Joe Stevenson

Joe Stevenson is a 155lb lightweight, standing 5' 7". He's a very, very experienced MMA fighter with 38 matches to his name, 29 of them victories.

Born June 15, 1982 in Torrance, California, Stevenson began wrestling at just 11 years old. He took up Jiu Jitsu two years later. More recently, he has trained at Marc Laimon's Cobra Kai in Las Vegas.

Stevenson gained mainstream exposure, and a contract with the UFC, when he won the welterweight division on season two of The Ultimate Fighter. He'd already worked pretty hard by then:  going into the show, he held the 155lb championship at both King of the Cage and Gladiator Challenge, and owned a professional record of 24-6-0.

On April 6, 2006 in his UFC debut, Joe lost to Josh Neer by unanimous decision. In the wake of that bout, he dropped down to the lightweight division, where he would remain.

In the cage, Joe uses an unbelievable grip combined with surprising crushing power to submit many of his opponents. His Guillotine choke is awesome, and catches opponents by surprise - in a normal take-down situation, most fighters don't worry if there's an arm around their neck, they're accustomed to pulling back, popping their head out, and getting on with business. Stevenson's fierce grip quite often smashes this expectation and ends the fight.

His Jitsu is excellent. He controls fighters from the top, gets out of control from the bottom, and can overturn a full mount, all the while showing superb submission defense.

While standing, he shows good aggression, moves forward, and has a high work rate, but his striking isn't fantastically accurate.

He's after championship glory, but his only title match to date, against B.J. Penn for the vacated UFC Lightweight Championship at UFC 80 resulted in Stevenson tapping out to a rear naked choke. Joe showed incredible heart in the face of a hideous cut, but B.J. Penn's grip, Jitsu skills, and tenacity were a notch above Stevenson's, al Penn also had more - he rocked Joe with the ferocity of his strikes. Put simply, the champ showed why he was the champ that night.

Working to establish another title shot, Stevenson took on Gleison Tibau . Throughout the match, Joe was losing, kept getting taken down, not damaging his opponent. This went on for nine minutes, before Tibau tried a take-down beneath Joe's striking. Gleison found himself in Joe's guillotine. Game over. Joe was back on track.

Unfortunately, Joe lost his next match, against Kenny Florian, to a rear naked choke in the first round. He didn't look good in this one, and together with his previous two outings, he's looking questionable against the higher level opponents.