Big MMA comings and goings in the past week, between new signings and fights being made, as well as last Saturday’s Strikeforce card. Let’s get right down to it.
In arguably the biggest news of last week, Alistair Overeem has signed with the UFC and he will be fighting a returning Brock Lesnar on December 30. To the casual fan, the biggest part of that is the return of Lesnar after another potentially career threatening bout of diverticulitis. It’s a great fight to introduce Overeem to UFC fans and it pits two behemoths against each other. It’s like Thor vs. the Incredible Hulk. Its also a win-win for Zuffa. If Lesnar wins and looks good doing so, he beats a highly regarded heavyweight and is reinserted in the title picture. If the Reem wins and does so decisively, he beats the company’s top draw and is the next contender for the heavyweight title. While this is a winnable fight for Brock due to his superior wrestling, I don’t think he will win. He has mediocre striking and due to that, his takedowns are set up poorly. Overeem isn’t Frank Mir or Randy Couture; he can’t just be hurled around. Lesnar reacts poorly to getting hit and Overeem is a K-1 kickboxing champion. If Cain Velasquez can knock Brock around, imagine what Overeem can do. Plus, the Reem has a nasty guillotine choke or Uberknee just waiting for Lesnar to shoot for one of those chest high takedown attempts he goes for after getting punched. However, if Lesnar can get it to the ground, his superior cardio and brutal ground and pound can get him through this. Still, as of right now I think Overeem takes this with a first round TKO. The combination of Overeem’s power striking and Lesnar looking vulnerable and coming back from a long layoff will be too much.
The other biggest story this week was the upheaval at the top of the UFC 136 card. Georges St. Pierre is no longer fighting Nick Diaz and is instead facing Carlos Condit. Meanwhile BJ Penn is fighting Diaz rather than Condit. This all came to pass after Diaz missed two flights to Las Vegas for a press conference to formalize the fight and didn’t return several of Dana White’s calls. While I would have liked to have seen GSP and Diaz to see how St. Pierre reacts to Diaz’s smack talk and technically sound boxing and jiu jitsu, I think that Condit may make a better fight. He has better takedown defense and fights hard, hard enough that I think he has a better chance of finishing St. Pierre than anyone he has faced in a while. And the only real way to beat him is by finishing him. Georges can go five rounds easily and his style lends itself to decision wins. On the other side of it, BJ Penn and Nick Diaz should be one of the more exciting fights of the year. Both have great boxing and BJJ and neither man shies away from a scrap. I think it can go either way. BJ is the more talented fighter overall, but Diaz has much better cardio. I lean towards Penn, but it could go either way. Regardless, whoever wins this should be next in line for a title shot. If GSP and Penn both win however, I would just go to the GSP-Silva superfight route instead because Baby Jay can’t beat Georges. If Diaz wins, I might still go with GSP-Silva since Nick flaked out on the last fight and the Silva fight needs to happen. If Condit wins, anything goes. If I was forced to pick winners, I would go with Condit and Penn. In the future, I’ll go into further detail about why I think GSP loses. I may even discuss Nick Diaz flaking out on the biggest fight of his career.
The final match of the Strikeforce Heavyweight Grand Prix is set, as Josh Barnett (the favorite in his side of the bracket) will face Daniel Cormier (an injury replacement for Overeem) at some undetermined point in the future. For Barnett, his path was easy. He outgrappled Brett Rogers in the first round earlier this year and then outgrappled Sergei Kharitonov, winning both fights by submission. I don’t know who Cormier beat in his injury replacement fight, but he knocked out Bigfoot Silva impressively to advance. This is an interesting fight, one that could make Cormier a legit heavyweight with a shot at contending in the UFC next year or give the blacklisted Barnett another shot in the company he was tossed from nearly a decade ago. Cormier is the better wrestler of the two, but Barnett has size and experience on his side. Of course, this is not the fight that Strikeforce had planned on. They originally set up the brackets so that we could see some combination of Overeem, Werdum, and Fedor square off against Barnett. Unfortunately, their brackets yielded a dud in the Reem-Werdum match, Fedor was blasted by Bigfoot Silva, and then Overeem was forced out of the tournament. Still, this should be a good one if it ever happens. One has learned never to accept things from Strikeforce at face value, especially when their erratic scheduling is paired with Zuffa cherrypicking the promotion’s best fighters. That could include one or both of the finalists in the GP to help boost a sagging heavyweight division.
That does it for this installment. Feel free to comment on anything that catches your eye. Stay tuned for UFC 135 predictions next week.
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