I’ve been waiting so long for this match-up to finally happen. Over the last 12-18 months, Cain Velasquez has been touted as the can’t-miss prospect to work his way through the heavyweight division and eventually be the ultimate challenger for Brock Lesnar. Velazquez all proved to all the experts that he was worth the hype and he finally gets his shot at the strap tonight in Anaheim in the main event of UFC 121.
I would normally give you a winner and what I would bet on, but to me, this fight has too many variables that go either one way or the other. It’s a fight that I’m just going to enjoy because of the competition and because I have a pick on the line. So, I decided that we should take a quick look on a couple of ways in which both guys will choose to try and win the fight.
Brock Lesnar
Brock will go back to what has got him to the dance in the first place. He’ll definitely look to use his superior wrestling skills, take him to the ground and use that massive 265 pound frame to ground and pound him to a victory. The strength and size advantage for Brock is something that just can’t be overlooked.
He’ll also want to do this because we’ve never seen Velazquez in a spot where he has to defend on his back for an extended period of time. The experience factor will be big as well. How often in Velazquez’s life has he been in championship moments? The count is probably not as high as it would be for Lesnar since Brock has won championships in NCAA wrestling and UFC. I’ll leave it up to you to decide if you want to count WWE moments as well.
Cain Velazquez
Everyone is pointing to his superior striking and stand-up game as his ticket to winning the championship and those people are not wrong, but I think the biggest aspect to look at will be conditioning. No one has been able to work Lesnar into the later rounds before. The only guy in Brock's MMA career to force him to the distance was Heath Herring in a completely one-sided fight. If Cain can somehow survive the first couple of rounds, we’ll find out the true conditioning of Brock Lesnar.
For Velazquez, it’s simple. He has to avoid the takedown at all costs and punish Brock when he misses his shoot attempts. Lesnar’s gameplan is no secret and I’m sure that Cain has been working on takedown defence, but a regular training partner is just not the same as the UFC heavyweight champion.
Alright, I told you that I wasn’t going to pick a winner, but I can’t resist. My gut says that Lesnar is just too much of a beast for Velazquez to handle. I think we’re going to see a repeat of Brock's other fights in which he takes Velazquez down, uses his size to neutralize and eventually gets the ground-and-pound TKO in the third round.