What’s the best way to determine how stacked a UFC card is? Looking at the preliminary fighters and the responses they get during the official Friday afternoon weigh-ins.
There are plenty of times when the fans in attendance don’t truly wake up until the main or co-main event fighters make their way to the stage. That’s an indication of a crowd who is truly only there to see the biggest fight on the show, and they couldn’t care less about the rest of the guys on the poster.
This was absolutely not the case with today’s UFC 146 weigh-ins. The crowd stayed mostly silent for the first three Facebook-televised preliminary fights, but once Dan Hardy’s visage hit the big screen and he made his way to the stage, the fans came alive. Hardy was one of the most popular fighters today, which is something amazing when you consider that he’s likely fighting for his UFC career on Saturday night.
That trend continued with Jason “Mayhem” Miller, who strutted into the arena in typical Mayhem fashion: sporting pink sunglasses, an outlandish pink feather boa and a pink boombox/man-purse. Miller was in the best shape I’ve ever seen him in; he’s a lean, ripped 185 pounds, which leads me to believe he’s not just issuing fighter-speak when he says he’s trained harder for this fight than any other in his career. He also said he will retire if he loses to C.B. Dolloway.
All of the 10 heavyweights on the main card got decent reactions, but the most intense moment came between two unlikely candidates: Cain Velasquez and Antonio “Bigfoot” Silva.
First off, let me tell you that Antonio Silva is a much larger man that Velasquez. Silva weighed 264 pounds, while Velasquez cut a great figure at 240. But from the way these two stood toe to toe, you’d think Silva outweighed the former heavyweight champion by 50 pounds. And come tomorrow night, he likely will; under the expert care of Mike Dolce, Silva will likely put on 20 pounds overnight, which means he’ll be roughly 285 by the time he steps in the cage.
Silva and Velasquez stared at each other before backing away slowly and begrudgingly shaking hands. It was a unique reaction from the sweet-natured Velasquez, and it added a moment of intensity to a fight I’m really looking forward to.
Frank Mir and Junior dos Santos were on point for their title fight. Mir, a Vegas local, was cheered by the crowd in attendance, but he’ll likely find himself booed come tomorrow night. That’s typically the way it works, anyway. Vegas citizens attend the weigh-ins heavily, but not all attend the fights. I expect to see Dos Santos as the clear crowd favorite come fight time.
So all of the talking is now over, and we can look forward to one of the more interesting experiments in the history of the UFC. Plenty of folks think an all-heavyweight card is a recipe for a boring-fight disaster, but I don’t think so. I think it’s going to be a memorable event, and for all of the right reasons instead of the wrong ones.
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