(Tanksgiving, you are a good. Photo via r/MMA)
While Robbie Lawler‘s career resurgence has been the talk of the town lately, there’s been a certain Peking man quietly racking up wins in the heavyweight division in equally impressive, not to mention violent, fashion. His name is Gabriel Gonzaga, and after being released from the UFC/semi-retiring (the latter of which is all the rage these days) back in 2010, “Napao” has strung together five wins (all finishes) alongside just one loss, with four of those wins coming in the UFC.
On the heels of a first round dismantling of Shawn Jordan at UFC 166, it seems that the 2006 Mundials champion will be receiving a significant step up in competition for his next bout when he faces Stipe Miocic at UFC on FOX 10 in January. Miocic recently rebounded from his first career loss — a second round TKO at the hands of Stefan Struve — by treating Roy Nelson‘s face like Jenna Jameson treats secretly installed home security cameras at UFC 161 back in June. Gonzaga has struggled when facing the upper-echelon of the heavyweight division his entire career, so this fight may very well be make-or-break if he ever hopes to fight for a title again.
UFC on FOX 10 goes down from the at United Center in Chicago, Ill., on Jan. 25.
In other fight booking news…
Less than a fortnight prior to Gonzaga and Miocic’s sure-to-be-slugfest, the seemingly unfirable Thiago Silva will square off with Ovince St. Preux at Fight Night 35, which transpires on January 15, 2014 from the Gwinnett Center in Duluth, Georgia.
Despite missing weight for his fight with Matt Hamill at Fight Night 29, putting on a piss-poor performance, and only defeating Hamill by virtue of the TUF 3 finalist being in even worse shape than he was before he retired, Silva is still tapdancing on eggshells in regards to his UFC career. That he’s receiving a top-15 opponent in St. Preux — who scored a vicious KO over Cody Donovan at Fight Night: Shogun vs. Sonnen in August (improving his overall UFC record to 2-0) — leads us to believe that this the UFC’s way of telling Silva to finally pull his head out of his ass.
The numbers suggest that neither of these fights will go the distance and history suggests that Silva will definitely fail his post-fight drug test, so does anyone care to make a prediction for these fights, Nation?