Former WEC Bantamweight king, Miguel Angel Torres showed us a different style of fighting than what we are used to seeing from his days ruling the division in WEC.
Speaking of his title days, it’s sort of funny that the UFC chose the “six former champions, six quests to regain gold” moniker but chose to exclude Miguel Torres.
Let’s see, Dan Henderson won two belts in Pride and another in Strikeforce, Mauricio “Shogun” Rua held a belt in the UFC, Wanderlei Silva won a belt in Pride (along with many other accomplishments), Urijah Faber won a belt in WEC, Brian Bowles briefly held a belt in WEC (Ironically with a knockout win over Miguel Torres), and Cung Le held a belt in Strikeforce.
If my math is correct, that totals six former champions. So why did they choose to exclude Torres?
Perhaps it’s because he wasn’t facing another former champion as the others were, I can understand that. Or maybe it was because he wasn’t on the main card, I can understand that also. But to not even mention it when you mention everybody else’s titles no matter how brief they were?
That wasn’t the coolest thing they’ve done.
However, in spite of the lack of recognition, Miguel Torres took care of business against Nick Pace in a tactical display of striking and octagon control. Long gone are the brawling days of Miguel Torres from East Chicago. Welcome the new George St. Pierre’-esque days of cerebral game plans to pick apart his opponent.
Torres actually trained with Firas Zihabi in preparation for this fight, so he got some of the same viewpoints that GSP gets for his fights.
The new style isn’t as exciting as the previous style, but it doesn’t put Miguel in the same positions he often found himself when brawling. Torres will look to ride this new style into a potential title shot in the near future.
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