Tag: UFC on Fox

Filed under: UFC, UFC on FOX

Los Angeles — Despite the magnitude of the UFC on FOX event this Saturday night in Anaheim, UFC president Dana White kept it simple and direct at Wednesday afternoon’s press conference to promote the show. No supporting cast. No big procession to mark the big occasion. Just the two people who mattered, and the one man willing to shout from the rooftops about how important it all is.

Right across the street from the Staples Center in downtown L.A., walled in by the trendy bars and restaurants of the L.A. Live complex, White stood flanked by a couple of men whose dented faces and misshapen ears were enough to tell you that they hadn’t come down here for a screen test, and squinted into the sun as he declared that what we were looking at was the ingredients for “without a doubt, the biggest fight in UFC history.”

At least, that’s what he’s hoping for. It’s what he’s betting on, and why, White said, he chose heavyweight champ Cain Velasquez and Junior dos Santos to lead the charge in the UFC’s network TV debut.

“If you’re in this position where it is the biggest fight in UFC history, the biggest moment for the sport of mixed martial arts, these are the two guys you want to step in there and go out and fight,” said White.

Of course, while Velasquez and dos Santos might make for a great pairing in the cage, they don’t seem to be the UFC’s best and brightest when it comes to selling a fight. Maybe it’s that both are just too easy-going, too agreeable. Neither is known as a man of many words, and both are too respectful to reach into the pro wrestling bag of tricks for snappy one-liners and stinging insults.

For his part, Velasquez was bolstered by the support of the Hispanic fans who had come out for the event, drawing cheers when he thanked “La Raza” for their support, but mostly relying on White to play up that angle for him in typical fight promoter fashion.

After running down the bullet points of Velasquez rise to stardom, White called his heavyweight champ “a testament to the American dream…where somebody can go out there and work hard and focus and he really is that story. I don’t care if you’re Mexican, American, German, or Puerto Rican, man, I don’t know how you can’t love Cain Velasquez and his story.”

Velasquez, not surprisingly, kept it slightly more low-key.

“I represent hardworking people,” he said. “That’s what my family is and that’s what I’ve grown up around. Mexicans are hardworking people. That’s what it means to me.”

Not that dos Santos was without his supporters, however. Even after it was suggested to him that he might find himself in unfriendly territory inside the Honda Center, small, but passionate chants of “Cigano! Cigano!” broke out among a few fans.

“I think for sure there’s going to be a lot of people rooting for Cain on Saturday night, but I know I’m going to get a lot of people rooting for me too, in the whole world,” said dos Santos. “That’s the energy I will bring with me inside the cage and use in the fight.”

A question from one enthusiastic fan about which hand dos Santos planned to knock the champ out with drew boos from the mostly pro-Velasquez crowd, but merely seemed to confuse dos Santos at first, before he replied, “I have two hands for a reason…but I like this one,” as he held up his right.

Another fan told Velasquez that his achievements made him proud to be Mexican, which seemed genuinely touching before he quickly followed it up with a slightly unreasonable request to walk to the cage with the champ’s entourage on Saturday night.

“I don’t think we can do that,” said a visibly uncomfortable Velasquez.

But White, who’d already agreed to give another fan tickets to the promotion’s upcoming Toronto event immediately after telling fans not to ask him for tickets, dismissed such practical concerns easily.

“Yeah, we’ll do it, dude,” he said.

Maybe it was the sunshine getting to the UFC president. Maybe he’s just feeling so good about the upcoming network debut, he’s become a soft touch for increasingly demanding fans. Or maybe sometimes all you have to do is ask and the rest takes care of itself.

As for White, he’s already made clear what he’s hoping for out of Velasquez and dos Santos when FOX pulls back the curtain on Saturday night. Whether he too will get what he wants remains to be seen.

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Filed under: UFC, UFC on FOX

It’s difficult to tell whether Junior dos Santos truly appreciates the magnitude of what’s about to happen to him on Saturday night. Though the Brazilian heavyweight has swiftly picked up the English language like something out of a Rosetta Stone ad, his grasp of American culture might still be a tad hazy.

After all, if someone told you that you were about to appear on Brazil’s Globo network, would you have any idea what that meant? So it is with dos Santos, who has heard enough by now to know that his UFC heavyweight title fight against Cain Velasquez on FOX is a very big deal, but still seems unclear about the exact ramifications of it all.

“I have no idea what that means for sure yet,” dos Santos told MMA Fighting on Tuesday afternoon. “I know it’s going to be huge for our sport, for all of MMA, and for the UFC. I’m just happy to be here and I want to do my best to win this fight.”

What it means, of course, is that dos Santos is about to become a significant part of MMA history. The sport has had primetime network TV exposure in the past, but nothing like this. As if fighting for a UFC title wasn’t enough, dos Santos is about to help the UFC expose its product to millions of viewers, many of whom will likely have never watched an entire MMA bout before. Talk about pressure.

Because dos Santos’ meeting with the champ is the only fight scheduled for Saturday night’s hour-long broadcast, the stakes couldn’t be higher for this fight. If it’s a dud, the whole sport may be judged by it. If it’s a thriller, dos Santos and Velasquez will likely be heroes not just to their bosses at the UFC, but to the multitudes of other pro MMA fighters — present and future — who are hoping that a successful debut on FOX will be the rising tide that lifts all ships.

“I know it’s an important show, it’s an important fight, for me and the whole of MMA, but I’m feeling no pressure,” he said. “Actually, I’m feeling the same pressure that I had for other fights. … For me, it’s going to be the same thing. I’m really happy with where I am now, fighting for the title, and it’s more important than everything. I will keep my focus on the fight, on Cain Velasquez, and I’ll try not to think about that other stuff.”

It’s a smart approach, since Velasquez’s non-stop motor will probably provide dos Santos with plenty to think about once the cage door closes. The champion is far from the biggest or strongest man in the heavyweight division, but what he lacks in size he has more than made up for with speed and pace.

Once the former All-American wrestler gets started, he doesn’t stop. He hardly even slows down, and there aren’t many big men in the sport who can keep up with him. To make sure that he’s one of the few who can go step-for-step and blow-for-blow with the champ, dos Santos had his conditioning coach adjust his training, he said.

To prepare for a fast-paced title fight that could, at least theoretically, go five rounds, dos Santos never sparred less than six rounds in training, he said. And while UFC president Dana White once criticized him for beating up on opponents early and then coasting in the later rounds, the Brazilian now says he’s “more prepared for this fight, and I train a lot to keep fighting like in the first round for the whole [fight].”

“Cain Velasquez has really good stamina. For the heavyweight division, it’s very different and that makes him very dangerous for this division. But you know, he seems like an unstoppable guy, and that’s going to be my challenge. I’m going to do my best to stop him.”

And how does he plan to do that, exactly? Fortunately for dos Santos (or maybe unfortunately, depending on how you think about it), he’s not one of those fighters who needs to keep his game plan much of a secret. He wants to stay off the mat against the decorated wrestler and put his boxing skills to work, and he doesn’t much care who knows it.

“I don’t know how the fight will be, but I would love to fight standing with him,” dos Santos said. “I think he’s going to try and take me down and make his ground-and-pound. He’s very good at ground-and-pound and I think he will try to do that. But I’m going to try very hard to keep this fight standing, because I want to knock him out and I will try my best to knock him out on Saturday.”

It’s a feat that none of Velasquez’s other opponents have accomplished, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be done. Whether it ends via KO or not, dos Santos insisted, “I will win the title. I’m really confident [that] I will be the heavyweight champion on Saturday.”

He’s known nothing but success so far in the UFC, but a win would vault him to heights that even dos Santos seems incapable of imagining just yet.

As he put it, “When I started, I had dreams to fight in the UFC and be one of the best fighters in the world one day. But I never thought I could be here at this point right now. I’m just enjoying everything. I’m really prepared for this fight, and for sure it’s going to be huge.”

How huge? That’s a question still waiting for an answer.

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