After Eddie Wineland had his four-fight winning streak snapped against Urijah Faber in March, he took an interesting next step.
Rather than taking the positives from a fight he kept much closer than most people predicted, regrouping and taking on someone down the bantamweight ladder to start a new streak, Wineland asked for an opponent maybe tougher than his last – Joseph Benavidez.
Before thinking Wineland might not have his head on straight – after all, he asked for the teammate and primary training partner of his last opponent, ensuring Benavidez would have plenty of knowledge about him built up from Faber’s training camp – one must listen to his logic. Having once held the bantamweight belt for the WEC, now the UFC strap, getting it back is the one thing he wants most.
“I could have easily fought one of the top five, six, seven guys, and that would’ve got me back on track,” Wineland said. “But a win over Joseph, I think, puts me right back into title contention. It’s a gamble, but I don’t need to be fighting guys who are up and coming and looking to get their names out there.”
Wineland (18-7-1, 0-1 UFC) had back-to-back Knockout of the Night bonuses to close out his WEC career before getting his matchup with Faber. And though he won the first round on the judges’ scorecards at UFC 128 – stopping multiple Faber takedown attempts and landing a slam of his own to the surprise of nearly everyone but Wineland – he couldn’t keep Faber at bay long enough in the second and third. Faber went on to get a title shot – a shot that UFC president Dana White said afterward he’d have to have given to Wineland had he won.
With Dominick Cruz locked down on the No. 1 spot in the bantamweight class, Wineland sees plenty of lists with Benavidez (14-2, 1-0 UFC) as the No. 2 guy. Benavidez’s only two career losses? To Cruz, of course. But Wineland wants to dispel the myth that asking for Benavidez was a call-out of any kind. He wanted another major test, more than anything.
“I always said that Benavidez poses a lot of problems for me since he’s a good wrestler and he’s really fast, very scrambly,” Wineland said. “He’s ranked top two or three in most all the rankings. In the beginning, he felt like I called him out – when it’s not coming from the horse’s mouth he’s going to hear something different. Not that I called him out, but I asked for the fight because that’s my fastest path back to the belt.”
Wineland was a heavy underdog against Faber, and he’ll enter the fight with Benavidez at UFC on Versus 5 on Sunday in Milwaukee, just a couple hours’ drive from his home in Northwest Indiana, as a 2-to-1 ‘dog.
Wineland will have a reach and height advantage of several inches against Benavidez, but he remembers how his opponent caught the bigger Miguel Torres not long back – the same Torres that Wineland once trained with. Wineland said he looked at Benavidez’s losses to Cruz more than anything else, and he wonders if he might have some of the same Benavidez Kryptonite that Cruz seems to possess. If he does, he believes an upset is in the offing on Sunday.
“I think Dominick and I have similar movements in the sense we move side to side and not forward and backward,” Wineland said. “I think ultimately, my natural movement is what’s going to give me the win. I think they think they’re going to come in and fight the same Eddie Wineland that Urijah fought, and that’s not going to happen. Every fight, I change. I get stronger. I get faster.”
And that size difference of 5-foot-7 vs. 5-4? If it gives Wineland that little extra mental boost for himself, he’ll take it.
“When we’re in the gym and I’m sparring with shorter guys, my confidence seems to grow,” Wineland said. “Not so much the fact that I’m looking down on them … but I am looking down on them. I think it gives me that confidence factor and helps me to push forward and realize that, hey, this guy’s a kid – he looks like a kid. So I can’t let this kid come in here and beat me. I just have to think child abuse, I guess.”
But that’s not a call out.
Wineland and Benavidez fight as part of the preliminary card of UFC on Versus 5 on Sunday at the Bradley Center in Milwaukee, Wis. Their fight will air as part of a live stream on the UFC’s Facebook page, with the first fight starting at 5:45 p.m. Eastern. The main card, featuring a welterweight bout between Dan Hardy and Chris Lytle, airs live on Versus starting at 9 p.m. Eastern.
Former WEC bantamweight title challenger Joseph Benavidez (14-2) will be making his second appearance in the UFC when he faces Eddie Wineland (18-7) on August 14 at UFC on Versus 5. His first win inside the UFC Octagon was a decision over Ian Loveland …
Former WEC bantamweight title challenger Joseph Benavidez (14-2) will be making his second appearance in the UFC when he faces Eddie Wineland (18-7) on August 14 at UFC on Versus 5. His first win inside the UFC Octagon was a decision over Ian Loveland at UFC 128.
Before his UFC and even his WEC career, he made a one-fight appearance in Dream against Junya Kudo, who replaced Norifumi “Kid” Yamamota on just two days notice. The 2008 bout was the eighth fight of Benavidez’s career.
Benavidez put Kudo on the mat almost immediately, but the Japanese fighter was able to get up after taking some knees to his head shoulders.
After a short stand-up exchange, Benavidez got a hold of his opponent and slammed him to the ground once again. He got the back and transitioned to mount where he locked in a guillotine choke shortly before the three minute mark of the bout. Kudo tried hard to try to break free but was forced to tap.
Team Alpha Male is known for their submission skills, especially the guillotine choke. Benavidez trains with UFC standouts Chad Mendes and Urijah Faber on a daily basis at the gym, which is located in Sacramento, California.
His next opponent, Wineland, is 0-1 in the UFC with his loss coming against Benavidez’s teammate, Faber. Wineland also had a stint in the WEC where he went 5-2.
Don’t forget to check out Sal DeRose’s knockout of the day article, here!
On Sunday night in Milwaukee, the internet would have you believe that bantamweight Joseph Benavidez will be participating in his 17th professional bout at UFC Live: Hardy vs. Lytle. The Internet would also have you believe that his first professional fight was against Brandon Shelton in June of 2006.
The Internet is wrong.
Then again, maybe it depends on what your definition of ‘professional’ is. If you mean professional in terms of the overall quality and credibility of the event, some vaguely official quality that separates the serious promoters from the amateurs, then okay, the Shelton fight might have been it.
But if you mean professional in the sense that it was a fight for which a fighter was paid (and to the man who is or is not going home with money in his pocket, this distinction often matters a great deal), then no way.
For that definition of professional, and for the very humble beginning of Benavidez’s MMA career, you’ve got to go all the way back to 2005 in Silver City, N.M., and into a slightly terrifying bar called the Brown Derby.
“It’s this place where it’s actually kind of scary to go in there by yourself,” Benavidez recalled. “And then they just put a boxing ring in the middle of the bar, which only made it scarier.”
Benavidez might never have ended up there that night had he not had a job as a screen printer in Las Cruces, N.M. It was a good job and he liked it, mostly because he could make his own clever T-shirts when the mood struck him. But one day a man came in looking to make some posters advertising a kickboxing event, and Benavidez started asking him about it.
“He looked at me and was like, ‘Hey, aren’t you that wrestler?'” I was literally bouncing his head off the ground — boom, boom, boom — and his corner threw in the towel. — Joseph Benavidez
In Las Cruces, Benavidez was that wrestler. He’d won a state championship in high school, which was the kind of thing people in a relatively small town tended to remember. The man asked Benavidez if he’d be willing to help out his teenage son, who’d been kickboxing for a while but wanted to move into MMA. First he needed someone who could help him with his wrestling, and who better than a former state champ?
It sounded like fun to Benavidez, but after two months of training with this rag-tag MMA club, he decided he’d like to find out whether he could win an actual fight. He was beating all his training partners, and he’d seen the sport on TV, so how hard could it be?
“I figured that if I was fighting guys around my size and from around my area and my state, and I was the best wrestler in my state, that at the very least I could out-wrestle them,” Benavidez said. “Even if I didn’t know a whole lot else, I had that.”
Benavidez asked around and, sure enough, someone was putting together a night of MMA fights down at the Brown Derby in Silver City. It wasn’t the kind of deal where they offered you an opponent and you could accept or decline. Instead it was the kind of deal where you were either in or you were out. And if you were in, it meant you showed up an hour before fight time and got a look at your opponent for the first time across a crowded bar.
No weigh-ins. No rules meeting. No sanctioning. Not even a locker room to warm up in.
“I get there, and I’m the first fight, so I’m warming up in the bar,” said Benavidez. “There’s people around me drinking beers. There’s this old drunk Mexican dude in my face, telling me what to do. And this is probably 20 minutes before I’m going to go out, and he’s totally drunk, trying to give me advice and tell me what to do. It was bizarre.”
It probably didn’t help matters that, instead of normal fight trunks, Benavidez was wearing a pair of underwear he’d bought at Target. That was a trademark of his all the way until he entered the WEC, he said. Even in his fight at Dream.5 in Japan he came in sporting the Target underwear.
“I just thought they looked so good, no one would know,” he said.
When the event was finally ready to get started, Benavidez and his opponent, who at least looked to be around his size, were called into the ring. There were chairs set up at ringside, but the bar patrons quickly ignored them in favor of crowding as close to the action as they could get.
“The people just ended up hanging off the ring like it was Lionheart, the [Jean-Claude] Van Damme movie. There’s no security, nothing like that, so they’re just all up on the ring.”
Once the fight started, Benavidez wasted no time. He threw a leg kick, went for a takedown, then stood over his grounded opponent and started hammering him with elbows to the head.
“I was literally bouncing his head off the ground — boom, boom, boom — and his corner threw in the towel.”
The whole thing took maybe a minute and a half. One of Benavidez’s teammates acted as the referee — not that he was actually called to do any officiating other than peel Benavidez off the guy once the towel flew into the ring.
“So I’m happy, I got my first win. Then some cops come in. They’d been watching the whole thing, and they went up to whoever was in charge and said, okay, you guys can keep doing this, but all the fighters from here on out have to wear headgear.”
Apparently the police were a little taken aback by the brutality of Benavidez’s fight. When the fighters complained that no one in MMA wore headgear, the cops gave them the choice of gearing up or getting shut down.
“All my teammates were pissed at me then, because they had to do MMA with headgear after my fight,” said Benavidez. “I thought it was pretty funny and unique. It just showed how bush league the whole thing was. Like, oh no, that was too hard and too violent. Wear headgear and it’s okay. I guess the drunk people cornering me was totally fine, though.”
Bush league or not, when the night was over Benavidez left the Brown Derby with two hundred dollars in his pocket. Considering that he was pulling in around a thousand bucks a month at his screen printing job, it was a nice boost to his regular income. It also had him thinking about how far he might be able to take this thing with a little more practice. I had a little ‘Lionheart’ moment of my own where I was like, man, I’m a prizefighter now. — Joseph Benavidez
“It felt good and it gave me some confidence, like I could do this. I had a little Lionheart moment of my own where I was like, man, I’m a prizefighter now. I’m getting money to beat people up.”
It wasn’t more than two or three weeks later that Benavidez had his second fight, then his third and his fourth. By the time he fought Shelton in what the internet records identify as his debut, he’d already had five bouts.
“So I actually have five fights that aren’t on my record, which kind of sucks because it would look a lot cooler if I was 19-2 than 14-2,” he said. “They just weren’t documented, and honestly, some of them probably shouldn’t be.”
Things didn’t start to get serious for Benavidez’s MMA career until he went to visit a friend in Sacramento in November of 2006. They bought tickets to UFC 65, where they watched Georges St. Pierre take the welterweight title from Matt Hughes.
For Benavidez, it was a glimpse of what the big time really looked like, though he didn’t know if a 135-pounder like himself could ever even dream of getting there. The UFC had only recently reopened its doors to 155-pounders. Below that, the best you could hope for was the lesser-known WEC, and even that seemed far away.
Before he left Sacramento and returned home to New Mexico, Benavidez made it his mission to seek out the then-WEC featherweight champ Urijah Faber, who he’d heard ran a gym in the area. If Faber could make a living as a smaller mixed martial artist, then maybe he was someone who could help, or at the very least, give Benavidez some idea of where he stood as far as skill level.
So he looked in the phone book for Faber’s gym, but couldn’t find it.
“I went into the first gym that I found and basically beat up everybody, all the instructors, whoever. Those guys told me, hey, we got nothing for you. You need to go get with Urijah and his guys.”
When Benavidez explained that this was exactly what he’d been trying to do, they gave him Faber’s contact info. By then, however, it seemed too late. He had a 7 a.m. flight back to New Mexico in the morning. He was out of time, and he hadn’t even managed to lay eyes on Faber.
But when Benavidez showed up to the airport in the morning, he became the rare traveler to regard it as good news when he saw that his flight was cancelled. He took the opportunity to stay three more days in Sacramento, which allowed him the chance to finally get on the mat with Faber.
“I definitely think it was fate,” he said. “I went in and we had a roll, and Urijah basically told me, ‘You need to come out here and get serious about this. You’ve got a lot of talent, so stop wasting time.’ That was pretty much it.”
After that, Benavidez returned home only to get his things and head for California. He was about to start a new life in MMA. From here on out, all the fights would be for real, with no doubt as to what counted and what didn’t. From this point on, he was definitely a professional. Even if he was still fighting in underwear he bought at Target.
On Sunday night in Milwaukee, the internet would have you believe that bantamweight Joseph Benavidez will be participating in his 17th professional bout at UFC Live: Hardy vs. Lytle. The Internet would also have you believe that his first professional fight was against Brandon Shelton in June of 2006.
The Internet is wrong.
Then again, maybe it depends on what your definition of ‘professional’ is. If you mean professional in terms of the overall quality and credibility of the event, some vaguely official quality that separates the serious promoters from the amateurs, then okay, the Shelton fight might have been it.
But if you mean professional in the sense that it was a fight for which a fighter was paid (and to the man who is or is not going home with money in his pocket, this distinction often matters a great deal), then no way.
For that definition of professional, and for the very humble beginning of Benavidez’s MMA career, you’ve got to go all the way back to 2005 in Silver City, N.M., and into a slightly terrifying bar called the Brown Derby.
“It’s this place where it’s actually kind of scary to go in there by yourself,” Benavidez recalled. “And then they just put a boxing ring in the middle of the bar, which only made it scarier.”
Benavidez might never have ended up there that night had he not had a job as a screen printer in Las Cruces, N.M. It was a good job and he liked it, mostly because he could make his own clever T-shirts when the mood struck him. But one day a man came in looking to make some posters advertising a kickboxing event, and Benavidez started asking him about it.
“He looked at me and was like, ‘Hey, aren’t you that wrestler?'” I was literally bouncing his head off the ground — boom, boom, boom — and his corner threw in the towel. — Joseph Benavidez
In Las Cruces, Benavidez was that wrestler. He’d won a state championship in high school, which was the kind of thing people in a relatively small town tended to remember. The man asked Benavidez if he’d be willing to help out his teenage son, who’d been kickboxing for a while but wanted to move into MMA. First he needed someone who could help him with his wrestling, and who better than a former state champ?
It sounded like fun to Benavidez, but after two months of training with this rag-tag MMA club, he decided he’d like to find out whether he could win an actual fight. He was beating all his training partners, and he’d seen the sport on TV, so how hard could it be?
“I figured that if I was fighting guys around my size and from around my area and my state, and I was the best wrestler in my state, that at the very least I could out-wrestle them,” Benavidez said. “Even if I didn’t know a whole lot else, I had that.”
Benavidez asked around and, sure enough, someone was putting together a night of MMA fights down at the Brown Derby in Silver City. It wasn’t the kind of deal where they offered you an opponent and you could accept or decline. Instead it was the kind of deal where you were either in or you were out. And if you were in, it meant you showed up an hour before fight time and got a look at your opponent for the first time across a crowded bar.
No weigh-ins. No rules meeting. No sanctioning. Not even a locker room to warm up in.
“I get there, and I’m the first fight, so I’m warming up in the bar,” said Benavidez. “There’s people around me drinking beers. There’s this old drunk Mexican dude in my face, telling me what to do. And this is probably 20 minutes before I’m going to go out, and he’s totally drunk, trying to give me advice and tell me what to do. It was bizarre.”
It probably didn’t help matters that, instead of normal fight trunks, Benavidez was wearing a pair of underwear he’d bought at Target. That was a trademark of his all the way until he entered the WEC, he said. Even in his fight at Dream.5 in Japan he came in sporting the Target underwear.
“I just thought they looked so good, no one would know,” he said.
When the event was finally ready to get started, Benavidez and his opponent, who at least looked to be around his size, were called into the ring. There were chairs set up at ringside, but the bar patrons quickly ignored them in favor of crowding as close to the action as they could get.
“The people just ended up hanging off the ring like it was Lionheart, the [Jean-Claude] Van Damme movie. There’s no security, nothing like that, so they’re just all up on the ring.”
Once the fight started, Benavidez wasted no time. He threw a leg kick, went for a takedown, then stood over his grounded opponent and started hammering him with elbows to the head.
“I was literally bouncing his head off the ground — boom, boom, boom — and his corner threw in the towel.”
The whole thing took maybe a minute and a half. One of Benavidez’s teammates acted as the referee — not that he was actually called to do any officiating other than peel Benavidez off the guy once the towel flew into the ring.
“So I’m happy, I got my first win. Then some cops come in. They’d been watching the whole thing, and they went up to whoever was in charge and said, okay, you guys can keep doing this, but all the fighters from here on out have to wear headgear.”
Apparently the police were a little taken aback by the brutality of Benavidez’s fight. When the fighters complained that no one in MMA wore headgear, the cops gave them the choice of gearing up or getting shut down.
“All my teammates were pissed at me then, because they had to do MMA with headgear after my fight,” said Benavidez. “I thought it was pretty funny and unique. It just showed how bush league the whole thing was. Like, oh no, that was too hard and too violent. Wear headgear and it’s okay. I guess the drunk people cornering me was totally fine, though.”
Bush league or not, when the night was over Benavidez left the Brown Derby with two hundred dollars in his pocket. Considering that he was pulling in around a thousand bucks a month at his screen printing job, it was a nice boost to his regular income. It also had him thinking about how far he might be able to take this thing with a little more practice. I had a little ‘Lionheart’ moment of my own where I was like, man, I’m a prizefighter now. — Joseph Benavidez
“It felt good and it gave me some confidence, like I could do this. I had a little Lionheart moment of my own where I was like, man, I’m a prizefighter now. I’m getting money to beat people up.”
It wasn’t more than two or three weeks later that Benavidez had his second fight, then his third and his fourth. By the time he fought Shelton in what the internet records identify as his debut, he’d already had five bouts.
“So I actually have five fights that aren’t on my record, which kind of sucks because it would look a lot cooler if I was 19-2 than 14-2,” he said. “They just weren’t documented, and honestly, some of them probably shouldn’t be.”
Things didn’t start to get serious for Benavidez’s MMA career until he went to visit a friend in Sacramento in November of 2006. They bought tickets to UFC 65, where they watched Georges St. Pierre take the welterweight title from Matt Hughes.
For Benavidez, it was a glimpse of what the big time really looked like, though he didn’t know if a 135-pounder like himself could ever even dream of getting there. The UFC had only recently reopened its doors to 155-pounders. Below that, the best you could hope for was the lesser-known WEC, and even that seemed far away.
Before he left Sacramento and returned home to New Mexico, Benavidez made it his mission to seek out the then-WEC featherweight champ Urijah Faber, who he’d heard ran a gym in the area. If Faber could make a living as a smaller mixed martial artist, then maybe he was someone who could help, or at the very least, give Benavidez some idea of where he stood as far as skill level.
So he looked in the phone book for Faber’s gym, but couldn’t find it.
“I went into the first gym that I found and basically beat up everybody, all the instructors, whoever. Those guys told me, hey, we got nothing for you. You need to go get with Urijah and his guys.”
When Benavidez explained that this was exactly what he’d been trying to do, they gave him Faber’s contact info. By then, however, it seemed too late. He had a 7 a.m. flight back to New Mexico in the morning. He was out of time, and he hadn’t even managed to lay eyes on Faber.
But when Benavidez showed up to the airport in the morning, he became the rare traveler to regard it as good news when he saw that his flight was cancelled. He took the opportunity to stay three more days in Sacramento, which allowed him the chance to finally get on the mat with Faber.
“I definitely think it was fate,” he said. “I went in and we had a roll, and Urijah basically told me, ‘You need to come out here and get serious about this. You’ve got a lot of talent, so stop wasting time.’ That was pretty much it.”
After that, Benavidez returned home only to get his things and head for California. He was about to start a new life in MMA. From here on out, all the fights would be for real, with no doubt as to what counted and what didn’t. From this point on, he was definitely a professional. Even if he was still fighting in underwear he bought at Target.
It has been over six months since the Zuffa folded the WEC into the UFC and officially introduced the bantamweights and featherweights into the octagon. Yet despite a great amount of talent at these new weights, the promotion is still treating them as …
It has been over six months since the Zuffa folded the WEC into the UFC and officially introduced the bantamweights and featherweights into the octagon. Yet despite a great amount of talent at these new weights, the promotion is still treating them as second-class divisions that are beneath its traditional weight classes.
On August 10 the UFC will be airing a live broadcast on cable television for hundreds of thousands of viewers. On the card will be Joseph Benavidez vs Eddie Wineland. The two fighters are both former world champions and Benavidez is ranked second or third in the world on most top-10 lists. While Brian Bowles vs Urijah Faber is going to determine the next challenger to the bantamweight title, this match puts the winner right in line behind them.
Those hundreds of thousands of viewers? Not a single one is going to see this fight. It isn’t being shown.
A fight essentially equivalent to Rashad Evans vs Tito Ortiz, which headlined the last UFC pay-per-view, has been deemed not good enough for a TV broadcast spot, an honor often given to reality show quarterfinalist washouts on Ultimate Fighter finales. In fact the fight isn’t even the final preliminary, but rather the second to last, as if to add insult to injury.
It isn’t just contenders matches that get snubbed; the UFC considers even championship bouts in their bantamweight and featherweight divisions to only be supporting fights. When Jose Aldo defended his UFC featherweight championship for the first time, it was as a lead-in to the welterweight championship fight. This wasn’t just a one-time thing: his next defense will be playing second fiddle on the UFC 136 card to the main event lightweight championship fight.
It is true that bantamweight champion Dominick Cruz defended his UFC title for the first time as the main event of UFC 132. Yet this was because of the star power of the challenger, Urijah Faber, not out of respect for the weight class. Cruz’s next defense? It will be the main event…of a card on television.
Would Georges St-Pierre, Anderson Silva or Jon Jones ever defend their title on a free card? Of course not. Their championship titles have too much prestige for that. Yet the lighter weight classes are considered to be second-rate compared to these more important divisions.
There doesn’t seem to be a good reason for this. Three possibilities come to mind: the divisions aren’t well known, the main fighters aren’t popular, or the talent isn’t good enough.
The argument that casual fans of the UFC aren’t acquainted well enough with these new weight classes would help explain why Cruz’s next defense needs to be seen on television for free. This seems dubious as Cruz already scored Fight of the Night while beating superstar Faber on a main event of a pay-per-view, but is possible.
Yet that doesn’t explain why future contender’s match Benavidez vs Wineland wouldn’t be on the Versus card this weekend, despite being veterans of numerous WEC broadcasts on the exact same channel. If the UFC is worried about people not knowing who the new fighters are, reducing their air time isn’t exactly a brilliant strategy.
As for the fighters being known but simply not popular, it has already been pointed out that Cruz surely gained a ton of momentum in his last event. What about now perennial co-main event fighter Jose Aldo?
Last year at the World MMA Awards Jose Aldo was voted by fans to be Fighter of the Year over Brock Lesnar, Mauricio Rua, Anderson Silva and Frankie Edgar, the latter being the one who will get to be the main event on Aldo’s next card. If constantly-unable-to-finish Georges St-Pierre and hit-or-miss-performance Anderson Silva can get guaranteed main event status every time, there is no reason why Cruz and Aldo shouldn’t be able to get the same.
The only remaining answer is that the talent isn’t that good, and this doesn’t hold up. The bantamweight and featherweight fighters haven’t had trouble winning their fair share of post-fight bonuses, and indeed the champions both got Fight of the Night in their last performance.
Most pound-for-pound rankings list Jose Aldo as third in the world, behind only St-Pierre and Anderson Silva, while Cruz ranks not far behind in the top 10. And looking at rankings by weight, any top-10 list of bantamweights or featherweights will show just as many are UFC fighters as the rankings for any other weight class.
The bantamweight and featherweight divisions may be new to the UFC compared to the traditional weight classes, but over the past few months have more than proved that they are just as talented and exciting. It is time for Zuffa to stop treating its lighter weights as second-class divisions and give them the notoriety and prestige they deserve.
At UFC on Versus 5, Joseph Benevidez and Eddie Wineland will collide in a bantamweight bout. Benavidez, who is currently riding a two-fight win streak, looks to make it three in a row over Wineland, who is entering the bout off a loss to Urijah Fa…
At UFC on Versus 5, Joseph Benevidez and Eddie Wineland will collide in a bantamweight bout.
Benavidez, who is currently riding a two-fight win streak, looks to make it three in a row over Wineland, who is entering the bout off a loss to Urijah Faber at UFC 128.
Benavidez said he doesn’t understand being matched up with Wineland, but he said he will make his opponent regret accepting the bout.
“You hear all the fighters say they want to fight the best guys out there, and maybe that’s something he wants to do, but I just think it was not a good decision,” Benavidez told Heavy.com.
Benavidez, whose only two losses were to UFC Bantamweight champion Dominick Cruz, is rebuilding himself and preparing to earn another shot at the title. Despite collecting two consecutive wins, Benavidez was not slotted into a title eliminator in his next bout and the opportunity was given to Urijah Faber and Brian Bowles, slated for UFC 139 in November.
The Team Alpha Male product currently finds himself in limbo; however, he said he understands why the decision was made.
“I kind of expected that to happen,” he said.
“I mean, they are probably the two more likely prospects when they announced Demetrious (Johnson) to go for the title; I thought that only left Bowles and Faber.”
However, Benavidez said he was motivated when he learned of being challenged by Wineland. He is now determined to earn a win over the former WEC bantamweight champion. In fact, Benavidez has required some assistance from fellow teammate, Faber.
“It’s one thing watching video and seeing what he does, seeing his tendencies. It’s a whole other thing having someone who has been in there in the heat of battle with the guy; knows exactly how strong he feels, knows how he feels in this situation; that’s a huge advantage,” he said.
And in addition to working with Faber, Benavidez hopes to succeed in defeating Wineland as a result, and make him pay.
“I don’t know if he thought that he gave Urijah a good fight—so maybe this fight would be easy–I don’t really know, but I can’t wait to go out there and show him that he made the wrong choice there,” Benavidez said.
Filed under: UFCNot only is Joseph Benavidez one of the wittiest fighters in the game, he also knows as much or more than anyone about the two main event participants at UFC 132.
Plus, he’s a Joe-Jitsu black belt tie-dye belt and a skilled (or so I h…
Not only is Joseph Benavidez one of the wittiest fighters in the game, he also knows as much or more than anyone about the two main event participants at UFC 132.
Plus, he’s a Joe-Jitsu black belt tie-dye belt and a skilled (or so I hear) bowler, so why wouldn’t I want to sit down with him for this edition of Fighter vs. Writer?
Benavidez fought two memorable fights with Cruz, and has spent the last few years as one of Urijah Faber’s main training partners, so he has a perspective on this fight that few can match. It’s probably not hard to tell who he’s picking in Saturday night’s main event, but does he have what it takes to go pick-for-pick on the rest of the main card with yours truly? Find out below.
Benavidez: Faber via submission. “He’s been my main training partner for four years, and I’ve just seen the way he works and the goals he sets for himself. For all these four years, I’ve never seen him more inspired and motivated for a fight. He’s a big part of the WEC going to the UFC, so this is huge for him. He’s a guy who rises to the occasion, and this is the biggest of occasions for him. Not only that, but he obviously has the skills. Dominick will be hard to hit, but he doesn’t do much damage, and Urijah has the grappling edge.”
Fowlkes: Cruz via decision. He’s just too fast and too hard to pin down. He may not have the power to knock Faber out, but I doubt Faber will be able to put his hands on Cruz very much at all, so I’m not sure how much it matters. Faber was a true champ in his time, but that time is over.
Benavidez: Silva via TKO. “Before the Stann fight I didn’t think Leben could get knocked out, but he did, so I guess it could happen again if they’re going to sit there and slug. Wanderlei could definitely catch him with a punch. I think they are going to stand there and swing at each other, and Leben will go down. Plus, Wanderlei’s a legend, so I kind of root for him, even though I love watching Leben fight also.”
Fowlkes: Leben via TKO. Obviously Silva is a sentimental favorite, but I don’t think his chin is nearly as solid as it once was, and being out of action for 16 months won’t exactly make him sharper in the cage. Even if they throw down in the center of the cage, Leben can take it and dish it out better at this point.
Benavidez: Ortiz via decision. “I think Tito is going to prove a lot of people wrong and come out with a comeback here — maybe not a total comeback — but I think he’ll go out there and get the win, old school ground-and-pound style. I actually think Tito’s boxing is a lot better too.”
Fowlkes: Bader via decision. I admire Benavidez’s optimism, but I’m not such a believer in Ortiz’s boxing, nor do I think he’s right about Bader having weak takedown defense. Bader is younger, quicker, and more explosive. I don’t see where Ortiz holds an advantage.
Benavidez: Condit via TKO. “He’s always in a super exciting fight and puts just this horrendous pace on people. He really lives up to his name: ‘The Natural Born Killer.’ He goes in there and tries to kill you. He’s going to put a lot of pressure on Kim and get the victory by stoppage.”
Fowlkes: Condit by TKO. Kim absolutely has the power to turn this into a grappling match, and if he does, he can absolutely win it there. But I don’t see Condit going out like that. He’ll come back late in the fight and overwhelm Kim with sheer aggression.
Matt Wiman vs. Dennis Siver
Benavidez: Wiman via decision. “That’s a tough one. Wiman has really good wrestling and has been putting it on people lately, but so has Siver. With Wiman though, I think he’s really hitting his stride right now, and this is going to be one that really catapults him to that next level where he wants to be at in the division.”
Fowlkes: Siver via decision. I simply cannot pick against the underrated Siver, who consistently surprises people and then melts back into the background to be forgotten and then underrated once again. His takedown defense will keep this one standing, and his power will keep Wiman reeling.
After Eddie Wineland had his four-fight winning streak snapped against Urijah Faber in March, he took an interesting next step. 
Former WEC bantamweight title challenger 
On Sunday night in Milwaukee, the internet would have you believe that bantamweight 
Not only is