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Zane Simon and Connor Ruebusch are back in the saddle to rope in a the best fight picks and odds for UFC 196. They’ll cover everything from the main event between Connor McGregor and Nate Diaz, all the way down to Julian Erosa vs. Teruto Ishihara.?

The stars will turn out when Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) returns to MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada, this Saturday night (March 5, 2016) for its UFC 196: “McGregor vs. Diaz” pay-per-view (PPV) extravaganza.

That’s where featherweight champion Conor McGregor bumps up to welterweight to throw hands with Nate Diaz in the five-round main event. But before “Notorious” can take on Stockton’s finest, Holly Holm will put her women’s bantamweight strap on the line against Miesha Tate.

Below is a handful of the celebrities expected to be in attendance, courtesy of TMZ:

Leonardo DiCaprio (actor)
Bruno Mars (musician)
Gerard Butler (actor)
Gordon Ramsay (chef)
Niall Horan (musician)
Liam Payne (musician)
Josh Brolin (actor)
Reggie Bush (NFL)
Tyga (musician)
T-Boz (musician)
Marcedes Lewis (NFL)
Zac Brown (musician)
Danny Elfman (musician)

What’s that song by Whodini?

MMAmania.com will deliver LIVE round-by-round, blow-by-blow coverage of the entire UFC 196 fight card on fight night (click here), starting with the Fight Pass “Prelims” matches online, which are scheduled to begin at 6:30 p.m. ET, and then the remaining undercard balance on FOX Sports 1 at 8 p.m. ET, before the PPV main card start time at 10 p.m. ET.

For much more on UFC 196 including previews, predictions, videos, and more, check out our comprehensive “McGregor vs. Diaz” news archive by clicking here.

Few fighters garner as much attention as Jose Torres did ahead of his professional debut.

Young, ambitious, and articulate, Torres managed to parlay his natural gifts into an exceptionally impressive amateur run in mixed martial arts. Though he lost his first ever fight, he later compiled a 25-fight consecutive win streak in non-professional bouts, which made Jose is one of the most experienced competitors to debut for a North American promotion.

Jose is also a two-time gold medalist at the International Mixed Martial Arts Federation (IMMAF) tournament. He competed six times in 2015, including multiple bouts in the same week for the IMMAF tournament. Having participated in amateur competition between the age of 18 and 23, he was finally prepared to move on and profit from his achievements.

Naturally, his success during that time earned him quite the reputation, so much so that he received various offers from promotions interested in his professional debut, as well as an offer from a gym in the Middle East that wanted to incorporate him into their team. It was a team known as KHK MMA and was founded by Bahraini Prince Sheikh Khaled Bin Hamad Al Khalifa.

“Bahrain had a decent squad at the IMMAF World Championships but sadly none of their guys placed. After I dominated at this year’s tournament, I was contacted by some of the representatives of KHK. Then I got a call from Mohammad Shahid, who offered me a certain deal.”

The offer came at a crossroads in Torres’ life: He was supposed to move to Malaysia to start a new job there while training for a pro debut at ONE Championships. While his job would allow him to fund his fighting career, KHK took their offer a step further.

“KHK MMA’s offer was unique: They would help me out financially, and all I had to do was represent your country and represent your people. They were not asking for anything else. “

KHK MMA’s founder explained in a recent interview with BloodyElbow that the team’s mission statement is to help support international fighters in order to allow them to accomplish their goals without sacrificing time holding onto part time jobs to help with finances. Once that financial anxiety is eliminated with their help, their fighters can simply focus on training full time.

According to Torres, the team is also about uniting fighters from around the world to benefit from each other.

“They are trying to unite people together from around the world. We have Americans like Frankie Edgar and myself, as well as Alex Soto from Mexico and a handful from Dagestan, Russia. We have James Gallagher from Ireland, as well as guys from India and Bahrain. It is a small step to unite the world. It is a great opportunity.”

The team also offers extensive medical coverage to all the fighters in the gym, which is hugely beneficial to those involved. Khabib Nurmagomedov regularly flew to Bahrain following his most recent knee injury to complete his rehabilitation process there instead of in Dagestan or the United States. He is not the only one who had enjoyed the advantages of the team.

“One of our wrestling coaches, Eldar Eldarov, chipped his tooth right in half. From there, the next day he came back to the gym with a full tooth. Everything was completely taken care of.”

“During the first two days I was there, everyone was rolling around and feeling each other out. Before I knew it, I was sitting next to some sweaty guy and we’re having a really good conversation. I told him that I can’t wait to meet Sheikh Khaled and tell him how happy I am to be on the team. Out of nowhere, that guy leaves and comes back in his black thoub (traditional Middle Eastern attire) and everyone just stopped. I was confused but everyone stood up and gave him full attention.

“That is when I realized that it was the Sheikh.”

Though Torres was worried about his future for a split second, he quickly realized that the Prince was more down-to-earth than he had expected.

“When you see him, if he is ready to get the attention, he commands it. But he rolls around with everyone else and gets beat up. He doesn’t expect you to treat him any differently besides when it is supposed to be an open ceremony in public.”

However, despite his good relationship with the team’s founder, that did not stop Torres from being pranked by him during his first visit.

“They told me not to look at Sheikh Khaled in the eyes. They said he doesn’t like that and they’ll hurt you (laughs).”

Apart from the resources available to him at KHK MMA, Torres completes a portion of his training in his home base of Chicago, where he also enlisted the support of nutrition guru Lou Giordano to help him make weight for his Titan FC debut. Jose is scheduled to meet Travis Taylor, who holds a 7-5 amateur record on Friday, March 4 in Ridgefield, Washington.

Perfectly aware and appreciate of the opportunities that have come his way, Torres plans on validating those decision and proving that he was worth the long-term investment.

“It is an honor to represent His Highness Sheikh Khaled Bin Hamad Al Khalifa. He gives me an opportunity not to work. I get the chance to do what I do every day and be financially stable because of it.”

Bloody Elbow’s striking specialist Connor Ruebusch analyzes the signature techniques of Conor McGregor and Nate Diaz ahead of their UFC 196 clash.

For the fourth time in his UFC career, Conor McGregor will have to fight a replacement. While Rafael Dos Anjos was a fascinating opponent for Conor McGregor, and one that would certainly have troubled him, Nate Diaz is no less compelling. Obviously Diaz doesn’t pose the same kind of threat as Dos Anjos; his brash personality is in large part what makes him such an interesting replacement. Still, Diaz’s style offers a few unique risks. Despite the journeyman numbers on his resume, he is not an opponent to be taken lightly. Not at all.

What’s more, personalities can be every bit as important as techniques. In fact, the two are intrinsically linked. In the case of Conor McGregor and Nate Diaz, we can go so far as to summarize their abilities by studying just two deceptively simple defensive movements.

Now of course, no single technique can tell you everything about a fighter. Martial arts are complex, and the fighters who use them even more so. Some moves, however, are so strongly connected to a fighter’s individual style that they seem to embody him. These techniques find a special place in the fighter’s repertoire. They are the fundamental movement that he goes to time and again, fight after fight, exchange after exchange.

Distance is the chief concern of both Conor McGregor and Nate Diaz. Both men employ a rangey style of fighting that makes full use of their lanky frames. Despite this common interest, however, Diaz and McGregor go about controlling distance in very different ways. Each of them has different strengths and weaknesses, and each of them has a signature technique that perfectly illustrates those unique attributes.

No single technique can tell you everything about a fighter, but you can learn an awful lot about Conor McGregor and Nathan Diaz from these simple moves.

Conor McGregor – The Hop-Step

The first thing to look at when comparing these two combatants is footspeed. There are other differences that may stand out more–punching power for McGregor, say, and jiu-jitsu for Diaz–but the difference in footspeed has a more powerful impact on their striking styles.

If you’ve watched any Conor McGregor in the past, it won’t surprise you when I say that “The Notorious” is much quicker and lighter on his feet than Diaz. Over the past six months he has worked infamously with “movement coach” Ido Portal, and the odd assortment of drills done by the two speaks to McGregor’s confidence in his agility.

This comes through in the way that McGregor moves. He is very rarely static. Instead, he likes to bounce forward and backward on the fringe of his opponent’s range, constantly toeing the invisible line between himself and his foe. There is often a predictable rhythm to this bouncing. McGregor dips in and out of range, moving forward and backward like the pendulum of a clock. He does not move at maximum speed while he does this, instead settling into a comfortable tempo while he eyes the opponent and waits for a reaction.

It’s a trap, of course. McGregor only sets this easy rhythm for the purpose of breaking it, giving the opponent something to time only to change speed and strike at the last possible instant.

See how Jose Aldo reacted to McGregor after the final frame of the sequence above, and how McGregor made him pay.

1. McGregor bounces into range, measuring with his right hand.

2. Jose Aldo springs forward and McGregor quickly begins his retreat. his right foot moves first.

3. And his left foot adjust just as the right hits the ground. Aldo’s right hand is a mere feint, but McGregor parries it.

4. McGregor’s upper body follows his feet as he drives his left hand through the same space as Aldo’s head.

5. An unconscious Aldo lands a cheeky left hook. That feint worked–kind of.

And that’s the hop-step. It’s a deceptively simple movement, but one that places precedence on McGregor’s feather-light feet. This technique has been part of McGregor’s arsenal since the early days, and it fits him like a glove.

The hop-step operates counter to traditional footwork. Normally fighters are taught to move the foot closer to their destination first. If the fighter is stepping right, he moves his right foot before his left. If he’s retreating, he moves  his back foot before his front. This keeps the novice from narrowing his own stance and compromising his balance. The hop-step is such a quick movement, however, that it allows fighters to break this fundamental rule. When McGregor hop-steps, he never has both feet in the air at once. By the time the back foot lifts off, his front foot has settled down in its new position. There is a transfer of weight built into this movement, the back foot driving weight onto the front foot. And that’s why the hop-step lends itself so perfectly to McGregor’s favorite counter, the left cross.

Conor McGregor’s hop-step is not flashy. Compared to his arsenal of spinning and jumping kicks, it tends to go unnoticed. But no technique illustrates the core of McGregor’s style more completely. Light on his feet, he plays with his opponent until the perfect moment, when he darts away and sends an arrow-straight left hand to its mark. Bullseye.

Nate Diaz – The Pull and Pivot

Where Conor McGregor is quick, Nate Diaz is slow and deliberate. Diaz possesses quick hands, but his feet can seem bound in concrete by comparison, even more so when compared to McGregor.

There is a fundamental rule in fighting, however: the hand is quicker than the body, and the body is quicker than the feet. When footwork fails, head movement prevails, and parries and blocks are quicker still. Nate makes up for his heavy feet by relying on his upper body movement.

In fact, he enjoys using this movement to play with his opponent. Diaz often fights out of a forward-oriented, almost crouching stance, lining his head up directly over his lead foot. As he edges into range, his head is an obvious and seemingly wide open target.

Conor McGregor isn’t he only one who knows how to set traps, of course. Because Diaz’s head is so far forward, he has ample space into which to retreat. From front foot to back his head has nearly a yard of wiggle room, allowing him to quickly turn an easy target into an impossible one. Like McGregor, this technique allows Diaz to coax opponents into overextending, after which he can snipe away with counters.

Michael Johnson found himself falling for this again and again.

1. As Michael Johnson comes forward, Diaz goads him by leaning into punching range.

2. Diaz stings Johnson with a jab from this forward position . . .

3. . . . but pulls right back as Johnson counters with a left hand, swinging his back foot to the right as he does so.

4. From this small angle, Diaz has an easy target. While Johnson attempts to recover from his whiff, Diaz blinds him with another jab . . .

5. . . . and follows with the long straight left.

Diaz’s pull lends itself to a wider variety of counters than McGregor’s hop-step. He can drag a right hook along after him as he pulls back, or he can drive forward with the one-two as in the sequence here.

Though nowhere near as dynamic as McGregor’s movements, Diaz can use simple pivots to add an angle to his preferred technique. Take a close look at his feet above. As he throws his first jab, his weight goes forward onto his right foot, which lands pronated. With his left foot light, Diaz can swing it around to the right as he pulls back, lining it back up with the right foot and giving him a subtle angle from which to launch his counter. This one-foot-at-a-time approach lends itself better to Nate’s particular strengths, and adds an extra layer of depth to his tricky head movement.

Two very different fighters are illustrated by these two different techniques. On the one hand we have speed and power, a quick and dynamic movement designed for a quick pair of feet. On the other we have stability, a more efficient movement that lends itself to the mental manipulation of a well-developed boxer.

When McGregor and Diaz meet in the cage, the clash of styles will be an obvious one. As each man looks to outstrike the other, he will look to press his strengths against the other man’s weaknesses. Whoever seizes victory, you can bet one of these techniques will play a key part.

For more on McGregor vs Diaz, as well as an in-depth analysis of Holly Holm vs Miesha Tate, check out this week’s episode of Heavy Hands, the only podcast dedicated to the finer points of face-punching.