Kody Steele just about had it when Sean Shelby told him to remove his hand wraps. It was the second time he received such instructions within the hour.
Constant peaks and dips of adrenaline and focus resulted in frustration followed by a crash and then acceptance that, frankly, there wasn’t anything he could do about things.
Scheduled to fight Quemuel Ottoni (12-3) in a lightweight bout Tuesday, Steele (6-0) arrived to the locker room and was notified the fight was canceled shortly after. His hand wraps were removed.
That’s when the UFC’s lightweight matchmaker appeared in the locker room.
“He’s like, ‘Hey, the fight is back on.’ I’m like, ‘F*ck.’ I went from feeling like I’m not going to go, to like, ‘Oh my God, I’ve got to jack myself back up again,'” Steele said. “Thinking like, ‘This guy is playing mind games or doing tricks.’ I got all jacked up, ready to go. The cutman does a super fast hand wrap, and I just started cracking pads and warming up. Boom, boom, boom. The fight is getting closer. I’m like 10 minutes before I’m about to make my walk. I’m like, ‘F*cking a. It’s my turn. My turn. Let’s go.'”
That’s when he was notified once again the fight was off – this time, for good.
“Dude, what the f*ck?” Steele remembers he exclaimed.
Less than 48 hours after he dropped that expletive, the situation still hurts. He’s $10,000 richer, but Steele wishes instead he took home the “trophy” he envisioned the entire training camp.
“I thought I’d have a frickin’ contract in hand right now at this point,” Steele told MMA Junkie on Thursday.
The withdrawal didn’t come to Steele as a total surprise, particularly considering five of Ottoni’s previous six scheduled bookings fell through. Steele sensed something was up from the moment the two fighters faced off at weigh-ins Monday.
“I have competed so much in wrestling and jiu-jitsu, sometimes it’s just like crossing paths with someone or the way they step on the mat when they approach the mat, I feel like I can sense this person’s energy and I can sense how confident they are,” Steele said. “This guy was just giving me a lot of craziness. Right after we did faceoffs, I walked right over to my friends and said, ‘That dude knows he’s going to lose. He’s literally here for 15 minutes of fame. After I’m done with him, he’s going to be done with this. He ain’t coming back after this. He knows he’s going to lose.'”
Who knows what Ottoni thought or knew, but Steele’s instinct was somewhat correct. Ottoni, in the other locker room, was having issues.
“It is not up to me to try to define the size of the monster that lives in Quemuel’s head and make any value judgment,” Ottoni’s coach Bruno Murata wrote on Instagram in Portuguese after the cancellation. “… It was a whole day of lots of talking and with great difficulty I managed to convince him to go to the gym. He actually put on and took off the gloves twice. In the last one we almost came to blows. Of course I’m frustrated too. It took months of hard work, a lot of dedication and financial expenses. But I understand that Quemuel’s mental health must come first now. As important as this fight was, this is just a sport. Life and well-being his is the most important.”
For nearly a day, Ottoni didn’t comment on the sudden cancellation. However, on Wednesday, he detailed a fight with anxiety outside the cage nixed his fight inside the cage.
“I ended up not fighting yesterday after really having an anxiety crisis, adrenaline, freezing a bit after seeing all that,” Ottoni said in Portuguese (translated by MMA Fighting). “Watching it from the other side of the screen is one thing, but being there and seeing the cameras, cars, and even people – It was a mix of everything, the anxiety, seeing the camera, seeing the cut man doing my hands, people I’ve seen the most, and that’s it.”
UFC CEO Dana White was not peeved at Ottoni, as many frequent viewers might expect. He actually half-complimented Ottoni’s realization that UFC-level fights might not be for him.
“I’m not sh*tting on the kid at all,” White said. “Listen, it happens. You show up here, and it’s real. You come here and you’re 9-0 or this and that, then the guy you’re fighting is also 9-0, a lot of these kids have hype on them already. You get here, and you realize it’s not for you. I’d rather have that happen here than in a UFC event.”
While he doesn’t begrudge Ottoni as a person, Steele admits the missed opportunity – totally due to circumstances outside his control – is an unnecessary hassle. He also thinks the reputation Ottoni will have going forward makes it unnecessary for him to pile on.
“Honestly, I just feel a little bad for the guy,” Steele said. “He’s going to have to frickin’ live with this for the rest of his life. Any time this dude wants to think about competing in anything, any time he wants to put on boxing gloves, any time he goes to the gym again, any time he watches UFC, any time he sees me on TV, it’s always going to remind him of the day he got here and quit and didn’t do it. I don’t know if he’s got kids, but it’s not good.”
Steele, 29, has made quite the amount of noise during his first six MMA fights, following a standout career in the world of grappling. One of the most anticipated DWCS competitors scheduled to fight this season, Steele will try to maintain that momentum Oct. 8 when he gets another crack on the show against an opponent yet to be determined.
“My game plan for this fight will probably be the same this time around,” Steele said. “I’ve just got to focus on myself and me and my game and whoever the opponent is, I’ll adjust a little bit to him. It’s a little extra motivation. The only thing I’m thinking about is that I’ve got to make this damn weight cut again. I just want my body to be OK.”
