UFC 129 FIght Card: Could Jose Aldo vs. Mark Hominick Be the Real Showstopper?

Last week, I came across a piece that attempted to justify a rather unique case regarding the UFC Featherweight title fight between champion Jose "Scarface" Aldo and challenger Mark "The Machine" Hominick.

For those who are interested, you can check out the piece by B/R Contributor David Kim here.

Now, the attempted point of said editorial. For those who would prefer a summary, the excitement potential of Aldo's defense against Hominick qualifies it to be the main event over the Georges St-Pierre-Jake Shields Welterweight title fight.

Considering the type of fights we've come to expect from the speed demons in the 145-lb. and 135-lb. divisions, I can understand that point. But 25 minutes of "serious spooning" in a Welterweight title bout?

Come on, GSP is not that boring.

I opened up the debate last week over whether he really needs to finish to be a legend in the sport.

GSP has more excitement potential on fight nights than people choose to give him credit for, but I'm not going to ignore the potential of Scarface's bout with The Machine.

As a matter of fact, the UFC Featherweight title bout might have the potential to be the bout that steals the show, but could the bout wind up being the one that should have headlined the card?

It could be, and what you're about to see is exactly why Aldo-Hominick could indeed steal the show.

Canadian Crowds Respect Good MMA

If you recall Hominick's bout with Yves Jabouin, you know two things already about this fight and one of those two things is that Canadian crowds show love to two guys who know how to fight and fight hard.

Hominick, the hometown boy, goes hard every time he straps the gloves on, but Jose Scarface didn't get to where he is as a pound-for-pound great by being a phenom on Youtube.

Aldo and his game have made waves in Mixed Martial Arts by connecting with body parts and doing more than cause a minor scratch.

Add the two together and there's no way that the crowd gets bored with this one.

Whether their boy Hominick prevails or not, the crowd wins anyway because they bore witness to a hell of a struggle between two of the best strikers at 145 pounds in the UFC.

Say Hello to My Little Friend...Who's Not from Around Here!

As stated before, Aldo is coming onto foreign soil for only the second time since winning the belt and becoming champion.

The last time Aldo came into hostile territory he faced Urijah Faber at WEC 48 in Sacramento and he made a tough, yet disgustingly dominant display against Urijah for 25 minutes.

People say Faber was able to make the drop to 135 because the WEC had finally highlighted their Bantamweight division by the time the questions came up about whether Faber should switch weight classes. But the WEC was already highlighting their 135-lb. division with guys like Miguel Torres, Eddie Wineland, Chase Beebe, Dominick Cruz and Joseph Benavidez.

The only thing stopping Faber from dropping to 135 was that Faber wanted his damn belt back.

Of course, Aldo and his leg kicks shut that prayer down quick.

Hominick better remember that when April 30th comes by and Aldo's across the cage from him in front of 55,000 in Toronto.

They're Both Former WEC Superstars

Hominick and Aldo may not have been as polarizing of names in the WEC as Urijah Faber was, but they were one of the reasons why the WEC was one of the most exciting MMA organizations to watch.

Then again, the excitement that WEC fighters brought with them on fight night was a reason why people hoped for the WEC-UFC Merger to be the reality.

Looking at this bout, the things that made the WEC fun to watch are highly visible in both of these fighters, and come UFC 129, the electricity in the air will be conspicuous by the actions of these two Featherweights when they compete with the Featherweight title hanging in the balance.

It's the Featherweights, Dude

So far, there's only been one Featherweight fight that has turned out a tad more dull than hoped, and that fight was Rani Yahya's fight with MIke Brown at Fight for The Troops 2.

Other than that fight, you always get your cash value with any fight involving the Lighter Weight guys, and Aldo's bout with Hominick is no exception.

As I'll touch on later in this slideshow, both fighters make for an interesting clash based on their styles, but then again, we are talking about the Featherweights here.

The fact that it's nearly impossible to mention Aldo or Hominick without using the term "exciting fighter" in the same sentence should come as no surprise to anyone who has paid attention to what these men can do in the cage.

Jose Aldo Has Never Faced a Mark Hominick Before

Many fighters have talked about how they were going to put Aldo in dangerous positions and how they were going to finish him before Aldo had a shot to do anything wild and flashy.

Only Mark Hominick has given any indication that he will in fact push the pace on Aldo, get inside and not hesitate to pull the trigger once he moves forward to stun Aldo.

Manny Gamburyan came close to being that guy, but while he did hurt Aldo, pull the trigger he did not, and Aldo made him pay for it.

If not a TKO or KO finish, then even earning a dominant first round on Aldo does enough to give Hominick some hope as far as earning a win.

The key here for Hominick, however, is to make good on what he's been saying all along.

"Don't write checks that your ass can't cash" is how the saying goes, and if this victory is a check that Hominick's ass can't cash, Aldo will gladly add The Machine to his victims list.

Mark Hominick Has Never Faced a Jose Aldo Before

There's a reason why many publications have Jose Aldo as one of their top four best fighters in the sport, pound for pound.

He's a dynamic animal who can be methodical if he needs to be, but he can also snap at you like a hybrid animal from out of the mouth of hell for five seconds and leave you wondering ten minutes later exactly how it was that you wound up looking at the lights.

I don't know if there's even a correct term for the type of striker Aldo is...all I know is that none of Hominick's past opponents have a style that echos the movements, speed or overall ferocity as Scarface's style.

The major question coming into this is whether Hominick really should stand toe-to-toe with Aldo.

Normally, I'd recommend it, but Aldo takes it to the ground and ends the fight punching the bejeezus out of people when people get brave and decide to trade on the feet.

Again, there's a reason why some people consider Aldo one of the best P4P fighters in the world.

The Machine Doesn't Have to Beat You up to Whoop Your Ass...

Some won't recollect this fact, seeing that Hominick's been showing off his skills on the feet recently, but Hominick does have a very solid submission ability.

Seven of his opponents have succumbed to Hominick by way of submission, and six of those seven know that Hominick does have an actual submission game.

He may not be a BJJ expert, but if the fight hits the ground, you can bet Hominick will look to make Aldo squeal if he sees the chance, and lest we forget, Aldo has tapped out once before.

If Hominick steps up his takedown game and refines his submission offense, Hominick could make MMA history and become the first Canadian to win a major Lighterweight title.

...Then Again, Jose Aldo Doesn't Need to Beat You up to Whoop Your Ass, Either

Now granted, Aldo's recorded two career wins by submission, and to be fair, one of those submission wins was by soccer kicks, so he's technically only submitted someone once.

That said, the Nova Uniao phenom is an example of a fighter who is always looking to improve his game and find new ways to beat his opponents.

Besides, he's a black belt in BJJ and he rolls around with the boys at Black House, including some of the Team Nogueira crew, so he does have some skill on the ground.

Hominick might be secretly hoping otherwise, but Aldo might have himself a ground game that we all don't know about (we all tend to jump the gun and assume myths as facts when an aspect of a fighter's game hasn't been seen in the heat of the fight).

Aldo has shown more of his stand-up than his ground game recently, but that doesn't necessarily mean that Hominick cannot be forced to tap by Aldo.

All it means is that Aldo knows how to use submissions to shock his haters and end fights.

There Will Be a Finish Unless Someone Shows Some Heart in the First 3 Rounds

If you know either of the two men involved, you know that both men come to finish fights.

No matter how tough someone is to knock out or put to sleep, both of these guys have made a career of defeating some of the toughest of the tough and making it look as though any fighter could do it.

Fans of guys who come to fight and look for the finish, or at least decide to let the damage they do to their opponent speak for itself, will have no problem with this fight, save for questionable officiating and shoddy judging.

They can also expect that, should the finish not come before the end of the third round, both men will show their true heart and take as much damage as they need to while trying to inflict enough damage to convince the judges and the multitudes in the Canadian contingent that they deserve to leave Toronto as the undisputed Featherweight champion of the world.

Jose Aldo Is in a Fight That He Might Not Be "Supposed to Win"

Whenever you hear about a champion before his next title defense, one of the most common things you hear is how the fight seems like a mismatch and that the only way the champion will lose is if the judges decide to give the fight to the challenger, regardless of whether or not the challenger truly did enough to win the fight (save for a thirty-second period of brief control that manages to wow the crowd).

The reality of it all, as past fights—non-title and title—have shown, is that the so-called odds-on favorite in any fight is usually anything but every nine times out of 10.

The only reason why they get the whole "they're supposed to win" deal from the media is because the champ generally puts on a dominating performance of sorts to win the belt, and more than not, they dominate at least one of their title challengers.

Truthfully speaking, however, every challenger to a title has more than just "the luck of a bulls**t decision" to walk out of a title fight as the champion on any given night, regardless of what kind of night or hindrances that the champ has had.

In other words, Hominick's best chance to beat Aldo is not by a questionable decision win, and with the things Hominick has been saying ever since he beat George Roop, maybe some of us should start giving him a shot as long as there's still a little under two weeks to go before the two collide.

Sure, I'm biased for Black House fighters normally, and of course my pick to win is Aldo, but is it a fight that he really is supposed to win?

Well, Shogun Rua was supposed to run right through Jon Jones in the same way that Frankie Edgar's UFC 125 fight with Gray Maynard was supposed to suck, right?

Maybe Hominick doesn't have such a bad shot to get the win at home after all come April 30th.

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