While Chris Horodecki (Pictures) waited in his corner Friday, moments away from his IFL lightweight bout against Nate Lamotte (Pictures), an enormous TV screen inside the Izod Center in New Jersey showed Ryan Schultz (Pictures) trapping Horodecki's arm and pounding his face relentlessly.

The Izod Center's acoustics are really something. Each punch Schultz landed in the December 2007 fight was like a little bomb going off. You couldn't miss the footage either, as massive as that screen was. Not to mention it faced Horodecki's corner.

Three replays, three angles. Horodecki trapped again and again, stuck under Schultz with no way to protect his face, nothing to do but watch the blur of blue leather coming at him.

"You're standing there ready to step up in the ring and you see your face getting punched," Horodecki said. "That's not really a nice highlight to be showing to pump up the crowd, but [it is] what it is."

Horodecki's longtime trainer, Shawn Tompkins (Pictures), called the clips "damn annoying."

"That's the last thing I want for a guy that I've been working on all night long, getting his mental edge back," Tompkins said. "Knowing that there is stress coming off a loss like that. [Horodecki] was undefeated until Ryan Schultz. We all have bad nights. Especially after 13 fights, sooner or later something like that's going to happen. It's mixed martial arts."

And it was the storyline Friday: Horodecki, the gifted 20-year-old from Canada whose standup skills are technically superior to an overwhelming majority of mixed martial artists, was trying to rebound from his first loss and a brutal one at that.

Schultz's win had not been a major upset. It was how he won and how abruptly Horodecki's run had ended that was so stunning.

The loss stopped Horodecki just short of the IFL lightweight title. He had won all seven of his fights in the league, including one over Schultz and two over Bart Palaszewski (Pictures). The Palaszewski fights were split decisions, debatable perhaps, but you'll have a hard time arguing against Horodecki's campaign in 2006 and 2007 as the most impressive two-year stretch ever for a mixed martial artist his age.

Going into the second Schultz fight, he had fought nine times in two years without losing. Such success only breeds greater expectations as well as a degree of antagonism. Some people want to see an undefeated fighter lose. Others want to see the fighter pushed as far as he can go, as quickly as he can get there.

The rigorous schedule took its toll on Horodecki.

"He was getting a little bit mentally and physically broke down," Tompkins said. "Especially for those last two fights."

The last two were Palaszewski in November 2007 and Schultz in December. Schultz of course was the one who finally got him. After the loss, Tompkins sat down with Horodecki, whom he has trained since the fighter was 13 years old.

"Now you can breathe," Tompkins told him. "Take some time. I'll see you in a couple of weeks."