Monday, August 19, 2013

Lemke hopes to rebound with New England Fights mixed martial arts title opportunity

By Ernie Clark, BDN Staff

Matt DesRoches (left) fights Jon Lemke during their mixed martial arts bout on July 12 on the Bangor waterfront. Lemke lost the bout and will look to get back on the winning track when he fights John Ortolani for the vacant New England Fights Maine State MMA lightweight championship on Sept. 21 in Lewiston.

LEWISTON, Maine — Coming off the first loss of his mixed martial arts career, Jon Lemke wasn’t sure what was next, save for the certainty that he would seek to learn from any mistakes that led to his setback along the Bangor waterfront last month.

The Brewer resident has been busy since then training at Marcus Davis’ Team Irish MMA Fitness Academy to iron out those kinks that 20-year-old Canadian phenom Matt DesRoches capitalized on during their battle of unbeatens on the New England Fights card.

And now he knows he’ll get the chance to apply those lessons learned in a championship setting, as Lemke (3-1) is scheduled to fight Billerica, Mass., veteran John Ortolani (7-7) for the vacant NEF Maine State MMA lightweight (155-pound) championship at NEF X on Sept. 21 at the Androscoggin Bank Colisee.

“This is awesome,” said Lemke. “I’m so grateful right now and so blessed. This is a huge opportunity both for me and my school.”

The Lemke-Ortolani clash will be one of at least two title fights on the NEF X card. Bucksport’s undefeated Ray “All Business” Wood (4-0), who won the promotion’s featherweight (145-pound) crown at NEF VIII at the Darling’s Waterfront Pavilion in Bangor on July 12 with a first-round stoppage of Canadian Lenny “The Show Stealer” Wheeler, will make his first defense of that belt against Rhode Islander Joe Pingitore (4-0-1).

The lightweight title became open earlier this summer when champion Dez Green vacated the belt after being selected to compete in Bellator MMA’s $100,000 fall featherweight (145-pound) tournament. Green (8-1) is set to fight Fabricio Guerrero (17-2) in the opening round of that tournament Sept. 13 in Temecula, Calif.

Lemke’s camp already had been in preliminary talks about fighting for an NEF title even before his first-round loss by armbar to DesRosches on Bangor’s first-ever MMA card.

Lemke still has never lost a lightweight bout, going 5-0 as an amateur and winning his first three pro bouts in that weight class — the DesRosches fight was held at a higher catch weight of 160 pounds.

“We didn’t have to look very far when we were considering who to put in for our recently vacated lightweight title,” said NEF co-owner and promoter Nick DiSalvo. “We have two candidates on our roster currently that are as talented and dangerous as any lightweights in the Northeast.”

Lemke traces his loss to DesRoches to several factors, including some overconfidence after the unbeaten start to his career and getting caught up in the atmosphere surrounding Bangor’s first-ever MMA show.

“Take nothing away from [DesRoches], but I was coming off two knockouts and I totally had the wrong mindset going into that fight,” said Lemke. “I was going to go for the knockout no matter what. Being in front of the home crowd I was so amped for that fight, it was something I’d never experienced before.

“But you live and learn. I believe if I had taken my time I could have picked him apart and eventually won the fight, but something like that brings to light all the things you’re careless about.”

Lemke’s next opponent is a two-sport professional athlete, as Ortolani plays for the Rochester Rattlers of Major League Lacrosse as well as competing in mixed martial arts.

“I’m fighting a real tough guy,” said Lemke. “He has a lot more experience than me, and he’s fought all the tough guys in New England. He’s very well rounded from what I see. He’s very dangerous on the ground, he’s got his brown belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and with his standing game he’s got two good hands and throws in some kicks, too.”

Ortolani has fought at both welterweight (170 pounds) as well as lightweight, and is coming off a loss by unanimous decision to Green in Plymouth, Mass., on Feb. 23.

“I’m really excited about fighting for the NEF and Maine state title,” said Ortolani. “It’s a great opportunity for me and my team. Lemke is a tough guy from a good camp. I’m looking forward to the challenge.”

NEF welterweight champ fights Friday

New England Fights’ Maine welterweight champion Gil de Freitas was scheduled to fight Friday night at the Twin River Casino in Lincoln, R.I., against former Ultimate Fighting Championship veteran Chuck O’Neill of Bridgewater, Mass.

The Brazilian-born De Freitas, now training with Team Link in Ludlow, Mass., won his Maine title last September with a unanimous decision over “The” Ryan Sanders and will take a 14-5 record with four knockouts into the O’Neill bout.

O’Neill is 11-5 with three knockouts.

Thursday, August 15, 2013

Former Bonny Eagle High School wrestling standout not retiring, set for UFC fight in Boston

By Ernie Clark, BDN Staff

BOSTON, Mass. — Mike Brown already has a game plan for after he gives up his current occupation.

But the aging warrior who turned a standout wrestling career at Bonny Eagle High School in Standish — where he was the 1992 Class A wrestling state champion at 112 pounds — and Norwich University into more than a decade as a mixed martial arts professional is not quite ready to make the transition from active fighter to full-time coach.

“I love the sport,” said Brown, a 37-year-old featherweight now living in Florida who will fight Steven Siler on Saturday night for the inaugural Ultimate Fighting Championship’s “UFC on FOX Sports 1” card at the TD Garden.

“It’s been great for me to be able to work at something that I’d do for free,” he said.

Brown, one of two Maine natives currently active in the UFC along with Lincolnville middleweight Tim Boetsch, contemplated retirement last year as he dealt with a nagging neck injury.

But he signed a five-fight extension with the UFC in the aftermath of a unanimous decision victory over Daniel Pineda in his most recent bout in May 2012. And his recovery from cervical fusion surgery on his neck last September has left him reinvigorated for competition.

“Just getting my body healthy has been the big thing,” said Brown, who will bring a 26-8 record into the Siler bout. “This is the best I’ve felt in a long time.

“It was supposed to be six months for a full recovery after the surgery, but I was doing a lot after three months and after six months I was really going at 100 percent,” Brown said. “There was some residual pain for a while, but now I’m as good as I’ve ever been.”

UFC president Dana White is happy to have Brown back in the octagon.

“He took some time off and claims he never retired, and I thought he was going to retire, too,” said White recently. “I’ve got a lot of respect for him, and he wants to fight so we’ve got him in there.”

Brown ranks as one of Maine’s MMA pioneers along with the likes of Tim Sylvia, Dale Hartt and Marcus Davis, with whom he trained for a time in Portland during the early 2000s.

Brown debuted in the sport in 2001 in Massachusetts, New England’s mixed martial arts hotbed at the time.

Much has changed about the sport and Brown’s status within it since then.

“In my first two fights they didn’t allow closed fists,” said Brown, who testified before the Maine Legislature in support of legalizing the sport in the Pine Tree State, which became reality in 2009. “All we could use was open fists. It was weird.”

Brown emerged from the regional scene to make his UFC debut in 2004, losing in the first round to Genki Sudo.

That was the first of two straight losses that slowed his rise through the ranks, but after winning nine of his next 10 fights he joined the WEC in mid-2008.

Less than six months later, he was that organization’s featherweight champion after dethroning Urijah Faber via a first-round technical knockout at Hollywood, Fla.

Brown held his title for a year through two successful defenses before being dethroned in November 2009 by Jose Aldo, the current UFC champion in the 145-pound weight division.

Since then he has fought somewhat sporadically while dealing with neck issues that first threatened his combat sports career while he was wrestling at Norwich during the late 1990s.

Still he returned to the UFC after its purchase of the WEC in 2010 and is 2-2 in his current stint with the world’s leading MMA promotion.

Brown, a former assistant wrestling coach at the University of Southern Maine, also has continued that second professional passion as a coach at the American Top Team training camp in Coconut Creek, Fla., that has been his home base since 2005.

“There are so many good things that come from mixed martial arts, from getting in shape to self-defense,” he said. “I really love the sport of it, and I love to help the younger guys with it.”

But Brown’s not quite ready to relinquish the opportunity to fight for himself, though he isn’t sure he will fight all five bouts on his current deal.

He prefers to focus instead on this weekend’s return to action.

“I’m a short-term goal type of guy,” he said. “I don’t like to set longer goals, but they’re in the back of my mind. Five fights is a lot to think about, though.”

His opponent on Saturday’s card, one of the first live events to be televised on the debuting “Fox Sports 1” cable television channel, is 22-10 overall and 4-1 since joining the UFC in 2011.

The 26-year-old Siler, from Anaheim, Calif., also holds a five-inch height advantage over the 5-foot-6-inch Brown.

“He’s a tough guy, an experienced guy. Between the two of us we have almost 70 fights, and he likes to come forward, he doesn’t back up,” Brown said.

“I do the same thing, so it should be an exciting fight,” he added.