Nineteen years later, Clay Guida is still an ageless wonder.
The 40-year-old UFC Hall Famer marches into his 59th professional fight on Saturday when he meets Claudio Puelles in a main card battle at UFC Vegas 52. Despite the mileage on his odometer, Guida could conceivably be 3-0 over his last three bouts if just one more scorecard flipped his way in a recent split decision with the undefeated Mark Madsen, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the old warhorse is still having the time of his life.
“I’ll tell you what, I get more excited now, man, knowing that there’s a new challenge, a new opponent, whether I’ve heard of them or whether I haven’t,” Guida told MMA Fighting. “The fact that we just get to keep going out there and having fun and doing what we love, man, that we set out a long time ago — which to me, doesn’t seem like a long time — is amazing.”
Guida’s road through MMA is one of the longest and most history-rich still active in the lightweight division today, so we asked the living legend to do the impossible: After a career rife with post-fight bonuses and Fight of the Year contenders, which nights stand out most to the UFC’s original wild man? If he could narrow down just five fights that shaped his Hall of Fame journey the most, which performances would Guida pick?