Cub Swanson got too good. For a while, the Palm Springs native’s striking may have been the best in mixed martial arts, as evidenced by a string of knockouts over George Roop, Ross Pearson, Charles Oliveira and Dennis Siver.
Even when fighters like Dustin Poirier and Jeremy Stephens went the distance with him, Swanson’s angles, accuracy and power showed him to be a step ahead of his peers. It was a heady time for him, but by the tail end of 2014, the word was out on “Killer Cub,” and it was that his black belt-level jiu-jitsu game wasn’t an issue anymore.