At UFC 144 Tim Boetsch was catching a beating. He was badly outclassed by a tough customer in Yushin Okami, a guy who was coming off a loss to Anderson Silva in his last fight.
Then he went all Jack Johnson, throwing huge uppercuts from in tight until Okami buckled and he got the chance to celebrate the biggest win of his fighting life.
Crazy stuff for sure, but it probably left the MMA world with more questions than answers. The most notable being: Is Boetsch ready for the elite of the middleweight division?
Realistically, if his performance against Okami is any indication, it’s hard to say he is. He was getting handily drubbed before going postal and snatching victory from the jaws of defeat. Aside from the last minute or so of the fight, he did almost nothing to convey to fans and pundits he was ready to compete with a higher caliber of opposition.
Then again, results trump all else, and the result of that fight is listed as a win for the brutish Boetsch. They don’t ask how, they ask how many.
As a result of that willingness to look past the road traveled and only at the destination, Boetsch will now square off with Michael Bisping after he called out the Brit for a UFC 148 showdown. Bisping is seen as a guy on the brink of a title shot, a guy who showed some serious evolution in his loss to Chael Sonnen in January.
People don’t love him, but he’s at least a lateral step from Okami—possibly a step up when Okami’s recent slide and his own improved stock in a loss are considered.
What Boetsch likely sees in Bisping is a smaller, slicker middleweight that he can bully if he gets his hands on and who isn’t likely to threaten him with much aside from volume kickboxing and good cardio. That’s great in theory, but Boetsch doesn’t have the footwork to compete with Bisping, or the shot to bring him to the ground from outside of range.
He works from the clinch, and catching Bisping to clinch him isn’t that easy to do. He’s masterful at getting in and out, racking up points without getting into too much trouble and staying out of areas where he isn’t comfortable.
And that’s just his next fight.
Win or lose against Bisping—and make no mistake, as he proved against Okami, no fight is a foregone conclusion anymore in MMA—Boetsch is going to get some tougher challenges from here on out. He’s exciting and he brings raw power to the table in a way that few others are not able to match. He might not be the most technical guy out there, but anyone who wouldn’t pay to watch him finish a guy violently to maul him with clinch work and bullish throws is either an idiot or a person who hates MMA.
That said, he’s out of his depth when the fights get serious. The win against Okami was a fortunate twist of fate and Bisping is a bad matchup if he can’t mug the guy, and those are both guys on the fringe of the top five.
Fights with Mark Munoz or Chael Sonnen would be problematic to say the least, he’d have fits with a Vitor Belfort blitzkrieg, and putting him in against Anderson Silva would be as close to legalized homicide as an athletic commission would ever rubber-stamp.
So enjoy Tim Boetsch for what he is: a tough, gutsy warrior who does a few things pretty well and accents them with otherworldly strength.
Not, however, a guy who’s ready for the middleweight elite.
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