Brian Bowles and Urijah Faber fight at UFC 139 in what could be the No. 1 contender’s bout for Dominick Cruz’s UFC bantamweight title.
Bowles is the man who gave Cruz the belt when he broke his hand in their title fight; now Bowles is in the position where he could be the man to take it away from him.
Bowles also finds himself in great position as a top-three bantamweight in the world after a big win over Takeya Mizugaki at UFC 132.
A Bowles win means the rest of the fighters in the bantamweight division will have to wait their turn. Frankly, though, only Renan Barao is deserving of a title shot.
Bowles could steal the belt from Cruz and make the bantamweight division wide open again. In their last fight, though, Cruz was beating Bowles, so it would be tough to say how well Bowles would perform after their first fight.
Now, though, Bowles has to face Faber and could possibly pull off a big win in the division and send Faber to the back of the line.
It would make the division work that much harder to surpass Bowles in the next few months and then give all the guys looking for a title shot a chance to beat someone like Faber to get a title shot.
Hey, Bowles possesses the knockout power to do so, and everybody loves a good underdog story.
Maybe next time around Bowles will be more ready for Cruz and be able to steal the belt from what looks like a very dominant bantamweight champion.
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