Preview: UFC Fight Night ‘Hendricks vs. Thompson’

Welterweights

Mike Pyle (26-11-1) vs Sean Spencer (12-4)

THE MATCHUP: Pyle has lived on this earth for 40 years, and he has spent 17 of them fighting. Spencer is just 28 and has only been fighting for seven. Both men have been inactive since the start of 2015. Pyle has lost three of his last five fights, and he has shown a worrying vulnerability to punches in most of his recent bouts. Will it be a problem?

Spencer is a good boxer, but he is notably without power. He sacrifices impact for mobility, moving almost constantly from side to side. Spencer augments this footwork with technical, efficient head movement, subtly built into the mechanics of his punching. So while Spencer is unlikely to hurt Pyle with strikes, he will be a difficult target for the older fighter at range.

On the feet, Pyle is best at close range. From the outside, he rarely attacks with more than one strike at a time, though his low kicks certainly demand respect. Inside, Pyle is extremely dangerous, especially with elbows and knees in the clinch. He is also an exceptionally daring submission artist. He is not particularly careful as a positional grappler -- in many ways, his ground game seems very much a product of a bygone era -- but he is a dangerous opportunist. Despite suffering two rounds of punishment at the hands of Colby Covington, Pyle still managed to sweep the young wrestler with a kimura and then nearly finish him with a rear-naked choke immediately after.

Unfortunately that kind of strong finish comes with a flipside. Pyle is notoriously slow to get going and easiest to hurt in the beginning of a fight. Pyle has been finished nine times in his career, and all but two of those bouts ended in the first round. Pyle will be relatively safe, but it has not taken much to send him reeling lately, and Spencer’s positioning and sense of timing have made up for a lack of natural power in the past, such as when he sent Alex Garcia reeling with a beautiful pivot right hand.

THE ODDS: Spencer (-165), Pyle (+140)

THE PICK: Spencer can stop a takedown, and he can scramble quickly back to his feet. He can move laterally, and he can punch in combination. Perhaps the most underrated attribute in Spencer’s favor is his durability. This is a man who has eaten flush knees from Yuri Villefort and hard combinations from the aforementioned Garcia. Pyle can surprise anybody with a big shot now and then but Spencer should be able to take it, and “Quicksand” just is not consistent enough to land those blows or get takedowns with regularity. The pick is Spencer by second-round TKO.

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