Shane Carwin, Junior Dos Santos Both Looking for the KO at UFC 131 at LinesMaker

Shane Carwin, Junior Dos Santos Both Looking for the KO at UFC 131

On Tuesday’s media call, UFC heavy­weights Shane Car­win and Junior dos San­tos made very clear what fans should expect to see when they meet in the Octa­gon on June 11, and it’s more or less what most peo­ple were already expecting.

“Let’s face it, both dos San­tos and I got to where we’re at right now by knock­ing peo­ple out on our feet,” Car­win said. “I think we’re both explo­sive fight­ers and I think the fans are going to…have a real treat at UFC 131 when it gets to that main event, know­ing both guys have knock­out power in their hands.”

Dos San­tos echoed the sen­ti­ment, adding that while he usu­ally feels most com­fort­able in the stand-up game, he’ll have to be more wary of Carwin’s strik­ing than he would have been of Brock Lesnar’s.

“Me and Shane Car­win are good stand­ing fight­ers,” dos San­tos said. “I believe so much in my box­ing. My box­ing bring me here until now, and I feel very com­fort­able fight­ing on my feet. So I will try to keep this fight stand­ing, but I’m ready to fight wher­ever I need.”

Not that it should come as a sur­prise that these two heavy­weights should con­tinue to look for the KO in this num­ber one con­tender fight, of course. Car­win and dos San­tos sport iden­ti­cal 12–1 records, and both owe more than half their vic­to­ries to knockouts.

But for both men, fac­ing an oppo­nent with dan­ger­ous strik­ing skills is a sig­nif­i­cant change from the orig­i­nal plan. Dos San­tos was ini­tially slated to face Lesnar, who’s known much more for his wrestling than for his stand-up. But when he with­drew due to a recur­ring bout of diver­ti­c­uli­tis, Car­win was pulled from his match-up with sub­mis­sions spe­cial­ist Jon Olav Einemo and shut­tled into bout with dos San­tos, where the stakes and the qual­ity of com­pe­ti­tion were instantly higher.

“I don’t know if there are any warm-up fights in the UFC,” Car­win said of Einemo. “You’re fight­ing a top group of guys in the world who have com­peted to get to that level and Jon was no excep­tion. He was basi­cally a gold medal­ist in jiu-jitsu and train­ing with one of the top strik­ing teams in the world. He was a very tough oppo­nent and just hasn’t run the same course that Junior dos San­tos has run through the UFC, so either way I had to make sure that I was pre­pared to come in there and fight at my best.”

Dos San­tos, who said his train­ing camp didn’t change much as a result of the oppo­nent switch, acknowl­edged that he will have to adopt a dif­fer­ent approach on fight night now.

“The strat­egy now is going to be a lit­tle bit dif­fer­ent, because with Brock I could use my box­ing more [eas­ily] for me with him. With [Car­win], now I have to be…a lit­tle more cautious.”

By the time they step into the cage, both men will have been out of action nearly a year, but for very dif­fer­ent rea­sons. After his loss to Lesnar in a UFC heavy­weight title fight last July, Car­win opted to have a neck surgery that kept him on the shelf for sev­eral months. Dos San­tos decided to take a coach­ing spot oppo­site Lesnar on ‘The Ulti­mate Fighter’ rather than wait for cur­rent champ Cain Velasquez to get healthy enough to defend his title.

Dos San­tos last fight was a deci­sion vic­tory over Roy Nel­son, but that was nearly ten months ago, which is “too much time with­out fights,” he said.

On the flip side, it’s prob­a­bly a lit­tle eas­ier to deal with the lay­off when you’re com­ing off a win. For Car­win, the last fight on his record is still a bit of a bit­ter mem­ory, though he said he tries to extract as many pos­i­tives as he can from it.

“I learned a lot. I learned some things about pick­ing my shots a lit­tle bit more when you get some­one hurt or get them down. I learned that I had to try and do some things with my nutri­tion and my car­dio — I don’t know if it was so much a car­dio issue, but we’ll see,” said Car­win, who added that he’s slimmed down to the 250-pound range thanks to a “mostly organic” diet given to him by Grudge Train­ing Cen­ter fighter and nutri­tion­ist Josh Ford.

As for the loss itself, Car­win seems to be doing his best to put it behind him.

“It’s part of life. I’m not going to dwell on it. There were plenty of pos­i­tives, but the one thing I can say is that I left every­thing in the Octa­gon. I was barely able to walk out of there. I didn’t hold back; I put every ounce of energy I had into that fight. When I walked out that cage door, I knew that in my mind. So I was okay with myself, I just knew that I had things to work on.”

Against dos San­tos, he con­fronts an oppo­nent with the abil­ity to test not only his stay­ing power, but also his box­ing skills and his chin. Both men seem well aware of the risks in this par­tic­u­lar fight, even if they have slightly dif­fer­ent opin­ions on who is favored more by a toe-to-toe strik­ing battle.

“We’re knock­out artists,” said Car­win. “That’s how Junior fights and that’s how I fight. I just believe in my power and my strength in box­ing, and he believes in his. We’ll find out come June 11th.”

Related Posts:

• Change of Oppo­nents? I’m Ready
• Fans Jeer Jack­son After UFC 130 Win
• Strikeforce’s Silva Apol­o­gizes for Lesnar Com­ments, Eyes Bar­nett for Grudge Match
• Ram­page Jack­son Not Excited with Matt Hamill for UFC 130
• With Con­tender Fight Shake-Up, Lesnar’s Mis­for­tune Could Be Carwin’s Gain

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