UFC 104 – Machida vs. Shogun
Battle of Brazil – This fight card is the mirror image of the 2009 New York Mets, a great Ace at the frond of the staff but not a whole lot of depth or bullpen help to be successful! The LHW title tilt is huge, and can for all intents and purposes carry the card, as Karate expert Lyoto vs. BJJ king pin Shogun, but after that the main card drops like Obama’s street cred with the Olympic debacle…
Lyoto “the Dragon” Machida v. Mauricio “Shogun” Rua
First, these two men are a combined 33-3 including Machida’s perfect 15-0, that right there is enough to get me to tune into this battle of the worlds best 205′s. Second, read the names these men have respectively beat: Rashad Evans, Tito Ortiz, Thiago Silva, Chuck Liddell, Rampage Jackson, Ricardo Arona and surprisingly B.J. Penn. Third, of there 33 wins between them with 20 that have come via TKO & KO. That includes the notion that Machida fights slow and tries to win an easy decision; to put it mildly this fight is going to be great! BUT, not the chess match a lot of the pundents are predicting. This one ends in the second with Shogun getting frustrated with the laissez faire style of the Dragon and makes a disastrous mistake and Lyoto capitalizes with a swarm of pepping jabs and finally a right hook with intentions that would have Ivan Drago wetting his underoos!
Like I said before this is where the card gets a little light for:
Cain Velasquez v. Ben Rothwell
Lets all hope that Cain comes out on top as he could be next in line for Brock or Shane with a nice win over Rothwell. If Big Ben wins, the HW division starts to look a little bleak again, and please, please, please don’t tell me about this season of TUF; those guys are terrible. I was recently joking with my cousin about how a D-3 athlete in myself could just run around the octagon until some of those guys with ‘titties’ got tired enough to let me sink in a weak rear naked choke or arm bar! Please Cain, win this fight!
The rest of the main card is kind of like last year’s Tampa Bay “Devil” Rays. Not quite sure what you have with them, could surprise us all and make a nice bout or two; or, they could be this years Rays who never really lived up to all the billing. Here are some names to watch out for:
1.) Anthony ‘Rumble’ Johnson – dude has heavy hands, he hits as hard as Koscheck and we saw what he did to Yoshida.
2.) Spencer ‘The King’ Fisher – he lives on a yo-yo, roller coaster, but is always entertaining and could upset Stevenson.
3.) Ryan Bader – he the real deal, he is 10-0 but has fought nothing but cans, and gets another one in the prelims, he can’t slip up!
Tune in here at ProFighting-fans.com for more UFC 104 predictions as well as the entire UFC 104 fight results as each fight is complete Saturday night.
By Greg Vorse
MMA Staff Writer
Tags: ufc 104, ufc 104 fight card, ufc 104 machida vs shogun, ufc 104 picks, ufc 104 predictions, ufc 104 preview