Anthony Hernandez doesn’t get the love he should. Not in in the middleweight division where he’s won six straight fights, five of them finishes. Not in the UFC’s official rankings, where he currently sits at No. 12, a few spots below a guy he beat in 2018. Not in the cautionary sense for being that guy, where heads are on a swivel and momentum goes to die.
The dynamic Michel Pereira had won eight straight, until he ran into Hernandez.
The free swinging Roman Kopylov has won six of seven, with the lone loss coming against Hernandez.
And now Hernandez takes on Brendan Allen in the co-main event of UFC Seattle, a fighter he faced seven years ago in his LFA finale — his springboard fight to the UFC’s Contender Series, as it were — who’s won seven of eight fights overall. Hernandez beat Allen the first time on MMA’s regional scene, yet to make the leap into the top of the middleweight division, “Fluffy” is going to need the second verse to be the same as the first. It’s a thankless ask for the previous victor, as the narrative is hinged around Allen’s revenge.
“I think [Allen]’s gotten better everywhere,” Hernandez says. “His wrestling is still really good, his jiu-jitsu and striking is good. I think mentally he’s more mature. He doesn’t give up as fast.
“When I fought him in LFA, I showed up heavy. I showed up hurt, so the weight cut was f***ing horrible. I was cramping mid-fight. I was exhausted because I trained for a striking fight, not a grappling fight, but I was still able to get the job done. If I was at my absolute worst and got it done, I mean, I’m excited to see what it’s like with the full camp, you know what I mean?”
The nickname “Fluffy” is of course ironic. It’s comically at odds with the raw, ragged nature of Hernandez’s personality. By his own admission, he wasn’t a nice kid growing up in Dunnigan, California, which is about 40 miles from Sacramento, meaning a million miles from anywhere. His favorite way to answer a question — such as “what do you think of the current state of the middleweight division” or “do you like being recognized in the streets of Dunnigan” — is always the same: “I don’t give a f***.”
From the time he’s been able to toddle, if anybody mouths off to him — which was often in his household — the instinct was to throw dukes first and ask questions later. Short fuse? No, no, no.
There was no fuse. We’re talking spontaneous combustion.
“Honestly, I’ve grown up fighting my f***ing entire life,” he says. “As a child, my dad and them wouldn’t separate us when we’d get into fist-fights. So it’d be like 20, 30 minutes of us f***ing each other up.”
Here he intersperses a sadistic little giggle, as one might when calling back fond memories.
“It didn’t matter if it was family, friends, uncles. They’d talk s*** to me. I was a little prick, I’m not going to lie. If I didn’t like what you told me or how you came at me, there was going to be an issue. My uncle has beat my ass plenty of times, because he’s told me to do some s**t and I would be like, ‘F*** you, you’re not my dad,’ and I’d get a pipe and try to hit him. I wasn’t the sweetest kid, you know? So this fighting s*** makes sense to me. This is the only thing I really do understand, and I’ve been to war plenty of f***ing times. And knowing how to control it is huge.”
“Fluffy” doesn’t get the love. He doesn’t get it from the UFC pay-per-view circuit, in which he has appeared on exactly one main card (UFC 298). He doesn’t get the love from the promotional B-roll, even though he’s a savage who finishes just about everyone. He doesn’t get the love from his bossy uncles, who inadvertently steered him towards prizefighting.
But prizefighting isn’t a dog’s life. It’s a glorious thing. And there’s nowhere Hernandez would rather be than locked in a cage with another man for the chance to return home with — to use Nate Diaz’s phraseology — “a pocketful of cash.”
“Bro, I don’t even honestly know what I’d do if I wasn’t a fighter,” he says. “I grew up doing mechanic work with my father. Working on big rigs and s***. I f***ing absolutely hated that because it was horrible, man. I’m telling you. Me and my dad would go — and I’m not even f***ing with you — at like 6 a.m. because he owned his own business; we’d go in at 6 a.m. on Saturday and sometimes we wouldn’t go home until Sunday.”
The thought of going back to that isn’t a pleasant one. It’s what drives him in training. Pushes him to keep going. He doesn’t want to go back to the garage where engines need to be rebuilt.
“Like, we’re talking the next morning,” he says. “It would be working all night, take a quick little nap and then get up and try to f***ing knock it all out, doing in-frames and s*** like that. So I absolutely hate diesel mechanic s***. I got a lot of respect for mechanics, but f*** that s***, man. I understand a lot of it. I don’t like doing it. Don’t like getting my hands dirty. I’ve done that s*** my whole life.”
It’s why he sacrifices himself, moving to the big city for his camps. Sacramento. The state capital of California, a million miles from the dirt bike trails in Dunnigan. What makes him ready to fight? Putting up with Sacramento.
“I absolutely f***ing hate Sacramento, man,” he says. “I don’t like it at all. There’s the weirdos, people be like driving up trying to…”
Here he intersperses a sadistic little giggle, this time astonished at the BS he endures.
“I don’t like it, man. I wasn’t even sure I was going to make it here. I thought I was going to have pistol whip someone last Sunday.”
As I said, “Fluffy” Hernandez doesn’t get the love he should.
