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UFC Live 4: Nate Marquardt and the Top 5 Fighters in Takedown AccuracyBleacher Report’s Joshua Carey:Nate “The Great” Marquardt makes his debut in the welterweight division at UFC on Versus 4 event Sunday in Pittsburgh.But Marquardt’s success has been…
UFC Live 4: Nate Marquardt and the Top 5 Fighters in Takedown Accuracy
Bleacher Report’s Joshua Carey:
UFC Live 4: Marquardt vs Story: Analysis and Prediction of All the FightsBleacher Report’s Todd Seyler:UFC Live: Marquardt versus Story will be held on Sunday, June 26th from the Consol Energy Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.Main event action inclu…
UFC Live 4: Marquardt vs Story: Analysis and Prediction of All the Fights
Bleacher Report’s Todd Seyler:
UFC Live: Marquardt versus Story will be held on Sunday, June 26th from the Consol Energy Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Main event action includes a welterweight matchup between the previous King of Pancrase and former middleweight title contender, Nate Marquardt, and the hard-hitting grappler from Washington, Rick Story.
A co-main event bout between two kick-boxing specialists pins the veteran Cheick Kongo against the up-and-coming Duke Roufus protege, Pat Barry.
Additional action includes a welterweight slug-fest between the relentless Matt Brown and the fearless John Howard.
Overall, 12 fights will be provided.
Please follow along as I dissect, analyze, and predict the winners for all the fights on the night’s card.
This will be an exciting evening of competition in Pittsburgh and I am fortunate to note that I will be sitting cage-side, along with fellow Bleacher Report columnist Sean Smith, providing up-to-the minute analysis of the action inside the Octagon on June 26th.
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Filed under: UFCNate Marquardt didn’t have to be in the UFC’s makeshift workout room the night before the UFC 128 weigh-ins. But hey, he had friends who still had a few pounds to sweat off, so there he was, sitting on the floor in a t-shirt and jeans, …
Filed under: UFC
Nate Marquardt didn’t have to be in the UFC’s makeshift workout room the night before the UFC 128 weigh-ins. But hey, he had friends who still had a few pounds to sweat off, so there he was, sitting on the floor in a t-shirt and jeans, keeping them company. Solidarity with the starving, and all that.
Only Marquardt wasn’t starving. Even though he also had to weigh in less than 24 hours later for his fight with Dan Miller, he wasn’t even especially hungry.
That’s because while Marquardt was fighting at 185 pounds, he wasn’t doing it the way most guys did. Instead of cutting down from well over 200 pounds in the weeks and days before the fight, he was more or less already on point. All he had to do was show up on the scales and flex.
That’s why it should have come as no surprise when Marquardt announced that he was moving down to welterweight following his unanimous decision win over Dan Miller at UFC 128. It wasn’t that he had no further prospects at middleweight, he said. It was just that it had started to seem foolish to try and put weight on in training camp, rather than take it off.
“I feel I could get the title shot and get the title at 185,” Marquardt said. “If that opportunity ever arises, I’ll go do that. But for now, I’m going to stay at this weight, at my walking around weight. I’m not going to try to bulk up anymore. I just want to stay here.”
But dropping to 170 pounds for his fight against Rick Story on Sunday night’s UFC Live fight card also meant that Marquardt would have to forego some of the luxuries he’d previously enjoyed, such as eating what he wanted without ever giving a thought to calorie content.
Now he suddenly needed to lose weight for the first time in a long time, which is where nutritionist P.R. Cole came in.
“He looks so big, and that’s why everyone thought, my God, how’s he going to make 170?” said Cole, who first came into contact with Marquardt when interviewing him for her nutrition column on UFC.com. “But when he was fighting at middleweight he wasn’t cutting that much. He was just used to going through camp and eating for fuel. He had the pleasure of never really having to think about his calories or anything.”
This time around Marquardt has had to start thinking about portion sizes more than ever, but the potential rewards may be more than worth the sacrifice. For starters, he’ll be fighting smaller opponents, which means he’ll likely have a strength advantage.
Then again, as Marquardt explained, “I feel I had a strength advantage at 185 [pounds]. It doesn’t really matter who I go against, I feel that I’m almost always going to be stronger. The fact that I haven’t lost any strength going down means it’s only more so.”
But perhaps more important is the new life he hopes to find in a new weight class. Unlike many fighters who make the decision to drop down in weight, Marquardt wasn’t chased down by losses. He went down following a win, but he also did it following a year in which he lost two no. 1 contender fights at 185 pounds.
Now at welterweight, he has a clean slate to work with, and he feels he could be “anywhere from one to two fights away” from a title shot. The fact that, because of an injury to his original opponent, he now gets to fight a guy like Story, who’s coming off an upset win over Thiago Alves? That only sweetens the deal for him, Marquardt said.
“I think the fact that Rick Story just beat Thiago Alves, who was considered a former number one contender, that’s a pretty big deal. I can’t really think of anyone [Anthony] Johnson beat like that. Not saying that he’s not tough, but their records, Story has that and Johnson doesn’t,” he said.
“I expect him to come forward the whole time and kind of try to make it a dirty fight, because I think he knows that I’m going to be better in most areas. I think he’ll probably have a similar game plan as he did against Thiago Alves, really.”
If Story is the young rising prospect in this scenario, then Marquardt is more than willing to play the role of the grizzled veteran. After all, he was fighting for a living when Story was still in high school. With those years comes a lot of hard-won knowledge, Marquardt said.
“That’s a good feeling to know that I know a lot more than this guy. The fact that he’s this young up-and-comer, to me that just means that he doesn’t know that I’m in a different league. He’s going to have problems that way.”
For Story, it might be a chance to add another big name to his list of victims. But for Marquardt, it’s a shot at a new beginning. And he didn’t spend the last eight weeks counting all those calories for nothing.
I’ll say it once again: you gotta love the UFC and the way they give fans free fights. This Sunday, UFC on Versus 4 goes down and features a solid card of fighters going at it with heavy implications all around. The importance of fights for guys like T…
I’ll say it once again: you gotta love the UFC and the way they give fans free fights. This Sunday, UFC on Versus 4 goes down and features a solid card of fighters going at it with heavy implications all around.
The importance of fights for guys like Tyson Griffin, who is making his featherweight debut vs. Manny Gamburyan cannot be understated. How about strikers Cheick Kongo and Pat Barry—will they deliver a slobber knocker of a knockout that the fans so expected out of Junior Dos Santos vs. Shane Carwin?
There are some intriguing fights on this card in every division, and I look forward to seeing the strategic, game-within-the-game moments of all of these match-ups. What detail will lead to one fighter’s victory vs. one fighter’s fall? Let’s take a look and zoom in on five things to look for in the fights this weekend.
5. Will the real Joe Lauzon re-emerge and dominate a lesser opponent?
Look closely on Sunday night to see if we will get a tentative, cautious fighter in Joe Lauzon, or if we get the pressing, blitzing, dominant Joe that we have been blessed to witness at times in his career. It has been an up and down couple of years for Lauzon, and he needs to get back on track with a win worthy of some noise for J-Lau.
In my opinion, Curt Warburton is outmatched in this fight both in skill and experience, but Joe has got to fight desperate, and show a renewed pension for unleashing hell when he gets in that cage.
4. Does Size Matter For Tyson Griffin?
Tyson Griffin shot on to the mixed martial arts scene as a lightweight with incredible cardio and dexterity, blasting through his first few fights early in his UFC career. Then he started to come up against some of the big boys of the division and it soon became apparent that he was going to forever struggle to hold off the elite guys at the 155 pound range.
Sunday night he moves down to 145 pounds, and he gets a rude welcome with top contender Manny Gamburyan. Watch closely in this fight to see if Griffin can impose his will on Manny, who is one of the strongest men in the division. I look for this fight to be in close quarters and hopefully Griffin can re-emerge a contender after the fight.
3. Who has the better striking, Mitrione or Morecraft?
I look for this fight to settle two scores where these two fighters are concerned on Sunday. The first score to settle is for these two to start this fight in stand-and-bang mode and see who has the better, more technical and powerful striking. Both of these guys like to cut it up and be funny characters at times and they have both gained a following doing so.
Settling the striking score will certainly settle the second score for me, as I want to see which one of these two boisterous heavyweights is ready for a large step up the next time they step in the cage.
2. Is It Near The End For Cheick Kongo?
I used to get frustrated with Cheick Kongo’s repeated failure to develop a ground game, it seemed such a waste for such a talented, sculpted fighter to get beaten so easily in one aspect of the game. Recently, I have been more frustrated with a certain lack of fire and heart in Kongo’s game. Although his losses have come to legitimate guys in the division, I am always left wanting more from him when the key moment of the fight arrives.
Pat Barry will stand in your face, fire shots and test your will to be there. If Kongo can stand and trade and not flinch an inch against Barry, it will go a long way in telling us all if we should consider Kongo a relevant enough fighter to continue to get interesting fights. He may try to shoot and submit, which is fine and may be smart, but if he retreats and starts to dance, will will know right away, he is fighter looking to survive instead of thrive and I wish him well in the future.
1. Will Nate Marquardt be technical and powerful enough to stop Rick Story?
As he was getting ready for Thiago Alves a month ago, I heard Rick Story say that he was going to come in come hard and come often, and that he did, to my surprise, against Alves, stealing the win in the process. Thiago Alves’ bread and butter was powerful Muay Thai striking, and Story bulldozed straight in through it with good set ups and brute timing.
Marquardt is coming down from 185 pounds and is banking on the fact that his size and power shots will be enough to deter and ultimately stop the train that has become Rick Story. I personally feel like Nate is a bit more technically sound in his approach than Thiago, so he will land punches. Will his punches be powerful enough at 170 pounds to get the job done and stop Story in his tracks? I am saying yes, and Nate will score a decisive win that sees a bloody Story at the end
Dwight Wakabayashi is a Feature Columnist for Bleacher Report MMA.
Catch him on Twitter @wakafightermma .
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There’s no question that when Nate “The Great” Marquardt is at the top of his game; not even the most promising of fighters at 185 pounds can shut him down.Nate “The Great” has made a case for himself as being one of the toughest finishers in the sport…
There’s no question that when Nate “The Great” Marquardt is at the top of his game; not even the most promising of fighters at 185 pounds can shut him down.
Nate “The Great” has made a case for himself as being one of the toughest finishers in the sport, as has been evident by his track record in the middleweight division.
However, the question for this weekend is not whether Marquardt is a tough finisher in MMA.
The question is, will he be able to make the drop to welterweight and remain the same tough finisher at 170 lbs. that he was at 185 lbs.?
If fast-rising welterweight Rick “The Horror” Story has anything to say or do about it, the fight will end before Marquardt is able to get the chance to answer the question of whether he can be as competitive at 170 as he was at 185.
Additionally, Pat Barry has found success in his UFC career, save for bouts against Tim Hague and Mirko Filipovic, but on his way up the UFC ladder, he faces the inevitable encounter with an exciting yet controversial kickboxer who is one of the more exciting gatekeepers in the UFC heavyweight division in Cheick Kongo.
Though Kongo’s likely to be the favorite due to his wrestling and ground game being more clear than Barry’s ground game, “Mr. Hype or Die” cannot be prematurely perceived as an underdog, especially since the Roufusport wrecking machine has found some strong company within Brock Lesnar‘s Deathclutch camp, and that strong company could be one to point fingers at if we should see any takedown defense from this comical yet passionate young prospect.
All this and more can be seen this Sunday at UFC Live on Versus 4: Marquardt vs. Story, but who will walk out with the big bucks when all is said and done?
The fourth addition of UFC on Versus Live will feature a fantastic main event, as Rick Story looks to stake his claim as a legit contender at 170 pounds as he takes on former top-tier middleweight Nate Marquardt. Story is fresh off a win over Thi…
The fourth addition of UFC on Versus Live will feature a fantastic main event, as Rick Story looks to stake his claim as a legit contender at 170 pounds as he takes on former top-tier middleweight Nate Marquardt.
Story is fresh off a win over Thiago Alves at UFC 130, and looks to prove it was no fluke by taking a tough test in Marquardt with less than a month of down time.
Marquardt has won two of his last three, and five of his last seven, and will be making his career debut at 170 pounds on UFC Live.
Nate “The Great” claims that he feels stronger, faster and has more stamina as a welterweight, but after losing to top-10 middleweights Yushin Okami and Chael Sonnen, fans have to wonder if Marquardt is just grasping at straws for one last title run before he retires.
Fans also get to enjoy what should be a slugfest between two hard-hitting heavyweights when Cheick Kongo takes on Pat Berry.
Additionally, Matt Brown will square off against John Howard in what is likely to be a “loser leaves town” fight, and Matt Mitrione will battle Christian Morecraft to decide which heavyweight remains relevant in the UFC’s 265-pound division.
This time around, the Bleacher Report MMA Staff will be represented by Dana Becker (10-15), Jordy McElroy (6-10), Dale De Souza (6-10), Sean Smith (4-5) and me, John Heinis (10-15).
Take a look inside to see what our panel had to say about this free UFC card.