UFC 8 was the first and last event in Puerto Rico. Immediately after this event, there was UFC Ultimate Ultimate. Headlined with a super fight of Ken Shamrock VS Kimo Leopoldo, the theme for the eighth UFC tournament would be “David VS Goliath”. The brackets lined up quarter-final bouts that had a weight difference of 200 lbs. and sometimes more. One match that left an impact to this day–Paul Herrera VS Gary Goodridge
Paul Herrera became the grappler of choice to train fighters like Gary Goodridge. As the smaller, lighter fighter, Herrera was a perfect underdog and manages to pull out a victory by expertly eluding his opponent.
“I was also fighting in the UFC, under Jason DeLuca’s management. I realized early on that if my opponents knew who I had beat up before they fought me, they would be intimidated.”
“In the lead-up to the fight, some of my friends told me that Tank Abbott was a racist skinhead who was involved with the KKK. Of course it wasn’t true, but my friends said it so I would train harder… Going into the Herrera fight, I wasn’t confident at all in my technical fighting abilities; however, I was confident that I wasn’t going to lose to this guy. I swore up and down that I was not going to lose to a racist jerk. I didn’t care what I needed to do because, in my mind, I was now fighting for all Black people.”
Before the fight even began, the commentator, Jeff Blatnick, listed a few facts about Herrera and called him a street fighter who might bleed from an old cut. Harrowing continued to say that he would not need to worry as he was about to receive new wounds.
“One thing that you don’t see under that gi is a huge set of arms,” Blatnick said as the match began, “He clearly is way more powerful than Paul Herrera.” Herrera lunged for Goodridge’s legs, but the Canadian deftly sprawled away from the shot. Using that power that Blatnick mentioned moments earlier, Goodridge trapped one of Herrera’s arms with both of his, and used his legs to wrap around the other, and took the wrestlers off his knees and onto his back. Goodridge formed a human crucifix across Herrera’s shoulders, and once he was in position, slammed his right elbow into the side of his opponent’s head. The first shot rocked Herrera, the second put him to sleep, the remaining six punctuated the ferocious debut of “Big Daddy”.
The crucifix technique was not a fluke, as Goodridge explained. Instead, he noted that it was practiced and drilled for by his corner. While in Puerto Rico, they noticed that Paul Herrera only went for the same move over and over again, a fireman’s carry. They practiced defending it so as not to look like idiots when faced with the technique on fight day. However, they said the knockout was not planned—their goal of engaging with Gary in this position was to get him to tap out by presenting a submission on his wrist until then. Unfortunately, he caught Herrera with a punch instead.
John McCarthy observed the intense fight and then followed up with his book, Let’s Get It On. With his commentary, he added a valuable lesson:
“don’t anticipate fights too far ahead.”
In this case, the grappler Herrera had been dominating Paul on the ground and continued to lose. Although McCarthy seemed in control of the fight soon after, he found that he was not where he thought.
“I’m fine,” says Herrera, who spent the night in the hospital with a concussion and a broken cheekbone. “I’ve had my ass stomped worse than that before. I spent the next day drinking Stoli martinis and getting loaded.”
