Dave Meltzer tells the tale:
He had four stoppage wins in his first four UFC fights, including three in the first round. The highlight of his streak came against former heavyweight champion Frank Mir at UFC 65, where Vera won in just 1:09 by overwhelming Mir standing.
The win put Vera in line for a shot at then-heavyweight champion Tim Sylvia. But Vera and the UFC had a contract dispute, and he never signed for the match. It was his upcoming opponent, Couture, who came out of retirement to fill the vacancy, leading to Couture's win in one of the most memorable moments in UFC history.
Just as Couture's storybook career hit its apex, Vera's unraveled.
After his contractual issue with the UFC came a management problem and a dispute. He sat out a year, and when he came back at UFC 77, he broke his hand in the first round in a fight against Sylvia, losing a decision and ending his undefeated status. The loss derailed him from a heavyweight title fight he would have received with a win.
Anyone who was following Brandon Vera up to 2006 knows that at one time he was one of the most exciting fighters in the heavyweight division: a skilled Greco-Roman wrestler with devastating Muay Thai skills and the jiu jitsu to rack up a string of submission wins. He wasn't just well rounded either, he was aggressive, confident, devastating.
And then he got into a business dispute with first the UFC and then his manager and when he finally came back after sitting out a year, he wasn't the same fighter.
Meanwhile, Randy Couture came out of retirement, where he'd been since Chuck Liddell had KTFO'd him right out of the light heavyweight division. Couture got the title shot against Tim Sylvia that should have been Vera's. This was when Tim Sylvia seemed like a vampire atop the heavyweight division, relentlessly draining the life out of the division just as he relentlessly took decision win after decision win over shorter, smaller foes. Then he stepped into the cage to face Randy Couture.
The rest is history.
Somehow the career momentum that had been accruing to the brash young Brandon Vera transferred to Randy Couture and the Natural went on a tear while Vera went on a downward spiral that almost saw him run out of the UFC.
We'll find out Saturday if Vera can get some of that mojo back from the ageless Captain America.