From what i have been reading, it seems the consensus is that while Fabricio Werdum has made some massive leaps in his striking game, turning himself into one of the best kickboxers in the division, his ability to fight on the back foot is somewhat lackluster. This should play right into the hands of Velasquez, who will hopefully return to the high pressure tactics that he has been known for in the past, however, given the 600+ days that Velasquez has been sidelined, due to multiple recurring injuries, there is a real question hanging about his physical capabilities after all the time off. There have also been rumblings about how the winner of this fight would probably have a claim to being the best heavyweight fighter since Fedor, and while i haven't necessarily drunk the kool aid on that decision, i can understand the thought process behind it, and wouldn't dismiss the notion outright, but no matter what the fight actually means, the question remains, who you got?.
I think Velasquez will be too adept at closing the distance, pinning him against the cage, and wearing him out before a TKO. Kind of a repeat of Couture-Gonzaga, if Couture had the bone structure of an Easter Island statue come to life. I mean, Werdum has more ways to win (better subs, more KO potential on the feet), and the question mark is how Velasquez's injuries have effected his performance, but unless Velasquez has gotten gun-shy or does something bone-headed (and uncharacteristic) like go for an early TD on a fresh Werdum, I just think the patterns these guys fight in tend to favor Velasquez.
Spoiler Werdum looked very sharp in this fight, Cains conditioning was questionable, something I never thought I would say, I think it was a combination of the altitude and the effective strikes taking their toll on him, I think in hindsight he will realise even with his conditioning he needed to get their sooner and acclimatise. But that takes nothing away from Werdum his conditioning was spot on, and striking was top notch, in fact I think he was winning the standup battle, his strikes seemed to be more accurate and have more pop behind them , and his takedown defence was good and as always his ground work world class, that’s two potential GOATS in the heavyweight division he has subbed now
I know people have been going on about how the altitude was the reason for the result, but i have to say, one thing i noticed quite a bit was how the fighter who lost seems to think he has a cast iron chin, and was pretty much just letting himself get caught the whole fight.
Letting himself get clipped? Slipping the jab of an anesthetised sloth takes some doing when one is really gassed in the ring. Whatever contingencies were drawn up on the chalkboard in the dressing room before the fight, I don't think an improvisatory Anderson Silva act was among them.
Correct I think werdum surprised Cain with the speed and accuracy of his shots and Cains plan to out strike him on the feet went out the window, he couldn't dominate the clinch as normal due to gassing and the fact werdums clinch especially neck tie is very strong You can see the corner tried to change the game plan and told him to take it to the mat, however that wasn't the original game plan and for good reason as we saw how that turned out.
Ja - you really have to work those plan B's and C's and train them as if they are happening in real-time in order to have a chance of working and that would've meant significant time on expert-level BJJ counters and it certainly didn't seem like his camp really thought that a likely scenario But one can't fault them too much because at that point ... you're dealing with a situation where you're now pairing up the weakest spot in your armour against your opponent's strongest mace and thing's couldn't be going too well - not a welcome process to work through. They never realy envisioned it, as you said.
It hard if you are not inside the camp but I would have thought their plan a would have been to out strike werdum where him down with leg kicks and boxing, plan B to clinch and bloody him up against the cage, and plan C takedown to side control problem was with plan A werdum had prepared for and his boxing was very sharp, plan B didn’t work out because Cain seemed to tire after the first round (whether due to altitude, lack of fighting or cumulative effects of the strikes we don’t know but probably a mix of all three) and werdum owned the striking in the clinch, his knees were lovely to watch if not to be on the receiving end of lol And when he went to plan C and was fresh as in the first round it worked, he passed to side control fairly well, when he hit a sloppy takedown and ended up in guard well as you say its hard to prepare for world class BJJ. I think the camp had worked counters and ground, but doing this with a BJJ blackbelt or a world class wrestler like cormier when you are fresh is one thing, doing it with a world class submission master like werdum quite another, to be fair other than calling in roger or vinny I don’t think theres allot you can do to prepare for werdums ground game, its on another level
I wasn't much expecting Cain to come out and go all Machida on the bloke, but i just figured if your expecting to fight a guy who's outstruck Nelson, Browne and Hunt, you'd have at least the sense to at least practice using your head as something other than a battering ram.
You could see the strategy his camp came up with, leg kicks to slow werdum down, then clinch him tire him out and wear him down, its worked for cain before against better strikers (such as de santos) problem was Cain was the one that tired first slowing down his reactions and timing, in the first round he did ok on the outside, werdums clinch came from a striking point of view was as what bloodied him up in the first round, it was in the second as he tired that he started taking real damage
Dos Santos is a better striker in a sense, but he is very one dimensional, especially with regard to the clinch, which i think was a big downfall in his last two fights with Cain. On the flip side though, Werdum was able to take control of the clinch and use it against Cain, which robbed Cain of his main stand up tool, forcing him to exchange with Werdum, but the thing that bothers me is, it looks like AKA put no effort into striking defense, as if they refused to accept that the clinch might fail on him, which led to him being lit up, which probably played as much of a factor in his decline in cardio as the altitude did.
