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Former UFC lightweight champion Jens Pulver is telling me about Jens Pulver, and he's pulling no punches. He describes Jens Pulver as an alcoholic, as a drug addict, as a bad man who has beaten up his wife and knocked his son unconscious. He says Jens Pulver is deranged. Dangerous.
He says Jens Pulver is the reason he can't go home.
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| Pulver has had enormous success, but not enough for him to go back home. (Courtesy UFC) |
Jens Pulver doesn't hate Jens Pulver, but he's repulsed by him. Ashamed of him. Jens Pulver, the father, is the reason Jens Pulver, the son, hasn't been home to Seattle in more than 10 years.
"That's the one city I don't like to be 'Jens Pulver,'" he tells me during a recent interview. "My dad is named Jens. We're not junior and senior because we have different middle names, but I am Jens Pulver, and I've had to carry his name with me. My dad was a good jockey, but he gave in to drugs. He just threw his career away -- drinking, drugs. So the name 'Pulver' was solidified with trouble, drugs, alcohol.
"I can't go home. I choose not to. Not until I've succeeded."
That last sentence, I tell Jens, might be the most outlandish one that has come out of his mouth. By any measure, he has succeeded. He didn't merely become the first lightweight champion in UFC history -- he created the weight class. Literally. The UFC wanted his charismatic violence so badly in 2000 that it added a 155-pound class to showcase him, and Pulver rewarded the fledgling MMA organization by knocking out John Lewis in 15 seconds.
Pulver became the UFC lightweight champion in 2001 by beating Caol Uno but left the organization after two successful title defenses because of a contractual dispute. Since then he has turned pro in boxing and gone 12-0 with 11 knockouts, and returned to MMA in the prestigious (but now defunct) Pride organization in Japan, where an electric style befitting his nickname "Little Evil" -- two knockout wins, two knockout losses -- made him a crowd favorite.
Pulver also has served as a coach on the popular UFC reality show The Ultimate Fighter and been wooed to a relatively new, UFC-owned circuit called World Extreme Cagefighting, where he will make his debut Wednesday against Cub Swanson. A win over Swanson would probably lead to a fight against WEC 145-pound champion Urijah Faber, considered one of the best pound-for-pound fighters in the world.
Clearly, Pulver has succeeded. Yet he won't go home. So I ask him: What if he eventually wins the WEC title? Would that be enough for him to return with his head held high?
"I don't know," he says. "I'm just waiting for all the cards really to be right, all the stars to be aligned, and then I'll go home. When I do, I'll say hi to everybody. I love where I'm from. I hope they don't ever think differently. I love my family, I'm very proud of where I grew up, I'm proud of the Tahoma school district, where I went to high school. But there's something inside of me ... I left all that behind a long time ago. And in order to be who I am today, that's sat on the back burner. I spent so much time running up hill that it hasn't caught up to me. But it will some day.
"I'm going on a gut instinct. I'll know when it's time."
It was almost time this past summer. Pulver's good brother -- there is a bad one; more on him in a minute -- was getting married and asked Jens to be his best man.