UFC 137 is less than one week away, and the anticipation is building for the main event matchup between former UFC champion B.J. Penn and former Strikeforce champion Nick Diaz.
Penn comes into the fight off his draw with Jon Fitch from February. A 23-second knockout victory versus Matt Hughes preceded that fight in his return to to the UFC’s welterweight division.
Diaz is currently riding a 10-fight win streak with victories over Paul Daley, K.J. Noons, Hayato Sakurai and Frank Shamrock. He fights in the UFC for the first time since 2006.
MMA Interviews recently interviewed a number of MMA fighters on who they think will win the fight.
Stephan Bonnar
B.J.’s tough. He gives everyone a good fight, but I’m leaning towards Diaz. [Diaz will] keep him at the end of his punches as the fight progresses. The longer it gets, the more it’s going to fall into Diaz’s hands, I believe.
Manvel Gamburyan
I’m gonna go with B.J. Penn. Diaz is a better boxer, but B.J. has really good hands. He has good head movement. BJJ-wise, I would say they are even. Wrestling-wise, most definitely I go with B.J. Penn. So anyways, it’s going to be a tough fight, but my pick’s going to be B.J. Penn by decision.
Phil Baroni
We’re going to see how good Nick Diaz is. I think [he] is great. I’m a Nick Diaz fan. I liked Nick Diaz before it was cool to like Nick Diaz. It could be a passing of the guard fight, or it could be B.J.’s just that good and Strikeforce guys aren’t at that level. It’s a pick ’em fight.
UFC 137 was originally supposed to be headlined by a title fight between UFC welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre and Diaz before he was pulled out due to missing two pre-fight press conferences. UFC contender Carlos Condit replaced Diaz, but St-Pierre recently injured his knee and pulled out of the fight altogether.
The pay-per-view card will also feature a heavyweight matchup between Cheick Kongo and Matt Mitrione.
Other main card bouts include Mirko “Cro Cop” Flipovic vs. Roy Nelson, Scott Jorgensen vs. Jeff Curran and Hatsu Hioki vs. George Roop.
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