Author: Adam Wells

UFC Fight Night 26: Preview, Fight Card, TV Info, Predictions and More

Mixed martial arts is ready to go big time with the first UFC on FX event being held this Friday night. We have gotten a taste of what UFC’s new home is going to be like, but this show will be the first full event on the new network, and it will be hea…

Mixed martial arts is ready to go big time with the first UFC on FX event being held this Friday night. We have gotten a taste of what UFC’s new home is going to be like, but this show will be the first full event on the new network, and it will be headlined by Melvin Guillard vs. Jim Miller. 

Guillard’s rise up the lightweight rankings took a hit after losing to Joe Lauzon in October, but he has a chance to get right back in the thick of things with a win on Friday night. He has lightning quick hands and good power to knock anyone out. 

Miller is not as flashy as Guillard, but he always manages to get the job done. He is a wrestler extraordinaire, though it does not bode well for his long-term future because he tends to have some not-so-exciting fights. He will be looking to get back on track after a loss to top contender Benson Henderson. 

 

Where: Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, TN

When: Friday, Jan. 20 

Watch: Preliminary card starts at 6:00 p.m. EDT on Fuel TV, main card starts at 9:00 p.m. EDT on FX

 

Fight Card

Main Card on FX

Lightweight bout: Melvin Guillard vs. Jim Miller

Welterweight bout: Duane Ludwig vs. Josh Neer

Bantamweight bout: Mike Easton vs. Jared Papazian

Heavyweight bout: Pat Barry vs. Christian Morecraft

 

Preliminary Card on Fuel TV

Middleweight bout: Jorge Rivera vs. Eric Schafer

Lightweight bout: Kamal Shalorus vs. Khabib Nurmagomedov

Welterweight bout: Charlie Brenneman vs. Daniel Roberts

Lightweight bout: Fabricio Camoes vs. Reza Madadi

Featherweight bout: Daniel Pineda vs. Pat Schilling

Bantamweight bout: Joseph Sandoval vs. Nick Denis

 

Why Guillard Needs to Win

Guillard has always been a gatekeeper in UFC. He has the talent and charisma to be a star, but his problems outside of the octagon, and inability to evolve as a fighter, have always held him back. 

If he wants to become something more than just another fighter, he will have to prove that he is capable of changing. He has already switched up training camps, so we will see what effect that has on him. 

 

Why Miller Needs to Win

Miller was one win away from earning a championship fight against Frankie Edgar, but his loss to Benson Henderson last August ended his hopes in the immediate future. Now, he is trying to right the ship and prove that he still belongs in the discussion for a title shot sooner rather than later. 

His stock is still on the rise and he is just 28 years old, so there will be plenty of time for him to make a name for himself. Guillard provides a good stylistic matchup for him, where he can show off his great wrestling and submission background if he gets the opportunity. 

 

Predictions For Fight Night Bonuses

Fight of the Night: Melvin Guillard vs. Jim Miller

Knockout of the Night: Pat Barry (vs. Christian Morecraft)

Submission of the Night: Jim Miller

 

Predictions For Main Card Fights

Pat Barry defeats Christian Morecraft via TKO (2nd Round)

Mike Easton defeats Jared Papazian via unanimous decision

Josh Neer defeats Duane Ludwig via TKO (1st Round)

 

Main Event Prediction

Miller is a better overall fighter than Guillard. He is going to work the fight to the ground, and when he does it will be academic at that point because Guillard has no defense on his back whatsoever. 

Guillard’s best chance is to catch Miller off guard early, and hit him with a hard punch to the face to stun him before dropping him with more shots. 

Miller via submission in the second round

 


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UFC on FX 1: Preview, Fight Card, TV Info, Predictions and More

A busy week in the sport of mixed martial arts figures to get wild with the UFC’s debut on FX this Friday night with Melvin Guillard challenging Jim Miller in the main event. Guillard was making some noise in the lightweight division last year bef…

A busy week in the sport of mixed martial arts figures to get wild with the UFC’s debut on FX this Friday night with Melvin Guillard challenging Jim Miller in the main event. 

Guillard was making some noise in the lightweight division last year before losing to Joe Lauzon at UFC 136. He will get his chance to prove that was just a fluke against Miller, who is coming off a loss of his own last August. 

Miller would have been in line for a title shot if he had defeated Benson Henderson, but was clearly overmatched in that fight. Now he must get back on track against the quick-striking Guillard in his first-ever main event. 

 

Where: Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, TN

 

When: Friday, Jan. 20 at 6:00 p.m. EDT

 

Watch: Preliminary card starts at 6:00 p.m. EDT on Fuel TV, main card starts at 9:00 p.m. EDT on FX

 

Fight Card


Main Card on FX

Lightweight bout: Melvin Guillard vs. Jim Miller

Welterweight bout: Duane Ludwig vs. Josh Neer

Bantamweight bout: Mike Easton vs. Jared Papazian

Heavyweight bout: Pat Barry vs. Christian Morecraft

 

Preliminary Card of Fuel TV

Middleweight bout: Jorge Rivera vs. Eric Schafer

Lightweight bout: Kamal Shalorus vs. Khabib Nurmagomedov

Welterweight bout: Charlie Brenneman vs. Daniel Roberts

Lightweight bout: Fabricio Camoes vs. Reza Madadi

Featherweight bout: Daniel Pineda vs. Pat Schilling

Bantamweight bout: Joseph Sandoval vs. Nick Denis

 

Guillard’s Keys To Victory

Use efficient, strong strikes in the stand-up, and avoid going to the ground at all costs. 

Guillard’s biggest problem throughout his career has been trying to defend himself on the ground. When his opponents work him to the mat, it is a virtual certainty that they will lock in a submission because he has no way to prevent it. 

What he does do well is strike. He has a lot of power in his punches and is more than capable of knocking out Miller because he is so strong and quick with his strikes. He will need to be precise in this fight in order to walk away victorious. 

 

Miller’s Keys To Victory

Don’t try to stand and trade, take the fight to the ground as soon as possible. 

What makes the main event so compelling is how different they are. While Guillard gets by with his stand-up game, Miller wants to work the fight to the ground. 

Of Miller’s 20 career victories, 11 have come via submission. He knows that the best way to frustrate Guillard is to get him down to the mat, because once he is there, he has no way of stopping anything that happens. 

 

What They Are Saying

Melvin Guillard has undergone a lot of changes in preparation for this fight. The biggest one was switching from Greg Jackson’s camp to Blackzilian. He discussed the move with MMAWeekly.com and said that he expects his decision to pay off in a big way. 

“As fighters we have to make the decision who’s going to get us ready to take us to that next level. At the end of the day, all this hype about which coach is better than who, at the end of the day we’re the ones in there doing the job. We’re the ones that have to get in there and bust our butts. All they can do is give direction and make things go from there,” said Guillard.

Guillard had to make a move in some way because he had gone as far as he was going to go with the Jackson camp. His new camp should be able to point out all the flaws in his style to bring him back to prominence in the lightweight division. 

 

Undercard Fight To Watch: Pat Barry vs. Christian Morecraft

 

Who doesn’t love a heavyweight fight? You know that you are going to get a finish when Barry and Morecraft step into the cage. 

These two men have 19 fights between them, and only one has gone to a decision. Sure, neither fighter is going to compete for a championship, unless something goes horribly wrong with everyone else in the division, but two giant fighters just beating up each other is going to be great entertainment. 

 

Main Event Prediction

Guillard struggles against upper-tier fighters in the lightweight division. He has the potential to do more, but he just has a mental roadblock that he has never been able to get past. 

It doesn’t help that Miller is one of the best wrestlers in the weight class and can exploit Guillard’s weak defense on the ground. 

Miller wins via second-round submission.

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UFC 142: Preview, Fight Card, PPV Info, Predictions and More

UFC 142 will be the first major event that kicks off the most important year in the history of Mixed Martial Arts. This show is also a big deal because it is the first time that a featherweight championship fight will headline a UFC pay-per-view with J…

UFC 142 will be the first major event that kicks off the most important year in the history of Mixed Martial Arts. This show is also a big deal because it is the first time that a featherweight championship fight will headline a UFC pay-per-view with Jose Aldo taking on Chad Mendes. 

Aldo looks to continue his climb to the top of the pound-for-pound mountain. He has made a smooth transition from WEC to UFC with two successful title defenses against Mark Hominick and Kenny Florian last year.

Mendes is making quite a name for himself in the 145-pound division. He has compiled a perfect 11-0 record thanks to his strong wrestling and efficient striking ability. He is not an exciting fighter, but at the end of the fight, he always finds a way to get his hand raised. 

 

Where: HSBC Arena in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

When: Saturday, Jan. 14 at 10:00 p.m. EDT

Watch: Preliminary fights at 8 p.m. ET on FX, main card fights at 10 p.m. ET on pay-per-view; online pay-per-view streaming (must pay $44.99) at UFC.tv, Yahoo! Sports, UStream, Android or iPhone.

 

FIGHT CARD

Main Card

Featherweight Championship: Jose Aldo (c) vs. Chad Mendes

Middleweight Bout: Vitor Belfort vs. Anthony Johnson

Middleweight Bout: Rousimar Palhares vs. Mike Massenzio

Welterweight Bout: Erick Silva vs. Carlo Prater

Lightweight Bout: Edson Barboza vs. Terry Etim

 

Preliminary Bout

Lightweight Bout: Thiago Tavares vs. Sam Stout

Heavyweight Bout: Gabriel Gonzaga vs. Ednaldo Oliveira

Featherweight Bout: Yuri Alcantara vs. Michihiro Omigawa

Welterweight Bout: Ricardo Funch vs. Mike Pyle

Featherweight Bout: Felipe Arantes vs. Antonio Carvalho

 

Aldo’s Keys To Victory

Use speed and power in the stand-up, and avoid going to the ground. 

Aldo has not shown the same explosiveness he did when he was in WEC. Perhaps it is a product of lingering injuries, or perhaps he is starting to lose a step or two.

He will have to get back to being the feared striker he was when he was defeating Cub Swanson, Mike Brown and Urijah Faber in order to keep up with Mendes for a five-round fight. 

 

Mendes’ Keys To Victory

Avoid getting hit early, and work the fight to the ground. 

Mendes does not have enough power nor is he strong enough standing to keep up with Aldo for 25 minutes. He has to fight the way he always does: He has to prevent big strikes and grind his opponent down until he can take him to the ground. 

He is one of the best wrestlers in UFC and has shown he is not afraid to just work an opponent over for five rounds before letting the judges decide the outcome. He is going to have to do that again to walk away as featherweight champion. 

 

What They Are Saying

You would think that fighting in your home country in front of thousands of fans who are there to see you headline a show would add more pressure, but Jose Aldo is doing his best to remain cool. 

From MMAWeekly.com:

“There’s more attention and it is a great pleasure to defend my title in my home country. It means everything for me to come back fighting in my country as a champion,” Aldo said recently.

“This is where I started, just with dreams and hopes, and now I am back as a champion. It is a great feeling, but I will try to think about it after the fight. I still have to train hard and win this fight.”

Chad Mendes sounds like he has all the confidence in the world heading into this fight. He told the Las Vegas Sun that he does something better than any of Aldo’s recent opponents.

“I don’t think any of the guys that have fought him have had the wrestling credentials or wrestling abilities to be able to get a hold of him, get him down and keep him down,” Mendes said. “So I think my skills, the things I’m good at, are key to beating a guy like Jose Aldo.”

 

Undercard Fight To Watch: Thiago Tavares vs. Sam Stout

I am going to go out on a limb and call this the fight of the night. Granted, there is some precedent here.

Tavares has been given the bonus three times in his career—interestingly enough, they all came in losses. 

Stout has also won three Fight of the Night bonuses and a Knockout of the Night in his last fight at UFC 131. 

These two will never be more than gatekeepers in UFC, but they also seem to put on exciting fights that more often than not end with someone on their back. 

 

Main-Event Prediction

Mendes is going to be the biggest test of Aldo’s UFC career so far. He is a great wrestler who knows how to work an opponent into fighting his kind of match. He has what it takes to get Aldo down to the ground and hold him there for five rounds. 

However, Aldo is a more complete fighter than Mendes. He has the ability to hit as hard and fast as anyone in the sport, and he will catch Mendes with a punch as he is coming in for a takedown to end the fight. 

Aldo retains via second-round TKO


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MTV Caged: New Reality Series Will Be Great for Aspiring MMA Fighters

When MTV gets in the business of reality television, the odds are good that you can expect a lot of over-dramatization and backstabbing to make sure that the show is so over the top that no one takes it seriously. But that won’t be the case with the ne…

When MTV gets in the business of reality television, the odds are good that you can expect a lot of over-dramatization and backstabbing to make sure that the show is so over the top that no one takes it seriously. But that won’t be the case with the network’s latest project, a mixed martial arts series called “MTV Caged.”

The series, which starts on Monday night, follows around young, aspiring fighters who are trying to balance their personal lives with their dreams of making it inside the cage. 

Here is a portion of the official description from MTV.com:

“This weekly documentary series will take an honest look into the world of young amateur MMA fighters, both inside and outside of the cage. One is dealing with his lost love, another tries to balance his young family and fighting, and another just yearns to make his family proud. It’s impossible for them to leave these issues outside of the ring, and each week, viewers will see how their personal lives and choices affect their chances inside the cage.”

“For these modern day gladiators, every day is a fight to break free from the past, and to find their future. It’s their chance to turn their lives around, and an opportunity to stand up and fight to make something of themselves.”

Mixed martial arts is still growing in this country, so it would make perfect sense for the series to follow around a group of young fighters, because as the sport continues to grow, they are trying to grow and find their place in this world. 

I am skeptical that the series won’t devolve into a parody of what it is supposed to be. We have seen MTV use all of its reality shows–or shows being presented as reality–as excuses to get people to have sex, talk about having sex, think about having sex or thinking of talking about sex. 

This series should focus on the journey of the people that are being profiled, not any of their trashy fantasies about the girl next door. As long as the show does that, it will be a success and can help the sport of mixed martial arts grow in popularity along with it. 

Since this is the first episode of the series, hopes should be high. Mixed martial arts is not an easy sport to break into, and hopefully we will see what aspiring fighters have to go through in order to make it to the top. 

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Brock Lesnar Retires: Remembering Lesnar’s Best MMA Moments

Immediately after Alistair Overeem made him shake with a kick to the body that made my ribs hurt, Brock Lesnar retired from UFC and the sport of mixed martial arts after just eight career fights.While his career was short, it was also impactful. L…

Immediately after Alistair Overeem made him shake with a kick to the body that made my ribs hurt, Brock Lesnar retired from UFC and the sport of mixed martial arts after just eight career fights.

While his career was short, it was also impactful. 

Love him or hate him, no one in UFC moved the needle as Lesnar did. His presence will be missed, particularly with Georges Sr-Pierre—who is the second-biggest draw in the sport—out for 2012 after knee surgery. 

But before we start to look ahead for Lesnar, we wanted to take a look back at some of the best moments in his MMA career. 

 

The First One

When Lesnar decided to try his hand at mixed martial arts, no one knew what to expect. He made his debut at the K-1 Dynamite show on June 2, 2007, with a dominant victory over Min-Soo Kim.

It wasn’t the most memorable fight ever, but it did launch Lesnar into the stratosphere, and he was able to catch the eyes of Dana White and the UFC to become the next face of the heavyweight division. 

 

Frank Mir, Part One

Even though Lesnar had only eight fights in his career, he did have a fun and captivating rivalry with Frank Mir that started in 2008 and lasted through the summer of 2009. 

Their first match was one of the most exciting 90-second fights that you will ever see.

Lesnar came out like a house of fire and even had Mir beat.

But he left his leg open, and Mir, being the savvy veteran he is, was able to make Lesnar submit with a leg lock. 

Still, this was the fight that let the world know that, with more experience, Lesnar could be a force in the UFC. 

 

The Champion

MMA purists were furious when Lesnar was given a shot at Randy Couture and the UFC heavyweight championship after just two fights and a 1-1 record, but Lesnar’s fights were doing such great business that any opportunity the company could find to put him in a high-profile match was going to be taken. 

The heavyweight division was in desperate need of a makeover in 2008. Couture was great, but he was 45 years old.

Someone else had to step up. 

Lesnar was given the shot, and took full advantage of it, with a second-round TKO. 

 

Revenge

After Lesnar won the UFC heavyweight title, it made sense that Frank Mir would be the first challenger, since he did hold a submission victory over the former. 

But things would be different when the two men locked horns at UFC 100.

Lesnar’s style had improved by leaps and bounds from the first time they fought, and on this night, he would leave no doubt about who the better man was. 

It helped that Lesnar delivered one of the greatest heel promos ever after it was over. 

 

The Comeback

Lesnar did not have a lot of time to celebrate being the undisputed champion because he was stricken with diverticulitis, which would end up taking away one year of his career, from July 11, 2009, to July 3, 2010. 

He made his triumphant return against Shane Carwin at UFC 116 in one of the most memorable fights of the year. 

Carwin destroyed Lesnar in the first round, but because he exhausted so much energy and couldn’t finish it, there was no way for him to win this fight. 

Lesnar came back in the second round and picked Carwin apart.

The finish came when he locked in an arm-triangle choke to get the submission. It was the most emotional victory of Lesnar’s career. 

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Lesnar vs. Overeem: Why Brock Lesnar’s Return to Octagon Will Be an Epic Fail

It has been a long time since we have seen Brock Lesnar compete inside the octagon, but after 14 months away he will make his triumphant return at UFC 141 against Alistair Overeem. But considering all the health problems that he has dealt with, it is n…

It has been a long time since we have seen Brock Lesnar compete inside the octagon, but after 14 months away he will make his triumphant return at UFC 141 against Alistair Overeem. But considering all the health problems that he has dealt with, it is not likely to be the banner night that Lesnar is looking for. 

In fact, I would be surprised if Lesnar was able to walk away from this fight with a victory. It’s not that I think that he can’t win, but there are just too many “what ifs” that have to be factored in when looking at how he wins. 

Heavy.com ran through a list of five ways that Lesnar can win this fight, and they are the standard items that we would expect: Wrestle Overeem to the ground, use speed, control tempo, consistent striking and prove he can take a punch. 

Those are all well and good, but the biggest factor working against Lesnar in this fight is his health. He is healthy after undergoing surgery for a second bout with diverticulitis, but physically he may not be as imposing as he used to be. 

When Lesnar was making his way through the heavyweight division and winning the championship, he was a physical marvel who had a mental advantage over his opponents because he was so huge and so fast. He was unlike anyone else in the sport. 

But now that he has been out of action for so long, and been forced to go through rehab just to get his body back to working normally, will he still be the same imposing figure that he once was?

The weigh-ins are going to tell us all that we need to know about where Lesnar is at right now. But having not seen him since he was announcing at the UFC on Fox special last month, it is impossible to make a prediction about where he is at. 

Lesnar is not going to be able to step right back into the octagon after having gone through everything that he has and challenge one of the best strikers in the sport in a No. 1 contender’s match and be the same fighter that he was before. 

There is still time for Lesnar to get his career back on track, but this matchup with Overeem is not one that plays to his strengths as a mixed martial artist. It is going to be a rude awakening for him on Friday night in Las Vegas. 

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