Dave Mandel/Sherdog.com
After running a jiu-jitsu train on the US vs. UK season of “The Ultimate Fighter,” Wilks alternated between grappling brilliance and gassed-out incompetence in his formal UFC debut against Matt Brown. In hindsight, it was a daring bit of matchmaking for a fighter with limited experience against legit competition. A far more suitable return bout awaits, as Wilks will take on judo convert Peter Sobotta.
Much of the blame for Sobotta’s UFC debut loss to Paul Taylor rests on Sobotta’s habit of keeping his back against the cage, which makes him a sitting duck for both strikes and takedowns. This plays right into Wilks’ game as he isn’t much of a wrestler, but he is good at pressing opponents into the cage and stringing together takedown techniques until one scores. Considering Taylor was able to consistently sweep Sobotta and take dominant positions on him, life is looking good for the UFC’s latest attempt at building a British star.
Things start getting dicey, however, once you consider Wilks still grapples with the mentality of someone in a Brazilian jiu-jitsu tournament. That is to say he rolls without regard for the fact that certain positions just don’t work in MMA because they’ll get you face-punched. Both DaMarques Johnson and Matt Brown took advantage of that strategic oversight. While Sobotta doesn’t have bulldozing ground striking, you don’t have to be Alistair Overeem to hammer-crush a wide-open opponent.
What Wilks gains by having a somewhat counterintuitive grappling style is the ability to more effectively string together submission attempts and relentlessly pursue dominant positions. Keeping up a work-rate like that means Wilks starts huffing and puffing past the five-minute mark, but Sobotta isn’t going to win any IronMan competitions either.
There isn’t much hope for Sobotta in this fight. He lacks dominant offensive skills, which has become the bare-minimum to attain mediocrity in the UFC. One thing that Sobotta should look to build on like Tony Dungy is the surprising striking he showed against Taylor. Despite losing nearly every exchange in that fight, Sobotta cracked Taylor several times over with powerful kicks to the body and seemed to have the natural physical talent to bust some heads.
The dimension where Sobotta picks apart Wilks on the feet unfortunately overlaps with the dimension where Wilks doesn’t go for any takedowns and spends the entire fight saying “Thank you, sir. May I have another?” At worst Wilks dominates the first half of the fight before it degenerates into a mess of tangled limbs and bizarre positions like a MMA Guernica. More likely is Wilks finishing Sobotta via submission during that dominant first half of the fight.