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Kyle Noke: Australian MMA’s quiet achiever

Roar Guru
14th August, 2011
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Roar Guru
14th August, 2011
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1203 Reads

Kyle Noke UFC MMA

There’s a good chance you won’t see Australian Kyle Noke’s fight with Ed Herman on UFC Live: Hardy vs. Lytle on Monday morning. The bout has been slated for the preliminary portion of the card and while you can catch the fight live on the UFC’s Facebook page, it will only find its way to One’s 11am broadcast if time allows.

However, something tells me that doesn’t faze Noke too much.

With back-to-back failures by George Sotiropoulos inside the UFC and Noke currently holding a three fight win streak – that includes a 95-second blitzing of Chris Camozzi on the main card of Sydney’s UFC 127 back in February – it wouldn’t be unfair to suggest that Noke is currently our country’s premiere mixed martial artist.

In an interview with The Roar, Noke stated that he does not see it that way.

“I still think George is up there you know? Just because he’s had a couple of losses doesn’t mean anything. I don’t really think of myself as the premiere fighter in Australia, I just like representing Australia and doing the best that I can.”

The lack of bravado Noke shows is not something you usually see in prizefighters. The fight business very much favours those that use their mouths as much as they use their bodies.

In the UFC’s middleweight division for example, you have to look no further than former title challenger, Chael Sonnen. Sonnen went from losing his UFC return to fighting for the middleweight title in three fights almost purely on the back of the verbal warfare he was unleashing upon champion, Anderson Silva.

The three fighters Sonnen knocked over in that streak definitely earned him that shot, but it was the trash talk that got his foot in the door.

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That’s just not Noke’s game though.

“I understand it all you know (trash talking). I think that Chael’s funny sometimes but I think he oversteps the line sometimes too. But that’s not me, I don’t like to disrespect anyone. I respect everyone that I fight.”

This respectful approach is probably the reason why Noke was able to rack up a 16-4-1 record before being picked up for the eleventh season of The Ultimate Fighter.

Even though the Mooloolaba, Queensland native had scored impressive wins over Sotiropoulos and Brian Ebersole and had fought to a draw with current Bellator middleweight titlist, Hector Lombard, his introverted approach to fight promotion had left him one of MMA’s most fight-tested free agents.

If it wasn’t for the success of the UFC’s first trip to Australia there was a real possibility that Noke could have not been picked up by the organization following his quarter final exit to eventual runner-up Kris McCray.

Regardless, he has made it to the biggest stage now with three successive stoppage victories under the UFC banner to boot.

Noke will get his chance to make his way further up the middleweight rankings on Monday when he faces 10-fight UFC veteran, Ed Herman. This fight is without a doubt the toughest of Noke’s UFC career to date and will give us an excellent idea of where he truly stands in the division.

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If he is victorious it will entrench him firmly in the upper echelon of middleweight fighters and if that does happen it will have been done, not by anything else but sheer weight of performance.

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