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UFC 134 Predictions

Filed under: UFCWill Anderson Silva improve to 14-0 in the UFC, or will Yushin Okami pull off one of the biggest upsets in MMA history? Can Shogun Rua avenge his loss to Forrest Griffin, or does Griffin have Rua’s number? Does Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira …

Filed under: UFC

Will Anderson Silva improve to 14-0 in the UFC, or will Yushin Okami pull off one of the biggest upsets in MMA history? Can Shogun Rua avenge his loss to Forrest Griffin, or does Griffin have Rua’s number? Does Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira have anything left, or is Brendan Schaub going to knock Big Nog into retirement? Those are the questions I’ll answer as I predict the winners at UFC 134.

What: UFC 134: Silva vs. Okami

When: Saturday, the Spike TV preliminaries begin at 8 PM ET and the pay-per-view starts at 9.

Where: HSBC Arena in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Predictions on the five pay-per-view fights below.

More Coverage: UFC 134 Fight Card | UFC 134 Results

Anderson Silva vs. Yushin Okami
Okami is the last man to defeat Silva: On Jan. 20, 2006, the two fought in the first round of a Rumble on the Rock tournament, and Silva was disqualified when he kicked Okami in the head on the ground. To the extent that their first meeting is relevant to their rematch, however, it should give Silva more confidence than it gives Okami: Silva was in control of the bout during all the stand-up exchanges until that unfortunate illegal kick the first time the fight went to the ground.

So what would Okami have to do to pull off the historic upset? The key for Okami would be to fight Silva the way Chael Sonnen fought Silva — except for the part where Sonnen got caught in a submission in the fifth round. Okami is a powerful grappler who has good takedowns and might just be able to do some of the same things to Silva that Sonnen did.

But Okami’s wrestling isn’t on the same level as Sonnen’s, and even if Okami is able to take Silva down, he’s going to have a hard time keeping Silva down. And Okami isn’t anywhere near Silva’s class as a striker. Is it possible that Okami could grind out a decision and become the new middleweight champion? Yes. Is it likely to happen? No. I think Silva wins by TKO.
Pick: Silva

Maurício Rua vs. Forrest Griffin
The co-main event is also a rematch, of Griffin’s upset victory over Rua at UFC 76. Going into that fight, most people thought Rua — a Pride wrecking machine making his UFC debut — would run through Griffin, who was very popular but known mostly for his stint on The Ultimate Fighter. Instead it was Griffin who finished Rua with a rear-naked choke in the third round.

Rua is again a big favorite this time around, as most people seem to think that Rua is healthier now than he was then, and that Griffin, at age 32, isn’t quite the fighter he once was. But I’m not convinced. I think Griffin’s size and strength is going to be tough for Rua to handle on the ground, and Griffin’s use of leg kicks will be very important to slowing Rua down. I see Griffin winning a hard-fought decision.
Pick: Griffin

Brendan Schaub vs. Antônio Rodrigo Nogueira
Nogueira has had a long and honorable MMA career spanning more than a decade, and he’s finally fighting in his native Brazil for the first time. So it would be great to see him put on a phenomenal performance.

Unfortunately, there’s not much reason to believe Nogueira has any phenomenal performances left in him. He’s been inactive for a year and a half, so ring rust may be a problem, and in his last fight he was knocked cold by Cain Velasquez. Nogueira was once legendary for his chin, but that knockout loss to Velasquez — as well as Nogueira’s TKO loss to Frank Mir at UFC 92 — has me thinking Schaub could put him to sleep.

Schaub is a former football player who only started fighting three years ago, so he’s got nothing close to the experience of Nogueira, but he’s strong as a bull and hits like a Mack truck. I expect Schaub to handle Nogueira, and as a longtime Minotauro fan, I just hope it’s not an ugly loss.
Pick: Schaub

Ross Pearson vs. Edson Barboza
Pearson won Season 9 of The Ultimate Fighter and has shown since then a real propensity for landing effective punches and putting on exciting fights. But Barboza is a different kind of striker, a guy whose leg kicks are legendary and who is capable of finishing opponents with his hands, his elbows or his knees. The 25-year-old Barboza is 8-0 and a rising star in the lightweight division, and he should earn his biggest victory to date against Pearson.
Pick: Barboza

Luiz Cane vs. Stanislav Nedkov
Win or lose, Cane’s fights usually end quickly: He’s been to the second round just twice in his 14-fight career. The 11-0 Nedkov is also a finisher, with five wins by technical knockout and four by submission, so don’t expect this fight to go the distance. I think Cane will welcome Nedkov to the UFC with a TKO win.
Pick: Cane

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UFC 134 a Homecoming for Brazilian Talent

Filed under: UFCFor as long as mixed martial arts has existed — and even before anyone used the term — Brazil has produced a wealth of fighting talent. But as a lucrative spectator market for the UFC, Brazil has lagged far behind the United States, n…

Filed under: UFC

For as long as mixed martial arts has existed — and even before anyone used the term — Brazil has produced a wealth of fighting talent. But as a lucrative spectator market for the UFC, Brazil has lagged far behind the United States, not to mention Canada and even some European countries that have never produced much in the way of MMA talent.

With UFC 134 taking place in Rio de Janeiro on August 27, however, the UFC thinks it may have finally reached the point where it can showcase its Brazilian fighters at home, and see them get as much recognition from Brazilian fans as they get in North America.

“It was very important for us — Brazil has exploded in popularity for the UFC,” said UFC President Dana White. “It’s a big deal.”

UFC 134 sold out the HSBC Arena, which frequently hosts concerts and will be the venue for basketball and gymnastics at the 2016 Olympics, on the first day that tickets were available. White said the UFC underestimated the demand for tickets in Brazil.

“We’re very excited it was a fast sellout — things sold out in an hour,” White said. “We were a little gunshy down there. We had a 14,000-seat arena down there and 350,000 people were online for tickets. We probably could have done a bigger arena.”

Fourteen Brazilians will participate in the 12-fight UFC 134 card, and one of them, former light heavyweight champion Shogun Rua, said Tuesday that he’s pumped about fighting back home, where he hasn’t fought since 2003, when he was 21 years old.

“I’m very happy to be fighting in Brazil,” Rua said. “I’m very motivated to do a good showing and to give something back to the fans who give me so much support, not only here in Brazil but all over the world.”

White said he believes recent fights featuring Brazilian stars, including the Anderson Silva vs. Vitor Belfort fight in February, have garnered more attention for the UFC than it has ever before received in Brazil. And he said he thinks Brazil represents a big step toward the UFC’s southern expansion.

“We’re doing a lot in Latin America and Brazil is our first big step,” White said.

One of the reasons there are so many great fighters from Brazil is that the culture has long been accepting of full-contact martial arts, whereas in other countries, there’s resistance to MMA.

“As you go into every market it’s different,” White said. “There’s no doubt about it: Brazil will be a zillion times easier than the UK and Europe have been. . . . And there’s so many talented guys that come out of there. Not just talented guys, literally icons of the sport come from Brazil. It’s the country where this thing started … it’s a fighting culture there. People get it and like it.”

And if the 14,000 fans at UFC 134 like it, the UFC will be back soon.

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MMA Top 10 Light Heavyweights: A Tough Call at No. 2

Filed under: UFC, Strikeforce, Rankings, Light HeavyweightsJon Jones is the undisputed champion of the light heavyweight division, but figuring out who deserves to be No. 2 at 205 pounds is tough.

Is it Rampage Jackson, who gets the next crack at Jone…

Filed under: UFC, Strikeforce, Rankings, Light Heavyweights

Jon Jones is the undisputed champion of the light heavyweight division, but figuring out who deserves to be No. 2 at 205 pounds is tough.

Is it Rampage Jackson, who gets the next crack at Jones’ title? Is it Shogun Rua, the previous champion? Is it Rashad Evans, who beat Jackson? Is it Lyoto Machida, who beat Evans? Is it Dan Henderson, who ran through the Strikeforce light heavyweight division and then beat an opponent who outweighed him by 16 pounds in Fedor Emelianenko?

Good arguments can be made for any of them. So who do I have at No. 2? Find out below.

Top 10 Light Heavyweights in MMA
(Editor’s note: The fighter’s ranking the last time we did light heavyweights are in parentheses).

1. Jon Jones (1): Jones was in Denver on July 19, his 24th birthday, for a press conference promoting his upcoming fight with Rampage Jackson. Jones said several times that now that he’s 24 he doesn’t think anyone should call him young anymore, but the reality is that Jones is both the best fighter in the division and the youngest in the Top 10. His age is an important part of why people are so excited about what he can do: He could be a long-reigning champion in a division that has seen a great deal of turnover at the top.

2. Rashad Evans (4): Evans’ impressive victory over Tito Ortiz at UFC 133 moves him back up to No. 2 in my book. Evans looked as good as he’s ever looked, and it was especially noteworthy that he looked physically stronger than he ever had before. The way he picked Ortiz up and slammed him down with a minute left in the first round was particularly impressive. Whether Jones or Jackson is the light heavyweight champion after their UFC 135 fight, Evans will be a very worthy opponent.

3. Shogun Rua (2): We’ll learn a lot about Shogun when he takes on Forrest Griffin at UFC 134. If Rua can avenge the loss to Griffin from four years ago and come out of the fight healthy, he’ll be in the mix (as Dana White likes to say) for a shot at the light heavyweight title some time in 2012. But Rua’s knees have given him so many problems that it’s hard not to wonder, even though he’s only 29, if he’s on the down side of his career.

4. Lyoto Machida (3): Machida’s decision to turn down a fight with Evans was a surprise, because Machida thoroughly whipped Evans when they fought two years ago. If Machida had accepted that fight and won, he’d probably be next in line for a title shot. Now he may be sidelined for an extended period of time, as most of the other top light heavyweights already have fights lined up.

5. Rampage Jackson (5): Jackson looked sluggish in his UFC 130 victory over Matt Hamill, and at age 33 he doesn’t seem to have the punching power he once had: In the last four years, Rampage has fought 23 rounds inside the Octagon, and other than his knockout of Wanderlei Silva at UFC 92, he’s never been particularly close to finishing anybody. If we’re going to see an upset of Jon Jones at UFC 135, we’re going to have to see a much better Rampage than we’ve seen recently.

6. Dan Henderson (6): Henderson is the Strikeforce light heavyweight champion, but his impressive win over Fedor Emelianenko was probably his last fight in Strikeforce: His return to the Octagon is likely coming soon. Machida would be a good opponent for him in his UFC return.

7. Forrest Griffin (7): Griffin will have a great chance to move up in the rankings when he takes on Shogun Rua at UFC 134. A win over Rua, whom Griffin has already beaten once, would vault Griffin into the Top 5 and probably put him only another win away from another shot at the light heavyweight title.

8. Phil Davis (8): A knee injury forced the 9-0 Davis to pull out of his scheduled UFC 133 fight with Evans, and there’s no word yet on when he’ll return to the Octagon. With five UFC wins in less than 14 months from February of 2010 to March of 2011, Davis had been building up a lot of momentum that this injury slowed down. But he’ll be back and quite likely fighting for the light heavyweight title by the end of 2012.

9. Thiago Silva (9): Silva is currently serving a one-year suspension for using a banned substance and cheating on his UFC 125 drug test. Some will drop him from the rankings for that, but Silva’s record (14-2 with 11 wins by knockout, two wins by submission and losses only to Evans and Machida) is strong enough that I don’t think you can put together a list of the Top 10 light heavyweights without him.

10. Rafael Cavalcante (10): The former Strikeforce champion, Feijao will face a largely untested opponent, the 4-0 Olympic wrestling silver medalist Yoel Romero, in his return to the cage on September 10.

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MMA Top 10 Pound-for-Pound: GSP, Aldo Miss a Chance to Move Up

Filed under: UFC, Rankings, Overall
Heading into UFC 129, I thought both welterweight champion Georges St. Pierre and featherweight champion Jose Aldo had a good chance of putting on the kind of performance that would move them up in the pound-for-poun…

Filed under: UFC, Rankings, Overall

Heading into UFC 129, I thought both welterweight champion Georges St. Pierre and featherweight champion Jose Aldo had a good chance of putting on the kind of performance that would move them up in the pound-for-pound rankings.

GSP did what he usually does and won a dominant unanimous decision over a good opponent in Jake Shields, but he didn’t do anything that makes him leapfrog Anderson Silva at the top of the list. And Aldo won a classic battle with Mark Hominick, but it wasn’t the kind of transcendent performance that could put him on top of the MMA world.

So as we review the Top 10 pound-for-pound fighters in mixed martial arts, there’s no change at the top.

Lyoto Machida Believes Different “Shogun” Rua Fought Jon Jones

It wasn’t long ago that everyone and their favorite keyboard (yes, including us), were falling over themselves to toss a heaping ton of praise on Jon Jones, after he demolished “Shogun” Rua at UFC 128 in March. After all, the 23 year-old-phenomenon hardly broke a sweat while dismantling the man that had beaten the man. […]

It wasn’t long ago that everyone and their favorite keyboard (yes, including us), were falling over themselves to toss a heaping ton of praise on Jon Jones, after he demolished “Shogun” Rua at UFC 128 in March. After all, the 23 year-old-phenomenon hardly broke a sweat while dismantling the man that had beaten the man. Remember the heralded Machida Era? And how Rua ended it with a series of ‘nighty-nighty’ right hands?

While there’s no questioning the fact that Jones is quickly approaching ‘baddest dude on the planet’ status, you don’t have to be a member of the “Shogun” Boosters Club to concede that Rua didn’t exactly look like his old self in the fight. The guy did spend almost a year on the DL with yet another knee injury. Well, Lyoto Machida recently offered his opinion to Sherdog.com on how Rua looked against Jones, and not surprisingly, he didn’t see the same dude that beat him down last May.

“Shogun is a tough guy…I know Shogun has more to show than that. Maybe he failed to bring his game or maybe he felt the pressure of defending the belt for the first time. As I’ve said before, there are other factors we don’t know about, other factors that may have interfered. They changed opponents on him. That can interfere with a fight. I have no doubt he could have fought better. I’m sure if Shogun was the same fighter he was when we fought in Los Angeles the fight would have been much more difficult for Jones…”

Guess we’ll get a better idea on this when Rua rematches Griffin this August.

MMA Top 10 Light Heavyweights: Any Stopping Jon Jones?

Filed under: UFC, Strikeforce, Rankings, Light HeavyweightsThe Jon Jones Era, as you’ve surely heard, has begun: Jones is the new UFC light heavyweight champion, and everyone who follows MMA agrees that he’s going to be the champion for a long, long ti…

Filed under: UFC, Strikeforce, Rankings, Light Heavyweights

The Jon Jones Era, as you’ve surely heard, has begun: Jones is the new UFC light heavyweight champion, and everyone who follows MMA agrees that he’s going to be the champion for a long, long time.

However, the light heavyweight division is so talented that it’s been nearly impossible for anyone to hold the belt for long: Chuck Liddell lost it to Rampage Jackson, who lost it to Forrest Griffin, who lost it to Rashad Evans, who lost it to Lyoto Machida, who lost it to Shogun Rua, who lost it to Jones. We’ve had seven different champions in the last four years, so why is everyone so sure that Jones is going to hold onto the belt for so long?

The biggest reason, I think, is Jones’ age. With the exception of Evans losing to Machida, every champion I mentioned above lost the belt to someone younger than him. But there aren’t any contenders on the horizon younger than the 23-year-old Jones. Not only is Jones already the best, but he’s going to keep getting better as the rest of the Top 10 light heavyweights in mixed martial arts get older.

So as I list the Top 10 light heavyweights below, I’ll talk about how I’d like their chances against Jones — even though I expect Jones to reign over all of them for a long time.