Penick's Take
PENICK: From gameshow winning Joe to MMA Pro, Charlie Brenneman gets massive opportunity at UFC on Versus 4
Jun 26, 2011 - 6:00:48 PM PENICK: From gameshow winning Joe to MMA Pro, Charlie Brenneman gets massive opportunity at UFC on Versus 4

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By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief

Charlie Brenneman steps into the cage tonight at UFC on Versus 4 with a massive opportunity in front of him. Four years after making the move to being a professional MMA fighter, Brenneman has gotten a chance to fight a top contender in Rick Story on a day's notice on a nationally televised card on Versus, and should he pull off the upset, he'll shoot himself up in stature in the UFC's welterweight division.

In an interesting twist of fate, it was a Spike TV program that acted as a catalyst for him to get into the sport. In 2006, Brenneman competed on Spike's "Pros vs. Joes," and after winning the first season of the show he quit his teaching job to train full time as a fighter. In short order he had moved to the professional ranks, and railed off five straight wins to begin his career before a training injury almost cut it short.

Brenneman was nearly blinded after a high kick in sparring broke his orbital bone, but after undergoing emergency surgery to repair the damage - which included multiple plates being put into his face - Brenneman returned to action. A loss to fellow UFC on Versus 4 competitor John Howard in his return bout led him to joining a true fight camp after having previously handled his own training, and that decision helped him get to the UFC with a six fight win streak.

Since making his debut, Brenneman has posted victories over Jason High and Amilcar Alves, sandwiching the wins around only his second career loss, which came by way of TKO against Johny Hendricks last August.

That 2-1 mark in the Octagon brought him to tonight's event, where he was scheduled to meet Canadian welterweight T.J. Grant. However, an illness to Grant pulled him from the event at the last minute this week, and Brenneman was told to stay close to weight in case something happened to one of the six other welterweights on the card.

As his luck would have it, headliner Nate Marquardt was pulled from the card prior to the weigh-ins. Being on weight himself, Brenneman jumped at the opportunity to meet Rick Story, and has gone from an un-televised preliminary card fight to no fight at all to fighting one of the top fighters in the division in Story.

He's got an extremely difficult task ahead of him on Sunday night, but the element of surprise and lack of preparation time for an opponent is something he shares with Story, and that could work in Brenneman's favor as well as it could work against him. Because neither has been preparing for the other, there are a lot of unknowns for each coming into the fight, and if Brenneman can use that to his advantage coming in he could potentially pull off a massive upset and make for one hell of a story of his own.