Kryptonite part 1: Hughes vs. Hallman

Matt Hughes has had a long and extremely successful career as an MMA fighter, and along with rival Georges St. Pierre will be remembered as possibly the greatest welterweight of all time. During the early days of the UFC Hughes ruled over his division in a fashion more dominant than anyone until Anderson Silva became the UFC middleweight champion. In the early stages of his career Hughes fought far more often than most professional fighters do now, more than once fighting two and three times in a single night. With this prolific approach to fighting Hughes amassed a 22-2 record in his first two years as a professional, a record comparable to very few other fighters, even now. In fact, the only thing keeping Hughes from having a perfect record at this time was a single fighter, Dennis “Superman” Hallman.

Many fighters come up against someone in their careers who they simply have no answer for. A fighter could be better than someone at almost every aspect of the sport, but still manages to get caught by them every single time. Hughes was dominating every opponent he faced at this stage in his career, but somehow Hallman just had the key to defeating him both times they fought. Not only did Hallman defeat Hughes, but in both of their bouts he managed to submit Hughes, and in less than 30 seconds each time. This is even more shocking when we see that in Hughes entire career he was only submitted twice more, once by a prime BJ Penn in 2004 and again by the other greatest welterweight of all time, GSP, in 2007.

The result of the two Hallman/Hughes fights is a surprise when you look over both men’s careers. As we established Hughes was on the verge of entering one of the greatest runs of all time, but Hallman was destined to make much less of an impression with his career. Not only did Hallman not go on to achieve greatness in the sport, but he has spent the time since that fight coming up short almost every time he has tried to take a step up to facing better competition.

In Hughes’ career he was only beaten more than once by two other men, losing twice to the aforementioned BJ Penn and Georges St Pierre. Both of these men however, also succumbed to Hughes once, Penn by TKO and GSP by submission. Hallman remains responsible for both the only unanswered losses that Hughes suffered in his prime, and his still impressive record of 45-9 would be much more illustrious were it not for the inexplicable losses to such an underachieving fighter as Hallman. Hughes supposedly called Hallman’s first win a “Fluke” after Hallman choked him out with a standing guillotine 17 seconds into their first fight in 1998. It is anyone’s guess how he reacted two years later when he tapped to Hallman’s armbar after only 20 seconds. Here is the first fight, so judge for yourself whether Hallman just got lucky.

Some losses just can’t be explained. Maybe Hughes was right and Hallman just got lucky, and maybe if the two met now the result would be drastically different. If I could see one more fight for Hughes before he retired forever it would be against Hallman, just so we could see for sure what would happen. For now though, Hallman will always be remembered as a pretty good fighter who never quite managed to hit the upper level. While he won’t have any major title belts to hang on his walls, at least he will one day be able to tell his grandchildren about how he tapped out UFC legend and hall of famer Matt Hughes. Twice. Somehow.