The main event of UFC Ultimate Fight Night 25 is a fight between former Strikeforce middleweight champion Jake Shields and rising star Jake Ellenberger.
Shields is coming off the biggest loss of his career, a unanimous decision defeat at the hands of UFC welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre. While Ellenberger is enjoying a four-fight win streak.
The key to determining who will win this fight lays in one question: Is Jake Shields Overrated?
At one point Jake Shields was overrated, but he isn’t now. When Shields was beating guys like Paul Daley and Robbie Lawler and people were saying that he was one of the best in the world at welterweight, they were jumping the gun. Shields was definitely overrated then.
When Shields beat Dan Henderson, things started to change. Shields managed to keep an Olympic caliber wrestler on his back for the majority of the fight in his most prestigious win to date.
Since then, Shields has managed to increase his striking abilities, which were the poorest part of his game. While he lost to St-Pierre, he did much better in the stand-up game than anyone thought.
Ellenberger, on the other hand, hasn’t fought nearly the same competition as Shields and isn’t as accomplished. His 4-1 run in the UFC is impressive but those wins were over mid-level competition at best. The same can be said for his 24-5 MMA record as a whole.
Ellenberger’s biggest wins are arguably Pat Healy and Mike Pyle while he has lost every step up in competition, being defeated by Jay Heiron, Carlos Condit and Rick Story.
How will this fight go then?
Shields will do what he does best, bring the fight to the ground and smother the overmatched Ellenberger en route to a submission or a unanimous decision victory.
Bleacher Report’s Matthew Saccaro