UFC 130 Musings at BetLM

RAMPAGE WINS, BUT WAS IT ENOUGH?

A cou­ple of for­tu­itous events found Quin­ton “Ram­page” Jack­son fight­ing for the right to chal­lenge UFC light heavy­weight Cham­pion Jonny “Bones” Jones. All he needed to do was defeat Matt Hamill in thrilling fash­ion to guar­an­tee the title shot that has eluded him since los­ing the strap to For­rest Grif­fin three years ago.

 Ram­page took care of part of the job. He defeated Hamill and did it with rel­a­tive ease. Unfor­tu­nately, it wasn’t the most excit­ing affair. In fact, the work­man­like effort against Hamill is the third con­sec­u­tive fight where Ram­page has been less than impressive.

Unlike in the pre­vi­ous two bouts, Ram­page was dom­i­nant this time around, leav­ing no doubt in anyone’s mind as to who was the bet­ter man. That sort of pos­i­tive trend should bode well for him in his next bout, whether against Jones or anyone else.

For what it is worth, I think Ram­page should be next up for Jones, despite the sleepy win. Why? He deserves it.

There are many, includ­ing Ram­page and this writer, who believe that he did enough to win the bout with Grif­fin. Worst case, it should have been a draw. Typ­i­cally, when a guy loses in close, con­tro­ver­sial fash­ion, he is granted an imme­di­ate rematch. Ram­page didn’t get one after his tough loss to Griffin.

Instead, he was sent back on the chal­lengers’ trail. Five fights and four wins later, it is time for Ram­page to receive an oppor­tu­nity to return to the pin­na­cle of the sport. Plus, Ram­page ver­sus Jones is one of the more mar­ketable bouts out there, par­tic­u­larly if one or the other begins a war of words, some­thing Ram­page immensely enjoys.

Of course, all that assumes that Rampage’s left hand is healthy enough to fight when Jones is ready to go. He revealed after the match that he com­peted with a frac­tured left hand, some­thing that is almost unthink­able in a sport where a standup killer like Ram­page lives and dies with his fists.

UFC Pres­i­dent Dana White needs to announce Jones’ oppo­nent soon so his com­pany can begin build­ing the pro­mo­tion for the bout. My guess is that it will be Ram­page. Then again, maybe Saturday’s sleepy effort opened the door for fel­low for­mer cham­pion Lyoto Machida. We will all know soon enough.

MIR SHOWS THAT HE IS STILL NEAR THE TOP OF THE HEAP

Roy Nel­son is nobody’s light lunch. Mix in the fact that he defeated Frank Mir in a grap­pling match, and Saturday’s “Las Vegas Bowl” was prob­a­bly a much tougher fight for Mir than most believe. Yet, Mir walked through Nel­son like a hot knife through half-melted butter.

The for­mer cham­pion still needs to fig­ure out how to deal with the true behe­moths of the divi­sion. He seems to have every­thing else on cruise control.

The win­ner of Junior dos San­tos ver­sus Shane Car­win will likely face Cain Velasquez at the end of the year. Unless he drops a fight in the interim, Mir should be next in line.

NELSON NEEDS TO GO SOUTH

Nel­son is one tough hom­bre. No doubt about it. Mir landed more vicious knees than I can remem­ber from any bout other than the two times that Wan­der­lei Silva sav­agely stopped Ram­page. Yet, “Big Coun­try” kept com­ing for­ward, swing­ing for the fences.

This was the sec­ond time in two fights that Nel­son expe­ri­enced a blud­geon­ing with­out really slow­ing down. If he wanted to prove to the world that he has pos­si­bly the best whiskers in the sport, mis­sion accom­plished. What he really proved, though, is that he is sim­ply too small to com­pete at the high­est lev­els of the heavy­weight division.

See­ing Nel­son and Mir stand next to each other high­lighted the point for me. The pair weighed the exact same amount at the pre-fight weigh-ins. Mir enjoys a three-inch height advan­tage, which is very sig­nif­i­cant. That dif­fer­en­tial paled in com­par­i­son to the mus­cu­lar­ity dif­fer­ence. I know. I know. Mixed mar­tial arts is not body­build­ing. Physique is rarely an indi­ca­tor of a man’s fight­ing ability.

Nev­er­the­less, I’m going to go back to some­thing the late, great Evan Tan­ner once told me dur­ing an inter­view. When he announced that he was drop­ping from 205 pounds to 185 pounds, I asked him why. His response per­fectly applies to Nel­son. Tan­ner said, “All else being equal, the big­ger man is going to win a fight more often than not, and I want to be the big­ger man going forward.”

The key to that phrase is “all else being equal.” Maybe Nel­son has the same skills as Mir — that is a big maybe. It is obvi­ous, though, that he can­not get into the same car­dio­vas­cu­lar shape, and there is no way on earth that he can match Mir in terms of speed and explo­sive power. The for­mer cham­pion is far and away the nat­u­rally big­ger man, and he dom­i­nated Nel­son on Saturday night.

Nel­son even admit­ted in the post-fight presser that Mir was dif­fi­cult to han­dle because of his size, remark­ing more than once that Mir was a “big guy.”

I don’t think I’m going out on much of a limb by sug­gest­ing that Nel­son should drop to 205 pounds. He eas­ily car­ries an extra 40 pounds of body fat on his torso. Hir­ing a sports-focused dieti­cian and some extra car­dio should eas­ily rid his body of those unwanted pounds in four-to-five months. If he gets to 220 pounds, he should be able to cut to 205 pounds with­out any worry.

Think of Nel­son at light heavy. He would still be on the short side, stand­ing only six-feet tall. But he won’t be tiny, like he is at heavy­weight. If he can eat three rounds of punches from Junior dos San­tos and a sim­i­lar amount of punches and knees from Frank Mir, it stands to rea­son that he will be able to han­dle what­ever guys like Jon Jones, Rashad Evans, Ram­page and other top light heav­ies throw at him. He should also be able to more effec­tively fight back, pos­si­bly earn­ing his way to the top of the division.

If Nel­son remains at heavy­weight, he will con­tinue to engage in fan friendly fights. He will also beat his fair share of oppo­nents. But I don’t see him enter­ing the upper ech­e­lon of the divi­sion at any point because of his phys­i­cal lim­i­ta­tions — height, reach, strength and nat­ural size — com­pared to guys like Mir, JDS, Brock Lesnar, Shane Car­win, and Travis Browne, among others.

STORY IN THE MIDST OF A FAIRY TALE RUN

Not many wel­ter­weights have the stones to ask for a bout with Thi­ago Alves. I guess that makes Rick Story unique.

Of those who would dare call out the “Pit­bull,” even fewer have the skills to defeat a moti­vated, focused Alves. Story did just that on Saturday night.

Fol­low­ing a win over Alves, nobody, and I mean nobody, would have the gall to call out Jon Fitch. We’re talk­ing about the one wel­ter­weight that nobody wants to fight. Fitch is a night­mare for oppo­nents because of his size and style. Yet, that is exactly what Story did at the UFC 130 post-fight presser.

I’ll admit that I expected Alves to walk through Story. That obvi­ously didn’t hap­pen. Story used an excel­lent game­plan to smother Alves’ strikes and score. And then he hung on for dear life in the third, as the Brazil­ian mounted a furi­ous assault, at least momentarily.

The win undoubt­edly places Story on the short list of legit­i­mate 170-pound title threats. That is a far cry from where most thought he would be two years after his UFC debut. Back on June 13, 2009, Story suf­fered a clear loss to John Hath­away in his UFC debut. That loss sparked a fire that con­tin­ues to burn white hot.

Wins against Brian Fos­ter, Jesse Lennox, Nick Osipczak, Dustin Hazelett, Johny Hen­dricks, and now Alves, in that order, fol­lowed the loss to Hath­away. This kid isn’t top 10 at this point. He has to be con­sid­ered top five.

Fitch’s cur­rent injury may pre­vent a fight with Story in the short term, par­tic­u­larly if Story wishes to keep busy and build off of his tremen­dous momen­tum. Josh Koscheck, depend­ing on his cur­rent recov­ery, or pos­si­bly Jake Shields might be just what the doc­tor ordered to deter­mine whether Story has the juice for a shot at GSP.

What­ever is next for the Wash­ing­ton native, he is in the midst of one heck of a run.

STANN IS THE NEW CAPTAIN AMERICA

I know that most asso­ciate the moniker “Cap­tain Amer­ica” with liv­ing leg­end Randy Cou­ture. The multi-division, multi-time UFC cham­pion car­ried that name to the Octa­gon for years. Yet, there is no fighter in the world more deserv­ing of that nick­name than Brian Stann.

Grad­u­ate of the United States Naval Acad­emy. Cap­tain in the United States Marine Corps. Vet­eran of live com­bat in Iraq. Recip­i­ent of the Sil­ver Star, the nation’s third high­est award for valor in combat.

And he is now one of the top mid­dleweights in the world, after defeat­ing Jorge San­ti­ago on Memo­r­ial Day Weekend.

Sounds like Cap­tain Amer­ica to me. All that is left for this Amer­i­can hero is to win a UFC cham­pi­onship. He still needs to improve on his wrestling base or guys like Chael Son­nen will give him fits. If he can shore up that part of his game and con­tinue improv­ing on his over­all skills, then who knows what might happen.

 

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