The story lines were deep and abundant leading up to last weekend’s (January 17, 2016) highly anticipated bantamweight title fight between TJ Dillashaw and Dominick Cruz in the main event of UFC Fight Night 81. On one side, we had the long awaited return of Cruz, a man who had only competed once over the
The story lines were deep and abundant leading up to last weekend’s (January 17, 2016) highly anticipated bantamweight title fight between TJ Dillashaw and Dominick Cruz in the main event of UFC Fight Night 81.
On one side, we had the long awaited return of Cruz, a man who had only competed once over the last four years due to a plethora of injuries, and a man who had never technically lost his title.
On the other side, we had a defending champion in Dillashaw, who had recently left his longtime home at Team Alpha Male to head to Colorado, joining Team Elevation and Duane Ludwig.
In the end, it was Cruz who came out on top, reclaiming his title in a narrow split decision victory. With the dust now settled on the bout, questions have continued to arise on how much the change in gyms has impacted “Killashaw”.
“The Dominator” feels as if the former champion left a tremendous amount of loyalty behind in Sacramento at Team Alpha Male:
“I think that he did what he needed to do for himself in order to grow, but at the same time I think that he left a lot of loyalties behind. I mean it’s no question that Faber and that whole camp put a lot of money into him and to help and to try to create him into a champion, and when he became and achieved that championship with that camp, he took the title to another camp and gave them all the credit. Come on, you’ve got to have some sort of loyalty. You’ve got to have some sort of care of what they did for you to build you into that because they did build him into that.” Cruz said on a recent edition of Chael Sonnen’s Podcast.
Continuing on, Cruz reiterated the idea of loyalty, stating that Dillashaw isn’t training where he came from:
“One hundred percent you’ve got to remember where you came from, and one hundred percent, TJ did not come from where he is at right now.”
So what exactly is the difference between the two? According to Cruz, it’s that he stayed with what he knows best unlike the now former champion:
“I stayed with my roots. I stayed with what I knew, and the people that I knew were going to tell me the truth. That’s people that were not yes men, people who were not trying to benefit off of me coming to their gym. People who were not going to get a percentage of my win bonus. People who started when I grew up in the trailer and knew me from Arizona. People who had me when I would show up to fights with no management and no corner men, and believed that I could win then with no real skill set. Those are the people that I’ve stuck with my whole career. So even when you become great, they’re going to tell you what it is and who you are, and without those people around me, I’d probably be lost. But, they always keep me grounded, they always keep me driven, and I’m not surrounded by yes men feeding me a bunch of crap.”
UFC bantamweight champion T.J. Dillashaw made a big change going into tonight’s UFC Fight Night 81 main event title bout against Dominick Cruz from TD Garden in Boston, Massachusetts. He left California and Team Alpha Male, which is owned by fellow UFC fighter Urijah Faber, for a more lucrative contract to train at Team Elevation
UFC bantamweight champion T.J. Dillashaw made a big change going into tonight’s UFC Fight Night 81 main event title bout against Dominick Cruz from TD Garden in Boston, Massachusetts.
He left California and Team Alpha Male, which is owned by fellow UFC fighter Urijah Faber, for a more lucrative contract to train at Team Elevation in Colorado.
Team Alpha Male’s striking coach Duane Ludwig also left the team to move to Colorado to coach Dillashaw. These two moves made big waves not only in the gym but in the headlines as well. Why? Well, because Dillashaw and Faber are big talkers, who put their dirty laundry in the public eye.
Going into UFC Fight Night 81, Dillashaw discussed the move and said that training with Ludwig is a match made in heaven.
“I knew that first practice. It’s kind of crazy to say that after the first practice, but he came in and started running practice and the way he kind of demanded respect,” Dillashaw told FOX Sports about his first session with Ludwig. “Also, the way he ran practice is the way that I would run practice, the way that I actually drilling on my own in the past.
“When Duane showed up and started running practices that way, I knew me and him were going to be a match made in heaven.”
Dillashaw explained that Ludwig is a hard worker and that Ludwig’s goals are now his.
“I can’t do what Duane does because it would be too much for me,” Dillashaw said. “What Duane does is, my goals are now Duane’s goals. When you have a coach that works just as hard as you if not harder, that’s hard to find.”
Thus, this makes Dillashaw have confidence that a champion needs to have. Especially going into the main event of UFC Fight Night 81.
“It gives me so much more confidence to have that behind you. I feel very prepared. I feel confident and prepared and ready to show what I’ve been doing,” Dillashaw said. “Not only working with Duane but the other three or four coaches who have had eyes on me.”
Dillashaw will be defending his title tonight at UFC Fight Night 81 against former bantamweight champion Dominick Cruz.
(I only counted 280 “likes” and 372 “dudes.” No way that was actually Faber on the phone. via MMAFighting)
So as we all know, the fallout between Duane Ludwig and Team Alpha Male — specifically, TAM leader Urijah Faber — has been a bit heated, with both sides lobbing some pretty strong accusations at one another. First, Ludwig claimed that TJ Dillashaw was the only fighter on the team who trained “like a champion.” Faber then hit back, calling Ludwig “difficult to deal with” and his eventual departure from the team “a breath of fresh air.”
“I say some stupid stuff sometimes,” Ludwig said. “And they’re training at their full potential. T.J. just really wants it. If you look at it in comparison, there’s a difference. You can just see it, you can feel it. And it’s just different with T.J.”
When asked to respond to Ludwig’s quote unquote apology on yesterday’s MMA Hour, Faber had had enough, it seemed, and unleashed a barrage of harsh claims Ludwig’s way in a lengthy, eye-opening interview.
(I only counted 280 “likes” and 372 “dudes.” No way that was actually Faber on the phone. via MMAFighting)
So as we all know, the fallout between Duane Ludwig and Team Alpha Male — specifically, TAM leader Urijah Faber — has been a bit heated, with both sides lobbing some pretty strong accusations at one another. First, Ludwig claimed that TJ Dillashaw was the only fighter on the team who trained “like a champion.” Faber then hit back, calling Ludwig “difficult to deal with” and his eventual departure from the team “a breath of fresh air.”
“I say some stupid stuff sometimes,” Ludwig said. “And they’re training at their full potential. T.J. just really wants it. If you look at it in comparison, there’s a difference. You can just see it, you can feel it. And it’s just different with T.J.”
When asked to respond to Ludwig’s quote unquote apology on yesterday’s MMA Hour, Faber had had enough, it seemed, and unleashed a barrage of harsh claims Ludwig’s way in a lengthy, eye-opening interview.
Accusation #1: Ludwig is a sexist who refuses to work with women
“I had a girl from Alaska who said that Duane keeps on saying these comments. And first off, Duane refused to work with any females. He said, ‘I just want to tell you, I’m not supportive of women’s MMA. I won’t be working with anybody, I won’t be working with Paige (VanZant), I’m not going to be working with Nicky, I’m not going to work with Veronica. I don’t believe in it.’ Okay. That was an issue.”
Accusation #2: Ludwig has a penchant for making racist jokes
“The second thing was, he was saying racial things. And that’s what I’m saying when I say, things aren’t jokes just because you laughed at them, especially if they’re hurtful. So I had two of the African-American guys on our team who approached me and said, ‘this is getting real uncomfortable. It’s funny one time, I guess, when he says stuff like, all the black guys at the end of the line. But he’s saying it every single day.’ Then one guy says, ‘every single time I’m in the gym and I’m talking to a girl, Duane yells across the gym, hey, so-and-so, all black guys 25 feet away from the females.’ He says, ‘I get it, he thinks it’s funny, whatever. But he keeps doing it and it’s really getting on my nerves.’”
Accusation #3: Ludwig’s financial instability has made him a monster
“He’s getting his salary, then he starts charging everybody for privates. And there’s a point where T.J. (Dillashaw) is like, ‘man, I don’t know what to do. Duane is bleeding me. I’m doing his videos for him after class, I’m doing this, and he’s still charging me for privates. I need to have a talk with him.’ T.J. has a talk with him. He’s charging everyone, and I feel bad for [Ludwig]. He’s selling peanut butter at the front desk, he’s doing all these things to make extra cash, he’s leaving every single weekend to go do a seminar, even if it’s for a couple hundred bucks. I’m like dude, I appreciate the hustle, but let’s just settle down. Let’s let the apple grow into a ripe, red apple before you start trying to pull it off the tree when it’s green and sour. Give it some time.
“So then it comes to my first fight that he corners me. I have my partner Scott who’s in Texas who owns Torque, and so Duane wants to wear his own shirt in my corner with a conflicting brand, Fear the Fighter, instead of Torque. … I said, ‘Duane, dude, my partner is going to be pissed off. Like, you didn’t okay this with him if you wear another brand. No one talked to him, he’s going to be pissed. Can you wear like a Duane Bang shirt or one of the other sponsors or something like that?’ This is 30 minutes before I’m about to go fight my fight. I said, ‘here dude, here’s this phone number. If you can call and get the okay from him’ — granted, this is 30 minutes before I’m about to go out and fight, and this is the first time having him in the corner — ‘if you can talk to my partner and get him to okay wearing the shirt, then you’re good.’
“Apparently, I didn’t find this out until afterward, he tries to shake down my partner for $300. He’s trying to get my guy to pay him $300 to wear my shirt, this and that. I didn’t know until way later when my partner told me, and it just baffled me.
In addition to all this, Faber also called Ludwig a “bully” and “tyrant” who is threatening trying to sue Team Alpha Male for not fulfilling a contract which he himself refused to sign.
While I’m not quite prepared to throw Ludwig under the bus based on hearsay, even though Faber has always struck me as stand-up, honest guy, an r/MMA thread has compiled a few things of note that certainly don’t help Ludwig’s case here.
Example #1: During the interview, Faber repeatedly brought up the notion that Ludwig is a very emotionally unstable guy, especially so when he’s interrupted. Knowing that, check out how Ludwig reacts when Joe Rogan dares to interrupt him during his appearance appearance on Rogan’s podcast back in August of 2013. The first instance happens at 47:08 in (queued up below) and the second just over a minute later (at 48:41).
Brian Redban’s reaction to this act of insolence is just priceless.
Example #2: Faber also recounted a story about Ludwig’s first time cornering a TAM member — Danny Castillo at UFC on FUEL 7 — which is cringe worthy to say the least. Apparently Ludwig, broke and sponsorless (minus a peanut butter company who was allegedly paying him in their product), showed up to the event offering to wear the signature shirt of any fighter competing on the card for $250, regardless of the fact that he was cornering Castillo. According to Faber, Ludwig hawked his services as close to half an hour before Castillo’s fight with Paul Sass.
Here’s an interview with Ludwig from that night. You’ll notice he is wearing a Tom “Kong” Watson shirt. Tom Watson competed at FUEL TV 7 just two fights before Danny Castillo.
On the sexism accusations: “I wouldn’t say I’m against women’s MMA. I do feel uneasy seeing a woman get punched in the face. That, I don’t like. Women’s grappling and wrestling, that’s cool. But seeing a woman punched in the face, I don’t really necessarily like that. There’s awesome women’s fights, but it still makes me feel a bit weird. But yeah, I don’t like to train women.”
On the racism accusations: “I don’t know what the hell he’s talking about. There’s jokes floating around the gym all the time. For him to point me out, like what the hell dude?”
On the financial issues with TAM: ”We definitely had a couple lapses. Every time we talked I thought one thing was said and then apparently something else was said. So there’s multiple times when we had what I thought were agreements and the result was always me getting short-handed. I don’t get it. That’s why we always had problems, because we always had a conversation, we’d agree on certain things and when it came time for certain things to happen, they wouldn’t.”
Again, there’s a lot of he said/she said going on here, but if it was me who had just been accused of being an emotionally unstable racist/sexist with financial issues, I might have brought a stronger counter-argument to the table than, “What the hell dude?” Again, this is just me. But what say you, Nation? Do you find any truth in Faber’s accusations, or is it just another case of egos clashing?
While Duane “Bang” Ludwig experienced something of a career revival during his stint as Team Alpha Male’s striking coach, he is a name that never really left the tongues of MMA fans with a true appreciation for the striking elements of the sport. Consistently and rightfully praised by Joe Rogan as being one of the most elite strikers to ever enter the UFC, Ludwig holds both the record for the fastest knockout in UFC history and the honor of being the only K-1 World MAX champion to compete under the Zuffa banner.
Although Ludwig has since departed from Alpha Male to start his own gym in Colorado, his impact could be seen in not only TJ Dillashaw‘s improbable and plain brilliant upset of Renan Barao at UFC 173, but in Chad Mendes‘ gritty performance against Jose Aldo last weekend. Ludwig is a tactician, a Bas Rutten disciple, and an absolute dynamo when it comes to the art of exploiting an opponent’s weaknesses — look no further than his wins over Jens Pulver, Genki Sudo, and more recently, Amir Sadollah for proof of how incredible Ludwig could look when he was in the zone.
So to honor Ludwig’s illustrious career (and because there’s not much else going on out there today), I present you with this stupid awesome Duane “Bang” Ludwig highlight reel, which I randomly stumbled upon last night. It’s cool, you can thank me later.
While Duane “Bang” Ludwig experienced something of a career revival during his stint as Team Alpha Male’s striking coach, he is a name that never really left the tongues of MMA fans with a true appreciation for the striking elements of the sport. Consistently and rightfully praised by Joe Rogan as being one of the most elite strikers to ever enter the UFC, Ludwig holds both the record for the fastest knockout in UFC history and the honor of being the only K-1 World MAX champion to compete under the Zuffa banner.
Although Ludwig has since departed from Alpha Male to start his own gym in Colorado, his impact could be seen in not only TJ Dillashaw‘s improbable and plain brilliant upset of Renan Barao at UFC 173, but in Chad Mendes‘ gritty performance against Jose Aldo last weekend. Ludwig is a tactician, a Bas Rutten disciple, and an absolute dynamo when it comes to the art of exploiting an opponent’s weaknesses — look no further than his wins over Jens Pulver, Genki Sudo, and more recently, Amir Sadollah for proof of how incredible Ludwig could look when he was in the zone.
So to honor Ludwig’s illustrious career (and because there’s not much else going on out there today), I present you with this stupid awesome Duane “Bang” Ludwig highlight reel, which I randomly stumbled upon last night. It’s cool, you can thank me later.
The basic story is this: Ludwig wants to leave Team Alpha Male in order to open his own gym in Colorado. Yesterday morning, he told Faber about his plans privately, assuring Faber that he’d stay on to complete upcoming training camps for team members. Instead of keeping things discreet, Faber posted a public ad on TeamAlphaMale.com later that day, stating that the team needed a new coach. The news was then reported on last night’s edition of UFC Tonight, and the cat was fully out of the bag.
“It wasn’t f*cking supposed to be like this, man,” Ludwig told MMAjunkie yesterday. “I’m not going to bounce on anybody’s fight camp. Then he f*cking went and told the team and did a press release before I knew. I’m like, ‘What the hell?’…I was just giving Urijah the heads up; I didn’t really have much planned. I think he kind of jumped (the gun).”
Faber confirmed that Ludwig will remain with the team until May 24th — the same day as UFC 173, which will feature Team Alpha Male fighters TJ Dillashaw and Chris Holdsworth. He also name-checked Mark Hominick, Dan Hardy, Muay Thai trainer Mark Beecher, and grappling coach Robert Follis as guys he’d like to see as Ludwig’s replacement. (Hominick already seems interested.) After the jump: Ludwig explains the strictly-business reasoning behind starting his own gym…
The basic story is this: Ludwig wants to leave Team Alpha Male in order to open his own gym in Colorado. Yesterday morning, he told Faber about his plans privately, assuring Faber that he’d stay on to complete upcoming training camps for team members. Instead of keeping things discreet, Faber posted a public ad on TeamAlphaMale.com later that day, stating that the team needed a new coach. The news was then reported on last night’s edition of UFC Tonight, and the cat was fully out of the bag.
“It wasn’t f*cking supposed to be like this, man,” Ludwig told MMAjunkie yesterday. “I’m not going to bounce on anybody’s fight camp. Then he f*cking went and told the team and did a press release before I knew. I’m like, ‘What the hell?’…I was just giving Urijah the heads up; I didn’t really have much planned. I think he kind of jumped (the gun).”
Faber confirmed that Ludwig will remain with the team until May 24th — the same day as UFC 173, which will feature Team Alpha Male fighters TJ Dillashaw and Chris Holdsworth. He also name-checked Mark Hominick, Dan Hardy, Muay Thai trainer Mark Beecher, and grappling coach Robert Follis as guys he’d like to see as Ludwig’s replacement. (Hominick already seems interested.) After the jump: Ludwig explains the strictly-business reasoning behind starting his own gym…
“I’ve been working for other businesses since I was 15, and it’s just time I do my own thing, man,” Ludwig said. “I gave Sacramento a year-and-a-half of my life and coaching. If I got hurt on this job, I would have no more income. There’s no residual income here, and I’m just at the point in my life where I’ve got to set up a residual business for myself.
“I’m still working paycheck to paycheck. I’ve got to set up a business; that’s just the smartest move. Plus, Colorado’s home. I’ve got to get my family back and get my life situated again. I’ve got to be smart about my finances, and right now, this isn’t a smart thing to do.”
“I’m still going to have an open window for them to come train with me and to bring me out for training camps and seminars and stuff,” he said of his relationship with Alpha Male. “They’re still going to be an affiliate of mine with the ‘Bang Muay Thai System.’ It’s just time to open my own business.”
An unlikely new coaching star, Duane “Bang” Ludwig has surged to the forefront of the competitive MMA coaching landscape after a fortuitous change of scenery. Ludwig is the obvious candidate for 2013’s “MMA Coach of the Year,” and few would question this, despite little fan awareness of his coaching prowess just one year ago.
Ludwig certainly had a tough 2012 that included three consecutive UFC losses, each one by first-round stoppage, the last of which added a fight-ending and career-threatening knee injury to the insult. But almost immediately after beginning the lengthy rehabilitation process, Ludwig got an unexpected phone call from Urijah Faber, and the creator of the Bang Muay Thai system suddenly migrated from the suburbs of Denver, Colorado to Sacramento, California.
Since Ludwig’s arrival at Team Alpha Male in December of 2012, his team’s fighters have been posting wins and highlight reel finishes at an unlikely pace. It’s even more unlikely, literally, when you consider the low share of TKO finishes that normally occur in the smaller weight classes where most Alpha Male fighters compete. The MMA media have been quick to point to the undeniable results of Team Alpha Male’s performance in the UFC as evidence that Ludwig was the missing ingredient to a team with championship potential. To be fair, the team already included former champions and contenders under Zuffa banners, but none that currently held a UFC belt. Now heading into this weekend’s UFC on FOX 9 card, Team Alpha Male has a chance to rack up not just four more wins, but capture its first UFC title of the Bang Era, and hold leading contender status in several divisions.
With all this hype around a team that is making a lot of noise, it’s a legitimate question to ask: Are they really better, or is this just a nice run of luck? The sudden emergence of Duane Ludwig as the MMA Coach of the Year is an extraordinary claim, and if Carl Sagan were still around (and an MMA fan), he would suggest that we demand extraordinary evidence before reaching such a bold conclusion. So I’m going to run the numbers in excruciating detail just to make sure.
(Duane Ludwig [right] with one of his star pupils. / Photo via Sherdog)
An unlikely new coaching star, Duane “Bang” Ludwig has surged to the forefront of the competitive MMA coaching landscape after a fortuitous change of scenery. Ludwig is the obvious candidate for 2013′s “MMA Coach of the Year,” and few would question this, despite little fan awareness of his coaching prowess just one year ago.
Ludwig certainly had a tough 2012 that included three consecutive UFC losses, each one by first-round stoppage, the last of which added a fight-ending and career-threatening knee injury to the insult. But almost immediately after beginning the lengthy rehabilitation process, Ludwig got an unexpected phone call from Urijah Faber, and the creator of the Bang Muay Thai system suddenly migrated from the suburbs of Denver, Colorado to Sacramento, California.
Since Ludwig’s arrival at Team Alpha Male in December of 2012, his team’s fighters have been posting wins and highlight reel finishes at an unlikely pace. It’s even more unlikely, literally, when you consider the low share of TKO finishes that normally occur in the smaller weight classes where most Alpha Male fighters compete. The MMA media have been quick to point to the undeniable results of Team Alpha Male’s performance in the UFC as evidence that Ludwig was the missing ingredient to a team with championship potential. To be fair, the team already included former champions and contenders under Zuffa banners, but none that currently held a UFC belt. Now heading into this weekend’s UFC on FOX 9 card, Team Alpha Male has a chance to rack up not just four more wins, but capture its first UFC title of the Bang Era, and hold leading contender status in several divisions.
With all this hype around a team that is making a lot of noise, it’s a legitimate question to ask: Are they really better, or is this just a nice run of luck? The sudden emergence of Duane Ludwig as the MMA Coach of the Year is an extraordinary claim, and if Carl Sagan were still around (and an MMA fan), he would suggest that we demand extraordinary evidence before reaching such a bold conclusion. So I’m going to run the numbers in excruciating detail just to make sure.
The data analyzed here includes all statistics from UFC fights for Urijah Faber, Joseph Benavidez, Chad Mendes, Danny Castillo, and TJ Dillashaw. Because WEC fights were in a smaller cage, stats from those fights will be skewed to contain more action and finishes. So this is an apples-to-apples comparison of the same five fighters in UFC fights only, before and after the arrival of their new coach. I’m not just interested in total wins and finishes, I want to know specifically how their performance in the Octagon has changed. I’ve got 21 fights for this group of fighters in the UFC leading up to December 2012, and then 14 more that have taken place since. Those are our before and after samples.
Now let’s see what they tell us.
What You’ve Already Heard:
Team Alpha Male has been winning. A lot. And not just winning, but finishing opponents. The implicit suggestion is that they’re doing better than before, but how much better? Here’s how the team’s fight performance looks comparing records before and after the arrival of Coach Bang Ludwig.
So the rumors are true. Team Alpha Male is indeed winning and finishing a lot of fights, and yes, even more so than before. They were already a winning group, but now they hardly ever lose. Their lone losing performance in 2013 was TJ Dillashaw’s gutsy split decision loss to Raphael Assuncao in Brazil. The rest were all victorious, and this doesn’t even include the recent TUF 18 winner Chris Holdsworth (too recent to be included in the analysis). During the course of racking up these 13 victories, Team Alpha Male fighters also finished nine of their opponents, seven via strikes. That’s a much higher finishing rate (and especially KO/TKO rate) than their division peers in the UFC.
But we knew that. What’s new here is that we can now dive much deeper into very specific performance variables on a per-fighter and per-round basis to understand exactly how Team Alpha Male has improved their relative performance.
Standup Striking Metrics
These findings are, well, striking. It turns out that Team Alpha Male has improved on literally every single key metric I follow for assessing striking performance in the UFC. These fighters have improved jab and power head striking accuracy, clinch accuracy, and even their striking defense. They’ve done all this while increasing their striking output relative to opponents and demonstrating greater cage control. In terms of power, they’ve more than doubled their collective knockdown rate on a punch-for-punch basis, and have yet to be knocked down themselves.
It would seem that the addition of a head coach that specializes in striking has made a huge impact on a team that was highly competitive to begin with. They’ve stepped up their striking game across the board, and improved their performance metrics in every meaningful offensive and defensive category. Now what else can we find?
Significant Striking Metrics
In terms of Significant Striking the team has increased their pace by 13%, and improved the overall rate at which they land strikes. Even in terms of defense, Team Alpha Male improved slightly on an already solid metric.
Significant Strikes include all strikes thrown at a distance, plus power strikes in the clinch and on the ground. They are a general, but also useful statistic to measure the overall effective output of a fighter, and by these metrics again the team has improved their performance across the board. But what about on the ground?
Wrestling Metrics
The last category of stats reflects wrestling, both in terms of offense and defense. The results show that these fighters are attempting fewer takedowns than previously, but have been more successful in their attempts. The wrestling-centric reputation of the old Team Alpha Male is at risk of fading given that their fighters are choosing to stand and trade more often. But that doesn’t mean their skills are getting rusty. On the contrary; the team has more than doubled their takedown success rate, have landed those takedowns with more force (more frequent slams), and have also defended a very high rate of attempts by their opponents. In terms of performance, they have once again improved in every category, but this time on the mat.
The Final Word
Whether these results are surprising is not really important. Analysis is still a valuable tool, even when it simply confirms what we already thought to be true. Many believed that Ludwig’s arrival in Sacramento marked an improvement in the team’s performance. But with these analytical findings, now we know that to be true. It’s not a small improvement, it’s significant, and it’s across the board. Team Alpha Male is now a new and improved breed of solid wrestlers that have added crisp and violent striking to their arsenal. While fans of the sport have shared the benefits that this team of “Uber Males” has brought to the UFC, opponents in the promotion’s smaller divisions should be justifiably concerned.
With Benavidez, Faber, Mendes, and Castillo all competing at the UFC on FOX 9 card in their home-field arena in Sacramento, a lot of attention will be given to their performance. In terms of market expectations, Benavidez is currently considered a slight underdog to incumbent champion Demetrious Johnson. Lines on the rest of the Alpha Males are still pending at the time of this writing, but I expect Faber to have a close matchup with McDonald, Castillo to be a possible underdog to Barboza, and Mendes to be the only one getting a clear favorite line over Lentz. These should all be fun fights to watch. But there’s a lot at risk here for Team Alpha Male who are still seeking their first UFC title, and for head coach Duane Ludwig, who is hoping to end 2013 with a Bang.
