LAS VEGAS – UFC middleweight Brian Stann says his success in fighting is partially owed to the skill known in football circles as calling an audible.
It's the ability, he says, to "think clearly under duress" and to make split-second decisions without a tweak in heart rate.
Quarterbacks use it to move players and plays around last minute on the football field. It was part of his life as a linebacker for the United States Naval Academy.
Later on, he applied it to a field of a different kind – the one where bullets are flying past you and you have to move men and women away from imminent danger and possible death. He made plenty of quick calls during two tours of duty in Iraq, and he won a Silver Star in the process.
Stann (9-3 MMA, 3-2 UFC), a decorated former Marine officer and ex-WEC light-heavyweight champion, faces a much less dire situation when he meets Chris Leben (21-6 MMA, 11-5 UFC) on Saturday at UFC 125. But he still could be hurt, or perhaps worse, suffer the embarrassment of a very public loss in the pay-per-view co-main-event fight.
Oddsmakers are betting on both.
Stann, though, said those outcomes long since have faded in importance. That's one reason he would never trade his life experience for the path most fighters follow on the way to the sport's biggest stage.
He doesn't care if people count him out on his current trail up the UFC's middleweight mountain, or if he loses a fight on his way there. He knows the battles he's faced inside famed trainer Greg Jackson's gym – where he's resided since early 2009 – are the only measure of how far he's come since he started training in a combat zone in 2005.
It's an edge that sets him apart from his opponents.
"A lot of times fighters beat themselves mentally before they get in the cage," he said. "Because we're not worried about getting hurt; we're just worried about hurting our pride. This means so much to us – the fact that if you lose you get half the money, and paying rent, and bills, and getting cut. All that stuff plays a part.
"With the experiences I've been through, at the end of the day, if I were to lose a fight, what does it really mean in the scheme of things? Am I a bad person because I lost a fight? Am I a worse husband or father? No I'm not. So I think that allows me to go out there and fight with no emergency brake on."
Of course, Leben comes to the table with his own laundry list of battles in an eight-year MMA career. He has more than twice the number of fights Stann does and has competed at the highest levels of the sport for five years. As of late, he's experienced a steep upswing with a pair of victories over Aaron Simpson and Yoshihiro Akiyama that were made all the more impressive by the two weeks that separated them.
Leben called out Wanderlei Silva following his triumph over Akiyama. The fight was expected to take place before Silva blew out his knee, and the deck was reshuffled. Instead of the highly regarded Brazilian, Leben got Stann, a fighter who's 3-2 inside the octagon.
Stann doesn't disagree that he's been set up as a final hurdle for Leben to overcome before a bigger name. But he's not bothered by it all. In fact, it could play to his favor. If Leben doesn't get his way inside the octagon Saturday, will he be able to call an audible?
"It's not high risk at all," Stann told us. "I don't think anybody has picked me to win yet. So me, I have nothing to lose. Chris has all the hype getting into title contention. He has everything to lose, and I have everything to gain.
"I can go out there and fight hard, fight my fight and not have to worry about holding back or some of those things that slow athletes down."
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