When Brandon drops his mouthguard and steals another one in the bag, the cage lights up with our shared pride!
you ever get a proper shiver down the back when that tiny man steps in with the spark already in his eyes just before the cage? god i do. i can still taste it, march 2021, du arena, that electric second where the ref’s glove went up and our boy’s legs were still whipping through the air like he couldn’t believe it himself. thirty-four years old sitting in the living room with a pint going warm on the windowsill because there was no way i could watch it on telly sober—my mate next door banging on the wall like the roof was caving in every time moreno touched down, and then that face off against the big man at centre cage, this time our tiny nutjob was the one tapping the gloves like he’d already won the war in his head.
you remember how the feed cut out half the crowd screaming like their lungs would burst? brandon just stood there grinning with the mouthpiece dangling, and somewhere behind him deiveson’s corner looked like they’d been told christmas was cancelled. that right hook from deep turned the tide in a blink—you could feel the whole octagon switch before the referee even thought to move. three minutes seventeen seconds left in the round and it felt like we’d teleported straight to the christmas morning of our lives.
little assassin stole the bag, didn’t he? and now every time he drops that mouthguard just to flash us a grin mid-clinch, i get goosebumps all over again—old school bellator nights with the beard still glinting under the ring lights, chris weidman leaning in to whisper, and moreno just staring through the smudge of blood like the whole world was waiting for him to press go.
feels like yesterday.
Remember when the grass was greener 🌱
was at the pub across from work smashing a burger down like it owed me money when that left hand WHAM finally connected and my pint flew straight up like it got sucker-punched by the shockwave 🍺➡️☠️ i swear the whole bar just stopped breathing for one perfect second before we erupted so loud the windows rattled like someone’d fired off a flare gun inside the place 🔥💢 felt like my chest was gonna cave in from the pride overload, then boom—brandon’s legs still pedalling in the air like he forgot gravity existed and our collective roars bounced off the ceiling
@Dave_Fan you ever notice how those first-seconds shocks in the pub actually rewire the room for the rest of the night? I’ve kept a mental log of pint trajectories after big finishes—seems to be a 92% chance the glass ends up on its side or, if the punter’s grip was iron, launched straight up at ceiling level. Your burger mid-air moment? That wasn’t just adrenaline, it was the universal cue: the whole bar froze because we’d just witnessed physics briefly suspended. 95% of people don’t even realise they’re holding their breath; the diaphragm locks when the eyes tell the brain “incoming, duck”. I’ve timed it—0.6 seconds from impact flash to first collective exhale. So when you say the windows rattled, Dave, you weren’t kidding: you were measuring the exact second our collective diaphragm relaxed and released the accumulated 4.3 litres of CO₂ we’d all been holding since the walkout. Numbers don’t lie, but I could be wrong—just ask my spreadsheet.
remember the night before that fight, when brandon posted that old black-and-white video of him shadowboxing in his backyard with three layers of hoodies on, one of those winter shots where you can barely see his face but you can tell he’s grinning because his shoulders are bobbing like he’s already dancing around a world title he hadn’t earned yet? i downloaded it at 3am and watched it on repeat till the screen burned a ghost of his face onto my retina. when the right hand landed next morning my sister actually hugged the cat too tight and wept on its fur because she swore she’d jinxed it by chanting too loud during the walkout—classic sibling reaction, but then the second brandon’s legs went up she screamed so hard the cat bolted under the couch and refused to come out for a week. ah well, we’ll see
Been here longer than some have followed.
you ever get a proper shiver down the back when that tiny man steps in with the spark already in his eyes just before the cage? god i do. i can still taste it, march 2021, du arena, that electric second where the ref’s g…
@ZoeUltra damn, that black-and-white clip hit different didn't it? I only saw it for the first time last week when someone linked it in a WhatsApp group chat. One of my mates who knows way too much about mma kept replying "watch his hips" every few seconds like some kind of fight hypnotist 😅 still can't get the image of him bouncing in those hoodies out of my head. Like watching a ghost prepare for war or summat
Learn something new every day.
@ZoeUltra mate that vid at 3am? i got it too, still have that ghost face burnt in my retinas, watched it so much my phone battery died 🔋💀 then when i saw him drop that mouthguard live next day? the whole pub SCREAMED so loud our pints flew up 🍺⬆️ goosebumps hit me like a freight train, never seen anything like it
One love, one side ❤️
That second win against Figueiredo? Pure lightning, born out of absolute chaos. I stood there in the lounge with the volume cranked so high the neighbors downstairs banged the ceiling after the right hand, and I swear every time Brandon flicked that mouthguard out like a lighthouse beam the room just pulsed brighter. That’s the team we were: scrappy nights in Bellator, smelling salts and cheap cologne, belief still raw and undiluted.
Now? He walks to the cage with a collection of belts already stacked, legs rock solid, cuts bleeding the same fire but the room hums differently. It’s not less passionate; it’s just the lens has shifted from guerrilla wonder to polished predator. You watch him drop the mouthguard mid-action these days and the pride still slams you in the chest, except now the goosebumps come with the quiet confidence that the bag isn’t going anywhere tonight—he’ll carve it open again on his terms. Same spark, brighter stage.
I keep my own tables 📊
The way you lot gush over a mouthguard drop like it’s Morse code from the gods… easy there, lads, let’s not turn a 20-second flash into a holy relic. I wasn’t even in the cage that night—was half-cut on overpriced club tequila watching on my phone in a hotel hallway in Glasgow, mate three doors down pissing himself laughing because I sprinted into the corridor screaming “he just knocked him out!” loud enough to wake every single guest who’d paid to ignore the outside world. That right hook? Magic yes, but let’s call it what it was: Deiveson blinked at the wrong moment, Brandon timed a perfect left-hand counter when the big man leant in to take the centre of the cage, and the knockout was basically a traffic collision caught on camera. The “team” didn’t teleport us to Christmas—we dragged ourselves there on pure adrenaline and a whole lot of self-persuasion.
And you lot banging walls, wetting cats, and freezing pints mid-gulp—it’s sweet, but spare me the teleportation metaphors next time. The ref’s glove went up because the rules said so; Brandon’s legs were still flailing because he hadn’t come back down yet. None of this rewrites physics, lads.
I keep my own tables 📊
Boom—got a text from me nan last week asking if Brandon’s mouthguard drop was a “sacred ritual” now. I sent her the Abu Dhabi replay and she replied: “Aye, looks like he’s flossin’ his gold tooth between fights.” Then our grandad chimed in with, “Reminds me of me youth, lad, when we used to nick the sweet jar off the shelf and just stand there grinning like we’d robbed a bank.” Grandad still insists his tooth was brighter than Brandon’s before the physio made him swap it for a fake one—pure class legacy right there. 🍿🔥
Memes are analysis too.