With its 104th pay-per-view event, the UFC returns to Los Angeles featuring a main event in the Light Heavyweight division as champion Lyoto Machida takes on fellow Brazilian and challenger Mauricio "Shogun" Rua.
Machida, 31, will be making his first title defense and first appearance since dethroning then champion and fellow undefeated star Rashad Evans back in May at UFC 98. Machida will be looking to further establish the discipline of Machida Karate not to mention the "Machida Era" in the UFC Light Heavyweight division.
But he's going to have to do it by beating a very capable challenger in Rua, 27, whom presents a very formidable fighting style with his duo black belts in Muay-Thai and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Rua is capable of dominating the stand-up portion of a fight ala Anderson Silva or take you down and submit you ala BJ Penn. Prior to arriving in the UFC, Rua was widely considered the top 205 lb prospect after his dominance in Pride.
Certainly Rua's first year and a half in the UFC was a brutal disappointment to everyone: himself, his camp, the fans and the UFC brass. But since the Griffin fight and overcoming not one, but two ACL tears in his right knee, "Shogun" appears now to be the "Shogun" of 2006 -- a very dominating and imposing force. He controlled a game Mark Coleman, the veteran wrestler, back in January and then stopped Hall-of-Famer Chuck Liddell in the first round in April via TKO.
In the two fights alone we saw progression Rua's game from poor conditioning to solid conditioning, improved technical striking and aggression in the stand-up game as well as on the ground. He's tenacious and you better believe that he's going to give Machida a test that he has yet to encounter.
Also featured on the UFC 104 card is a heavyweight matchup between rising undefeated star Cain Velasquez (6-0) and veteran Ben Rothwell (30-6) of IFL fame who has finally broken through to the big show and wants to make his presence known.
Velasquez enters this fight after an impressive performance against Cheick Kongo in which he withstood some very hard shots from the imposing French-man and still managed to take the fight to the ground and dominate a much bigger fighter.
Against Rothwell, Velasquez will have to be more precise in his stand-up to minimize his errors while controlling Rothwell with his superior wrestling game. When he enters the Octagon on the 24th, he's going to be facing a fighter in Rothwell who has overcome a number of hardships in his life to get to this very point and he's going to be fighting with a great amount of emotion because of it.
The undercard bouts feature some talented fighters such as welterweight stud Anthony Johnson (7-2) who takes on Yoshiyuki Yoshida (11-3), lightweights Joe Stevenson (35-10) and Spencer Fisher (24-4) as they prepare to do battle and top middleweight contender Yushin Okami (24-4) as he takes on Chael Sonnen (24-10).
The General's Predictions:
Shogun by submission, 4th round Cain Velasquez by unanimous decision Gleison Tibau by TKO, 2nd round Joe Stevenson by submission, 3rd round Anthony Johnson by TKO, 2nd round Antoni Hardonk by TKO, 1st round Eric Schafer by unanimous decision Yushin Okami by submission, 2nd round
No comments:
Post a Comment