamrock, their adoptive father. Pulver had asked to take the Shamrock name for himself, not for direction in his career but to erase the memory of his father; instead, Shamrock told him go make Pulver mean something good and put him in touch with Pat Miletich, who was in the process of building the team that would dominate the early 2000s.

The UFC began holding its first 155-pound fights in the year 2000. They had a murderer's row of competitors: Vale Tudo standout Joao Roque, submission specialist Dennis Hallman, jiu-jitsu superstar BJ Penn, and one of the first stars of Miletich Fighting Systems, Jens Pulver. After rattling off a 3-0-1 record in the UFC, the UFC set him up in a fight to crown their first-ever lightweight champion against Caol Uno, the reigning 154-pound champion of Shooto. It was a grueling 5-round fight that saw Pulver batter Uno on his feet and stymie his attempts to force a grappling battle. At 26 years old, after decades of struggling with trauma and self-loathing, Jens Pulver was the champion of the world. Unfortunately, as with so many moments of glory in combat sports, it wouldn't last.

At the apex of his success, having defended his title twice and scored a career-defining win over BJ Penn, Pulver left the UFC. He and its new owners at Zuffa had never seen eye to eye, and contractual disputes ended their relationship entirely. Toe the first time in his career, Pulver left America and plied his trade around the world. He fought for TKO in Canada, he notched two knockout wins for Shooto, he even crossed sports to win four boxing matches and one shootboxing fight. By the end of 2014 he was 18-4-1, still universally ranked in the top five, and a natural pick for Pride's recently-opened lightweight ranks.

Expectations were sky-high for Pulver's Pride debut, but unfortunately for Pulver, so was the level of competition. Takanori Gomi was 18-2 and in the middle of the two years of dominance that would make him a legend of the sport, and Pulver, who had always succeeded on the grit in his chin and the power in his hands, was faced with arguably the only lightweight who punched harder than he did. Over the next two years Pulver would go 2-2 in Pride, knocking out DEEP standout Tomomi Iwama and Pancrase contender Kenji Arai but falling to the fists of Gomi and Mach Sakurai. It hadn't been the glory Pulver had sought, but it had kept him vital and relevant, and by the end of 2006, it gave him the chance to come home.

The lightweight division ceased to exist in the American mainstream after Pulver's departure. The UFC had scrambled together a four-man tournament to fill the vacant slot, but when BJ Penn and Caol Uno fought to a draw in its final, they simply gave up and focused on heavier weight classes. Almost half a decade after its last appearance, the UFC crowned Sean Sherk its new lightweight champion in 2006 and began contracting talent worldwide to fill its ranks, which meant finally mending fences with Pulver, who made his long-awaited return to the UFC only to get knocked out in forty-seven seconds by a then-unknown Joe Lauzon. This marked the beginning of the slide that defined Jens Pulver for the newly-massive audience of the MMA boom years.

Pulver had been brought back with a great deal of hype, including a starring role as a coach on The Ultimate Fighter and a rematch with BJ Penn that would serve as a title eliminator--but he was entering his mid-thirties, his body was slowing down, and the sport had advanced since America had seen him last. Under the Zuffa banner Pulver won just once--a 23-second choke over a not-yet-grown Cub Swanson--and lost seven times, six by knockout or submission. He returned to the regional scene in 2010 and eventually became a banner fighter for the nascent ONE Fighting Championship in Singapore, but he couldn't stop losing and he couldn’t stop fighting.

His retirement ultimately came from someone else's misery. Jens was in the audience for the third bout between old nemesis BJ Penn and Penn's own spoiler, Frankie Edgar, and it was seeing Penn look old, slow and helpless that finally made Pulver realize his career was over. As he told Ben Fowlkes: “It’s the hardest thing to realize when you’re in there, because in your mind you’re like, ‘I can do this.’ But once you’re in the fight, it’s like you’re not doing anything. That was the hardest part for me to watch. I was looking at him in that fight and going, ‘I get this. I know that feeling.’ Nobody told us how to get old. Nobody told us what getting old was supposed to feel like. There’s no magic switch where it all shuts off.”

Pulver turned that switch in 2014, retiring at 27-19-1. He professes a desire to have retired after his loss to Urijah Faber in 2008, but there's no wonder why someone whose entire life had depended on his ability to shut out his pain and trauma would realize too late that he'd accrued too much of it. He spent his career proving--to his father, to the world, to himself--that he deserved to be loved and respected. No matter how many losses are on his record, Jens Pulver is still the first lightweight champion in UFC history, and still built a loving family. He's a legend of the sport and a testament to success as a human being.

And more people should watch his Twitch channel.

Moveset, stats, logic and four attires (UFC 30 vs Uno / Pride: Bushido 10 vs Arai / WEC 31 vs Swanson / ONEFC: Kings and Champions vs Ueda).