Dos Santos vs. Mir: Can Junior Dos Santos Defend More Than Once?

At UFC 146, Junior dos Santos joined a pretty exclusive club—he became only the seventh UFC heavyweight champion to actually defend the belt.

The heavyweight title is the most up for grabs belt in the history of the organization. Many have held the biggest title in the sport, but defending it is a whole other thing.

Naturally, the discussion is now centered on whether or not dos Santos can defend it again.

Nothing is official at this point, but logic dictates that Cain Velasquez will probably be the next challenger after his dominating beatdown of Antonio Silva.

Dos Santos already defeated Velasquez when he knocked him out in roughly a minute at UFC’s inaugural FOX event and a rematch would be a huge event.

And realistically, after Junior’s phenomenal performance against Frank Mir and Cain’s utter destruction over Antonio Silva, Velasquez is the only remaining threat to the title.

Alistair Overeem, when and if he’s granted another shot after failing a drug test, is also a credible threat. Overeem is a K-1 champion and a beast of a striker, but he’s just too one-dimensional to deal with the quickness and skill of dos Santos.

Velasquez has the combination of kickboxing and wrestling that is the only formula for dealing with dos Santos. Lest we forget, this is mixed martial arts and the ‘mixed’ is the compelling factor.

That’s easy to forget watching a dos Santos fight. His takedown defense is flawless, which gives him a great advantage to dictate where the fight takes place.

But the first meeting between dos Santos and Velasquez ended so quickly that no probable conclusions can be drawn about how a second fight would look.

Make no mistake, Cain is a credible challenger, despite how the first fight ended.

So can dos Santos defend the title a second time? Of course he can. He’s a seriously bad man. But so is Velasquez. And he deserves the rematch more than anyone.

From a skill-set perspective, this would be a close matchup, but Cain would emerge victorious with his varied attack.

Dos Santos does seem indestructible right now, but so have so many heavyweights that came before him.