BREWER, Maine — Tim Boetsch was just seven fights into his mixed martial arts career when the Ultimate Fighting Championship first called him on short notice in early 2008.
A stunning first-round victory over David Heath earned the Lincolnville native more phone calls, but two losses in his next three fights ended his first stay in mixed martial arts’ major leagues by mid-2009.
Boetsch fought his way back to the UFC a year later and has been a staple in its light heavyweight and middleweight divisions since then — once rising to No. 4 in the world among middleweights in 2012.
But a string of eight victories in nine fights has been followed by five losses in his last seven bouts, and with the pool of UFC fighters expanding both numerically and geographically, such stretches of competitive futility leave even the most loyal of combatants in career jeopardy.
That’s the challenge “The Barbarian” faces Sunday night when he battles Ed “Short Fuse” Herman in a three-round light heavyweight bout on the preliminary card of UFC Fight Night 81 at TD Garden in Boston.
The Boetsch-Herman fight will be televised live on Fox Sports 1 between 8 p.m. and 10 p.m., just before the main card headlined by a UFC title fight between bantamweight champion T.J. Dillashaw and No. 1 contender Dominick Cruz.
“For my career in the UFC, this is my most important fight,” Boetsch said before a recent training session at Marcus Davis’ Team Irish MMA Fitness Academy. “Once again I find myself in the position that if I lose this fight I might be out. Chances are I would be out because of where I am career-wise. That being said, the way this sport goes, if I string a couple of wins together, I’m right back in the mix.”
Boetsch, who will turn 35 on Jan. 28, was in a similar position in August 2014 after a stretch of three losses in four fights — including a first-round TKO defeat against Luke Rockhold, now the UFC middleweight champion.
But the former four-time Class B wrestling state champion at Camden-Rockport High School, who had been living in Pennsylvania but training on the West Coast with Matt Hume at AMC Pankration in Seattle, Washington, switched camps and began working in his native state with Davis, himself a former UFC top-10 contender.
Boetsch then scored a second-round stoppage of Brad Tavares in a homecoming bout at the Cross Insurance Center in Bangor, giving his career new life — as well as earning a $50,000 performance-of-the-night bonus.
He hopes another East Coast bout, his first in Boston, will produce a similar result.
“I’ve been through numerous do-or-die situations throughout my career as a fighter,” said Boetsch, 18-9 overall, 9-8 in the UFC. “This is just another one, and I plan on making the most of it, especially fighting this close to home.
“I know I’m going to have a lot of support in Boston. I’m going to do the best I can, and I feel like I’m ready. Marcus has gotten me trained well to do what I have to do on fight night,” he said.
What Boetsch has to do on fight night against Herman is to find that successful balance between the more technical fighter he was under Hume’s watch and the more Barbarian-like performer he has been since joining forces with Davis.
“Certainly one thing Marcus and I talk about a lot is controlled aggression, controlling the chaos,” said Boetsch. “I perform well in a chaotic-style fight, but I like to be in control of when the chaos begins, so certainly having the ability to dictate at what point the fight goes there takes some technical ability.
“So yes, there is a balance between the two, and I think I’m finally understanding that, and hopefully everybody will get to see me implement that on fight night,” he added.
The philosophical change under Davis’ watch led to the victory over Tavares but since then has resulted in losses to Thales Leites — albeit in a fight-of-the-night performance — and Dan Henderson in a one-punch knockout 28 seconds into Boetsch’s most recent fight as the main event of a June 6 show in New Orleans.
“At the end of the day it’s fighting,” said Boetsch, “and in this sport with the 4-ounce gloves, there are so many ways to win, which means there’s a lot of ways to lose, too, so anything can happen in a fight.
My last fight I was ultra-confident … but anything can happen on any given night.”
The 35-year-old Herman (23-11, one no contest overall, 9-7, one NC in the UFC) may sense being in the same precarious UFC career position as Boetsch after dropping two of his last three bouts, most recently by first-round strikes to Derek Brunson on Jan. 31, 2015.
“I guess he changed camps for this fight and has been working a lot more on jiu-jitsu and grappling,” said Boetsch, “so potentially his game plan could change to just trying to win by a ground-game submission or dragging me down and holding me down and maybe not making it a fight.
“But at his core he’s a guy who’s going to want to walk to the center of the cage and fight, so I don’t think it will be difficult for me to drag him into that kind of fight,” he said.
Boetsch will fight at the 205-pound light heavyweight limit for the first time since late 2010, while Herman will move up from middleweight for the first time since he finished second in the third season of “The Ultimate Fighter” television series in 2005.
“Being up a weight class I’m feeling strong, my mind is sharp and a lot of that has to do with not worrying about cutting weight,” said Boetsch, who spent Christmas with his family before returning to Maine to resume training. “I’ll still have to cut a few pounds but not what I normally do, so I can focus on the fight and what I need to do to handle business on fight night.
“There’s definitely a lot riding on this fight, but I’m not counting myself out in the least bit. As far as career-wise in the UFC, I know I’ve still got what it takes to compete at the highest level of the sport,” he said.
