On Saturday night, UFC 166 presented us with the much-anticipated third showdown between reigning heavyweight champion Cain Velasquez and the only man who has beaten him, Junior dos Santos.
In the final chapter of the trilogy, Velasquez quickly put to rest any doubts as to whether the Brazilian was capable of taking his title again, as the 31-year-old thoroughly dominated JDS in Houston.
Now with consecutive victories over his closest challenger, Velasquez has cemented his status as the undisputed best heavyweight in the world, and we don’t need to see a fourth bout between these two to be sure of that.
Had this fight been a closely contested affair, I would have been on board with the scheduling of a fourth tilt between arguably the sport’s two best heavyweights.
But it wasn’t, and as MMA Fighting’s Dave Doyle said prior to the fight, a lopsided bout would all but erase any need for a fourth clash.
A close decision Saturday night, or a back-and-forth slugfest that goes into the late rounds before one guy finishes it, would do nothing to dissuade the notion that these guys are Nos. 1 and 2. If you care about UFC titles meaning something from a true sporting perspective, and the two clearly demonstrate they’re still heads and tails above the rest of the pack, then I don’t say how you can deny an eventual fourth fight.
That’s not even necessarily implying a title rematch should be immediate. The route the UFC took to get back to the Cain-JDS trilogy fight, in which both took bouts in the interim, was sensible. While Fabricio Werdum has a case for the next title shot, I personally think the Josh Barnett-Travis Browne winner has a better case. Either way, other than a second straight blowout win for Cain, I don’t think there are any good reasons why the series shouldn’t eventually continue.
Unless someone really believes that Dos Santos stands a reasonable chance at knocking off the champion, why should they face each other again? There’s no sense in getting Velasquez to beat up on the 29-year-old again, especially after we saw him pummel him more decisively in their most recent meeting.
In addition, while it’s true that JDS’ 2011 victory over Velasquez will always cause us to wonder whether history might repeat itself, it now seems evident that the champ’s shoulder injury had a lot to do with him being knocked out in Round 1. That fight looked nothing like the two that followed.
Since the loss, Velasquez has reeled off two masterful performances against Dos Santos, so much so that the outcome of Saturday night’s fight was never in doubt once it began.
At this point, Fabricio Werdum is a much better choice for Velasquez’s next opponent, and not just because it’ll be a breath of fresh air for UFC enthusiasts. After seeing how easily Velasquez dismantled Dos Santos, one has to wonder whether Werdum would provide him with more of a challenge.
Yes, Werdum fell to Dos Santos in 2008, but since then, he’s come out on top over a number of impressive opponents, including Antonio Silva, Roy Nelson and Antônio Rodrigo Nogueira, so there’s at least a possibility of an upset.
Dos Santos will go down as one of the best of this era, and he’s the only man to have defeated the champion to date, but UFC 166 highlighted the gap between the two in terms of ability.
Velasquez attacked him all night long, and his stingy defense more than made up for Dos Santos’ advantage as far as power goes, as it did during their second meeting.
We now know who the better fighter is between them, so there’s no need for them to meet in the Octagon again.
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