UFC 141 A Card of Contenders

By Brian Holmes

Boy am I glad that I have nothing better to do on a friday then watch UFC. All of the attention that the main card was getting kinda stifled the attention of the other fights on the card.


With this card I saw a few fighters that could soon be the number one contenders to the UFC thrones. Overeem destroying Lesnar guarenteed him a shot at Dos Santos unless an injury occurs, which with the ufc's luck of having fighters pull out as of late is a huge possiblility.


This fight should prove to be one of the most exciting heavyweight bouts in recent history due to the amount of power both of these strikers can generate.


But since everyone has been and will be talking about the heavyweight implications of that fight i'm gonna change over to the other fighters that may have been overlooked due to a couple of giant men doing battle in the octagon.


Alexander Gustafsson has been on fire as of late.


Only losing once in his professional career to undefeated Phil Davis, he is riding a four fight win streak with none of his ufc opponents making it out of the second round. After his loss to Davis he actually went to train with Davis, which takes a lot of pride swallowing to do.A fighter always looking to finish (13wins, 9 ko, 3 sub) without getting to wild, he looks extemely composed for such a young fighter.


Everytime I watch him fight he looks better and in a year or two at this rate we could see him challenging for the light heavyweight title.


If I had to pick one fighter from the card taht I was most impressed with it would be Jim Hettes.


Undefeated and winning nine out of ten pro fights by submission, it suprised me to hear that he was only a brown belt in judo and purple belt in brazilian jiu-jitsu.


While Nam Phan was the first fight that he didn't finish it was more impressive to see him tired and continuing to move forward and attack.


His judo trips and throws looked amazing as well as his ground control and he have a brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt on the ground.


He made Phan look like a blue belt on the ground and was attacking so much that Phan could not mount a significant offense on the feet. This was the most lopsided decision I have ever seen in the ufc, with two judges giving Hettes 30-25 and one judge 30-26. And with judges seemingly being reluctant to give 10-8 rounds that is saying something.


While he's training with the current lightweight champion Edgar, we might find our selves in a situation where he will have to fight his training partner for the title.


He is still a bit young to be challenging with only two victories in the octagon, but that being said if he has a few more fights like the one on friday he will be on the top five lightweights list in no time.


Nate diaz has had his up and downs during his ufc career, after seeing his performance against Cerrone I think that Diaz might have turned a corner in his career. This was a fight that I thought Cerrone would have been able to win with superior striking, but I always seem to be eating my words when it comes to going against the Diaz brothers.


Only his second fight after coming down from welterweight he dominated the fight other then Cerrone kicking his legs out from under him multiple times during the fight. If Nate can keep making his opponents fight his fight we will see if he can get close to a title. The only problem with the fight that I saw was Diaz's leg kick defense. Cerrone being stronger seem to have no effect in the clinch and the few knees that Cerrone landed seem to just reinforce the fact that Diaz's chin is made of granite.


When I heard that Jon Fitch was fighting Johny Hendricks I thought that this would be a barn burner of a fight that would at least go to the third round and if not to decision.


Glad that I didn't bet on it.


Hendricks became the first person to finish Fitch in the ufc and the first person to finish Fitch in 9 years. He's only lost once by decision in the ufc and is on a three fight win streak. A well rounded fighter with bricks in his hands as well as 2 NCAA division I wrestling titles he has only been fighting for 4 years.


This is one fighter that you can almost guarantee will get a title shot in the future.


This is just a heads up to watch out for cards with these fighters on it.


Regardless of whether these fighters make it to the #1 contender status they are all very exciting fighters and should put on a lot more exciting fights for years to come.