The Diaz vs. Miller Blueprint at LinesMaker

The Diaz vs. Miller Blueprint

East Ruther­ford, NJ (UFC/Newsfeed) – Michael DiSanto breaks down Saturday’s UFC on FOX 3 main event between Nate Diaz and Jim Miller…

Very few things are cer­tain when it comes to the UFC light­weight division.

Ben­son Hen­der­son is the cham­pion. Bar­ring injury, he will make the first defense of his crown later this year against the man he snatched it from, Frankie Edgar.

Beyond that, lit­tle is cut in stone. For exam­ple, it is nearly impos­si­ble to state with cer­tainty who sits in the num­ber one con­tender spot. Is it Anthony Pet­tis, the last man to defeat Hen­der­son? What about for­mer cham­pion and future Hall of Famer BJ Penn? Don’t pay any atten­tion to his retire­ment talk. This guy will fight again. I’m as cer­tain of that as death and taxes. What about Strike­force cham­pion Gilbert Melen­dez, who is one of the most tal­ented light­weights on the planet not cur­rently com­pet­ing in the UFC? Some would actu­ally argue that he is the best of the best, period.

Of course, we can­not for­get peren­nial con­tenders Nate Diaz and Jim Miller. The pair will square off on in the main event of the UFC’s third live broad­cast on FOX this Sat­ur­day night. Many believe that the win­ner will move to the head of the cham­pi­onship chal­lenger queue. A bor­ing win prob­a­bly won’t “get ‘er done,” to quote Larry the Cable Guy. If, how­ever, the win­ner scores a deci­sive vic­tory or sur­vives a thrilling back-and-forth war, then I def­i­nitely agree with the masses. The win­ner will almost cer­tainly stand next in line.

A likely title elim­i­na­tor on net­work tele­vi­sion in prime­time. How is that for pres­sure? Pretty intense, isn’t it?

Many fight­ers cave in the face of such pres­sure. They go out and fight not to lose, rather than fight­ing to win. It makes for dis­as­trous television.

While I can­not guar­an­tee any­thing, it seems extremely unlikely that Diaz and Miller will do any­thing other than let it all hang out in front of mil­lions of view­ers in a des­per­ate attempt to secure their first shot at a UFC cham­pi­onship. The sta­tis­tics back up that claim, too.

Diaz is one of the most dec­o­rated post-fight award win­ners in UFC his­tory. More than half of his 15 trips to the Octa­gon resulted in an “of the night” bonus, mak­ing him one of the most thrilling fight­ers in the sport today. Miller doesn’t quite rise to Diaz’s level, in terms of fan-friendly out­ings, but he is no slouch. One quar­ter of his UFC bouts earned him a lucra­tive and career-enhancing post-fight bonus.

It’s no acci­dent that these guys are head­lin­ing UFC on FOX 3. UFC Pres­i­dent Dana White expects it to be a barn­burner, with the win­ner being per­fectly posi­tioned to present him­self to the world as the next in line for the win­ner of Henderson-Edgar II.

This fight is extremely easy to break down. It is the quin­tes­sen­tial striker ver­sus grap­pler bout, with a twist.

There is no doubt that Diaz wants to keep the fight on the feet. His standup game, though extremely unortho­dox, is one of the most effec­tive in the divi­sion. He is basi­cally a car­bon copy of his older brother Nick. Nate walks down oppo­nents from a south­paw stance. He paws with both hands, reach­ing out as if he is try­ing to grasp his opponent’s wrists. Then, seem­ingly out of nowhere, he turns a paw into a slap­ping shot.

Nor­mally, slap­ping shots are inef­fec­tive. The Diaz broth­ers have some­how fig­ured out how to turn those shots into whip­ping, effec­tive punches. Nei­ther has true one-punch knock­out power. They instead swarm oppo­nents and over­whelm them with activity.

Nate absolutely wants to do that against Miller. His game plan is to use non-stop offense as a way to defend. He wants to keep his hands mov­ing and com­pletely for­get about kicks, unless they are at the end of punches. That is OK because Diaz isn’t much of a kicker in the first place. He is a tech­ni­cally bril­liant brawler who uses unyield­ing pres­sure to break an opponent’s will before break­ing his body.

Miller, by con­trast, is more of a reac­tionary fighter, rather than an aggres­sive preda­tor. He has ser­vice­able standup, but his bread and but­ter is get­ting foes to the ground and either beat­ing them up or, far more likely, using his ground-and-pound attack to force his oppo­nent to give up his back to try and escape the onslaught and then sink­ing in a choke. He did exactly that in his last fight.

Fac­ing the ultra-explosive and always enter­tain­ing Melvin Guil­lard, Miller had to wade through extremely deep waters after get­ting dom­i­nated on the feet early in the first round. But before the round ended, he found a way to get it to the ground and he used his impres­sive ground skills to secure a sub­mis­sion through supe­rior ground con­trol and excel­lent grap­pling technique.

A black belt under Jamie Cruz, Miller is a vastly under­rated sub­mis­sion spe­cial­ist. Most con­sider him a wrestler first. I dis­agree. I view him as a top-focused ground fighter, one who equally blends wrestling, BJJ and ground-and-pound. His major weak­ness, how­ever, remains both his standup and his inabil­ity to really offer dan­ger­ous sub­mis­sions from his back against top opponents.

It stands to rea­son that Diaz will seek to exploit the first of those weak­nesses, but won’t have the take­down chops to try and take advan­tage of the sec­ond. Diaz will almost cer­tainly want to use his tremen­dous height and reach advan­tages to keep the action on the out­side in order to help avoid the take­down. If the take­down comes, he won’t panic. That is the twist. Diaz is a black belt under Cesar Gra­cie, so he is one of the more com­fort­able fight­ers from his back in the division.

I will actu­ally take that one step fur­ther. Diaz has one of the most spec­tac­u­lar offen­sive guards in the divi­sion. He isn’t intim­i­dated by being on his back against anyone.

The real­ity, though, is he has strug­gled from his back with guys who posses great top games and very good sub­mis­sion defense. Joe Steven­son and Clay Guida both fit that descrip­tion, and they each ground out vic­to­ries over the for­mer real­ity tele­vi­sion star. Thus, it is tough to imag­ine him hav­ing suc­cess from his back against a top-focused fighter like Miller, who, as men­tioned above, is also a black belt.

Miller has only three losses in his pro­fes­sional career. All three came against supe­rior wrestlers – Frankie Edgar, Gray May­nard and Ben­son Hen­der­son. He has faced many, many supe­rior strik­ers, and has defeated each of them. That sug­gests that he should be able to pass the Diaz test, since the Stock­ton native is nowhere near Miller in terms of wrestling skills.

I’m not so sure. Diaz presents a dif­fer­ent sort of standup game than any­thing that Miller has ever seen before. He doesn’t over­com­mit, like Guil­lard did. He is rarely out of posi­tion. And he is becom­ing bet­ter and bet­ter at incor­po­rat­ing his sprawl into his boxing.

If Diaz is able to keep the fight off the ground, he wins easy. Sure, Miller could win by shock­ing knock­out. He blasted Kamal Shalorus out of there with a series of punches fol­lowed by a knee just over a year ago. Any­one can get knocked out on any given night in mixed mar­tial arts. But Diaz isn’t Shalorus. And Miller isn’t win­ning this fight by knock­out – not on the feet, at least.

Can I see Diaz win­ning by slick sub­mis­sion from his back or maybe catch­ing a stand­ing guil­lo­tine? Sure. A Cesar Gra­cie black belt has the abil­ity to win any fight by sub­mis­sion if an oppo­nent makes a mis­take. It just isn’t likely, because Miller is extremely good from the top.

This fight is a tough fight to call, when it is all said and done. All I know for cer­tain is that it has all the ingre­di­ents of a great fight. If forced to pick, I’m cur­rently lean­ing toward Diaz. He has more tools in his arse­nal, and he is arguably com­ing off the two most impres­sive per­for­mances of his pro­fes­sional career – utter dom­i­na­tions of Takanori Gomi and Don­ald Cerrone.

Then again, when I started writ­ing this piece a cou­ple of hours ago, my mind was lean­ing toward Miller, a guy who has only lost once in his last nine fights. And that was to reign­ing cham­pion Hen­der­son. If he can get Diaz to the ground and keep him there, this could be one of the more intrigu­ing and fast-paced ground bat­tles of the year.

Maybe tomor­row I’ll lean toward a draw. Who knows?

BetLM's sports betting news features unique sports betting articles as well as current sports news compiled from leading wire services. This arti­cle was dis­trib­uted by Syn­di­cated Sports news wire and aggre­ga­tion ser­vice for review. For more UFC news see: The Diaz vs. Miller Blue­print.

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