Total-MMA.com

By Lee Casebolt

Now you’ve had a week to think about Penn vs. Sherk and Shamrock vs. Le, and you are, no doubt, quivering with anticipation over both fights. But wait, fight fan, there’s more. Much, much more. Well, ok, just a few more. There’s a welterweight rematch, a battle of the two best middleweights in the game, and a heavyweight scrap that’s going to annoy a lot of people. Let’s take a look.

Georges St. Pierre vs. Matt Serra, UFC Welterweight Title

2007 was a year of upsets, but none were bigger than Matt Serra knocking out Georges St. Pierre. Forget the fact that GSP was (and is) indisputably the best 170lber on the planet. Forget that he’d just wrecked Matt Hughes, as dominant a fighter as the UFC has ever seen. Forget that Matt Serra was “just a reality show winner”. Remember that Matt Serra was (and is) a blown up lightweight groundfighting specialist who, up til last April, had never knocked out any opponent in his career. And he stops GSP in the first round? What kind of world is this?

It’s the kind of world where anything can happen, and that’s why we love it. Matt Serra was the ultimate underdog, a capable but unspectacular fighter sporting a respectable but unintimidating 8-4 record facing a man who’d only lost one fight, and that to the then-peerless Hughes. St. Pierre had crushed Hughes in a rematch. He’d decisioned BJ Penn and dominated Karo Parisyan, both of whom had come out on top when facing Matt Serra. GSP had outwrestled Sean Sherk and Matt Hughes, outgrappled Jason Miller and Karo Parisyan, and outstruck basically everyone on his record. He was a naturally bigger, more athletic fighter with a far broader skill set. What did he have to fear from Matt Serra?

Unexpectedly heavy hands. If you watched Matt Serra fight Karo Parisyan, the early exchange with GSP looked eerily familiar. Parisyan recovered to pound out a decision; GSP didn’t get that opportunity. Serra poured on the pressure and, against all expectations, won himself a world title.

A world title he never got to defend. Scheduled to face Matt Hughes in a television-fueled grudge match, Serra was injured in training and forced to bow out of the contest. This, of course, led directly to Hughes/GSP 3 for the interim welterweight title, one of the great beatdowns of modern times, and Georges St. Pierre, two time (sort of) Welterweight Champion of the World.

Look, nothing’s changed here. GSP is still bigger, faster, stronger, and a better all around fighter. Serra should, by all rights, get wrecked in the first, and it shouldn’t even be close. But it took a long string of unexpected, counterintuitive, downright unlikely events to get us to this fight in the first place. Matt Serra winning a second bout is probably the most unlikely of all. Which, in the crazy world of MMA, almost makes him the favorite.

Almost.

Anderson Silva vs. Dan Henderson, UFC Middleweight/Pride Welterweight Title Unification

Bill Thompson has recently written about the value of title unifications in MMA, and it’s been a pet issue of mine for almost a decade now. If the UFC has a champion, and EliteXC has a champion, and so does Shooto, and there are still a couple of Pride belts floating around, not to mention a few dozen other organizations of wildly varying credibility, are there really any world champions? Good new, MMA fans. Silva is, officially, the Cage Rage World Middleweight Champion, in addition to his UFC title. Dan Henderson holds the equivalent of the middleweight title for the late, lamented Pride organization. The winner of this bout will have as strong a claim as anyone in the sport to being a true champion of the world.

Some of you don’t care about that. That’s fair. You just want to see the best fighters in the world putting on the best fights possible, without worrying about shiny pieces of tin, and I can respect that. I’ve got good news for you, too. This is, arguably, the best possible action fight available amongst top five middleweights. Unlike Shamrock/Le, this bout features two elite, experienced competitors in their respective primes. It’s been a long, long time since either man had a boring fight. Both are adept at all ranges. Silva is probably the more technically adept (except, obviously, as a wrestler), while Henderson is probably stronger. Silva is faster.

Henderson’s been tested in championship rounds. Silva finishes opponents too quickly to get to championship rounds. Henderson’s remarkably adept at avoiding punishment, even in the worst positions. Silva’s takedown defense has improved remarkably, and Henderson loves to stand and bang. Both are incredibly dangerous in the clinch. There is, basically, no realistic way to predict how this fight will go. Piece of advice? Don’t even try. Sit down, grab a beverage of your choice, and enjoy the action.

On top of whatever legitimacy this fight brings to the winner as a champion, the victor here would have to be considered the best middleweight in the world. Neither Robbie Lawler nor Matt Lindland, the other contenders to that status, will have defeated an opponent the quality of either Henderson or Silva. There’s no story here, like there is with GSP/Serra. There’s just two men entering the cage to decide who’s the best middleweight in the world. Along the way, they’ll probably have the best fight of the year. If you can’t get behind that, you should probably quit MMA altogether.

Tim Sylvia vs. Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira, UFC Interim Heavyweight Title

Hey, the title says “care,” not “like”.

This weekend’s headliner comes out of Randy Couture taking his belt and going home. To be honest, I don’t blame him. I fully support the right of every fighter in MMA to take whatever steps he (or she) can to ensure the maximum possible rewards for a career likely to be brief, painful, and not overly remunerative.

Still, there’s some understandable disappointment among MMA fans. Not long ago, we were pretty sure ZUFFA was going to give us Randy Couture vs. Fedor Emelianenko, and we’d find out who the best heavyweight fighter on the planet really is. For a number of reasons, most of them accompanied by dollar signs, that fight has failed to materialize and in its place we have a contest between two men, Sylvia and Nogueira, who’ve been pummeled in lopsided bouts against Couture and Emelianenko, respectively. On top of that, it’s a battle for an “interim” title, and virtually nobody actually thinks Couture’s really coming back any time soon. You may be forgiven for feeling let down.

And you feel all the more let down because it’s Tim Sylvia. Nobody seems to like the big guy, not even his teammates. Big Dim, he’s called. A talentless load who wins boring decisions by doing slightly more than the absolutely nothing his opponents do, and accomplishes that only because he’s eleven feet tall.

What a bunch of crap.

Talentless loads don’t win a UFC world title. They certainly don’t win two of them. And if being ridiculously tall was enough to be a champion in MMA, we’d be discussing the glorious reigns of Corey Hill, Kendall Grove, and Gan McGee. The fact of the matter is, no matter how much you boo him, Sylvia is the best heavyweight remaining in the UFC. Not Andrei Arlovski, who Sylvia’s taken, two fights out of three. Not Brandon Vera, who got completely shut down in his bout with the Maine-iac. Not Gabriel Gonzaga, who’s followed up his highlight reel knockout of Mirko Filopovic with disappointing TKO losses to Couture and Fabricio Werdum. Not Werdum, who accomplished nothing of note in a lackluster decision loss to Arlovski and looked horrible in the first round against Gonzaga.

And not, by any stretch of the imagination, Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira. Nogueira is everything Tim Sylvia is not. He’s an undersized heavyweight who stops bigger opponents like Bob Sapp. He’s a technical wizard on the ground and in marvelous physical condition. And for these qualities, he’s a hero to hardcore MMA fans.
Unfortunately, he’s going to be dwarfed by Sylvia. While Nogueira is, arguably, the better boxer, he hasn’t got remotely the power of Sylvia. Nogueira is a horrible wrestler, and Sylvia is, defensively at least, a pretty good one. What does this mean? That Nogueira’s BJJ skills are completely irrelevant, for one thing. For another, it means that Nogueira has no realistic way to win this fight. Watch the first round of Nogueira/Fliopovic or the third Fedor fight and see what happens when Nogueira faces a stronger opponent he can’t take down.

Will it be pretty? Probably not. Heayweight bouts rarely are, and Sylvia bouts even more rarely so. Nogueira has an incredible chin and more heart than is probably good for him – Sylvia will have to put him out, he won’t quit. You will probably hate the way Sylvia paws repeatedly at Nogueira’s face with his slow, lazy jab. You’ll hate even more how often it finds the mark, and how rarely Nogueira counters effectively. While you’re busy hating, though, as is your right as a fan, I ask you to remember this – that Sylvia wasn’t near 100% when he took Couture five rounds, and that one of Fedor’s conditions for signing with ZUFFA was not fighting Tim Sylvia. There’s a chance that Sylvia is not only the best heavyweight in the UFC, but in MMA as a whole. Try and appreciate that on some level in between the boos. And stay away from high places and sharp objects when Bruce Buffer says “three time Heavyweight Champion of the World, Tim ‘The Maine-iac’ Sylvia”!”