Everybody loves Chris Leben. He’s been around forever, puts on good fights, has a personality and has been fought against some legitimate competition in his day.
But, he isn’t a contender.
He’ll go on the warpath against mid-level talent or aging veterans—he’s a guy with an iron chin and stone hands who actually looks to have tightened up his game a little as he’s entered his thirties. When it comes time to lock down the Top 10 in the middleweight division though, he’s not in the picture.
On the other hand, Mark Munoz is.
Like it or not, wrestling wins in MMA and Munoz has wrestling in spades. The two-time All-American has been showing it since college, and has made the transition into the MMA quite smoothly as a result. He’s also found a home at 185, where he holds wins over Demian Maia, CB Dollaway and Kendall Grove.
He lost to Yushin Okami via split decision and Okami went on to survive the wrath of Anderson Silva for seven minutes or so. That may seem a comically low measuring stick, but it’s Anderson Silva. Seven minutes is a long time.
Those wins—and that loss—have entrenched Munoz in the Top 10 middleweights out there. So, going into UFC 138, he’s definitely a guy with a lot to lose.
With a standup game that has evolved significantly, and a mentality that has him utterly fearless of using it, Munoz is likely to spend significant time on his feet with Leben. Sure, he could take the fight down at his leisure, but that’s not his approach. There will be stretches where he’ll fight fire with fire.
That’s exactly what Leben wants. He’s proven nearly impossible to knock out in his career, actually going full zombie on guys when the lights start to flicker. Instead of crashing to the canvas, he’s far more apt to trudge forward and throw haymakers in response to getting tagged, and Munoz should be very mindful of that when the two are on their feet.
If he’s not, he’s going to get knocked out.
If Munoz loses? Well, that’s a big loss for him. Leben is below him in the division, which stings enough on its own, but Munoz is at most two wins away from a shot at gold.
Middleweight is incredibly thin, and it doesn’t take much to climb the ladder. He’s 6-1 as a middleweight—every win coming in the UFC—and his loss was narrow to the last guy to fight for the title. If you don’t think he’s close, you can’t think there are many who are closer.
And so it goes, for Mark Munoz in England this weekend. A win is a win over a guy he probably should beat. It looks good on the resume and it puts him in a fight with Brian Stann or a rematch with Okami, with an eye on Silva.
But a loss? A loss will cause Leben to replace him in the Top 10 and it badly hurts what he’s worked to build, and it knocks him down a few pegs with no rightful claim to a title shot for several fights.
Nobody’s disrespecting Chris Leben, but it’s Munoz who has little to gain and everything to lose going into Saturday night’s main event.
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