UFC 131 Fight Card Predictions: Dos Santos vs. Carwin Poll, “Who You Got?”

The UFC 131 main event featuring Junior dos Santos vs. Shane Carwin is attracting quite a bit of attention and is perhaps the most polarizing main event we’ve seen this year. While we’ve seen quite a few other UFC fight cards headlined by champions versus inferior competition, no one seems to really have a big advantage in the fight between dos Santos and Carwin.

At the time of this article, the current betting odds from Bodog on the fight are as close as ever, showing dos Santos as a slight favorite at -170 to Carwin’s +140.

While the original main event between The Ultimate Fighter season 13 coaches Junior dos Santos and Brock Lesnar may have drawn more media exposure, many experts are predicting that the modified main event now featuring dos Santos and Carwin may actually be a better overall fight for the fans.

Junior dos Santos
12-1 career record (6-0 in UFC)
8 wins by knockout
3 wins by submission
1 win by decision
26 years old
6’4”
239 lb.
77” reach

Shane Carwin
12-1 career record (4-1 in UFC)
7 wins by knockout
5 wins by submission
36 years old
6’2”
254 lb.
80” reach

Each of these two warriors has made a name for himself as a consensus top five heavyweight, mostly using their superior striking skills to punish their opponents. Neither man will be looking to grind out a decision as each man has been in 13 fights, but only one of the 26 total fights has gone to a decision (Junior Dos Santos vs. Roy Nelson). In fact, Carwin has only gone out of the first round once, and dos Santos twice.

Needless to say, both fighters have predicted a knockout one way or the other, and it isn’t expected to make it out of the first round. If you’ve been hoping and waiting for a true heavyweight slugfest, you’ve got one at UFC 131.

Most would agree that while Junior dos Santos has the advantage in the technical striking department, Shane Carwin possesses more power in those cinder block-like hands which he has used to crush countless opponents in the past.

However, the real question may actually be what will happen if this fight ends up going to the ground.

We’ve seen Shane Carwin use his wrestling to bring his opponents to the ground and punish them with ground-and-pound in the past, but we haven’t yet seen much in the way of a ground game from the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu brown belt, Junior dos Santos. While dos Santos trains with some of the best Jiu-Jitsu experts on the planet including the Nogueira brothers and Anderson Silva, he has assumed the role as the group’s most dominant puncher.

At this point, we really don’t know what he can do on the ground.

There are a lot of different ways that any MMA fight could go, but this one, in particular, has some very intriguing aspects. It’s just so difficult to predict exactly what will happen when two fighters with such differing styles clash in the center of the Octagon.

But as MMA writers, we sometimes neglect the fact that our audience is often as educated and even sometimes more educated about the sport than we are. So I wanted to give everyone an opportunity to voice their own opinion on this important main event.

So, as they say on TV, Dos Santos vs. Carwin: who you got?

Please feel free to both answer the poll as well as leave a comment on why you went the way you did with your prediction and of course, enjoy tonight’s pay-per-view!

Stay tuned to Bleacher Report for all things UFC 131, including the latest UFC 131 results, fight card analysis, UFC 131 news and live reaction from Vancouver.