Tuesday, October 27 1:42 pm PT: You’re Cain Velasquez and you’ve just made Ben Rothwell’s mother exit the arena in a hurry, likely earning yourself a title shot. You probably want to sleep. Too bad the media has other plans.
Velasquez and trainer Javier Mendez spoke to Sherdog.com’s Greg Savage to evaluate the issues involved in facing either Brock Lesnar or Shane Carwin, who fight one another Nov. 21. And unlike some camps that promote the idea their athletes could hang with mace and small-caliber weapons, Mendez was practical.
“[Lesnar] is an extremely hard fight for us,” Mendez said. “We’re going to definitely have to win the standup game and the kicking game. And then the wrestling, the size of Brock could potentially neutralize us, but Cain’s cardio is going to neutralize him, so it’s going to be a really, really interesting fight.”
I’m not sure there’s anything to neutralize in Lesnar’s cardio conditioning: he had no problem staying in Heath Herring’s face in a 15-minute fight, which is downright demoralizing considering his near 280-pound frame. Big men are supposed to wear out easy. That’s how life stays fair. Lesnar doesn’t.
And on Carwin: “Should Carwin get past Lesnar, it’s going to be a little different fight. We can’t attack the same as against Lesnar because Carwin is to be respected because of his incredible power, and his wrestling is top notch also. We will have to take a different path because he is a different fighter with different strengths.”
More ambiguous: Carwin is more or less Lesnar’s mirror. But if anyone’s cardio should be open to debate, it’s Carwin’s, who hasn’t seen a second round anywhere but in a gym.
If you had trouble sleeping Saturday night and happened to possess the attention span of someone with a gun to the head, you could’ve watched virtually eight hours of prizefighting with a tandem UFC 104/Dream 12 marathon. One session like that and you’d be ready for a job as an EMT: nicely desensitized.
Dream aired on HDNet in the early-morning hours Sunday with big names throughout, but none in any particular mood to be fighting one another. Alistair Overeem, looking like he has ingested the 2003 Alistair Overeem for the proteins, sunk in a trademark guillotine choke against James Thompson; in the newest chapter of the world’s slowest public execution, Kazushi Sakuraba took another few years off his life by eating several flush punches to the head courtesy Zelg Galesic before securing a kneebar. Not an even trade; Bellator lightweight champion Eddie Alvarez survived a demoralizing first round -- and gave Bellator CEO Bjorn Rebney some slight palpitations -- before getting an arm-triangle submission against Katsunori Kinuko.
Bouts for the event were held in a white circular cage, a departure from most Japanese events using a ring: eventually, Dream will adopt Michael Buffer and possibly ring girl Edith, and the bizarro world will be complete.
