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Monday, Sep 09, 2013

Full Contact Fighter’s “The Daily Takedown”: Odd Fights On Horizon In 2013

Melendez

By Joshua Molina

A look at some of the strange match ups we’ll see inside the cage over the next few months:

Mark Hunt will fight Antonio “Bigfoot” Silva on Dec. 7 in Australia. I don’t like main event fights between two guys who were badly KO’d in their last fights. It feels like they are fighting to see who’s not the worst, rather than who’s better.

There’s no way this fight goes three rounds. Hunt will probably put the big man down early.

On Oct. 19 former Strikeforce Lightweight Champion Gilbert Melendez takes Diego Sanchez, of The Ultimate Fighter 1 fame. This is the best guy the UFC could find for Melendez, who nearly upset Benson Henderson in his last fight? Of all the fighters in the UFC’s stacked lightweight division, Sanchez was the best guy they could find to take on Melendez?

Melendez would be better off fighting Josh Thomson for a fourth time. This is a bad, bad fight for Melendez. Sanchez is tough, smart and talented. He has everything to gain by tapping out Melendez, while Melendez, if he wants to fight for the title again in 2014, absolutely has to win.

After being champion for so long, it’s going to be tough for Melendez to get up for non-title fights, but if he doesn’t beat a mid-carder like Sanchez, he’s probably going to go the way of his buddy Nick Diaz and drift away.

On the same card, Daniel Cormier will fight Roy Nelson, in another dumb matchup. Cormier plans to drop down to the light heavyweight division to fight champ Jon Jones. But first, he’s gonna fight Nelson, a guy with knockout power, who could blow away Cormier’s undefeated streak with one left hook.

A knocked out Cormier challenging Jones isn’t a fight a lot of people will want to see. If he can outwrestle Nelson he’ll be OK, but if Cormier wants to fight as a light heavyweight he should start now, and not risk a title shot against a hammerfist like Nelson.

 

posted by JoshuaM @ 3:52 pm
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