Preview: UFC 183 ‘Silva vs. Diaz’

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LIGHTWEIGHTS

Joe Lauzon (24-9, 11-6 UFC) vs. Al Iaquinta (10-3-1, 5-2 UFC)

THE MATCHUP: Rising Serra-Longo Fight Team product Iaquinta looks to build on his devastating knockouts of Ross Pearson and Rodrigo Damm against action fighter Lauzon. A Massachusetts native, Lauzon was locked in a competitive fight with Michael Chiesa in his last outing before a nasty cut ended the bout in his favor, and prior to that, he took a decision win -- the first of his career -- from Mac Danzig. The winner will likely be well-positioned for a bout with a top-15 opponent and a potential run at the top of the stacked lightweight division.

The quintessentially aggressive, offensively focused fighter, Lauzon is lethal in every phase. A solid boxer, Lauzon throws reasonably powerful punching combinations mainly consisting of hooks and straights in ones and twos at range. His emphasis on throwing hard leather sacrifices head movement and clever angles, however, and makes him fairly hittable.

Lauzon is an excellent infighter, with sharp knees and the occasional elbow to complement his occasional inside and outside trips. The ground is where he really shines, though. He has a diverse and lightning-quick guard replete with chained submissions and sweeps; he drops bombs from top position and passes nicely; and he is always looking for the back and the rear-naked choke.

Iaquinta is a talented and steadily improving wrestle-boxer. A pupil of the inimitable Ray Longo, the New Yorker displays the clean fundamentals and easy power common to Longo’s pupils, strings together nice combinations and has a gift for taking slick angles and returning with counters in the pocket. He intersperses his preferred head-body punching sequences with sharp kicks and hard elbows at close range, and in general tends to work at a quick, pressuring pace. Iaquinta mostly uses his wrestling defensively, and is quite solid, but he can hit nice singles and doubles when the mood strikes. From top position, he has decent passes and throws hard ground strikes but occasionally has mental lapses in the scrambles that lead him to bad positions.

BETTING ODDS: Iaquinta (-170), Lauzon (+150)

THE PICK: Lauzon is not terribly old, but he looks increasingly shopworn and his chin seems to be failing him, while Iaquinta is clearly a fighter on the rise. Still, Iaquinta’s history of giving up submissions is a huge question mark against a venomous, opportunistic grappler of Lauzon’s caliber, and if they end up in extended sequences on the ground, the New Yorker could easily find himself tapping. The more likely outcome, however, involves Iaquinta piecing up the Massachusetts native on the feet, cracking him with hard right hands and depleting his questionable gas tank with hard body shots. Eventually, I think Iaquinta will catch him with a flush shot. The pick is Iaquinta by knockout in the second round.

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