Preview for UFC 117
Date: 2010-08-01 00:00:00
Source: http://netdugout.com/indiana/2010/08/kraigkendrick...
Submitted By: MMAFightsDump
UFC 117: Silva vs. Sonnen takes place on Saturday, August 7th, live on Pay-Per-View from the Oracle Arena in Oakland, CA. This card is loaded with the big names that MMA fans have been following for quite a few years. Ranging from the star power names of Anderson Silva and Matt Hughes to the gritty Jon Fitch and Clay Guida. Also slated to fight is the powerful Thiago Alves and the toughest fat guy in the world, Roy Nelson. With the UFC Middleweight Championship on the line in the match between Anderson Silva and Chael Sonnen, an action packed evening of fights is nearly guaranteed for Mixed Martial Arts fans. In a bizarre matchmaking coincidence, the top six fights of the night pit fighters from the USA against fighters from Brazil. It will be an interesting side note to see which country come out on top. Main Card Middleweight Championship bout: Anderson Silva vs. Chael Sonnen Welterweight bout: Jon Fitch vs. Thiago Alves Lightweight bout: Clay Guida vs. Rafael Dos Anjos Welterweight bout: Matt Hughes vs. Ricardo Almeida Heavyweight bout: Roy Nelson vs. Junior Dos Santos Preliminary Card Light Heavyweight bout: Thiago Silva vs. Tim Boetsch Welterweight bout: Dustin Hazelett vs. Rick Story Heavyweight bout: Stefan Struve vs. Christian Morecraft Welterweight bout: Johny Hendricks vs. Charlie Brenneman Welterweight bout: Ben Saunders vs. Dennis Hallman Light Heavyweight bout: Rodney Wallace vs. Stanislav Nedkov UFC 117 = Stacked Card Take a look at how all the fighters stack up against each other here. Here is the extended UFC hype video. Anderson Silva vs. Chael Sonnen The Middlweight (185 lb.) Championship Belt is on the line in this scrap between Anderson Silva and Chael Sonnen. Silva is on an unprecedented streak of demolishing the competition and hasn’t lost since he joined the UFC in the spring of 2006. He has broken down everyone put in front of him and hasn’t been close to being tested or in trouble in any of his fights. He is nearly untouchable and seems to have ninja like skills in the Octagon. Here comes the rub. In his last three fights, Silva has seemed very bored. All of his last three fights have ended in decision victories. Silva has been coasting through the fights and putting on dance steps like never seen before in the UFC. His title defense at UFC 112 on Yas Island, Abu Dhabi was a disgrace on many fronts. Silva was clearly much better than Demian Maia and according to all acounts, finished the fight in the early rounds. Instead he spent the better part of the last three rounds circling Maia while taunting his opponent with goofy techniques and openly yelling at him. As you can imagine, his boss Dana White was very unhappy with performances and made it very clear. Instead of the customary placing the belt around the champion from White, the UFC president tossed it to Silva’s manager Ed Soares and walked out in the fourth round. White also claimed it was the most embarrassed he’d ever been as the UFC president and if it happened again he would cut the champ on the spot. Yikes, talk about a motivator for Anderson Silva. Now enter into the picture his opponent, the brash tough talking, Chael Sonnen. Sonnen was brought over to the UFC from the WEC and has went 3-1 in his four fights. About the time Anderson Silva has started playing games instead of fighting, Sonnen became extremely vocal about the situation. His trash talking rings of the little brother trying to incite his big brother into a rumble. We’ve all heard the little guy who runs their mouth until somebody shuts it for the. Some of his quotes have sounded like they come straight from professional wrestling and others are just plain funny. Here are a few samples of Sonnen’s verbal jabs. “Look, he’s not my kind of a guy,” Sonnen says. “This is a grown man that’s got earrings. This is a grown man who wears his hat sideways. This is a guy who wears pink T-shirts. This guy wouldn’t make it 12 minutes in my neighborhood. I live in a nice neighborhood and we’d still run him out.” “I’m not on board with this ‘Anderson is so scary,’ mentality,” Sonnen said. “What’s he ever done? What’s he done? He beat up my teammate, Chris Leben. He was my teammate. … He beat up Patrick Cote, who was not ranked in the top 10 and we found Patrick was fighting on one leg at the time of the fight. He beats up every bum who can get a plane ticket to Ohio and he beats up a couple of slow, unathletic light heavyweights, like that’s hard to do. I don’t know what he’s done. I don’t know where this big mystique that’s around him has come from.” This guy has ran his mouth so much that the UFC put together a highlight reel of all his ranting. And so on and on it goes. Part of me wonders why Sonnen talks so much but the reality is he is a reporter and promoters dream. He is drawing interest into the fight and has finally got Anderson Silva to jump offsides after months of keeping up the trash talking. Silva finally responded with this. “What he’s saying is disrespecting me, he’s disrespecting me and all opponents I’ve faced,” Silva said. “In my opinion, Dan Henderson is one of the best wrestlers in MMA. With him being a politician, he should really pay attention to what he’s saying.” Silva says that he will continue to do what he does best when he faces Sonnen. “I’ll keep doing my job the same way I’ve always done,” said the champion. “I’ll do a good fight, as I always do, I’ll try to show my technical superiority”. Anderson Silva has always come across as a bit wacky but if you care to watch the following video you will be certain something is different with this guy. He had Steven Seagal in for a training session on some goofy type of a martial art. Yes, that Steven Seagal. The thing with trash talking the champ is that you have to back it up or you look as silly as a turd on a wedding cake. We will have to see if Sonnen has enough skills to match up with a motivated Anderson Silva and push the champ to the limit. My guess is that he doesn’t. I don’t see how Sonnen has a chance but crazier things have been happening lately, huh Fedor? Welterweight bout: Jon Fitch vs. Thiago Alves Just as Anderson Silva has dominated the Middleweight division, as has Georges St. Pierre dominated the welterweights. Both Jon Fitch and Thiago Alves have recently unsuccessfully tried to defeat the champion of their division. Now both men are trying to position themselves back in the running for another title shot and the winner in this match would go a long way towards that goal. While Jon Fitch has been rather active since UFC 100, Thiago Alves has not had a fight since his last fight against GSP. The two men have fought before with Fitch winning by TKO and have been scheduled to fight a rematch but twice injuries to Alves have forced postponements of the match. First a knee injury at UFC 107 and then a brain condition that required surgery was found before UFC 111. A long awaited rematch that pits the strong striking of Alves against the grinding Fitch style that has given so many opponents fits. With Fitch riding a four win streak I think I would lean towards him getting the victory. Lightweight bout: Clay Guida vs. Rafael Dos Anjos So easy a caveman can do it! This fight provides another interesting mix of styles with Clay Guida having the “cavemanesque” style and Rafael Dos Anjos being a top level Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Black Belt with a Muay Thai background. Guida pushes the pace of his fights more than nearly anyone else in the sport. He smothers his opponent with constant pressure and suffocates them with his crazy mop of hair. Clay Guida is a very tough fighter that uses the take down to wear out his opponent and then pounds them out from there. He is not pretty to watch but he is very effective at what he does and nobody would want to run into this guy in a dark alley. Rafael Dos Anjos is not very well known, at least to this MMA fan, except for being on the receiving end of an amazing knockout. He was punched so hard by a Jeremy Stephens uppercut that if his head would have been on a rope it might have traveled 50 feet. If you think I am exaggerating, see for yourself. I will take Guida in this one because Dos Anjos will be wearing him like a hairy shirt for the whole fight. Welterweight bout: Matt Hughes vs. Ricardo Almeida The former king of the welterweights, Matt Hughes, is still a big name draw for the UFC. While the sport and his age has caught up with him, Hughes is still a respected fighter in the organization after being named to the UFC Hall of Fame. Hughes is coming off of a TKO victory against Renzo Gracie at UFC 112. Ricardo Almeida is a highly skilled black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu that first competed in the organization at UFC 31. His recent victories include Matt Horowich, Kendall Grove and Matt Brown. If Matt Hughes comes into the fight and can get it to the ground in a dominant position he should be able to win this fight. Joe Rogan breaks it down for ya below. Heavyweight bout: Roy Nelson vs. Junior Dos Santos Roy Nelson gives every man with a spare tire around his gut something to cheer for every time he wins. Make no bones about it, this guy is fat. And he is a tough dude too. Nelson fought in prior years with the now defunct IFL and Elite XC. He won the Ultimate Fighter Heavyweight show in 2009 to earn Dana White’s respect and defeated Stefan Struve in his next fight. The size difference between Nelson and Struve was cartoonishly funny. Roy Nelson is also a very accomplished grappler that just happens to be wearing a fat suit. Check him out grappling against Frank Mir a few years ago to get an appreciation for his skills on the ground. Junior Dos Santos has taken the UFC heavyweights by storm and has defeated in succession Fabricio Werdum, Stefan Struve, Mirko “Cro Cop” Filipović, Gilbert Yvel, Gabriel Gonzaga. Those names are fairly salty for a 25 year old fighter. Dos Santos is a cat quick striker and has major league knockout power. I don’t know how this will go but if Nelson can get his gut on top of Dos Santos he might have to tap instead of smother to death. But should Nelson catch an uppercut from Dos Santos he will be having Burger King dreams for a few minutes.
