Junior Dos Santos retained his heavyweight title against Frank Mir at UFC 146 on Saturday, proving that he is the top fighter in the heavyweight division.
Dos Santos avoided playing to Mir’s advantage and stayed on his feet for the entire match, capitalizing on his superior boxing skills to score a TKO at the 3:04 mark in the second round. Dos Santos showed that he is not only the most physically gifted heavyweight, but that he is one of the most intelligent strategists of the division by being able to avoid going to the canvas with Mir.
Even when it appeared that JDS would be wise to jump on Mir, who had fallen on his back after a takedown attempt, the Brazilian sensation let his opponent rise to his feet instead of going for the kill shot early. Mir tried time and time again to close the distance between the two, but Dos Santos would have none of it. He landed all different types of punches on his punchless opponent, working both the head and body with lightning-fast strikes.
Mir is no slouch either. He came into this fight on a three-match winning streak, knocking out Mirko Filipovic with a knee, beating Roy Nelson via unanimous decision and making Antonio Nogueira double-jointed with a kimura.
Despite Mir’s past accomplishments, Dos Santos made him look like an amateur in UFC 146. Mir hardly landed anything other than a few leg kicks, and Dos Santos hardly missed anything. Body shots, head shots, face shots, hooks, jabs, uppercuts, counter punches, you name it, Dos Santos landed it. He was almost able to finish it off before the conclusion of the first round, unloading a flurry of quick punches on Mir in the closing seconds before Mir went for the leg.
In between rounds, the doctor asked Mir where he was. Mir named the wrong casino. The sheer power that is behind Dos Santos’ strikes is something to behold. At 6’4″, 240 pounds, a fighter shouldn’t be able to land punches like he does with such precision and timing.
You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone in the world who can beat Dos Santos right now, as he put on one of the best performances of his career at UFC 146 and struck down yet another star in the process.
He’s beaten Gabriel Gonzaga, Roy Nelson, Shane Carwin, Cain Velasquez and now Frank Mir in his last five fights.
The most impressive takeaway from the fight was Dos Santos’ ability to exhibit self-control through the entire match. He could have easily gotten too eager to finish Mir and jumped on him the first two times he went to the canvas, but he knew that he had much less of a chance at victory on the mat.
His planning for this match was so impeccable that he motioned for Mir to get back up the two times he went down. It wasn’t until the third time Mir went down, when Dos Santos knew Mir was seeing cobwebs, that he punched on his challenger and forced referee Herb Dean to stop the fight.
This was an impressive showing by Dos Santos and we are obviously witness to the best heavyweight fighter in the UFC building on his legendary career, dominating great fighter after great fighter in the process.
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