One good thing about the MMA community currently suffering a bad case of “Fedor Fatigue” after the stoic Russian’s quizzical decision to sign with Strikeforce instead of the UFC last week is that Pound For Pound can finally move on to discussing some new business: UFC 101 in Philadelphia this Saturday.
Like a lot of the UFC’s non-Vegas shows, the UFC 101 card features a series of mediocre fights leading up to a pair of highly intriguing co-main event bouts. In the featured attractions, B.J. Penn will make a long-awaited defense of his lightweight title against Kenny Florian, while middleweight kingpin Anderson Silva again moves up to light heavyweight to look for a challenge against former champ Forrest Griffin.
It’s good to see Penn come back to 155-pounds after his unsuccessful and ultimately embarrassing quest to turn welterweight champion Georges St. Pierre into his nemesis. Face it, Penn belongs at lightweight, where the opponents are closer to his own size and the weight cut forces him to show up in pretty decent shape. Not to mention the fact that, if Penn is truly as mindful of his legacy as he seemed during the months he spent baiting St. Pierre into kicking his ass at UFC 94, this is a pretty big fight for him.
A convincing win over Florian will tell the world that Penn is exactly who we thought he was all along: the best lightweight fighter on the planet and a guy who needn’t be jeopardizing his birthright by chasing around GSP. A loss will make things a little more murky, signifying that Penn is either getting long in the tooth, that the talent level in the predator-infested 155-pound division has finally caught up with “The Prodigy” and/or that Florian really has been able to transform himself into the best simply through hard work and determination.
Penn enters this bout as the deserved favorite, opening at -228 odds from BetFightOdds.com, but the Hawiian phenom didn’t do anything to dispel the notion that he’s still obsessed with St. Pierre this week when told Yahoo Sports he thinks the Canadian champ uses steroids.
“I can’t hand you any proof, but ... in my opinion, he doesn’t play by the rules when it comes to steroids and growth hormones and that stuff,” Penn said. “Look at him. He’s the worst. He looks like that every day. That’s cheating ... The rest of us, we get fat, then we train and get skinny and the cycle goes over and over again. He looks the same way all the time. Come on.”
Now, what B.J. says about GSP obviously says more about B.J.’s training schedule than it does about GSP using drugs. It could also speak volumes about how Penn is approaching Florian. Not exactly known for staying focused and keeping a clear head, Penn will lose this fight if he’s not 100 percent “in the moment” against Florian.
In the light heavyweight bout, Silva also has a certain amount to prove about his mental state. After back-to-back cakewalks at 185-pounds against Patrick Cote and Thlaes Leites, fans started to worry that their beloved middleweight champ was forgoing his popular “ballet of violence” fighting style in favor of a more reserved, craftier approach. Others, like me, wondered allowed if Silva wasn’t bored to tears with the lack of competition in his own weight class.
In response, the UFC exercised a fairly brilliant stroke of matchmaking by putting “The Spider” up against Griffin. That is, Silva will have to be at his best to beat the former 205-pound titlist and Griffin’s straightforward, bruising style certainly isn’t going to let him dance and clown like he did against Cote and Leites.
This fight has the potential to tell us a lot about where Silva is mentally and what his future looks like in the fight game. A focused, old-school attack from him will likely indicate that he is simply bored with the middleweight division. A crafty and elusive, yet effective “Spider” might mean that the guy has simply evolved to a point where he’s ninja-like in his precision striking game and that might be something that we all just have to accept as fans.
If Griffin manages to pull of the upset, it will be a great feather in the big man’s cap, but might be just what Silva needs to go back to 185-pounds and return to being the bloodthirsty, merciless Muay Thai machine that we all know and love.
Either way these fights turn out on Saturday, things will be a lot clearer in both the lightweight and middleweight divisions. They’ll also both probably be fun to watch. And remember kids, it’s not the destination, it’s the journey.
Chad Dundas writes a weekly MMA column for Crave Online. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
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