Verbal Submission: UFC 129 Preview

Time to preview UFC 129

Music to listen to: Hoops (live) by Chemical Brothers

Since its only a few hours before the festivities begin, I’ll keep the predictions short…

Georges St. Pierre vs. Jake Shields:  GSP is better in every aspect of this fight accept for submissions and maybe wrestling.  While this may sound like a recipe for a quick TKO victory for St. Pierre, I don’t see that as the case.

This fight keeps reminding me of the Anderson Silva/Chael Sonnen fight from last year.  If you remember, Sonnen dominated the fight for four and a half rounds using his superior wrestling skills and was about to win the decision before Silva ultimately got the submission victory in the end of the fifth round.

While Shields may not be as good of a wrestler as Sonnen and St. Pierre’s grappling skills are superior to Silva’s, I see this fight going towards the same direction.

GSP is a notorious slow starter so Shields’ best tactic would be to use some aggression to gain an early round from his opponent.

Shields will have a few moments where he will outmuscle his Canadian opponent and even get a potential submission or two.  However, I think St. Pierre will ultimately use his superior stand up skills and ultimately get the victory.

Prediction:  St. Pierre by 4th round TKO

Jose Aldo vs. Mark Hominick:  Its not often that you get to see two of the top three pound-for-pound fighters in the world on one fight card but the UFC achieved this with having GSP and the Brazilian Jose Aldo fighting tonight.

Aldo hasn’t shown a weakness in several years.  He arguably has the most diverse offensive attack in MMA, using his blistering pace along with utilizing arguably the best leg kicks in the sport and lethal elbows to keep opponents at a distance and make them uncomfortable.

We’ve also seen some excellent ground work from Aldo as well in contests such as his victory over Cub Swanson at WEC 41.

Hominick isn’t a pushover and earned his title shot by beating respectable opponents such as Leonard Garcia and George Roop.  However, Aldo will be too much for him because the aggressive style that Hominick likes to use plays right into Scarface’s hands.

Prediction: Aldo by TKO 3rd round

Lyoto Machida vs. Randy Couture:  You can write an entire book (which has already been done) on Couture’s career and it looks like its coming to an end after this fight.  For this match against Machida, I think you’re going to see vintage Couture, which means some dirty boxing, wrestling takedowns, use the cage and bash away.

Machida’s defensive style would seem like the best counter-attack to Couture.  However, as we saw in the second fight between Machida and Shogun Rua, an aggressive offense against Machida works best and Couture will use that.

Furthermore, if you don’t think that the judges and the fans won’t be swayed by the fact that this is Couture’s last fight and show bias, than you’re naive to the fight game.

Prediction:  Couture by decision

More predictions

Ben Henderson def. Mark Bocek by submission

Jason Brilz def. Vladimir Matyushenko by decision

Nate Diaz def. Kyle Watson via submission (don’t be scared homie!)

Those are my thoughts, what are yours?