Sherdog’s Top 10: Flashes in the Pan

---

6. Houston Alexander

When a 35-year-old Alexander debuted against Keith Jardine at UFC 71, the Nebraskan did so as a complete unknown and a heavy underdog (+450). Jardine, on the other hand, was a known quantity: He had participated in the second season of the booming “Ultimate Fighter” reality show and was coming off a shocking upset of fan favorite and rising star Forrest Griffin six months earlier. Alexander was supposed to be a stay-busy fight for Jardine; instead, the herky-jerky Albuquerque, N.M.-based light heavyweight found himself crumpled on the canvas in less than a minute.

Alexander followed that impressive debut with another first-round, one-minute knockout, this time over longtime veteran Alessio Sakara. The finishing sequence led to UFC analyst Joe Rogan’s famous line, and one that might as well sum up the entirety of this list: “Houston Alexander is for real!”

As we now know, Alexander was not in fact for real. Thiago Silva and James Irvin both separated him from consciousness in the first round, Irvin in only eight seconds, and Eric Schafer needed less than five minutes to submit the grappling novice and send him packing from the UFC. A victory on the regional scene led to the UFC bringing him back to fight Kevin Ferguson, aka “Kimbo Slice,” at a 215-pound catchweight in one of the worst fights in the promotion’s history, and he was cut once again.

Alexander has hung around the regional scene in the intervening five years and even strung together a reasonable winning streak, but his career as a high-level fighter has long since passed, if it ever really existed in the first place.

Number 5 » He would be little more than a sad story of unrealized talent if not for the horrifying events that followed, as he was arrested in August for a series of domestic abuse incidents that included the alleged repeated punching and kicking of his wife and training his dog to attack her.