High level middleweight fighter Nate Marquardt may be facing submission specialist Rousimar Palhares but he doesn’t think that Palhares will necessarily go for a submission. Marquardt is a jiu-jitsu blackbelt himself, and hasn’t been submitted in a match for several years, and seems to think that perhaps Palhares will use a “Chael Sonnen” like formula, as he stated during a recent interview with MMAFighting:
“I don’t think that’s necessarily going to be his plan against me. He may watch the Chael Sonnen fight and think, ‘I’ve got to take him down and control him the whole fight and win a decision.’ But it doesn’t matter what his game plan is. I’m definitely going to stop it.”
Marquardt may be very good at submission defence and have few if any holes in his ground game but one has to think that Palhares’s lower body attacks can make anyone tap in the right situation. UFC: Marquardt vs. Palhares looks to be a very interesting bout which should help determine the middleweight rankings.