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The media’s countdown for Brock Lesnar vs. Cain Velaquez in UFC
By Zach Arnold | July 8, 2010
“Iām really looking forward to that fight because that’s going to be a hell of a fight. I see it as a long battle with both guys having their ups and downs and some striking, a lot of wrestling, a lot of ground ‘n pound… A lot of escapes. I just see this is as, and it’s going to be a long fight most likely, it may, anything can happen in MMA, it can end in one punch. I kind of sense that this will be the classic heavyweight fight of this generation in the sense that you know it’s not going to be the Lesnar/Carwin fight, we knew it would be a quick fight. And this one is going to be the opposite of Lesnar and Carwin and you know it won’t be as dynamic, it won’t be as explosive going in, I think it’s going to be more cautious but I think that it’s going to be more dramatic and more twists and turns and a lot more variety, it ain’t going to be one guy just punching the other guy really hard and knocking the hell out of him because I mean, it could happen, but I just see it as more hurting each other and attrition, you know, so of course we’re months away from that fight, many months away.”
On a lot of radio shows and web sites, I’ve noticed that Cain has become the favorite pick of the pundits to win the fight. Lutfi Sariahmed on Sherdog radio felt that since Velasquez and Lesnar are similar in skills as far as wrestling and that Velasquez has been more active recently as a wrestler, that it neutralizes Lesnar’s big strength heading into the fight. Brock’s performance against Carwin either impressed the pundits (like me) or completely turned them off. Here’s a passage from this week’s Pro MMA radio show talking about why the pundits shouldn’t have soured on what Brock displayed during his fight with Shane Carwin:
JESSE HOLLAND: “What’s interesting about Lesnar’s performance is that there’s really two ways to look at it. You can look at it and be critical of it because of the first round and I thought that it was the first round that he fought scared. And I think if you want to criticize his chin, I don’t think that’s a fair assessment because I believe part of his reason for being turtled up and back-pedaling and landing on his butt has more to do with fighting scared than getting rocked. If you think about what happens to a fighter if they get rocked, Cheick Kongo/Cain Velasquez comes to mind. When the legs give out and they kind of do that zombie lurch forward, and that wasn’t really Lesnar’s thing. And he did take, Fightmetric had it at 60 punches to the head. If you can survive 60 punches to the head in one round against Shane Carwin, who like you said probably hits harder than anyone in the sport, you know that says a lot about who you are as far as your will to survive. Was it a little too easy for Shane? I think it was. I expected him to dominate the stand-up. I didn’t expect Lesnar to become a punching bag but to his credit you know he held on, he persevered, and he came out and a lot of people are critical of his performance because he was dominated so thoroughly in the first round but you really can’t praise a guy like Minotauro Nogueira who in the same position would have been hailed as you know just another one of his amazing comebacks and but then slam Lesnar for the same thing. He survived, he came back, and he won in impressive fashion and I think it says a lot about who he is as a champion.”
LARRY PEPE: “I’m not going to slam the performance. I’m impressed by the importance. I understand that he clearly does not respond well to being hit from a standpoint of defensively, he doesn’t have a great defense on the ground when he’s on his back which is certainly common with most wrestlers. But the other side of the coin was, my question with him was his chin. Not having to respond to being hit, how does he respond in terms of being able to take a punch and if there was ever a test to being able to take a punch, I think getting hit 60 times in the head by Shane Carwin and not going out and really impressively to me he comes out in the second round, Jesse, and aside from the cuts and a little bit of swelling, as far as his physical ability after taking that beating, a one minute rest on the stool and he looked very fresh to me, so he answered that question for me. I think it’s going to take an awful lot to knock this guy out. I think him finishing the fight the way he did with an arm triangle choke and really taking the risky position of leaving a full mount to try to get that choke, he had to have a lot of confidence in being able to get it and he did and I think coming in if you’d have told someone that you have Brock Lesnar by submission, they would have thought it was time to get you to the loony bin and get you a little bit of help. So I think that says a lot about how he’s evolving as a fighter.”
There’s your setup for a lengthy discussion about how a fight between Brock Lesnar and Cain Velasquez will turn out when they fight in the cage.
LARRY PEPE: “What kind of chance do you give Cain? Because I don’t give him much of a chance against Brock?”
JESSE HOLLAND: “I give him 0% chance. What’s surprising me is how many people now are saying that Cain is saying that guy. Not just fans, but of course you know there’s a lot of educations fans who just say anything depending on who their favorite fighter is but a lot of fighters are coming up and stepping up and saying you know what, Cain Velasquez is going to be the next champ. He’s the guy. And what they like to do is they point to the mistakes that Lesnar made in the Carwin fight and say, he’s not going to get away with this stuff against Velasquez and they’re predicting kind of a one-sided fight in favor of Cain and that really just surprises me based on what we’ve seen out of Velasquez in his time with the UFC and you know what? How Brock is not just a lopsided favorite is something I don’t understand.”
LARRY PEPE: “Well it’s intersecting to me because we hear things and we see things and we hear that Cain is a phenomenal wrestler. I have no doubt that he’s a great wrestler, none. But to say that he’s a better wrestler than Brock based on what we’ve seen? What we’ve seen in the cage is that he had Brad Morris, Jake O’Brien, and Dennis Stojnic as his first three opponents. O’brien was a 205er, later had to go to down 205 and couldn’t hang in that division and got cut. Brad Morris and Dennis Stojnic have long been cut. Then he fought Cheick Kongo where every time Kongo hit him, he went down and he used his wrestling against Cheick Kongo who, oh by the way, had been dominated by a guy named Carmelo Marrero because Marrero was a wrestler who also wasn’t a legitimate Heavyweight and had to go down to 205. He beat Kongo because he took Kongo down at will and you know Marrero, while a good wrestler, was not regarded as the best wrestler in the Heavyweight division. So, I don’t think taking Kongo down makes you a phenomenal wrestler. Rothwell? Took him down a couple of times, really overwhelmed him. It was really cardio vs. no cardio was the storyline of the fight. And then he knocks out Nogueira. So, I don’t know what we’ve seen in the cage that tells you he’s able to going to take down a 270 pound Brock Lesnar with no problem and Lesnar is not going to be able to take him down. I think Lesnar is going to be able to take him down 7 out of 10 shots because at the end of the day, I don’t think Lesnar’s shot, I don’t think his takedown is stoppable by anybody in the Heavyweight division more than half the time. So and I think the other issue is, once Lesnar takes him down, I don’t think it’s going to be too easy to get up and once they’re on the ground as we saw with Mir and we saw with Carwin, it’s hard to get out of that position against Brock. So, I’m not exactly what people are looking at either, Jesse.”
JESSE HOLLAND: “I’m not sure because what surprises me you want to put Cain on a pedestal for the wrestling accomplishments. You can do that and how much of that comes from his time at AKA with some other good wrestlers like Jon Fitch and I mean clearly you know they hail everybody there, Koscheck, Fitch, and Velasquez you know as wrestling deities and that’s fine but you know Brock Lesnar was the 2000 NCAA Heavyweight champion, runner up in 1999. He finished his collegiate career 106-5. I mean this is a guy who is the best wrestler in the country for a couple of years there and Cain Velaquez also is a very talented wrestler but we’re talking about an NCAA two-time All-American who never really placed higher than fourth and he had half the record that Lesnar did, I think he was about 50-10 in college. So, to call him a better wrestler or a more accomplished wrestler is just not accurate. And if you want to say that everything else is equal, let’s say that you know well you say collegiate wrestling doesn’t translate into the Octagon because when you’re in the Ocagon there’s a difference between mat wrestling and cage wrestling, I’ll give you that, too. But if we want to say that everything is equal, let’s say that Velasquez and Lesnar enter the Octagon on equal playing field, you still have to recognize that Lesnar outweighs him by 30 pounds come fight night and that’s a very difficult thing to overcome. I mean, you’re talking about grappling for position, staying off of the cage, avoiding the takedown, and getting back to your feet. I just, I really don’t see how Velasquez has any kind of advantage.”
LARRY PEPE: “Yeah, I agree with you, and to me it’s a similar analysis you know when Brock fought Randy. I thought you know granted Randy’s older and someone but to me the big issue was OK, they’re both wrestlers, let’s assume that’s even, Brock has a 50 to 55 pound weight advantage in that fight. And not only does he have a weight advantage, Jesse, he’s lightning fast at that weight. He may be faster than Cain just from a starting position so not only is he much bigger, much stronger, has the wrestling pedigree, he’s also faster and I think the big issue with Brock for Cain will be again, who do you bring in that’s going to simulate that size and speed so you’re prepared? It’s going to be a lot easier for Brock to find 240 pound really good high-level wrestlers, good MMA guys than it’s going to be to duplicate Brock because quite frankly, if there was someone who had that kind of raw athleticism, size, wrestling pedigree, etc, they’d be fighting Brock Lesnar. So I think he’s just a very, very difficult to prepare for and I think power-wise, it’s no contest. Brock is a much more powerful striker. I think Cain is the much more technical striker, but if the fight with Carwin shows me anything, Cain will have to hit Brock 100 times to put him out.”
JESSE HOLLAND: “And that worries me, too. If you’re Cain Velasquez and you’re watching this fight and you see a guy in Shane Carwin who hits twice as hard as you have pretty much five minutes to himself, it was almost as if Brock sat down and said, I’ll give you five minutes to try to knock me out, go crazy. If you’re Cain Velasquez and you’re watching that, that has to bother you especially in light of your performance against Ben Rothwell. Yes, the fight was stopped, TKO, but he didn’t finish Rothwell by knockout, he was getting back to his feet. Cheick Kongo was pounded on for 15 minutes. He was never put away. I mean, if you want to talk about the Nogueira stoppage as a testament to Cain’s power, you know we’re talking about a guy I saw Minotauro take a full on head kick from Mirko Cro Cop in PRIDE right to the face, right to the jaw, and he wasn’t put out. And he got dropped on his head by Bob Sapp who powerbombed him and he was not knocked out. So, if you want to tell me that knocking out a guy who in fight years is probably 50 years old and has nothing left, if that’s what going to bring into the fight against Brock Lesnar, I’d be very concerned.”
LARRY PEPE: “Yeah. To me, the only path to victory that Cain has is to get Brock down, use a lot of cardio, outpoint him, but here’s the problem: That means that the fight, I don’t see how Cain finishes Brock, which means assuming that the fight goes 25 minutes, you have to outpoint him for 25 minutes. He probably has to get you down in a disadvantageous position or land one big blow and the fight’s over. So, that’s why for me Brock’s a huge favorite.”
Topics: Media, MMA, UFC, Zach Arnold | 20 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
I have to agree I don’t see how Cain can be a favorite coming into the fight. Also, what I have a hard time understanding is that this was Brock’s first fight in almost a year which could be why his first take down attempt was way off base and he could not get Carwin down. I think ring rust and being scared or Carwin’s power is what made the 1 round a bad one for Brock.
With 1 fight under his belt after coming back from illness I think we will see a much better Lesnar when he fight Cain then what we saw against Carwin
I was shocked when there was talk about doing this fight in September. Would have been dumb. Give a little build up to this fight. It will make for a great new years show headliner.
I still don’t know who I am going to pick. It’s a toss-up in my mind right now.
Well, they can’t build a fight any worse than they did Lesnar-Carwin and some “trending estimates” are saying 1.25 million buys is possible. So basically you could advertise Brock is fighting the first time hours before his fight and it will sell.
I think people will be interested in this fight because they want to see what Brock will do with someone who isn’t going to completely gas in 3 minutes. Velasquez will keep pressure on him and clearly Brock freaked out under pressure and had no answer. Obviously Cain doesn’t hit as hard as Carwin, nor is he large enough to stuff takedowns as easily. But Brock freaked out when he got rocked and offered absolutely nothing and got a gift that Carwin punched himself out. If Velasquez can rock him and keep up the attack he wins.
“clearly Brock freaked out under pressure and had no answer”
Huh?
I’ll agree that Brock freaked out when he ate that uppercut, but he showed quite a bit of composure while eating ground & pound underneath Carwin. If he had no answer, he wouldn’t have survived and pulled off that sweet half-guard sitout and stood back up before the end of the round.
That was after Carwin punched himself out. Popular belief was that he was just too tired to come into round 2, but he was done in round 1. When Carwin had steam, all Lesnar was doing was turtling and praying the referee wouldn’t stop it. It’s what happens when you’ve never been under pressure before. It’s not Brock’s fault, he got too much too soon whereas most guys in his position would have seen it all and done it all already and handled the situation better and much more calmly.
Brock was obviously hurt. I don’t think it was some conscious decision to turtle up and hope to weather the storm, nor was it a particularly brilliant and well thought out strategic move. He covered up and hoped the guy beating the crap out of him would stop being able to before he got totally dismantled. As it turns out, that’s what happened.
I get that there are people who want to make it into something more than that in order to prop up Brock as a heroic superhuman, but really, that was it. That scenario plays out a billion times over in the sport.
The thing is it was more than that.
I know how you like to pretend that you are always the voice of reason, but in this case your off. People aren’t saying Brock made good moves because they want to make him out as superman. He weatherd the storm. Took some shots, tried to kick out a few times, ate big leather from a guy who was supposed to be the biggest puncher in the HW division, held on, and as soon as Carwin got in half guard to rest a little bit Lesnar sat out, stood up and force Carwin into the fence as the bell sounded.
Cain is great. He’s a great wrestler, he’s got great cardio, improved striking, and buttloads of heart to match.
But he’s not gonna win.
Lesnar will either take him down and wear him out on the mat(most likely), or land a big shot standing and finish him quickly on the ground.
Either way Lesnar takes home the belt, and it doesn’t go past three rounds.
Write that down.
I can absolutely see Lesnar taking Velasquez down and doing what he did to Mir.
But winning a stand up game with him? No freakin’ way. I’m not saying Velasquez is Cro Cop, but Lesnar’s stand up is horrible. He’s living off of a “BIG ARMS = KO POWER” myth (ask Ron Waterman and Mark Kerr about that) but has pretty poor accuracy. I can’t ever see him finishing a fight on his feet unless it against an even worse striker like Randy or Roy Nelson or Werdum.
I think Heath Herring and Couture would disagree with you about him not being a threat on the feet. He knocked one acrss the ring, and the other he barely clipped, but put on dream street.
And I am not really saing Brock would win a stand up battle. I just think if they got in an exchange that Brock would be able to eat about 10 of Cain’s shots just to land one big one.
Also, why do you think Roy is such a terrible striker? He just finished two guys(obviously both were very raw), but I thought they were impressive wins…
Nelson and Vasquez I would put along the same line where striking is concerned.
In the end I just see the wrestling ability coming into play when they start to clinch. Cain is a great wrestler, but he usually came up short against the bigger guys in the division. Lesnar has always been one of the biggest, and on top of that his speed is down right freakish. I truly see a beating being handed out to Cain whenever they go at it.
Couture is good in the clinch but never known for his striking, and was also laid off forever when he fought Brock. Herring peaked in 2002 and has been in a decline to the point where he’s honestly not even good enough to headline local shows these days. So pinning Brock’s striking ability on those two is a little like saying you’re the new Barry Bonds because you hit a Little League home run.
And I’m not trashing Brock. I think he’s a fantastic athlete. But I am sick and tired of seeing the myth about his striking ability when we just saw less than a week ago it sucked. It doesn’t mean he’s not a good fighter because he’s not a good striker. Just pointing out the first guy who forces him to stand (who has a real gas tank) is going to be the guy to beat him. And it very well could be Cain Velasquez. Or Junior Dos Santos. Maybe even Overeem if he went crazy working on sprawls.
Agree to disagree.
But agree it’s nice to have a division where a champion is in doubt for a change after having years of every division where title fights are foregone conclusions the champion retains.
Brock is good, but unlike the Machida/GSP/Penn/Silva foursome he is vulnerable, and that makes me want to watch the fight much more than “Hey, it’s time for the tri-yearly Georges St. Pierre 25 minute takedown clinic again.”
LOL good point.
The thing is if we’ve learned anything over the past couple years is that MMA is crazy. For all we know GSP could lose to Koscheck in his next fight, Sonnen could run a GSP clinic on Silva, BJ could get KOd by Edgar, and Brendan Schaub could be HW champ…
I thinking I agree with that Michael David Smith character.
I think Dos will be the one with the best chance to possibly beat the Brock.
I cant think of anything that Cain does better than Carwin. Of course he wont make the mistake of blowing his load in a round punching a brick wall like Carwin did now, but its only a guess wether or not that’s gonna actually end up eventually presenting any advantage.
In fact after mulling it over a bit I’ve thinking that the best way to beat the Brock is the same way he took his only loss.
Somebody strong enough to not get bullied for position, with a good enough chin to survive catching those toasters a few times, with functional wrestling awareness, and slick enough with Subs has to get him in a submission again IMO.
Prefferably on his much smaller legs because that will probably only present a visual gag trying to pull an armbar on those loony toons size arms.
I’m not really sure how Dos has a terribly better chance then Cain, but he’s got a slightly different toolbox then Cain/Carwin, including access to elite level BJJ training.
Maybe Cain can do it if he’s got or is working on a hidden Sub arsenal.
I dont recall seeing those decent hands that he put on Nog before he did that either.
Dos hasn’t defended a real takedown attempt yet. Until he does, he’s suspect. And if he can’t stop Nelson, he won’t stop Lesnar or Velasquez. No way.
Yeah there are a few questions.
I think I acknowledged that.
Have we seen him fail to stop a takedown yet?
Brazilians aren’t always great wrestlers so I’m not expecting better wrestling from Dos then Carwin/Cain.
But your not gonna out wrestle the Brock anyway.
Dos’ hands are better then Carwin/Cain IMO.
Which combined with a bit of strategy to conserve his strength for takedown and GNP defense might be
enough to keep the Brock a bit shy of rushing in and batter him for a decision.
And thats sans my other submission concept.
“No way”?
I wouldn’t say that.
Nelson beating Dos would be more accurately described as no way IMO.
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(And even then there’s almost always a way in MMA)
Lesnar was cautious and scared looking for a couple reasons, he was taking on a challenger that other people regarded as very strong, that hadn’t been tested to the point of losing a fight yet, and he was coming off a HUGE layoff, and looking kind of small. Lesnar didn’t look like he made much of a cut for the fight. Still a big guy, but not as big as normal.
The look on his face after that fight should have told you he was worried about it even if you couldn’t tell before the fight. That was pure relief. Next fight, he won’t be worried.
“Brock is good, but unlike the Machida/GSP/Penn/Silva foursome he is vulnerable”
Um what?, here’s a little newsflash all of those 5 guys are vulnerable Machida was just KTFO and Penn got worked by Edgar. As good as GSP and Silva are both have been beaten in the past, every fighter is vulnerable the only problem is finding someone good enough to beat them.
Does anybody here really believe he got 60 times in the head? Only a couple clean shots got through and those were elbows. The rest of the time carwin was just careless bombing away at his forearms. He never got tagged clean standing either. The first time somebody ACTUALLY HITS HIM he’s going to completely wilt. Carwin never even connected with anything more than an arm punch. If Dos Santos has even a semblance of TD defense he’ll absolutely melt Brock with hook-uppercut combination.