UFC 125 Complete Main Card Breakdown
Hopefully by now you are starting to come out of the Christmas mood and starting to get into the New Years mood. This Saturday, January 1st, 2011, the UFC comes back to Las Vegas, Nevada for its first event of the New Year. UFC 125 comes to you live from the Garden Arena inside the MGM Grand.
Coincidentally, last year’s card in January, UFC 109, was also held inside the MGM. Originally, this card was supposed to be co-headlined by a Featherweight Title match, but Champion Jose Aldo had to pull out of the fight due to a neck injury. Let’s take a look at how the finalized Main Card for the PPV broadcast breaks down.
The first fight that will be shown on the PPV broadcast is a Lightweight battle between Clay “The Carpenter” Guida (27-11) and former PRIDE Lightweight Champion “The Fireball Kid” Takanori Gomi (32-6-1). Anybody who has ever seen either of these guys fight knows that “boring” isn’t even in their vocabulary. Guida uses more energy in his entrance than many fighters do in their actual fight. Joe Rogan may have summed up this fight perfectly on the Countdown shown when he said, “these two are going to meet in the middle of The Octagon and the whole place is going to burst into flames.” When these two clash on New Year’s night, you can expect a high-energy, fast-paced, all-out war.
Next on the agenda, “The Kid from Stockton” Nate Diaz (13-5) faces off against “Stun Gun” Dong-Hyun Kim (13-0-2) in the Welterweight Division. In Diaz’s last fight, he dominated Marcus Davis by using his reach to set up jabs and counter punches and eventually scored a victory via Technical Submission after Davis went to sleep rather than tapping out. Kim dominated Amir Sadollah in his last fight, using his superior Judo and wrestling to keep pressure on him and pull of a Unanimous Decision. Although Kim has far better Judo and may be able to throw Diaz around at will, Diaz is a terrific grappler on the ground. He is especially dangerous when he is on his back, having seven of nine submission victories by way of triangle choke or guillotine. Diaz has more submissions, but Kim has more knockouts, so this fight could go either way.
The next fight will be a test of recovery results as Brandon “The Truth” Vera (11-5) squares off against Thiago Silva (14-2) in the Light Heavyweight Division. Vera has been out of action since March when Jon Jones literally broke his face. Silva has been out of action for almost a year, to date. His last fight was at UFC 109 last January when he lost to Rashad Evans. After that fight, it was revealed that he had three herniated disks in his back, which also forced him to pull out of a fight with Tim Boetsch at UFC 117. Before being sidelined with injuries, both men had become a respectable force within the division. After having surgeries and being away for so long, it will be interesting to see who will be able to shake off the ring rust quicker and pick up where they left off. Both men have good Jiu-Jitsu and big power, and this fight is up in the air.
As the night draws nearer to the end, Middleweight Chris “The Crippler” Leben (25-6) will step in The Octagon opposite of “All American” Brian Stann (9-3). This past summer, in a span of approximately three weeks, Leben had two fights against two tough opponents and two big victories. Stann also had a big accomplishment of his own as he successfully dropped to Middleweight and won by submission for the first time in his career. Now both men take a step up and face a great competitor that has a similar fighting style to his own. A win for either man could put them right in the mix for the Middleweight title.
Finally, in the Main Event of the Evening Frankie “The Answer” Edgar (13-1) defends his Lightweight Championship against Gray “The Bully” Maynard (10-0). As it has been made well-known in the weeks leading up to this fight, Gray Maynard is the only fighter to have beaten Edgar in his professional career, or as Edgar describes it, “I’m thirteen and Maynard.” This fight will be the third title fight in nine months for Edgar and for the third consecutive time, he is the underdog. In their first fight, Maynard used his strength and wrestling ability to muscle Edgar around and pick up a Unanimous Decision. In this fight, Edgar plans to use his boxing and quickness to outwork Maynard, as he did both times against B.J. Penn. According to Maynard, “it would be my pleasure to stand with him and test his chin.” It will be interesting to see if Frankie Edgar can overcome the odds once again, avenge his lone loss and retain his title or if Maynard will put on a repeat performance, keep his unbeaten record intact and become the new UFC Lightweight Champion. Whoever wins this fight will take on Anthony Pettis next to unify the WEC and UFC Lightweight titles.
As usual, Dana White starts the year off on a good note. For months, his followers on Twitter bombarded him with tweets regarding prelims being shown on Spike TV. Unfortunately, it was announced that Spike had elected not to show prelims for this fight due to the time slot being filled already. So the Big Bossman Dana went out and struck a deal with ION Television to not only get prelims shown, but there will be three fights shown instead of the normal two. These prelim fights will also be shown on ESPN UK, Rogers Sportsnet in Canada and on ufc.com/live for all other countries outside of North America.
The three fights being shown include Jeremy “Lil Heathen” Stephens (18-6) as he takes on “Irish Hand Grenade” Marcus Davis (17-7) in his Lightweight debut. Also being shown is Josh “The Fluke” Grispi (14-1) taking on Dustin “The Diamond” Poirier (8-1). The third fight being shown, as requested by Dana White’s thousands of followers, is “The New York Bad Ass” Phil Baroni (13-12) as he makes his last stand against “The Hawaiian Kid” Brad Tavares (6-0).
If you cannot make it to the MGM to see this event live, make sure you get to where ever it is you plan on watching the fight in time to catch the prelims at 6PM PT, and the PPV broadcast at 7PM PT. If you are going on to celebrate the New Year, be sure to buckle up, have a designated driver if you’ve been drinking and, in the words of the great Jon Anik, “never text and drive.” We’d like to close by wishing all the readers of mmavalor.com a wonderful holiday weekend and a Happy New Year.
About the Author (Author Profile)
Aspiring chef turned MMA writer after financial issues prevented me from pursuing my first dream. Ever since I started watching MMA, I've read up about it and talk about it all the time and with the encouragement of family and friends I finally decided to actively pursue a career in writing about it.Subscribe
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