Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) is bringing a locked and loaded fight card to the pay-per-view (PPV) airwaves this Saturday night (Oct. 19, 2013) with UFC 166: "Velasquez vs. Dos Santos 3" at the Toyota Center in Houston, Texas.
On the FOX Sports 1 "Prelims," Hector Lombard makes his UFC welterweight debut against fellow ex-middleweight Nate Marquardt (details), a fight he's been clamoring for since 2011. It will be a chance for "The Great" to prove "Lightning" wrong after this rant about "cheating."
Not that Marquardt has been paying attention.
The former Strikeforce 170-pound titleholder has been too busy making room in his heart for God, after losing touch with the Almighty One in pursuit of false idols, like the big, shiny belt that comes with winning a world mixed martial arts (MMA) championship.
Those days are over (sorry, Chael), according to his conversation with UFC.com:
"I've tried to live my life in a way that God wanted me to, but over the years I grew away from God in my heart. I was still doing the same things, always trying to put my family first and still going to church and praying, but in my heart, my career started to grow as a false idol. I was always trying to gain that accomplishment of the title, and that started to become more important than God. I wish that realization would have come sooner, but I still have time to do God's work in this sport, and it's obviously still one of my goals to be the champion, and I definitely think it's a very good possibility that that will happen. I'm so strong and fast right now, and obviously the more experience you have the better you get technically, and as a fighter in the training room, I know how good I am, and I know that I can beat and should beat anyone in the world if you match us up on paper as far as skills, athletic ability, and experience. But then I can lose to somebody who on paper I shouldn't lose to, and then I lose two in a row like that, and to me, that's just God saying ‘you can try as hard as you want, but if your heart's not in the right spot, I'm not gonna let you have that.'"
Hopefully God isn't Cuban, or Marquardt could be in for a short night.
The Coloradoan is still reeling from back-to-back defeats to Tarec Saffiedine and Jake Ellenberger, the latter of which put him asleep in his pew just three minutes into the opening frame at the UFC 158 PPV event back in March. Three losses in a row could put him back on the open market and let's face it, Lombard has 18 wins by knockout/technical knockout for a reason.
Like Aretha Franklin once said, "I say a little prayer for you."
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