UFC 117 Preview: The Main Card

Junior dos Santos vs. Roy Nelson

If you have anything to be thankful for, it should be that the days of Paul Buentello and Jeff Monson challenging for the UFC heavyweight title are long gone. Currently in their stead are dos Santos and Nelson, who will match wits and fists for the right to take on the winner of the upcoming Brock Lesnar/Cain Velasquez ultra-fight.

Who earns that potentially dubious prize comes down to who controls the range. Setting aside Nelson’s back-to-back KO wins, he does his best work when he gets in the clinch and hits his trademark outside trip into half-guard. Dos Santos on the other hand likes to stay mobile on the outside while throwing the occasional jab or feint before collapsing the pocket with power punches.

Both at range and in close quarters, Nelson won’t do well at all against dos Santos’ handspeed and crisp boxing technique. A fact best illustrated by Nelson’s bout with Andrei Arlovski, which saw him struggle and ultimately fail to keep up with the Belarusian’s striking. Dos Santos is a much better counterpuncher than Arlovski, and his chin isn’t made of talcum powder either, so he’s much more willing to stay in the pocket and wait out opportunities.

A boxing match just isn’t going Nelson’s way. He’s only effective from just outside mid-range, where his clubbing punches have their best chance of landing. Even if Nelson could keep the fight at that range, dos Santos’ two best punches are the counter left hook and lead uppercut, both of which will beat Nelson’s parabolic punches to the target every time.

The only place Nelson has a real chance of winning this fight is on the mat. However, his skill from top control has been severely oversold based on his fights on “The Ultimate Fighter” -- fights that saw him take on mostly hopeless and/or hapless competition. Nelson is undoubtedly a solid grappler. His Greco-Roman skills are good enough to get dos Santos down, but he’s not some instant tapout machine from top control either.

In his match with Brendan Schaub, Nelson lost the top position when Schaub literally pushed him off from underneath side control. While dos Santos is untested on the mat save for a white belt level submission loss early in his career to Joaquim Ferreira, it’s still important to be realistic about what kind of grappler Nelson really is. He’s a methodical top-control grappler whose best weapon is his guard-passing.

Nelson has to close the book on dos Santos early because he doesn’t have the cardio to go 15 hard minutes. Going back to the Arlovski fight, he was zapped after five minutes and turned into human target practice for the brief remainder of the bout. Given how good dos Santos is at controlling distance and picking his spots, it’s hard to imagine Nelson finishing the job before conditioning comes into play.

Even if Nelson comes into the cage with the gas tank of a lightweight, he still doesn’t have anything to offer dos Santos on the feet. Unless dos Santos proves to be a total fail on the mat, he’s going to control the majority of this bout and his fluid footwork should be enough to minimize Nelson’s bulrush clinch grabs. Sooner or later Nelson will have to defend against dos Santos’ own bulrush, and it’s not going to end well for the Bryant Reeves of MMA.