The resurrection of Jorge Masvidal: From stepping stone to UFC star in less than a year

It was obvious how the UFC brass viewed Jorge Masvidal at the start of 2019. Wasn’t it?

To Dana White and Co., he was a stepping stone. Masvidal remembers thinking the same thing.

“I want to say you’re a mind reader,” Masvidal told MMA Junkie during Monday’s UFC 244 conference call when asked about this.

In the UFC’s defense, it was hard to argue otherwise. Masvidal sat out all of 2018 after spending a portion of the year filming a Spanish-language reality TV show, and he was 4-5 in his previous nine fights dating back to April 2015.

At the time, in January, rising British star Darren Till was one of the UFC’s favorites, viewed as a star in the making – young, talented, can trash with the best of them. But Till also was just a few months removed from the first loss of his career after getting schooled by Tyron Woodley before being submitted in the second round of their UFC 228 welterweight title fight.

And so, White and the UFC matchmakers turned to Masvidal. A win over the 16-year veteran with name value among hardcore MMA fans certainly would get Till back on track – except it didn’t pan out like that. Masvidal knocked out Till in the second round of their UFC on ESPN+ 5 headliner in London.

Ten months, a “3-piece and a soda,” and one record-breaking flying knee later, Masvidal approaches the biggest fight of his career. He and Nate Diaz will headline UFC 244, perhaps the biggest card of the year, on Saturday at Madison Square Garden and fight for a made-up-but-still-meaningful “BMF” title belt. And while the first step here was the Till knockout, Masvidal hasn’t forgotten his intended purpose.

Or how slighted he felt.

“Maybe they were. Maybe they weren’t,” Masvidal said of the UFC using him in hopes of a Till rebound. “Me? I was just licking my chops, man, like ‘I can’t believe they’re gonna give me this dude.’ I knew they’d been pushing him real hard. And in I way, it was like, I beat that dude (Donald Cerrone), too. I beat him first, and I didn’t get the same push that he got after the ‘Cowboy’ fight. So I was like, ‘I wanna fight this dude. I wanna hurt him.’ And it’s not like I dislike him or nothing on a personal level; I think the kid’s cool. But I just wanted to scrap. …

“The UFC had to learn the hard way. I’m glad to teach the UFC lessons, life lessons like, hey, don’t ever underestimate me.”

As in life, sometimes it’s funny how things work out in the fight game. Just two months before being booked against Till, Masvidal was linked to a fight with Nick Diaz. Masvidal was ecstatic about the matchup because of his respect for the Diaz brothers as fighters – “the dog in them,” as he put it.

For Masvidal, there was no better way to return from a year-long layoff. So when the fight with the elder Diaz brother fell through, it was discouraging.

“I remember at the moment I was a little heartbroken,” Masvidal said. “I had stepped away from the sport for a year. I came back, and obviously I’m excited. I’m like a kid in the Christmas store, the same way when Nate called me out that (my fight with Nick) is gonna materialize. So when that doesn’t happen, I was devastated.”

Mavidal continued, “I was coming off two losses, and I was in the darkest of the dark places I’ve been to. And I’ve been to some dark places from time to time. I slowly but surely started coming out, and the person that came out of that dark place is not the person that went into that dark place. That person is no longer with us. That old ‘Gamebred’ inspired the new one, and he’s here just ready to go.”

Few could’ve imagined when 2019 began that Masvidal, all things considered, would become a legit UFC star. Except Masvidal himself always believed.

“Since I came back, I’ve seen everything that was gonna unfold and unravel,” Masvidal said. “I looked at the whole landscape. I looked at No. 1 through No. 10, and I said, ‘Man, I’m gonna have a field day if they let me back in here. If they don’t stop me from fighting this year, I’m gonna hurt a lot of feelings.’ And that’s all I’ve been doing, man.

“I’m telling you: This year was big, and next year’s gonna be even bigger.”