UFC On ESPN 6 Preview And Picks: Will Joe Lauzon Stop The Bleeding?

Joe Lauzon announced his arrival in the UFC in emphatic fashion. The 22-year-old knocked out former UFC lightweight champion Jens Pulver at UFC 63. The stoppage came 48 seconds into the bout, which took place in September 2006. The knockout earned Lauzon a "Knockout of the Night" bonus. On Friday, Lauzon makes his 27th trip to the octagon, where he faces Jonathan Pearce in a lightweight bout.

Lauzon has been reasonably successful as a UFC competitor. He's put together a 14-12 record with five knockout wins and seven submission victories. He also added 14 more fight-night bonus awards to go along with the bonus he earned for knocking out Pulver. That total of 15 post-fight awards ties him for second all-time in UFC history with Nate Diaz.

As successful as Lauzon has been, he's never had a winning streak of more than three fights. Those three consecutive wins came in his first three bouts with the UFC. Lauzon is currently on the worst run of his UFC career. He's lost his past three fights and is 3-6 since January 2015. His two most recent setbacks have been knockout losses.

"I really felt like going into that last fight, I had a good camp but I got my butt kicked," Lauzon told MMA Fighting. "I felt like stylistically and skill-wise, I was much better than (Chris) Gruetzemacher and I've known for a long time, since my first fight in the UFC, I've been thinking about what am I going to do after (fighting)? How long am I going to fight for? I've never taken for granted like I'm going to keep fighting, keep fighting, keep fighting. It's something I've always been conscious of and something I've always been thinking about."

"Going into the last fight just because we had a couple that didn't go very well-we got knocked out by (Clay) Guida and he's not knocked out anybody else I think but he hit me, perfect placement, perfect shot-so going into the last fight with Gruetzemacher, I was thinking is this the point? Is this the end? Am I going to get hit and go down? I didn't really know. Going into the fight we had talked a lot about if this fight doesn't go well, this is probably the last one."

The Gruetzemacher fight took place in April 2018. Lauzon had knee surgery after that loss and then pondered his future. He said he decided in November that he wanted to compete again.

Lauzon, who hails from Brockton, Massachusetts, won't commit to this being his final fight.

"I'm just going to see how it goes," Lauzon said. "I'm not going to commit to this being my last one. Steve Maze, he's my boxing coach, he wants this one to be last one. He's pushing hard that this needs to be the last one."

The 27-year-old Pearce is 9-3 as a pro. He makes his UFC debut on the UFC on ESPN 6 fight card. Pearce is coming off a knockout win on a Dana White Contender Series card in July. Pearce is favored over Lauzon.

Pick: Lauzon

UFC on ESPN 6 takes place Friday, Oct. 18 at TD Garden in Boston, Mass. The entire card airs on ESPN 2.