With the champ Cain Velaquez on the shelf with knee injuries,# 1 contender Fabricio Werdum won the interim title on Saturday night against the one dimensional but hard hitting toughman Mark Hunt by vicious TKO in round 2. [YT]wSBCbpuDvYI[/YT] After the fight UFC president Dana White said if Velaquez gets injured again in training he will be stripped of the title and Werdum will assume full champion status. Thoughts?
Nice performance by Werdum, his striking has come a LONG way in the last few years, but Hunt just isn't the fighter he used to be. Still. Excellent performance by Werdum, I give him a very good chance at shattering Cains fragile mandible. I agree with Cain being stripped... Actually, more champions need to be penalized for holding titles hostage and not fighting, I don't care if the injuries are legit or not... It's just unacceptable for to hold a belt down, and not fight for over a year.. Maybe this will encourage them not to over-train anymore.
Werdum's striking I think has been underrated for awhile, he outstruck Overoid easily when he was fresh off of winning the K1 GP. Got jobbed in that fight. Then Travis Browne who everybody(including myself) thought was going to brutally KO him, gets pummelled. Stripping Cain if he gets hurt again is a good move, they learned their lesson from the Cruz situation. Do you think Cain can wall and stall Werdum like he did to Junior?
It's definitely solid at this point, I noticed a serious difference when he fought Nelson in 2012(even though Nelson only has an OHR, I still didn't expect Werdum to outstrike him that badly) I picked Werdum to beat Browne actually, I never really feel for the Browne hype... He's got no jab to speak of, and mostly relies of flashy techniques that wouldn't work on anyone half decent... Overoid was taking it to him before he punched himself out, and his infamous glass jaw/weak heart let him down. Werdum definitely is a live underdog against Cain, even if he can't keep the fight standing he's very content to go the ground, and with his extremely dangerous guard I'm not sure Cain wants to hang out there for too long. Extremely interesting match up. I'm gonna go with Werdum by upset KO in rd 3.
