UFC 102: Time to Get Off The Schneid

For several fighters competing at the Rose Garden this Saturday, UFC 102 is an opportunity to fight for mere relevancy.

Believe it or not, UFC 102 is the first event in promotion history where all four co-headliners are coming off losses. Take it one step further and you’ll see that six of the 10 fighters slated for Saturday’s main card are coming off losses altogether.

At a time when competition in MMA is running high not just between the fighters inside the cage, but the promoters behind the scenes, those involved in the fight game will take any kind of victory they can muster.

MMA is a sport where records operate under the “sink or swim” mentality and anything even broaching a losing streak can put a fighter out of title contention and at times, even a job. Randy Couture and Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira have etched their names in MMA’s history books for eternity, but both fighters enter Saturday night at a similar crossroads, fighting to silence any criticisms about knocking at retirement’s door.

A loss is hard to stomach for any fighter, but there is literally a “do or die” subplot entrenched in each main card bout at UFC 102. In this week’s edition of the The Five Finger Death Punch, we’re taking a look at just what’s a stake and what the future holds for each of the participants on this weekend’s televised fight card. While some fights are a bit clearer than others, you’ve got to look between the lines for some to see just who needs the win a bit more.

Simply put, which fighter needs to get off the schneid and reverse what could be some otherwise bleak misfortunes in the aftermath of Saturday’s card (mind you, these aren’t predictions…just indicators of who needs the win the most).

Brandon Vera vs. Krzysztof Soszynski

Things really have evened out in the career of Brandon Vera. Once deemed an integral cog in the future of the UFC’s growingly stale heavyweight class of 2006, Vera has all but erased the memories of him kneeing Frank Mir into oblivion.

Following a yearlong hiatus from the octagon, Vera has managed just two wins in his past five fights. All three losses have come to fighters who at the time, were ranked in the top 10 in their respective weight classes. It’s a telling sign that Vera has been unable to break through the glass ceiling that so many fans had him poised for three years ago.

Considered too small to flourish in the otherwise mammoth climates at heavyweight, Vera’s move down to 205 pounds was supposed to allow him to meet his full potential but since word one, the 31-year-old has struggled to reignite the fire that fueled his early days in the octagon.

Leg kicking his way through an overmatched Mike Patt at UFC 96, Vera now aims to show whether or not his performance was all smoke and mirrors when he clashes with the quietly surging Krzysztof Soszynski. A product of the eighth season of “The Ultimate Fighter,” Soszynski has steadily emerged as one of the more notable standouts from the show, already having amassed a 3-0 record since stepping outside the house.

If you take a look around the division, you'll notice that the UFC has a near monopoly on the light heavyweight division. Check out any ranking sheet and if you string together the top 20 names or so competing at 205 pounds, all but maybe Gegard Mousasi and Renato Sobral are signed to the UFC. Even beforehand, light heavyweight was one of the UFC’s most talent-rich divisions, and now a loss can be damning as ever.

While it’s definitely a step back, a loss for Soszynski won’t hurt in the same way that it will Vera. Soszynski has built up enough goodwill with his last three performances that he’ll be given at least one more opportunity to redeem himself. For Vera though, a loss would make for his fourth in his last six fights and few fighters are able to outlast a downward spiral of that nature.

Unfortunately for Vera, his stock has plummeted to the point where even if he were released and picked up by Strikeforce, it’d hardly going to make a difference in either promotion’s future. Either Mousasi is given a UFC veteran to steamroll, or a guy who couldn’t hack it in the UFC with the division’s top dogs, and deflates the hype surrounding one of Strikeforce’s most prized investments.

Who needs to get off the schneid?

BRANDON VERA

Demian Maia vs. Nate Marquardt

The latest kink in the ongoing rubix cube masked as a middleweight contendership scene, sees Brazilian jiu-jitsu demigod Demian Maia butt heads with top 10 divisional stalwart Nate Marquardt.

While to say the victor is hardly a lock at an immediate date with the winner of Anderson Silva/Dan Henderson, this is one of those fights where you need to look at the intangibles surrounding each fighter, because they’re not just competing against each other to see who deserves a shot at “The Spider.”

While justice prevailed and Henderson was granted his much deserved rematch with Silva, I’m from the school of thought that Hendo’s performance against Michael Bisping weighed heavily on Dana White’s decision to sign said fight. If Henderson doesn’t knock out Bisping in spectacular fashion on the promotion’s biggest stage to date, I’m not sold that we’re talking about the winner of Marquardt/Maia waiting in line for a title shot.

If “Decision Dan” struck at UFC 100 and coasted to a lackluster decision over “The Count,” I don’t think the UFC brass would be as generous to grant Henderson a rematch. Even after the knockout win, Dan’s title shot didn’t become a reality until weeks after when the UFC nixed a contest between Henderson and Rich Franklin for UFC 103.

Now so more than ever, Silva has plenty of opportunities outside of competing at middleweight. UFC 101 showed all of us that Silva has every reason to flourish at 205 pounds in fights that are far more marketable than anything Marquardt or Maia could offer at its surface.

Squashing former champion Forrest Griffin on a card that is believed to have eclipsed the million buys mark has done wonders for the middleweight king’s stock and now all of a sudden the focus has shifted to just how far Silva can go as a light heavyweight. Imagine Silva competing against the likes of Mauricio Rua, Quinton Jackson, Rashad Evans, champion and training partner Lyoto Machida, or even Randy Couture. All of a sudden a fight with Maia doesn’t seem to have as much luster behind it.

Heck, rumors have even surfaced that Silva wants to test himself at heavyweight against Frank Mir, but it’s safe to say that there are no shortage of options for the world’s top pound-for-pound fighter. With that in mind, either Marquardt or Maia need to make their case for a shot at Silva and need to pull out something akin to Henderson’s knockout of Bisping to prove it.

For Marquardt, he’s up against the fence in that a potential bout with Silva isn’t as fresh. Nate has really come into his own since losing to Silva at UFC 73, improving with each fight and stringing together a 3-1 record since. Marquardt’s been so good that his lone loss (to Thales Leites in the infamous UFC 85 contest) is barely regarded as such because of the officiating circumstances surrounding the bout. Still, Marquardt’s not exactly a household name and doesn’t possess the undefeated allure that Maia would, should he win.

On Maia’s end, the sexiness of a fight with Silva took a bit of a hit over the past few months, and in no part due to Maia. When pondering whether or not to book Silva/Maia, the UFC brass are bound to have flashbacks to the travesty of a contest between Silva’s last go around with a jiu-jitsu-predominant fighter in Leites. As big a snoozer as it was, the UFC could be a bit reluctant to grant Maia a shot immediately.

Silva is a counter-striker by nature and for the most part, waits for the game to come to him. Leites was content doing the exact opposite and the backlash was so great that it played a heavy part in the UFC’s decision to cut bait with the former top contender following his loss to Alessio Sakara. Maia’s going to have to show that he won’t be afraid to force his style upon his opponent and will need to use Marquardt as exhibit A.

Honestly, when you break down each scenario, there really isn’t one fighter who needs the victory more than the other. It all comes down to who stands the most to lose if they face defeat. We’ve seen previous fighters attempt to make that ascension back to contender status and fall flat in the past (most recently Gabriel Gonzaga), and for Marquardt, I don’t think he can afford to redo the two years that he has spent trying to work his way back to a title shot.

Who needs to get off the schneid?

NATE MARQUARDT

Chris Leben vs. Jake Rosholt

It’s a battle pitting the two evils of the troubled, controversial veteran against the underwhelming hype machine when Chris Leben meets Jake Rosholt in perhaps the least compelling of the five main card contests.

Leben has been nothing short of a PR nightmare for the UFC over the past year, having a UFC 85 contest with Michael Bisping nixed stemming from a warrant relating to a DUI arrest that landed Leben in jail for over a month. Once the bout with Bisping finally did come to fruition, after building the fight with chatter on how he’d turned over a new leaf if life, “The Crippler” tested positive for steroids following an underwhelming decision loss to Bisping.

But just to show how the UFC frowns on steroid suspensions, Leben is back on the main card in his first fight in nine months and meets another phenomenal collegiate wrestler who has struggled to match the hype surrounding his transition to MMA (hey there, C.B. Dollaway).

For many, the only samples of Rosholt’s six fight career are his lone outing in the WEC, where he Homer Simpson'd his way through the standup game against Nissen Osterneck, and used his superior wrestling to grind out a less than stellar victory. Once the WEC folded it’s middleweight division, Rosholt was given a chance to prove his worth on the fight game’s grandest stage, but was choked out in short order to Dan Miller.

It’s pretty clean cut right here: if Rosholt loses, he’s probably going to be seeking employment elsewhere. As incredible a wrestler as the college record books list him as, he’s still lagging behind in virtually every other facet of MMA, and as Saturday could prove, he might just flatout be in over his head at this stage of his career.

While the numbers are construed a bit differently than Vera’s, Leben is also in the predicament of a loss marking his fourth in his last six fights, though the defeats to Kalib Starnes and Jason MacDonald seem forever ago.

The question for Leben is whether or not the UFC thinks he’s just not worth the trouble anymore. To that notion, I say that Leben simply appearing on the main card after a suspension is all the answer you need. Sure, they could bump up Gonzaga vs. Random Debuting Tomato Can, or give Ed Herman vs. Aaron Simpson some love, but with Leben/Rosholt, there’s the chance that Rosholt could get the piss knocked out of him. 

It’s not like there’s much intrigue outside of that to this fight. It’s not like Rosholt set the world on fire since entering the Zuffa umbrella, and Leben is yet to apologize or show any regret for the steroid debacle. I think Leben’s nature as the defacto gatekeeper who puts on a good show more times than not will keep him around a tad bit longer should he lose, but for Rosholt, the road ends here if he winds up gazing into the lights Saturday night. Perhaps he’ll be back down the road, but an 0-2 mark will only keep someone who performs like Rafael dos Anjos around.

Who needs to get off the schneid?

JAKE ROSHOLT

Keith Jardine vs. Thiago Silva

Take the stuff from the Vera/Soszynski entry about how winning at 205 pounds is as pivotal as ever, and you have a similar scenario in the evening’s co-main event, which pits uppervechelon fighters Keith Jardine and Thiago Silva against one another.

Silva gets to use this opportunity to give us all a clearer gauge of where he stands in the light heavyweight picture. After amassing four victories in the UFC and notably derailing the Houston Alexander bandwagon, Silva was fed to and promptly embarrassed by division king Lyoto Machida. Honestly, the leap in quality of opposition between Machida and Antonio Mendes is staggering and probably not the best indicator of Silva’s true potential.

Well if there was ever an opponent tailor-made for Silva to get off the schneid against, it would be Jardine, who almost by default, remains outside the top 5 in most publication’s light heavyweight rankings. Not having strung together consecutive victories since 2006, Jardine can at least carry the mantle of being one of only two fighters in history to boast victories over both Chuck Liddell and Forrest Griffin. The problem with Jardine has always been maintaining whatever momentum he gained from those victories.

If we’re talking who needs this victory more, I think Silva’s on the shorter leash between the two. Jardine, believe it or not, has headlined a pair of UFC cards in the past and hasn’t disappointed on either stint. He upset Liddell at UFC 76 and shocked everyone by making his outing against Quinton Jackson at UFC 96 remotely competitive to the point where he actually had an outside shot at winning the darn thing.

Being one of the “TUF” alumni to actually amount to something without having won the show doesn’t hurt Jardine either, but for Silva, his place in the division is very much set in stone if he loses on Saturday. I liken Jardine’s standing at light heavyweight similar to Joe Stevenson’s at lightweight, in that while he’s underwhelmed at times (Alexander loss aside), he’s basically a gatekeeper to the stars at this stage. Silva, well, he is what he is with a loss this Saturday.

Who needs to get off the schnide?

THIAGO SILVA

Randy Couture vs. Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira

At long last, and only 2500 words in, we come to the evening’s main event. We all know this fight would have set the world on fire had in taken place four years ago, but right now, this contest symbolizes two fighters struggling to retain relevancy in the heavyweight division.

This fight has the same questions looming around it as any Randy Couture bout to take place since 2007, where it’s simply a question of whether or not this is the end of the line and whether or not this is the fight that officially signifies that it’s time for Couture to hang up the gloves.

Couture is one of those fighters who has the tools to look competitive against literally every fighter in the heavyweight division right now, but it’s just a question of whether or not he can take that next step and beat someone like a Cain Velasquez or a Shane Carwin. It’s especially troubling because one of the knocks against Couture in the past is that he has struggled with bigger fighters and guys who he can’t force his trademark clinch game on.

For Nogueira, Saturday night represents an opportunity to notch perhaps the most high profile win of an otherwise disappointing run in the UFC. Starting from scratch, Nogueira was introduced to the UFC fanbase against an opponent that he knew inside and out in Heath Herring, yet found himself seconds away from being finished and only due to Herring’s trepidation/total stupidity, coasted to a lackluster decision win.

Act II saw vintage Nog, who after getting battered and pummeled by Tim Sylvia, swept and choked out the lummox in trademark comeback fashion. Using that victory as a springboard, the UFC used “TUF” as a platform to humanize Nogueira to the casual fan. Despite coming off as perhaps the nicest guy in existence and the perfect protagonist to Frank Mir’s general arrogance, it was all for naught as a staph riddled Nogueira was embarrassed and bludgeoned by Mir at UFC 92.

While the verdict is yet to be determined on whether or not the Mir abomination was entirely due to the illnesses surrounding Nogueira or if the tread on the tires really has worn off, UFC 102 is as prime an opportunity as any for “Minatauro” to recapture that previous billing as the consensus No. 2 heavyweight in the world.

Couture’s road will not end on Saturday. As much as the questions will always plague “The Natural,” Couture is well, well off from Ken Shamrock status to the point where he becomes a caricature of himself. Steam has picked up that a drop to 205 pounds could give Couture one last avenue to make some magic out of how ever many fights he may have left in the tank, and I don’t think anybody would object to the idea of Couture vs. Anderson Silva or Lyoto Machida.

Who needs to get off the schneid?

ANTONIO RODRIGO NOGUEIRA