Tim Sylvia, Houston Alexander Halt Losing Streaks With TKOs at Adrenaline MMA

Both former UFC heavyweight champion “Maine-iac” Tim Sylvia (25-6) and UFC light heavyweight “Assassin” Houston Alexander (9-4) halted two-year, three-fight losing streaks with first-round TKOs Friday night in Omaha at Adrenaline MMA 4.

Sylvia’s downward spiral bottomed-out at 2:32 versus Jason Reily (6-2).  Sylvia dropped the North American Allied Fight Series heavyweight champion with an overhand left, then finished him on the mat with hammerfists.

Alexander was even quicker, setting-up Sylvia’s training partner at Militech Fighting Systems, “Tank” Sherman Pendergarst (11-15), with chopping leg kicks, before putting him on the mat with a bone-crushing knee to Pendergarst’s body, and finishing him with punches at 1:51.

Both fighters moved up a weight class.  Sylvia weighed 287 pounds for the fight, 22 pounds over the Unified Rules heavyweight limit, but 23.6 pounds less than his disastrous KO loss to “Merciless” Ray Mercer (1-1) at Adrenaline MMA 3 in Birmingham June 13.  Alexander’s matchup versus Pendergarst was contested in the heavyweight division.

Monte Cox both promotes Adrenaline MMA and manages Sylvia and Alexander and this fourth iteration was conceived specifically to get Alexander a payday and some cage time after a year long hiatus from the Octagon.  The opposition Sylvia and Alexander faced wasn’t UFC-level, but the stakes for each fighter were all-or-nothing.

After losing to Mercer in what was supposed to be a boxing match until the Association of Boxing Commissions reversed their sanctioning policy days before the event, Sylvia found himself peering out of the deepest trench of his underrated career.  A source close to Adrenaline MMA confided to Fighters.com that Alexander’s UFC career was on the line versus Pendergarst.

Both fighters now find themselves out of the quicksand of losses and on stable ground to regain former glory.  Sylvia plans to fight again before the end of 2009 and Alexander might return to the Octagon as early as December.