On This Day — November 14: Couture’s Manchester Grind at UFC 105
November 14 has twice been a night for the men who simply outlast narratives. In Manchester in 2009, a 46-year-old Randy Couture bored and bullied his way past a younger man while 16,693 people booed the scorecards; eleven years later at the Apex, Paul Felder took a five-round fight with a former champion on five days' notice and nearly stole it. Durability is the theme.
November 14 has twice been a night for the men who simply outlast narratives. In Manchester in 2009, a 46-year-old Randy Couture bored and bullied his way past a younger man while 16,693 people booed the scorecards; eleven years later at the Apex, Paul Felder took a five-round fight with a former champion on five days' notice and nearly stole it. Durability is the theme.
2009 — Couture's Manchester grind
UFC 105 was the UFC's Manchester statement, and its main event was pure late-period Couture: the 46-year-old, dropping back to light heavyweight after losing to Antônio Rodrigo Nogueira at heavyweight, spent fifteen minutes gluing Brandon Vera to the fence, kneeing his thighs, and smothering every attempt at the spectacular. The judges gave Couture all three cards, 29–28, and the MEN Arena booed — not because the verdict was theft, but because Vera's brief flurries had been the only beauty in the fight and beauty had lost to geometry. It remains the definitive Couture artifact: a man in his late forties winning UFC main events with leverage, patience and a complete indifference to being enjoyed.
The card underneath built Britain's next chapter. Dan Hardy outpointed Mike Swick 30–27, 30–27, 29–28 to earn a shot at Georges St-Pierre's welterweight title — the mohawked brawler from Nottingham, one fight from the summit. Michael Bisping, the local hero, folded Denis Kang with knees to the body and punches at 4:24 of the second round in the night's Fight of the Night, a win that steadied him after his knockout loss to Dan Henderson that summer. And on the prelims, a 22-year-old Swede named Alexander Gustafsson made his UFC debut by knocking out Jared Hamman in 41 seconds. Four years later Gustafsson would give Jon Jones the hardest night of his life; the first entry in that file is a 41-second footnote in Manchester.
2020 — Felder's five days
The 2020 edition of November 14, at the UFC Apex, was assembled in emergency. Islam Makhachev withdrew from the main event with a staph infection at the start of fight week; Paul Felder — semi-retired, working as a commentator, expecting to call fights rather than take them — stepped in on five days' notice against former lightweight champion Rafael dos Anjos, who was returning to the division.
What followed was the least five-days'-notice performance imaginable. Dos Anjos won the fight the way he wins fights: pressure, takedowns, top control, a slam in the late rounds. But Felder struck with him for five full rounds, opened cuts of his own, and argued every minute — so effectively that one judge handed him the fight, 48–47, against the 50–45 cards the other two judges gave dos Anjos. The split decision went to the Brazilian, and Fight of the Night went to both. In the co-main event, Khaos Williams produced the night's firework: a straight right hand through Abdul Razak Alhassan's guard, out cold in 30 seconds — remarkably, the second 30-second knockout of Williams's two-fight UFC career.
Also on this day
- 2009, Manchester: Dennis Siver's spinning-back-kick TKO of Paul Kelly took Knockout of the Night in the $40,000 bonus era.
- 2009, Manchester: Matt Brown stopped TUF winner James Wilks in the third round.
- 2020, Las Vegas: Sean Strickland stopped Brendan Allen in the second round for a Performance of the Night bonus.
Couture's grind, Hardy's ticket, Bisping's knees, a Swede's 41 seconds, and a commentator's five days: November 14 belongs to the stubborn. It is the date that proves a main event does not need to be loved to be remembered — it only needs men willing to keep showing up at the exact moment everyone else would have stopped.
