craveonline

By Ben Fowlkes

If you’re trying to figure out who will win Wednesday’s “UFC Fight Night” main event, don’t bother looking at the records.  It won’t help you at all.

On one hand, you’ve got Kenny Florian, whose 9-3 record would seem to suggest an inexperienced, untested waif.  Looking at photos of him, you might wonder if he only took up MMA after getting cut from the high school lacrosse team for being forty pounds too small, but don’t be fooled.  Florian is no joke, and after coming of age almost entirely within the UFC ranks he knows his way around the Octagon.

Florian may be of a dying breed in MMA.  A white-collar kid from an upscale Boston suburb, he had only three fights when he got his start with the UFC via the first season of Spike TV’s The Ultimate Fighter.  To the surprise of many, including himself, Florian found himself in the finals, where he was promptly outmatched and undersized against Diego Sanchez.

Now Florian’s at lightweight, where he belongs, and low and behold, the kid has become a complete fighter in every sense of the word, almost as if the skinny middleweight spun himself into a cocoon when no one was looking and emerged as 155 pounds of pure bad-ass.

His opponent, Joe Lauzon, would seem to be the battle-tested youngster here, but again, don’t jump to conclusions.  Lauzon sports an impressive 16-3 record, including a victory over Jens Pulver in his UFC debut.  But of his nineteen fights, sixteen came in the smaller shows of the minor MMA circuit.  This, quite naturally, is how most fighters come up these days.  He had a chance to figure his game out, learn the ropes, and then jump into the UFC shark tank via, you guessed it, The Ultimate Fighter.

The result is a main event featuring two guys who have arrived in the same place by two very different roads.  Lauzon probably won’t be overwhelmed by Florian’s ground game, considering he spends his days training with B.J. Penn in Hawaii, but to think of Florian as purely a jiu-jitsu fighter is a mistake.  He’s much more than that now, and I expect he’ll show it on Wednesday night.

Pound for Pound pick: Florian.  He’s got too many tools for Lauzon to handle.  Lauzon’s best chance is to catch in the transition, but if you don’t think Florian’s going to be expecting that you’re not giving the man enough credit.  It may take all three rounds, but Florian’s hand gets raised in the end.

Quick Picks:

- Karo Parisyan over Thiago Alves.  Parisyan has a way of making even the most exciting opponents look languid and boring.  He takes over right away and never lets up, which is exactly what he’ll do en route to a decision win here.

- Tim Boetsch over Matt Hamill.  A minor upset perhaps, but Boetsch has the wrestling ability to match Hamill’s, as he showed just by virtue of lasting three rounds with IFL champ Vladimir Matyushenko.

- Nate Diaz over Kurt Pellegrino.  Diaz has been underused by the UFC thus far, which is typical for a TUF winner.  The kid wants to fight, and he gets better every time he does.  The UFC would do well to move him more into the spotlight if turns in an impressive performance here.

- Houston Alexander over James Irvin.  Thiago Silva exposed Alexander’s complete lack of a ground game, but Irvin isn’t Silva.  Alexander should return to form as the beast who demolished Keith Jardine, but if he doesn’t put away Irvin fast he could be in trouble.

Read more of Ben Fowlkes work at The Fighting Life.