UFC 102 Preview:
by Carlos Santana

UFC 102: Couture vs Nogueira
Rose Garden in Portland, Oregon
Saturday, August 29, 2009.

The untelevised undercard will feature the return of LW Marcus Aurelio, as well as the debuts of top HW prospects Todd Duffee Mike Russow, and Chris Tuchscherer. Tuchscherer was discovered while auditioning for the upcoming season of The Ultimate Fighter and will be thrown in with the big dogs right away as he squares off with Gabriel Gonzaga. Also featured on the untelevised portion of the card is a MW matchup between impressive newcomer Aaron Simpson and Portland native, Ed Herman. The main card will provide Krzysztof Soszynski with a chance to prove himself and Brandon Vera a chance to answer the question if he really is the Truth as they square off in a LHW match sure to get the crowd going. A pugilistic chess match seems likely as Demian Maia and Nate Marquardt will face off in a fight with the winner looking to position themselves as next in line to fight for the MW belt. The controversial star of the first season of TUF, Chris Leben will look to bounce back from a loss and a suspension in front of his hometown crowd as he faces hyped newcomer and highly decorated wrestler, Jake Rosholt. In the evening’s co-main event, Keith Jardine and Thiago Silva will duke it out, trying to claw their way back to the top of the division after losses in their last bouts. And in the main event of the evening, MMA legends Randy Couture and Antonio Minotauro Nogueira will lock horns in front of a very pro-Couture crowd in a fight that was supposed to happen at UFC 81 for a belt, nearly two years ago. With both coming off of losses, these two former UFC champs will be looking to get back on the winning track and show the world that they still have what it takes to be champions.

Krzysztof Soszynski 18-8-1 vs Brandon ‘the Truth’ Vera 10-3 – Krzysztof, who I will now refer to as Kris because that name is too unnatural to attempt type, is a very experienced fighter. The vowel hating Polish Canadian fought at UFC 97, stepped in for an injured fighter for UFC 98 and now will replace another injured fighter. He steps in to replace Matt Hamill, who was forced to withdraw with a knee injury sustained in training. He appeared on TUF8 and was impressive, both in his pranking creativity and his win over Kingsbury as well as a loss to former training partner, Vinny Magalhaes. Prior to appearing on TUF, Kris had 23 pro fights, including wins over Dan Christison, and Marcus Hicks. He has also fought and lost to Chris Tuchscherer, Matt Horwich, Ben Rothwell (twice,) Mike Whitehead, and Reese Andy. Kris is a former bodybuilder and professional wrestler and credits wrestler Bad News Brown for getting him started in BJJ. Currently riding a 6-fight win streak, the Team Quest-Temecula fighter has powerful and polished striking in addition to a polished ground game, shown by his Sub of the Night wins over Shane Primm and Stann.

Brandon Vera, the last holder of the WEC HW belt, is fighting for the 4th time as a LHW. He should be used to the weight cut at this point and should come in very crisp. His first fight at 205 was uninspired in a decision win over Andy and his in next fight against the tough Keith Jardine. Although the Jardine fight did show a stronger and more conditioned Vera, he still was not showing the form he was at when he was competing as a HW until he cam out and destroyed Mike Patt with leg kicks in his last fight. Vera has great Muay Thai skills, effectively using kicks and knees. A good example of some of Vera’s striking ability is when he made the late Justin Eilers (RIP) look like a human Pez dispenser. The Truth has wins over Whitehead, Fabio Scherner, Assuerio Silva, and Frank Mir with losses to Tim Sylvia, Fabricio Werdum (in my opinion, a very bad stoppage) and Jardine. The former Air-Force man wrestled at Old Dominion and with the AF at the US Olympic Training Center. He also holds a BJJ black belt under Lloyd Irvin. Kerry, Brandon’s wife is also a strong kick boxer and was featured on Fight Girls alongside Gina Carano, and Master Toddy. I think it helps having a wife that can kick your ass if you don’t focus and train right, so Vera should come into this ready for war.

A focused and disciplined Brandon Vera is a very dangerous fighter. Kris has a ton of experience and has also fought as a HW, but he will have a very difficult time dealing with Brandon’s explosive striking as well as his underrated ground game. Vera’s clinch is also somewhere that can give opponents trouble, as Vera is proficient both in Greco-Roman wrestling as well as Muay Thai. Kris’ strategy to win has to be to outmuscle Vera and dominate from the top, avoiding Brandon’s guard game. Vera will use his lean and lanky build well with quickness and great movement to outstrike Kris and earn a TKO victory to protect his job status.

Nate ‘the Great’ Marquardt 28-8-2 vs Demian Maia 10-0 – Nate is extremely well-rounded and experienced, holding wins over Yves Edwards, Daiju Takase, Shonie Carter, Kiuma Kunioku, Kaz Misaki, Ivan Salaverry, Joe Doerkson, Dean Lister, and Jeremy Horn and losses to Genki Sudo, Ricardo Almeida, Anderson Silva and a strange decision loss in which he had 2 points deducted for fouls to Thales Leites. Nate, a 7-time King of Pancrase trains with many different camps, but works extensively with Jackson Submission, and holds a BJJ black belt, has a ton of Pancrase experience, and is currently ranked 3rd in the world at MW. Nate is coming off a pair of impressive TKO wins over a much smaller Martin Kampmann and Wilson Gouveia.

Maia is a BJJ wizard and probably one of the best BJJ practitioners in all of MMA. Of his 5 UFC fights, 4 of them have earned Submission of the Night bonuses, and had the other win not taken place on a card that featured an omoplata/shoulder crank/armbar, he would have earned it again. He holds a wins over Gustavo Machado, Ryan Jensen, a beautiful teabag-triangle of Ed Herman, a RNC win over Jason MacDonald a very nice RNC of Nate Quarry, and an absolutely beautiful throw into triangle submission win over Chael Sonnen. Currently undefeated and ranked as the #5 MW in the world, Maia has been very impressive since he started his MMA career in Helsinki nearly 5 years ago as an elite BJJ guy that can actually get the fight to the mat.

Maia’s most proficient striking opponent to date may be Nate Quarry, who he quickly wrapped himself around and choked out. Marquardt has shown to be well rounded enough to take the fight wherever it goes, but intelligent enough to avoid his opponents strengths while exploiting their weaknesses. Maia’s standup has not really been tested in his time with the UFC, his only TKO victory was due to a shoulder injury by his opponent, and this happened on the ground as the guy was getting mounted. Training with the Wand Fight Team, Maia has surely been focusing on his standup game, but it won’t be enough to compete with Nate’s experienced striking game as the veteran Nate hands the Brazilian his first pro loss with a unanimous decision win by playing it safe and winning a kickboxing match and avoiding the ground like Fedor avoiding Dana White.

Chris ‘the Crippler’ Leben 18-5 vs Jake Rosholt 5-1 – Rosholt was a 4-time D-1 wrestling All-American at Oklahoma State U as well as a 3 time collegiate national champion and 3 time Idaho state HS champ. Jake trains with Xtreme Couture as a member of Team Takedown, a management company consisting of other former OSU wrestlers. He showed a lot of toughness in a sloppy win over Nissin Osterneck in the WEC, in which he won by TKO. He was set to fight Alessio Sakara in his UFC debut, but an injury forced Sakara out and Dan Miller went on to hand Rosholt his first pro defeat.

Leben is a brawler with a cinderblock for a head and fists just as hard. He is a strange fighter who comes straight forward, baiting you to strike him with his colorful target of a head, and then starts flailing his arms towards you in an attempt to hit you harder than you have ever been hit before in your life. That’s’ pretty much his gameplan. After opening his career on a 9-0 run, including a KO of Mike Swick, Leben dropped a fight to Joe Doerkson and bounced back from that by breaking Benji Radach’s jaw and earning an invite to be a contestant on the inaugural season of TUF. While on the show, Leben became a controversial, outspoken, wild, tough guy that couldn’t hold his liquor. He pee’d on Jason Thacker’s bed and stole his pillow, got called a ‘fatherless bastard’, broke down in hysterics and went to sleep it off outside. After Josh Koscheck sprayed him with a garden hose while he slept, Dana White set them up to fight on the show and Koscheck went on to earn the nickname, ‘The Nappy Blanket’ for the lay n pray win. Leben was brought back to replace an injured fighter and faced off against Kenny Florian, who also schooled him on the ground and rained down ‘hell-bows’ opening Leben up bad and winning a TKO. After taping, Leben fought and defeated Thacker, Patrick Cote, Edwin Dewees, Jorge Rivera, and Luigi Fioravanti before being decimated by a debuting Anderson Silva. Leben bounced back with a KO of Jorge Santiago before dropping back-to-back losses to Jason MacDonald and Kalib Starnes. Bouncing back with back to back wins, demolishing Terry Martin and Alessio Sakara, Leben was setting up to make a run at the top of the division with a win over Michael Bisping, but he got popped with a DUI and a probation violation, pushing back his fight. In his last fight, Leben was outmaneuvered by the shifty Bisping and dropped a decision, post fight drug-testing showed that Leben had tested positive for Stanzonol and was suspended for 9 months.

It was funny that everybody was saying Leben looked in his best shape ever for the Bisping fight. He had stopped drinking alcohol, at least drinking heavily, and was taking his training seriously after opening a school in Hawaii. He looked great because he was on the juice, which he bluntly admitted to taking months before the fight and hoping it would be out of his system by fight time. Rosholt could try to turn this into a wrestling match and lay on Leben for much of the fight, but I don’t think he has transitioned wrestling well enough into MMA to set his takedowns up and avoid damage on his feet. If he comes in looking like he did in the WEC, he could quickly take a nap. Leben should be looking to bounce back from both a loss and a suspension in a big way with a win here. Leben’s takedown defense will be a huge part of his offense as he cruises to a sprawl and brawl victory and a TKO in the 2nd.

Keith ‘the Dean of Mean’ Jardine 14-5-1 vs Thiago Silva 13-1 – Keith Jardine was a cast member of TUF2, where he lost to eventual winner and Jackson’s Submission Fighting teammate, Rashad Evans. Before his MMA career, he played football at New Mexico Highlands U and earned a degree in Human Performance and Sport. He worked as a personal trainer, wild land firefighter, football coach, miner, and eve as a bounty hunter; Jardine is one bad dude. He has wins over Kerry Schall, Mike Whitehead, and Wilson Gouveia. Jardine made Forrest cry with the beating he gave him (an impressive task at the time) and then beat up Chuck Liddell. His latest victory was a very close split decision win over Brandon Vera. He has losses to Travis Wiuff, a questionable decision loss to Stephan Bonnar, a brutal KO to Houston Alexander, a manhandling at the hands of the Axe-Murderer, and his most recent loss, an extremely close decision to Rampage Jackson. Jardine, who looks like a combination of the Techno-Viking, video game character Kratos, and Satan, is a Gaidojutsu practitioner with very unconventional striking that has baffled many opponents thus far. Jardine, a very competent kick boxer, has pro boxing experience, sporting a 3-0-1 record.

Thiago Silva comes from the Chute Boxe camp, known for their wild aggressiveness and explosive striking abilities. Now training with American Top Team and their elite group of fighters, this match pits two of the premier fight camps against each other. Silva holds wins over James Irvin, Tomasz Drwal, Houston Alexander, and Antonio Mendes. He has shown good ground skills, very aggressive striking and excellent GNP, except when he did none of that, getting tossed around the cage and put to sleep at the buzzer by Lyoto Machida in his last outing.

Both of these guys float around the bottom of the top 10 LHW’s in the world and would love to bounce back from losses with wins over big name guys. They both are also willing to stand toe to toe and slug it out, with each other all day and both have very underrated ground games. There will be tons of electricity in the cage from the moment these two hook up for their intensely frightening staredown. Jardine seems to be the more adept fighter when it comes to formulating and following through with a gameplan, and he has one of the best guys in the business behind him in Greg Jackson. While Silva has the stable of ATT guys behind him, planning and executing often take a back seat to aggression and adapting to the fight as it happens with Silva. Unless Silva can capitalize on a mistake similar to the one that Wanderlei caught Jardine in, we will see Jardine win in a methodical and scrappy unanimous decision.

Randy ‘the Natural/Captain America’ Couture 16-9 vs Antonio Rodrigo ‘Minotauro/Big Nog’ Nogueira 31-5-1 1NC – Randy has a very strong background as a collegiate and Greco-Roman Olympic wrestler. A crazy athlete, even at the age of 46; he is still in extraordinary shape. Couture has solid, crafty wrestling, good boxing, a legendary clinch from his Greco-Roman wrestling background, and one of the most intelligent MMA minds there is. Randy Couture was a 3-time NCAA D-1 All-American wrestler and a runner up twice at Oklahoma State, where he earned a degree in German after a stint in the US Army where he wrestled and boxed. Randy Couture is an MMA legend and a UFC Hall of Famer. In his illustrious career, he has defeated some of the world’s best fighters, including Vitor Belfort twice, Pedro Rizzo twice, Kevin Randleman, Tsuyoshi Kohsaka (the only person to hold a W over Fedor), Jeremy Horn, Chuck Liddell, Tito Ortiz, Mike Van Arsdale, Tim Sylvia, and Gabriel Gonzaga; those last two wins were after Randy’s first retirement and a 13 month layoff to beat Tim Sylvia for the HW belt, while already a member of the HOF. Couture, who thrives as the underdog, has losses to Valentijn Overeem, Josh Barnett (on steroids) Ricco Rodriguez, Vitor, Chuck Liddell twice and his most recent loss to Brock Lesnar. Randy also was the winner of the HW tournament at UFC 13 and is the first fighter to hold the belt in two different divisions.

Big Nog is also a legend in his own right as the first ever fighter to hold both the PRIDE and UFC HW belts. At the age of 5 Nog and his twin brother started training in Judo. By 14 they had added BJJ and boxing to their games and Nog held a BJJ and Judo black belt by 23. Nog turned pro that year and opened his career 6-0 with wins over Valentijn Overeem and Jeremy Horn before dropping a split decision to Dan Henderson, eventual winner of the Rings 1999 King of Kings 8 man tournament. Next, Nogueira entered the 40-man, Rings 2000 King of Kings tourney and walked away with the championship after defeating 6 opponents over a three-event tournament. PRIDE signed Nog after that and ran off victories against Gary Goodridge, Mark Coleman, and Heath Herring to become the first PRIDE HW champion. He held his belt until he lost a decision to HW kingpin, Fedor Emelianenko, defeating Enson Inoue, Bob Sapp, Semmy Schilt, and Dan Henderson along the way. After beating Ricco Rodriguez, Nogueira again captured the belt by defeating Mirko Cro-Cop for the interim HW belt. Minotauro extended his winning streak to 5 before he fought Fedor again and was hit with a no contest for an accidental head butt. The two would meet again 4 months later, with the Russian HW again defeating Nog and unifying the belts. Nog tore off another 4 fight streak, including a win over Zulu and Fabricio Werdum before losing a split decision to Josh Barnett which he would avenge in his next fight, his final in PRIDE. Nog would defeat Herring a 3rd time in his UFC debut before defeating Tim Sylvia to earn the UFC HW belt, becoming the first man to ever hold both PRIDE and UFC HW belts. Nog was next invited to be the coach for the 8th installment of TUF, with the rival coach being Frank Mir and the two would meet at the conclusion of the season with Mir defeating Nog and becoming the 1st fighter in 38 professional matches to finish Nog. It had been said, up until the Mir fight, that Nog doesn’t lose fights, he simply runs out of time. Nog has shown an unreal titanium-jaw in his fights, taking tons of punishment over his long career, but only being finished once. It should also be noted that after the loss to Mir, it was revealed that Nog had a staph infection no more than 3 weeks before the fight which required 5 days of hospitalization and also suffered a knee injury during training. Minotauro has always shown tremendous heart and durability both in and out of the cage. As an 11 year old boy, he was run over by a large truck and fell into a coma for 4 days. His 11 month hospitalization following this traumatic experience also resulted in a lost rib and part of his liver, many MMA fans will recognize his badge of honor prominently displayed as a large scar and indentation on his lower back.

These two MMA legends, and cast mates from the upcoming film ‘The Expendables’ will square off in hopes of climbing back to the top of the pile and grabbing hold of the HW belt they once held again. With both fighters coming off of losses in championship fights, they will be hungry to jump back into their winning ways. In the last 5 years, Couture has gone 3-3 with one legal battle NC while Nog has gone 7-2. It should be noted that 5 of those fights for Randy were championship fights and 3 of those were at LHW. Nog has never suffered back to back losses, while Randy has had to endure that twice. Also, Randy has never lost a fight that has been decided by the judges, while Nog has dropped 4 that way. On the other side of that is that all 9 of Randy’s losses have been finishes, 4 subs and 5 TKO’s while Nog has only been finished in his last fight. These two appear to be very evenly matched, having good boxing, great ground skills, outstanding clinches, and excellent durability. Nog will be the bigger and stronger fighter, probably coming in around 245 while Randy will be somewhere around 225 and shorter by an inch or so. When will Father Time finally catch up Couture, who had his first pro career fight one month prior to his 34th birthday? Nog, although only a few months past 33, has a battle tested and much battered body, putting him at about 40 in ‘Brazilian cage fighter’ years. Randy came back from his battle with the UFC to try and get Dana to sign Fedor and set that fight up, now that there appears to be no chance of ever fighting Fedor for Randy, is his heart still where it needs to be to fight? Having found success in his gyms and a budding acting career, is the drive still there knowing good money can be made without getting punched in the face? Also, fighting in Portland, Oregon near Gresham where Randy along with Matt Lindland and Dan Henderson established Team Quest, and Corvallis where Randy lived and trained as an assistant wrestling and strength and conditioning coach for Oregon State U will be very emotional for Couture. On top of all of this, the Natural is going through the process of his 3rd divorce. With so much stacked emotionally and mentally against Couture, along with the constant footsteps of Father Time behind him, I think this will be the perfect storm in Randy’s career for a loss to the legendary Brazilian and an even more emotional farewell than we last saw out of him. Nogueira sends the legend off with an armbar in 2.