UFC Fight Night 47 comes to you from Bangor, Maine, on Saturday. The UFC is back after a short layoff, and it will bring you 10 fights to whet your fighting appetites.
No. 8-ranked Ryan Bader takes on No. 10-ranked Ovince St. Preux in a big light heavy…
UFC Fight Night 47 comes to you from Bangor, Maine, on Saturday. The UFC is back after a short layoff, and it will bring you 10 fights to whet your fighting appetites.
No. 8-ranked Ryan Bader takes on No. 10-ranked Ovince St. Preux in a big light heavyweight tilt in the main event, and Gray Maynard battles Ross Pearson in the co-main.
The action begins on Fox Sports 2 at 8 p.m. ET before switching to Fox Sports 1 at 10 p.m. ET. Bleacher Report will be here to bring you all the action from the very first fight. Two top-10 matchups are featured on the undercard, so you’ll want to be sure to check in.
When the UFC visits Bangor, Maine, on Saturday, there will be a handful of fights on the card with strong Fight of the Night potential.
The headline bout is a key light heavyweight matchup pitting two top-10 ranked fighters in the 205-pound division ag…
When the UFC visits Bangor, Maine, on Saturday, there will be a handful of fights on the card with strong Fight of the Night potential.
The headline bout is a key light heavyweight matchup pitting two top-10 ranked fighters in the 205-pound division against each other. No. 8 Ryan “Darth” Bader will face the fast-rising Ovince Saint Preux, who is currently ranked No. 10.
Bader is a longtime contender at 205 pounds who has already had his shot at Jon Jones just before Bones won the title. He’s dropped a few high-profile scraps with Glover Teixeira, LyotoMachida and Tito Ortiz since, and he’s beaten some lesser-regarded opponents.
At 31 years old, Bader needs to prove he has what it takes to beat a big-time opponent.
Is OSP big time? We may just find out against Bader. The 31-year-old from Knoxville, Tennessee, has won five fights in a row since losing by decision to GegardMousasi in Strikeforce. OSPis known as a dangerous striker, but he has been showing diversity in his game of late.
His last two wins have come by submission. Most recently, OSP forced Ryan Jimmo to verbally submit after a slam and kimura broke the Canadian’s arm. OSP is a vicious and hungry contender looking to continue his climb up the light heavyweight rankings.
Here’s the viewing information needed to watch the featured bout and the rest of UFC Fight Night 47, as well as a look at the entire card and predictions for each fight.
Tavares Will Outlast The Barbarian
Tim “The Barbarian” Boetsch always fights with a sense of urgency, but considering he’s lost three of his last four fights, he should really bring some desperation into the Octagon on Saturday.
He was just dominated by Luke Rockhold in April. Rockhold finished the bout with an inverted triangle kimura.
Boetsch is a battler who isn’t terribly athletic, but he has used his toughness, resolve and second wind to outwork opponents in the past. That combination of somewhat intangible qualities hasn’t been getting the job done lately.
Brad Tavares is just as tough as Boetsch, if not more rugged. He’s never been stopped, and his beard was certified stone after enduring a full scrap with the ridiculously strong Yoel Romero in his last bout. Though Tavares lost by decision, he proved his chin was the real deal.
If Boetsch can’t hurt Tavares, he won’t slow him down during stand-up exchanges. Thus, the speed and dexterity advantages the 26-year-old from Hawaii holds will be more evident.
In what figures to be an entertaining scrap, Tavares will hold his own on the ground and land more significant strikes to earn the decision.
The Real Deal Will Finish The Bully
Coming off a bout where he was the victim of one of the worst decisions in UFC history, Ross Pearson should be hungry for an official victory.
Pearson appeared to easily outpoint Diego Sanchez in June, but the latter got the nod from the judges. In this bout, Pearson faces another tough and respected legend in Gray Maynard, but I wouldn’t count on the judges coming into play in this one.
It feels like a little bit of a risk factor leaving it to the judges. It’s definitely a little bit sketchy. Coming out of that last fight with Diego, I was so confident that I won that fight and I felt 100 percent in my mind that nobody could believe I lost that fight. It was laughable.
I’m here to look for finishes. I look to finish fights and it’s definitely lit a spark under my ass to finish fights. To be a little bit more hungry to chase and press a little bit more.
Maynard has lost three of his last four fights, all by way of stoppage. The only win he’s had in this span came over the equally washed-up Clay Guida.
A motivated and slightly irritated Pearson will finish Maynard on Saturday and quite possibly punctuate The Bully’s career.
OSP Will Defeat the Gatekeeper
Yes, I used the word gatekeeper in association with Bader. At this point, it’s hard to call him anything else. He’s beaten up on guys who hope to be contenders or are past their prime, yet he’s failed to grab the big win over the division’s elite.
OSP is showing himself to be one of the most dangerous men at light heavyweight. This bout represents yet another opportunity for Bader to make a statement.
The concept of this fight is going to be simple. If Bader, the consummate wrestler, can take OSP down, he’ll have a shot to win. If he can’t, he’ll get picked apart in the stand-up and likely finished within two rounds.
It seems OSP understands what to expect, and he sounds confident in his abilities. He told Bleacher Report’s Duane Finley:
I think this is a great matchup. He has power in his hands, and I do too. I also have power in my feet, and I know the things he’s eventually going to go for. With me, you don’t know what I’m going to go for or when I’m going to go for them. If I want to go for the takedown, I think I can take him down if I want to. But at the same time, I think he’s going to have a hard time taking me down.
While OSP is an explosive striker, he doesn’t get enough credit for his grappling and takedown defense.
Per Fight Metric, he has a 71 percent takedown defense rating. What’s more relevant is that he’s stuffed the last eight takedowns attempted against him. In fact, no opponent has successfully taken OSP down since the Mousasi fight.
Because of this, OSP is going to destroy Bader‘s Death Star.
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UFC Fight Night 47 hits Bangor, Maine this weekend with a light heavyweight main event between two top-10 fighters.
No. 8-ranked Ryan Bader meets No. 10-ranked Ovince St. Preux in the final bout of the night.
First, they, and the 18 other fighters, mus…
UFC Fight Night 47 hits Bangor, Maine this weekend with a light heavyweight main event between two top-10 fighters.
No. 8-ranked Ryan Bader meets No. 10-ranked Ovince St. Preux in the final bout of the night.
First, they, and the 18 other fighters, must step onto the scale and make weight. That happens on Friday at 4 p.m. ET. The weigh-ins will be televised live on Fox Sports 2. Bleacher Report will have complete coverage of the weigh-in proceedings.
This Saturday, the UFC goes to Bangor, Maine, for UFC Fight Night 47: Bader vs. St. Preux. The main event features a light heavyweight bout between The Ultimate Fighter season eight winner, Ryan Bader, and the former Strikeforce standout, Ovi…
This Saturday, the UFC goes to Bangor, Maine, for UFC Fight Night 47: Bader vs. St. Preux. The main event features a light heavyweight bout between The Ultimate Fighter season eight winner, Ryan Bader, and the former Strikeforce standout, Ovince St. Preux.
Bader comes into the fight on a two-fight win streak, having earned unanimous decision victories over Anthony Perosh back in December and Rafael Cavalcante in June. In his last six fights, Bader is 4-2 with one Submission of the Night, but both losses by (T)KO.
St. Preux is on a five-fight win streak, dating back to his final fight in Strikeforce and all four of his fights in the UFC. Four of his wins on this streak have been finishes, two knockouts and two submissions. Since 2010, St. Preux is 13-1, with the lone loss having come against the No. 7 ranked middleweight, GegardMousasi.
Bader and St. Preux are two tough opponents, and it’s not going to be an easy night for either one. Let’s check out their keys to victory.
Ryan Bader: Utilize his Wrestling and Avoid Big Shots
St. Preux has finished his opponent in 12 of 16 wins. Five have come by submission—one to punches—and the other seven by (T)KO. Bader has lost four times in the UFC, twice by knockout and twice by submission. His chin is considered weak by many people, and a submission loss to Tito Ortiz will likely hang over his head for a long time.
St. Preux being effective with both his striking and submissions makes him a dangerous opponent anywhere—except on his back. In St. Preux‘s loss to Mousasi, Mousasi won every round by getting St. Preux down and controlling him on the ground. Ryan Bader, being a former Division I wrestler, should have the ability to do the same.
Bader just has to be sure not to get too aggressive going for takedowns, because if his chin really is weak, St. Preux could easily take advantage on a missed shot.
Ovince St. Preux: Avoid the Takedown
St. Preux could very easily win this fight, as long as he doesn’t end up with his back on the canvas. Bader has shown in the past that he can be both submitted and knocked out, and St. Preux has shown that he can do both of those things to almost anyone.
In Bader‘s last fight, he was able to beat Rafael Cavalcante by controlling him in the clinch and on the ground. There was a moment in the third round where Bader may have been rocked, but Cavalcante was unable to follow up. If St. Preux is able to rock Bader, he could easily score the finish.
If he doesn’t go for the knockout, then simply avoiding a Badertakedown could open up an opportunity for St. Preux to score a submission. Bader has been submitted with guillotine chokes twice, and St. Preux is sure to be aware of that and is likely to have been working on his guillotine.
As long as St. Preux can stay on his feet, he’s got a good shot in this fight.
Perhaps more than anything else, UFC Fight Night 47 has positioning going for it.
The Octagon makes its first trip to Maine on Saturday in the UFC’s first fight card in 21 days. By the measure of 2014’s jam-packed live event schedule, that’s basically …
Perhaps more than anything else, UFC Fight Night 47 has positioning going for it.
The Octagon makes its first trip to Maine on Saturday in the UFC’s first fight card in 21 days. By the measure of 2014’s jam-packed live event schedule, that’s basically an eternity. With a week’s worth of mostly bad news also clogging our timelines at the moment, it’s easy to get the impression fight fans are just going to, you know, want to watch some fights this weekend.
To that end, Saturday night looks just right. Despite a head-scratcher of a main event, this event serves up a handful of other interesting attractions.
But what will happen? Exactly? Glad you asked. Here, Bleacher Report MMA lead writers Chad Dundas and Jonathan Snowden take their best, boldest guesses…
It’s easy to feel sorry for a guy like Ryan Bader.
OK—scratch that—more accurately, I suspect it’s easy for fight fans to feel absolutely nothing for a guy like Bader.
As he approaches his Saturday showdown with Ovince St. Preux…
It’s easy to feel sorry for a guy like Ryan Bader.
OK—scratch that—more accurately, I suspect it’s easy for fight fans to feel absolutely nothing for a guy like Bader.
As he approaches his Saturday showdown with Ovince St. Preux at UFC Fight Night 47, the former Ultimate Fighter winner is likely viewed by most as an athlete whose best days have come and gone without him ever reaching his full potential.
We’ve already seen Bader tested against the best in his division and come up wanting. At 31 years old and 15 fights into his UFC career, he’s a fully known commodity—eternally kicking around the outskirts of the 205-pound top 10, with a fleet of A-listers like Alexander Gustafsson, Daniel Cormier and Anthony Johnson between him and anything resembling top contender status.
He’s still regarded as a viable member of the UFC’s roster, but nobody’s going to get overly excited about him. At this point, it’s tempting to cast him merely as a measuring stick for up-and-comers.
Any discussion of the light heavyweight pecking order—and we’ve been having a lot of those lately—casts Bader as an afterthought. An also ran. A nonfactor.
Honestly, that seems a bit unfair. It’s pretty easy to make the case that at this stage in his fighting life, Bader is being short-changed, unjustly overlooked and underestimated.
As of this writing, he’s going off as a slight favorite over St. Preux, in a fight met by widespread bemusement when it was announced as the main event of the Octagon’s first ever trip to Maine. With Gray Maynard vs. Ross Pearson slotted as the co-main event and a potential flyweight No. 1 contender bout relegated to the undercard, a scrap between two relatively off-the-radar light heavyweights seemed an odd, borderline desperate pick for top billing.
But that’s more of a commentary on the UFC’s unyielding live event schedule than a judgment of Bader or OSP. Truth is, this is a fine fight, though admittedly one that lacks the panache we’ve come to expect from “main event” contests.
St. Preux is riding a five-fight win streak—and is 13-1 dating back to Feb. 2010—but so far hasn’t been able to distinguish himself from the 205-pound pack. His last two fights have been pay-per-view curtain jerkers. In strict narrative terms, it would probably be most interesting for the division if he beats Bader and establishes himself as a legit player for the second half of the year and beyond.
Unfortunately, that might be a bit more of a long shot than the odds indicate.
Despite the fact Bader is largely regarded as lost property, he amounts to an enormous step up in competition for St. Preux. Though the stink of a shocking 2011 loss to Tito Ortiz has never quite dissipated, he’s earned his status as more than just a UFC gatekeeper, with wins over the likes of former UFC champ Quinton Rampage Jackson and Strikeforce titlist Rafael Cavalcante.
It bears repeating that, besides that fluky first-round choke-out by Ortiz at UFC 132, Bader has actually been pretty good. His other three career losses (he’s 17-4 overall) have come at the hands of Jon Jones, LyotoMachida and Glover Teixeira.
Hard to fault him for any of those, especially considering he looked on the verge of stopping Teixeira in Sept. 2013 before a careless mistake left him on the wrong end of one of the Brazilian’s powerful punching combinations. Teixeira used the victory to springboard into a title shot against Jones at UFC 172.
So while Baderhasn’t ever lived up to what we imagined might be possible for him when he won TUF Season 8, he shouldn’t be totally discounted as a potential future contender. He’s still got a few years left in his athletic prime, and while he’s not going to unseat Jones or Cormier from the top of the charts, he certainly still has the ability to be among the high-level players.
If Bader takes care of OSP this weekend, he should creep up near the top five, and a well-placed call-out of another light heavyweight luminary—Johnson and Gustafsson suddenly seem in need of engagements—could bring him back to relevance in a hurry.
He’ll have won three straight and six of his last eight. He could end the year looking a lot less like a guy who needs our sympathy.
When the UFC visits Bangor, Maine, on Saturday, there will be a handful of fights on the card with strong Fight of the Night potential.