Then the call came in.
Evan Dunham was injured and UFC matchmaker Joe Silva needed a replacement, so they reached out to Varner to see if he was interested. It didn’t take him long to answer ‘yes’, but there was a very daunting task ahead of him in the form of Brazilian knockout artist Edson Barboza Jr.
Barboza was an explosive Muay Thai striker with deadly knees, devastating kicks and power in both hands. Varner knew he had his hands full, but it was a chance to be back in the big show.
Like a baseball player who once saw World Series glory only to find himself buried in the minor league system just years later, Varner wanted one more chance to prove to everyone that he belonged in the UFC.
“That’s what I told me trainers, I just want to make one more run. We’ll call this like my final journey, when it’s done it’s done, I’ll retire,” Varner stated.
“I couldn’t confidently say I was going to win. I knew I could take a beating, I knew I could stand in front of somebody, I could take a beating.”
In the early going, Varner’s words rang true as he started to eat a healthy diet of leg kicks from the dangerous Brazilian, his signature strike that has finished other fighters. Then the tide turned for Varner.
He cracked Barboza with a few good shots and he saw the Brazilian was stunned, and so he rushed in looking to turn up the heat. Varner blasted away and as Barboza fell to the ground, he felt a rush wash over him.
A few more punches and the fight was over. Jamie Varner had done the impossible and defeated the previously unbeaten Edson Barboza.
“I was not supposed to win that fight. I was like a 5 to 1 underdog,” Varner said about the victory. “It’s surreal, I can’t believe people want to talk to me now. I understand people like winners, but I think the fans could see there was something different about me. That I had the passion and desire that the fans wanted to see from me, I had lost that passion and desire and they could see that I got it back.”
When Bruce Buffer was calling out his name as the winner, Varner was overloaded with emotions from the long, hard road he had traveled to get back to the top.
“Honestly, I’m back,” Varner revealed as the first thing that entered his mind after the win. “It was like I’m back but the first thing was we did it. My team, we did it. The people behind me believed in me more than I believed in myself. They’re the ones that came up with the game plan and believed I could do what I did.”
It was hard to believe that just 8 months earlier, Varner was contemplating retirement and here he was feeling like a new man standing on top of the world.
“I attribute a lot of that to just hitting rock bottom, losing my job, and just kind of going on this journey and being alone. It’s really lonely down there at the bottom, it’s a crappy place to be. But it shows you what type of person you are to be down there and to fight, scratch, claw your way back up and that’s what I did,” Varner said. “That’s what I was prepared to do.”
There’s a famous line in the Christopher Nolan film ‘Batman Begins’ that says ‘why do we fall, sir? So that we can learn to pick ourselves up.’
The fact is Jamie Varner fell down and he fell down hard, but through the belief of his coaches, manager and people closest to him he made his way back. Does this mean he’s destined to become champion again one day?
The honest answer is who knows.
But there’s one thing for sure – Jamie Varner is back and he’s happy to be here, and his next mission is only to keep fighting in the UFC.
“My major focus is on my next five minutes, my next round that I have in the Octagon under the lights,” stated Varner. “I don’t care who it is, where it is, I just want to get back in the gym on Monday and start training. I just want to focus on my next round.”
