Glover Teixeira has been a true joy to watch and, as the title of this post suggests, his evolution as a fighter is inspiring. Having now retired at the age of 43, we can look back empirically at just how, when other younger fighters fade into relative obscurity, this man’s strength and skill rose allowing him to topple seemingly unbeatable fighters who were faster, stronger, more powerful and who had already collected the scalps of other younger fighters in their prime.
They say that the inception of an unbreakable spirit is struggle, and in Teixeira’s early life there certainly was; born in October, 1979, Glover Teixeira grew up in poverty in Brazil before moving to America in 1999 and began training in MMA after he met long-time trainer John Hackleman. Hackleman invited him to train at his gym where he went on to make his professional debut in 2012, one year after my discovery of the sport. Hackleman incidentally, has cornered Teixeira ever since and cornered the staunch veteran for his recent and ultimately final UFC appearance in January, 2023.
I first became aware of MMA in 2011, of which the first cage fight I ever laid eyes on was Leonard Garcia vs Nam Phan at UFC 136 in Houston Texas, and a controversial fight at that. I can’t to this day recall how I encountered this, I can only assume it was via the internet, since the UFC was PPV only at the time. No such thing as BT Sport. What I didn’t manage to see and was not aware of at the time, was the historical main card to follow which featured bouts from a host of UFC hall of farmers such as Frankie Edgar vs Gray Maynard, Jose Aldo vs Kenny Florian and Chael Sonnen vs Brian Stann.
Teixeira would make his UFC debut 1 year later at UFC 146, another legendary card featuring a prime Junior ‘Cigano’ Dos Santos vs Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu ace, Frank Mir. Teixeira would take on Kyle Kingsbury at light heavy-weight and boy did Kingsbury look big for the weight class. That didn’t stop Teixeira from grinding him down for a submission win via arm-triangle choke.
The winning streak of Teixeira began at this debut and was halted in 2014 by, what no-one knew at the time, would be one of the best mixed martial artists the sport has ever known, Jon Jones. Since then, Teixeira has had a turbulent rise to the top and in this time, suffered terrifying knockout losses in 2017 and 2018 to Alexander Gustaffson and Anthony Johnson respectively, with the latter inflicting an uppercut on Teixeira that many would assume could change the fighter for good. His last loss in the cage before his final meteoric rise came by a decision loss at the hands of an equally evolutionary fighter in Corey Anderson.
After this loss, I would not be exaggerating, and I seldom do, when I say that Teixiera transformed. This came in the year of 2019 and Teixiera, now 39, beat the brakes of a malicious fighter in Ion Cutelaba and the improbable wins came thick and fast, each one in increasingly impressive fashion. Teixiera dismantled Anthony Smith with thudding punches like a surround sound subwoofer and then the win that no-one saw coming; the submission victory over Thiago Santos.
Santos, by comparison looked twice the size and his reputation for ferocious attacks and insatiable power made him a fighter to be feared in the division and boy did he crush opponents in a way that had fans reeling from the sight of his victims as they lay on the canvas. So how did Teixeira, a weathered veteran with a fair few knockout losses of his own, weather the storm and come out with the win? Well, first, he really did have to weather a storm. In the opening round of his fight against Santos, Teixiera absorbed a plethora of hammers but what was noticeable was the change in his game that got him through this fight; Texiera rolled with the strikes and when he started to get overwhelmed, he recovered by drawing his opponent into his world, grappling. In doing so, whenever Teixiera got hurt, as he was more vulnerable to in his older age, he could recover on the ground with superior wrestling and Jiu-Jitsu. Not only that, Teixiera learned he could drain the power required to throw these venomous shots from these powerful fighters if he wore them down with grappling first, and Teixiera did just that. He would go on to submit an exhausted Santos and this win would propel him to a title shot.
This title shot came in 2021 against a tricky kick-boxer in Jan Blachowicz. Bear in mind for a moment that Blachowicz has beaten not only the best the light-heavyweight division had to offer at the time already, but had also beaten what many believed as the pound-for-pound best striker in the UFC at the time, the long-reigning undisputed middleweight champion, Israel Adesanya. I think therefore it would be fair to say that not only did many not expect Teixeira to win this title fight, absolutely no one expected him to dominate the champion in a fight where he took almost no damage.
At that moment where Teixiera secured the choke, and Blachowicz tapped, I recall vividly my eyes welling up at what felt like a once in a lifetime, momentous occasion and the reason why I consider Teixeira to be the inspiration that he is. I previously wrote about Michael Bisping and the similar journey he had to the title. Teixeira had been working for this for his entire MMA career and going back over his history, his first ever professional MMA fight was in 2002. The moment therefore, when UFC president Dana White wrapped UFC gold around the waist of Glover Teixeira, was not only 20+ years in the making, but would be the final time he held the title following his loss of said title to Jiri Prochazka in one of the greatest fights of all time. To put this into context, imagine working for something your entire career, only to achieve it just before your retirement and in all that time, you never gave up on your dream.
That is why Glover Teixeira will be up there on my list of most inspirational people of all time, not just fighters, and I know he will inspire others from his background, to come out and do the same.
Written by Howard William Noakes
Cage Logic MMA 