James Wilks will be looking to build on his recent victory over Peter Sobotta at UFC 115 when he takes on Canadian prospect Claude Patrick. Wilks’ career hit a stumbling block after winning the Ultimate Fighter as he suffered a loss to Matt Brown, however if he puts a good showing against Patrick, then he will extend his win streak to 2 and he can look to build up a case to fight the top fighters in the division. Patrick will be no pushover though, holding a 12-1 professional record (the only loss being back in 2005), he is currently riding an 11 fight win streak and his confidence will be at an all time high after a successful UFC debut at UFC 115. With both fighters being very accomplished with their submissions, this fight could turn into more of a stand-up battle in which case i’m leaning more towards Patrick as even though Wilks has improved his overall game a lot since the Ultimate Fighter, his stand-up is still not quite upto par with his ground game. Therefore due to Claude having the more well rounded skill set, i’m going to have go with the Canadian via decision.
My Prediction: Claude Patrick via decision.
In the main heavyweight fight of the night Cheick Kongo will take on the undefeated Travis Browne in a fight that will surely have some fireworks. Kongo is well known for the fact that he loves to stand and trade strikes with his opponents even if he has to take some shots to land his own. In Travis Browne he will have the perfect opportunity to trade leather as Browne also has a tendency to keep his fights standing. With a 10-0 record and 8 KO’s, Browne has big power in his hands and will surely believe that he has what it takes to stop Kongo after seeing him get dropped in previous fights. I think Kongo is the more technical striker in this match-up but he will need to stick to his gameplan and not get drawn into a brawl. If he keeps a cool head and concentrates on his defence, then I think the opportunity will be there for Cheick to counter Browne and hand him his first loss. There's a big danger of Browne catching Cheick and putting him out cold, but i'm counting on Cheick's experience to see him through on his way to a late stoppage victory.
My Prediction: Cheick Kongo via TKO.
After putting on the performance of his career against Diego Sanchez at UFC 114, John Hathaway will now take on tough veteran welterweight Mike Pyle as he looks to continue to climb the ranks of the talent rich welterweight division. Hathaway surprised a lot of people in the Sanchez fight with just how easily he was able to dictate the pace and dominate not only the stand-up but the grappling and ground game aswell. This was all the more impressive as Diego is well known for his grappling ability. Although Pyle may not be as well known to some people as perhaps Sanchez was, I think this fight may be an even bigger test. Mike has been around the sport for a long time and has close to 30 professional fights, his main strengths are his submissions so as a result he is normally most dangerous in the beginning stages of the fight where it’s a lot easier to lock onto a sub & keep hold. John is pretty adept on the ground himself, so he shouldn’t have too many problems as long as he is concentrating. In terms of the striking i’d give the edge to John, he has a big reach of 75.5 inches and knows full well how to use it to his advantage. I think we’ll see him out-point Mike in the early stages before then seeing Pyle attempt to drag the fight to the ground, even though Mike is a lot more experienced I think Hathaway is hungrier to make an impact at this point in his career and with a better overall game this is Hathaway’s fight.
My Prediction: John Hathaway via decision.
My Prediction: John Hathaway via decision.
In the co-main event of the evening Dan Hardy will be looking to start the long road back to a shot at the welterweight title, but in order to do so he is going to need to defeat former WEC welterweight champion Carlos Condit. Even though Hardy lost his fight to GSP pretty convincingly, he showed tremendous heart and never gave up. He also had the opportunity to find out some of the weaknesses in his game, which is mainly his wrestling ability and I fully expect that he’s been working hard to address these issues since that night. Hardy already has good striking so if is able to get his grappling upto that sort of level then he will surely be a threat to anyone in the division. With Condit having a reach advantage in this fight I expect him to utilize this to try and out-point Hardy, who has never been KO’d in his career & Carlos isn’t the biggest punching welterweight so I feel this would probably be his best strategy. Hardy on the other hand should look to counter where possible and try to land one of those power strikes, I think if he connects then he should be able to finish Condit and with what should be a tremendous home following I think he’ll be spurred on even more to end this fight emphatically.
My Prediction: Dan Hardy via TKO.
In the main event of the evening middleweights Michael Bisping & Yoshihiro Akiyama will collide to try and work their ways back up the middleweight rankings. Akiyama is coming into this fight on the back of his first loss in 5 years, so no doubt he will be very motivated to make up for his disappointing loss at UFC 116 against Chris Leben and what better way to bounce back than to take out Michael Bisping in the UK. Bisping is coming into this fight with a decision victory over Dan Miller behind him, recently he’s been working a lot on getting more power into his strikes instead of firing off quick combinations and moving out of range. We seen glimpses of this in his last fight however we also saw Bisping kind of revert back to his old style, it’ll be interesting to see just how much he’s managed to improve on using more power strikes since the last fight. I think Bisping does have the style to get a decision win in this fight but he will need to be careful of Akiyama’s powerful strikes and judo throws. One thing that could be a deciding factor is cardio, Bisping’s cardio is one of his main strengths, whereas Akiyama seemed to lose steam after just one round against Chris Leben and went on to fight off of heart alone. If this happens to him against Bisping then it’ll be a very long night for Yoshihiro as Bisping will pick him apart. This is a tough fight to call but with the defensive improvements that Bisping has made to his striking, i’m leaning towards him taking a unanimous decision in this one.
My Prediction: Michael Bisping via decision.
My Prediction: Michael Bisping via decision.
