UFC middleweight champion Chris Weidman is undefeated in his mixed martial arts career, defeating legendary fighters such and Anderson “The Spider” Silva and Vitor “The Phenom” Belfort during that spotless run.
Top 185-pound contender Luke Rockhold yawns at these accomplishments.
The American Kickboxing Academy product recently spoke with MMAFighting.com, and he didn’t hold back when he was inevitably asked about Weidman. The two will fight Dec. 12 at UFC 194 in Las Vegas, but the war of words is already well underway.
After Weidman called Rockhold “insecure” on Monday’s edition of The MMA Hour, the California native returned fire. MMA Fighting’s Chuck Mindenhall has the transcription:
“It sounds like [Weidman]’s asleep in bed. I just don’t know what the hell is going on in his head. I don’t know if he’s psychologically convinced himself that we’re scared of him or something, but he’s not on the right page. I feel like he’s in for a rude awakening.”
Rockhold then took his sentiments a step further, questioning Weidman‘s mindset inside the cage. According to Rockhold, the Team Serra-Longo product lacks restraint once the cage door closes, and his fight IQ suffers because of this fact:
“He’s so tough, he gets by on a lot of toughness, but I don’t think he uses his head too well,” Rockhold said. “It seems like he’s a little cloudy in his vision in a fight. He doesn’t fight with the highest IQ. You can see when he comes in, he comes in kind of carelessly, kind of going through the motions. He doesn’t adjust well.”
That’s certainly a fresh take. Weidman is generally regarded as a studious, intelligent fighter who meticulously game-plans to maximize his chances of winning. To this point, it’s worked, leading him to 13-straight victories as a professional.
Last October, Bleacher Report stopped by Weidman‘s home gym, LAW MMA, to chat with head coach Ray Longo, and the man behind the machine lauded the champ’s mental toughness and understanding of the fight game.
“He (Weidman) understands fighting,” Longo told Duane Finley. “He’s got a fighting IQ that’s off the charts. If they had Mensa for fighters, he’s in Mensa. He’s a genius, man. He really is. And he puts it to work…He functionalizes everything that he can think.”
Either Rockhold or Longo is wrong on this front, and we’ll get to find out in December.
Personally, I see this as the toughest fight so far in Weidman‘s career. Rockhold is in the prime of his fighting life, and he’s obliterated his past four opponents, finishing them all in progressively more impressive fashion.
He has the training camp, the sparring partners, the coaching and the athletic abilities to reach the top, and this one will come down to who is more prepared on fight day.
Forced to pick, however, I side with Weidman based solely on his ability to get the job done when the lights go down. When it matters, Weidman rises to the occasion, becoming a fighter who is better than the sum of his parts. That’s special.
We’ve seen Rockhold falter in the past, losing twice in his career via knockout, and he hasn’t dealt with a fighter possessing the sheer power and will of Weidman.
That’s not necessarily his fault—nobody in the division can match Weidman in those departments. The champ mixes his striking and wrestling as well as anyone in the sport today, conjuring memories of former welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre’s utter dominance every time he planted his foes on the mat.
His control is otherworldly, and his grappling game is only getting better, a point evidenced in a recent Instagram post by world-class jiu-jiteiro Garry Tonon.
In the caption, Tonon says:
If you think “MMA GUYS” don’t possess the skill to submit Grapplers at the highest level, you are dead wrong. The level of #submissiongrappling that@chrisweidmanufc brought to the table today was incredible as usual. I’d put my money on him in a sub only grappling match with any high level grappler in his weight category.
Rockhold is a decorated Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt himself, but Weidman routinely receives this type of praise from the best in the business, so it’s hard to bet against him in that department until proven otherwise.
It’s a close fight, and Rockhold has all the tools to dethrone Weidman at UFC 194, but I just can’t pull the trigger on the upset.
The New Year will begin with the man hoisting gold in the UFC’s middleweight division.
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