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At one point Sage Northcutt looked as though he were the future of the UFC. Signed with a shiny 5-0 record at just 19 years old, the former poster boy of non-contact sport karate seemed headed for big things with his clean cut, wholesome personality and dynamic traditional martial arts style.
Unfortunately, the UFC is a terribly hard place to learn the ropes. A couple surprising upset losses and a few fights that were more difficult that expected and the Northcutt hype train felt all but derailed by the time he and the world’s largest MMA promotion parted ways in 2018.
Northcutt landed in ONE FC a year later, with the expectation of becoming a star for Asia’s largest MMA promotion instead, but a brutal loss to Cosmo Alexandre in his debut and bouts with injury and illness saw him sidelined for the next four years.
Sage Northcutt returns again
Finally, in May of last year, Northcutt made his return to competition—submitting relatively unknown AKA talent Ahmed Mujatab just 39 seconds into round 1 with a heel hook. Sadly, for fans hoping this would jump start his return to action, his injury troubles weren’t totally behind him.
“I would have liked to fight sooner than the six to eight months since my last fight, I wanted to fight very soon but I had a little nagging injury that I had going into my fight with Mujtaba and I got it checked up again after my fight,” Northcutt said in a recent interview.
No word on exactly what that injury might have been. Northcutt suffered multiple facial fractures in his bout against Cosmo Alexandre, but hasn’t publicly disclosed any other more recent injury problems. It may be worth noting, however that Northcutt did pull out of a 2017 bout against John Makdessi citing injury, but the exact nature of that issue was never disclosed.
Sage Northcutt talks prep for Aoki
Known primarily for his striking prowess, Sage Northcutt shocked a lot of fans when he won his last bout with a heel hook submission, the first joint-lock submission win of his career, and only submission since beating Cody Pfister in 2015. However, in a recent interview with MMA Junkie, Northcutt admitted that he’s been putting a whole lot of time into his grappling game. It’s something he says he won’t necessarily look to avoid, even against a submission artist with Aoki’s reputation.
“I’ve been working my grappling for the past several years a lot,” Northcutt revealed. “Great grapplers, great teammates, great coaches. So, I’ve been really, really preparing and training my grappling a whole lot to improve.”
“A lot of people know that Shinya is known for his grappling, but it’s not just a grappling match out there,” Northcutt said. “It is mixed martial arts. You have a whole different set of tools and same thing, it’s not just a striking match. So, I think really going out there and being ready for anything is very important.”
Of course, it doesn’t hurt Northcutt’s chances that Aoki is a full 13-years his senior, and has competed as low as 145 lbs in the past. While Northcutt pinged between lightweight and welterweight during his UFC run, he made his ONE debut up at 185 lbs. It seems very likely that the Team Alpha Male talent will hold a pretty decent strength advantage when he meets ‘Tobikan Judan’ on January 28th in Tokyo.
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