Brock Lesnar has elevated himself to the toughest SOB on the planet. Well he was a round away from being KOed by Shane Carwin. That self importance may make him an elite athlete, but he needs reality as well.
Tactically, Brock Lesnar wants to make this a simple wrestling match where he uses his size and strength to dominate and suppress Cain Velasquez. So he needs to close the distance and make it very hard for and offence. Brock wants to keep things simple and refuse all the dangerous conditions.
For Cain, the task is to stay at long range and dance in and out of control while picking his moves and his shots. He does not want to come into close range or get stuck in a corner without an exist strategy.
As for the intangibles, Cain has not been under the pressure of a 5 round fight in the past, but neither has Brock really - Couture doesn't count since he was really a skilled light heavyweight. And Brock has not recovered from a wicked combination of strikes like the one that put Nogueira onto the mat for the count.
From a matchup perspective the fight favours Velasquez: Brock has to close the distance and dominate but Cain has the speed and skill to attack and retreat at will. If Cain is smart he will feint in and out of range and frustrate the champ. And then when Brock is frustrated and behind in points the mistakes will happen and the lights will go out. Expect Cain to win in the third by KO or ref stoppage.
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I just ran into Brock Lesnar here in Medicine Hat at a restaurant. I went over to shake his hand and asked him how he was. He answered me in a way that a silly question like that deserved. But then he was very polite and told me that he was going to return from it. I appreciated the fact that he shook my hand.
ReplyDeleteHe was very polite.
I guess I didn't make myself clear to him. I didn't want an autograph or a picture.
I was not and am not a Brock Lesnar fan per se, but I do respect the courage it takes to step into a cage and risk your reputation in a contest like an MMA fight. So I wanted to shake his hand to salute the fact that he is a brave person, regardless of my personal agreement / disagreement with some of his actions. With all the hype and nonsense that goes along with a sport sometimes people are quick to forget that at the heart of it all these guys are pretty amazing.
So despite the hype of a pre-fight Lesnar, I believe he is a nice person in his off time.
I would hope that after the last fight, he gets better coaching advice than what he has had in the past.
If I was his coach, I would make him stop wrestling training and even jiu jitsu training for a time and focus his effort 90% on boxing movement. That is the one key element he is missing from his game. He gets caught moving like a wrestler into oncoming punches and kicks. He needs to shift his body, rotate at the hips, and defend incoming strikes the way a muay thai striker does. If he can close that hole in his game he will improve tremendously against the elite heavyweights.