UFC 109 Preview: The Main Card
Wednesday, February 03, 2010
by Tomas Rios (trios@sherdog.com)
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The concept of “better late than never” will face its stiffest test yet at UFC 109 on Saturday. For those of you into trivia, the headlining bout of Randy Couture vs. Mark Coleman was originally scheduled for UFC 17 -- yes, I said UFC 17 -- before a Couture injury set the table for Pete Williams to score one of the defining knockouts in MMA history.
That was more than 10 years ago, back when the UFC couldn’t even fill civic centers made of plywood and duct tape. Quantum leap to today and both Couture and Coleman will fight in comfier confines, but the stakes are even higher than they were in ’98.
The rest of the main card isn’t quite so prone to nostalgia, but makes up for it with a high violence probability quotient. Whether it’s the world’s most dangerous real estate agent, Chael Sonnen, taking on Nate Marquardt or Paulo Thiago looking to claim his second American Kickboxing Academy scalp from Mike Swick, 2010’s latest MMA fix should keep us all mellow until at least Monday morning.
Randy Couture vs. Mark Coleman
The Breakdown: The inclination here is to write this fight off as a case of the UFC cashing in on the names of two legends on the wrong side of 45. And to a certain extent, that’s a fair point, but both Coleman and Couture are coming off of wins over guys more than a decade younger than them, so maybe this is just a fair fight.
Terry Goodlad/Sherdog.com
Can Coleman's lungs go 15?
A fight is exactly what Coleman wants to avoid, as his game hasn’t evolved much since the days when he helped make ground-and-pound a revolutionary concept. Coleman’s bout with Stephan Bonnar at UFC 100 showed his striking limitations, and his grappling remains stuck in the late 90s.
What “The Hammer” does have going for him is Bill Brasky-level strength and a bench-pressing double-leg shot that has been known to level small cities. Neither of those attributes will intimidate Couture, though, who practically wrote the bible for using Greco-Roman wrestling in MMA. Unlike Coleman, Couture has also spent much of his career developing the striking and grappling knowledge to complement his wrestling base.
Being a decent striker with a grasp of basic fundamentals is an incalculably huge advantage in this fight for Couture. For instance, Coleman doesn’t really set up his takedowns. Once upon a time, Coleman was spry enough to blast a double leg from a mile away, but he just can’t move like he used to and his boxing is too slow and sloppy to serve as an effective
segue to a takedown.
Even the worst-case scenario for Couture -- Coleman blasting a vintage double leg of doom -- isn’t that bad since “The Natural” excels at stuffing takedowns and immediately transitioning to the clinch. That’s a place Coleman doesn’t want to be since the last thing he needs is to get sucked into one of Couture’s dirty-boxing clinics.
Finishing skills are a necessary component of any modern fighter’s repertoire, and that is where the biggest disparity lies in this fight. Coleman’s ground-and-pound is his only offensive weapon. He has neither the power to finish Couture with it nor the conditioning to use it effectively for 15 minutes. Not a good sign considering Couture will be putting a strain on Coleman’s gas tank from the first minute.
The Bottom Line: For as long as Coleman’s lungs hold up, this should be an entertaining wrestling match. Once he starts wilting, though, this fight will be all but over. Too much striking from Couture and too little conditioning from Coleman will net Joe Rogan’s hero a TKO win late in the second round.
Nate Marquardt vs. Chael Sonnen
The Breakdown: With Dan Henderson long gone and Vitor Belfort already lined up to face incumbent middleweight champion and destroyer of souls Anderson Silva, Marquardt and Sonnen enter this fight a win away from getting dibs on a title shot. The obvious question central to this fight is whether Sonnen can put his stultifying top control to work against one of the division’s most dynamic fighters.
Unlike the vast majority of wrestlers in MMA, Sonnen seamlessly transitions from one takedown attempt to another and is deft at employing everything from double legs to crotch-lift slams. While Marquardt has shown stout takedown defense before, Thales Leites took him down multiple times in their contentious bout at UFC 85, and Sonnen’s wrestling makes Leites’ look like spastic flailing.
Historically, the problem for Sonnen has never been scoring takedowns. His issue has been keeping his limbs from getting mangled by competent grapplers. Marquardt has never been much of a guard player, but he does know how to create space and escape to his feet.
That is where this fight takes a bad turn for Sonnen. His simplistic striking game will get him knocked out if he tests his luck. The predictability of Sonnen’s striking, which consists of simple one-two combos and telegraphed leg kicks, plays right into the hands of Marquardt, who has developed into a dangerous counterpuncher.
Throwing telegraphed strikes got Demian Maia knocked into another dimension in his fight with Marquardt at UFC 102, and Sonnen will do no better if he can’t hold Marquardt down. Limiting your options that much against someone as versatile as Marquardt rarely ends well, and Sonnen’s been known to trip at the finish line.
The Bottom Line: Marquardt has too much skill for Sonnen to overcome the difference with pure top control. The road getting there may be rough, but Marquardt will eventually get Sonnen in a bad spot on the feet and bust out a “Street Fighter”-style super combo for the finish.
Mike Swick vs. Paulo Thiago
The Breakdown: Erudite game-planning and strategy has finally become a part of any successful training camp, but that doesn’t mean all successful fighters have embraced becoming equal parts brains and brawn. Both Swick and Thiago have entrenched themselves as top 10 welterweights, and both fighters have some maddening habits that will cost one of them a win come Saturday night.
Thiago’s spectacular knockout of Josh Koscheck at UFC 95 doesn’t change the fact that whenever he throws his jab or right cross, he drops his defense and is especially vulnerable to the right cross whether thrown as a counter or a lead. The right cross is one of Swick’s best weapons, and he also has a compact counter left hook that kept him alive in his fight with Dan Hardy at UFC 105.
What keeps Swick from being an academic pick is that despite his rangy frame, his nonexistent jab makes his preposterous reach advantage useless. That flaw plays into Thiago’s game. The Brazilian never hesitates to initiate exchanges and, while his defense is indeed flawed, his punching combinations are tight and his chin managed to survive the stress test that is Koscheck’s overhand doom-hammer.
How this fight plays out depends heavily on Thiago’s ability, or lack thereof, to beat Swick to the punch and avoid getting counterpunched into unconsciousness. Relying on his Brazilian jiu-jitsu may seem like a tempting option, but Swick is borderline impossible to take down. The AKA-trained fighter has a strong base and clinch skills that allow him to quickly dig in for underhooks and work his back toward the cage.
The other obstacle to Thiago turning Swick into a postmodern art installation is that Swick excels at using underhooks to create leverage and reverse takedowns. While Thiago’s top control can be nasty, his guard game consists mostly of going for hopeless guillotine or brabo chokes and giving up his back in a misguided attempt to create scrambles.
Short of showing up to the cage with a commission-approved battle axe, Thiago’s only real hope consists of trying to survive in the pocket with a guy who only needs to land one punch. Even if Swick does have trouble on the feet, he can take this fight to the mat far more easily than Thiago can.
Granted, Swick lacks the technical sheen to string together takedown attempts and mostly relies on a slick outside leg trip, but Thiago hasn’t shown much in the way of takedown defense. In other words, Thiago will have to fight on Swick’s terms, and those terms are looking about as appealing as a Michael Buble concert.
The Bottom Line: Thiago may have the power and the chin to strike with Swick, but he just doesn’t have the skill. It won’t be long before Swick starts timing his left hook counter and sneaking the right cross in behind it while Thiago struggles to get a combination off without getting cracked halfway through.
Sooner or later, Thiago will go into survival mode. He’ll start diving for takedowns that Swick will simply stuff or reverse. Rinse and repeat a few times over, and Swick ends up with a ho-hum unanimous decision win.
Demian Maia vs. Dan Miller
The Breakdown: No matter how you look at this fight, Miller is pretty well screwed if he plans on winning with his usual combination of equal parts Brazilian jiu-jitsu and wrestling. It’s been shown time and time again that hitting the floor with Maia is like signing up for a voluntary root canal, only more painful.
Even if Miller tries to smother Maia with top control, there is no way he’ll stay mistake-free considering Maia’s innate ability to force his style of grappling on his opponents. The gap in skill on the ground is so great that it should be a given that Miller will try to keep this fight vertical.
Nate Marquardt already proved in their match at UFC 102 that Maia’s striking is easily exploited, but his success depended on Maia foolishly trying to play kickboxer. It would be hard to imagine Maia repeating that mistake with the memory of his first loss still fresh in his mind. Plus it’s not like Miller’s wrestling is so good that he can force Maia to strike with him.
Maia has proven in his UFC run that he can get supposedly superior wrestlers to fall into his web of twisted limbs on the mat. Just watch his fights and you’ll see Maia display far more wrestling skill than he ever gets credit for, and when all else fails, he’s one of the few in the game who knows how to pull guard effectively.
Whatever time Miller gets on the feet won’t be enough for him to score the knockout he needs. Even assuming a vast advantage on the feet for Miller is a bit of a stretch considering he’s never had to rely on his striking. More likely than not, his haste to score a knockout will leave him vulnerable to a takedown, and any opening Miller gives Maia, no matter how small, is all the Brazilian submission artist will need.
The Bottom Line: There likely isn’t a middleweight in the UFC who can hang with Maia on the mat, and Miller isn’t the exception. Another Submission of the Night will make its way to Maia’s mantle as he locks up a textbook triangle choke from his guard in the first round.
Matt Serra vs. Frank Trigg
The Breakdown: Late-career renaissances are a mercurial thing, not that you’d have to tell that to either Trigg or Serra. After being written off by the MMA cognoscenti, Serra won the fourth season of “The Ultimate Fighter.” For his part, Trigg rebounded from a disastrous run in the UFC welterweight class by becoming a top 10-ranked middleweight.
The phoenix routine proved short-lived, however, as Serra has lost back-to-back fights and Trigg looked overmatched in his UFC 103 bout against Josh Koscheck. In that fight, Trigg had no answer for Koscheck’s power-punching style. He’ll need an answer for just that against Serra.
While most know Serra for his Brazilian jiu-jitsu and submission wrestling credentials, he’s never been able to fully translate his grappling skills to MMA. Instead he seems to prefer raw punching power to submission savvy inside the cage. Although Serra does have smothering top control, he shouldn’t bother trying to out-wrestle Trigg considering the massive disparity in wrestling acumen.
Ground-and-pounding his way to a W seems like Trigg’s best bet, but his once hyperactive top game has slowed over time. Combine that with Serra’s willingness to lockdown his guard in search of a stand-up and it sounds like the bell tolls for Trigg’s chin yet again.
The Bottom Line: This fight certainly doesn’t have any big-picture relevance, but it should be entertaining while it lasts as Serra will look to jailhouse blitz Trigg every chance he gets. There won’t be much in the way of an answer from Trigg, whose chin will take the brunt of his second straight knockout loss.
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