Mic drop: How Bryan Battle broke through UFC invisibility by embracing 'the bad guy'

There were 15,449 people packed into Paris’ Accor Arena in September, and all of them, from the nosebleeds down to the bougie seats, were booing. Bryan Battle had knocked out France’s own Kevin Jousset, a figure from Bordeaux out in the wine country, which didn’t sit well with the faithful. As he made his way over to Michael Bisping for the post-fight word, the boos got so loud that Battle could barely hear what was being said.

“Mike, I gotta say something right quick,” he boomed, surveying the crowd and sounding every bit like Jesse Ventura circa 1986. “Yeah, keep booing me baby. Keep booing me, I lub it. I lub it. Listen, people been booing me and doubting me since I started training. I lub it. The more you boo me, the stronger I get baby. I’m used to this. Y’all can’t stop me. Keep it up, baby, y’all can’t stop me.”

Battle’s gold chains sparkled in this God-given spotlight, and his message hit like subwoofers on the main drag. This was the greatest heel turn in quite some time. Where did this guy come from? Didn’t he used to be called "Pooh Bear?" With long wet-looking locks streaming down the sides of his head? Now here he was, bleached blonde, a provocateur before a room of raging Frenchmen, egging things on in a way that would’ve made the Duke of Wellington blush.

It was brilliant.

Then he cupped his ears so as to hear the chorus of expletives a little better, and the cords in his neck bulged as he continued on, this time in the regal third person.

“Uh-huh, uh-huh,” he yelled, “Hey, let me hear it. Hey, I know y’all didn’t think the 'Butcher' was going to lose in a fistfight to a French dude. I know y’all didn’t think the 'Butcher' was going lose in a fistfight to a French dude!”

If people hadn’t paid attention to Battle before, they did after he cut this spectacular promo. The boos rained down on him as he made his way back to the locker room. He gladly took them in. And the end result was, to borrow from pro wrestling parlance, he got over in a big way. The UFC rebooked Battle into a fight with the veteran Randy Brown shortly after he touched back down in the United States, for a bout set to take place in December. Strike while the iron is hot.

“That was big,” Battle says. “I think the biggest pops I had was winning ‘The Ultimate Fighter,’ which was up there, when I fought Tresean [Gore], that popped off a little bit because we had some bad blood. The Charlotte fight [against Gabe Green] was big, being in my hometown.

“But nothing compared to this.”

Battle, a welterweight, has been around for the last few years, has had his moments. The 14-second knockout against Green was memorable given its brevity. That time he had an arena full of people on his side, celebrating his victory with him. He got emotional as he addressed the Queen City that raised him. There was that quick head-kick knockout of Takashi Sato, too, which got people’s attention. All told he’s 6-1 with one no contest in the UFC since "TUF." Not bad, but nothing that distinguished him from the crowd.

Until France. If ever there was a demonstration of how to use a microphone, it showed up in Paris, and all anybody could say after was to hang it in the Louvre.

“People are talking about like it’s a heel turn, but I don’t think it's necessarily a heel turn,” he says. “I think it’s just me just having fun. You know what I'm saying? Charlotte was more special, but this one was more fun.”

Fun is perhaps the new wrinkle that “The Butcher” has added since those salad days when he was known as the more fun-loving "Pooh Bear." Battle took the new nickname from an upstate New York rapper that his tattoo artist turned him on to known as Benny the Butcher, whom he has grown to greatly admire.

“It was constant pressure, the way he’s rapping,” he says, “and it's just like the tone and the cadence was so imposing — I was like, I feel this, and Bryan 'The Butcher' Battle has a good ring. Triple B, you know what I’m saying? I am killing people. I am a butcher.”

Publicly he rolled out the new nickname against Green, but he says he adopted his ruthless counterpart as his new identity as far back as the Sato fight in the gym. The difference?

“'Pooh Bear' was more like a happy-go-lucky dude,” Battle says, as if there are just some characters he knows. “Just doing my best, trying to push and figure out where my limits are. Whereas ‘The Butcher’ is like, ‘No, no, no. I’m here to kill everybody.’ There's no happy-go-luckiness about this. 'The Butcher' came in and killed 'Pooh Bear.'”

With "Pooh Bear" dead, "The Butcher" is like the devil on the other shoulder who way back in the day, during pro wrestling’s Attitude Era, took a few cues from watching "WWE SmackDown" every Thursday night. Battle had a little television in his room with two channels, one in which he played his Game Cube, and one in which he watched pro wrestling against the will of his family. He was 10 years old watching bra and panty matches. Beholding Austin 3:16, which was blasphemy in his religious household. It’s possible the genesis of the promo in France dates back to a DX crotch chop. Who’s to say?

“'SmackDown' was a problem because I always had spelling tests on Friday,” Battle says. “So I should have been studying, but I was watching 'SmackDown.' And then between you and me, the 'Girls Gone Wild' info commercial would come on afterwards. That made Thursday night my favorite night of the week. I’d watch 'SmackDown,' and back then they were doing some pretty wild sh*t, and then I’d wait a little bit for the 'Girls Gone Wild' infomercial. It was a great night. And then I would struggle in my spelling test the next day.”

Not that Battle consciously knew he was going drum up the ire of an arena full of people when he arrived in France. His intention was simply not to lose to a Frenchman, which simplified his mission. Yet when he got his first sampling of the crowd’s displeasure with him, he started feeling a little uncomfortable.

“Before the ceremonial weigh-ins, hearing the crowd, how loud the crowd was getting just for the weigh-ins — how they cheered for the French guy and boo the person who wasn't French — I was like, ‘Oh, man, I’m a little nervous!’ I was like, ‘What do I do? What do I do?’ So it started at the ceremonials and once I got a vibe for it, I knew walking in I was just going to antagonize people, you know what I'm saying? I was just going to be like, ‘Alright, I’m the bad guy. I’m the antagonist.’ Let me lean into it. Really hot dog it up.

“I was like, 'You’re the f*cking man. Just go out there and just be yourself and ride the wave.’”

The wave reached America and made quite a splash. The French were beating the interlopers at a good clip before Battle made the walk. The fight was a solid one. Jousset was game, and so was Battle, who was winning the fight into the second. Late in that round Battle landed a big right hand staggered Jousset, and then he traded a sequence of one-twos until referee Herb Dean stepped in to wave it off. He’d broken the French stronghold, and that whipped the crowd into a frenzy, setting up Battle’s ultimate scene.

That’s when he cut one of the best promos of the year.

“After the fight, I really didn’t plan on saying hardly any of that, but they were booing so bad,” he says. “I could barely hear myself, so I was like, ‘Alright, you know what? F*ck you guys.’

“I don't know if you pay attention to current wrestling, but there’s a guy, Rey Mysterio. His son, Dominick, is a wrestler. He’s someone where people hate him so much, they’ll be booing. They’ll be booing and when he grabs the mic and you can't even hear him, they’re booing so loud. That’s kind what it was like. I loved it.”