The October 19th Heavyweight Title fight between Junior Dos Santos and Cain Velasquez has all the makings of a classic. It will be the third time they meet, and the early lines at the sportbooks have Velasquez sitting as a -260 favorite, with the comeback on Dos Santos at about +180. As everyone knows, the first meeting saw Dos Santos drop Velasquez early, while the second meeting was a 5 round domination on the part of Velasquez that saw Cain regain the title he lost in their first meeting. Since that win, Velasquez has defended the title with a dominant KO win over ‘Bigfoot’ Silva and really cemented himself in the eyes of most observers as the best Heavyweight in the UFC. Dos Santos however, is a worthy foe, so Cain is going to have to likely fight a different fight than he did the last time out. In his last outing, Dos Santos stood in front of the rugged Mark Hunt and pounded away until he took Hunt out. Based on that fight, Velasquez is going to definitely look to avoid a stand up battle against Dos Santos. In their second meeting, Velasquez’ pressure decided the fight, as Dos Santos was overconfident and flat, and he looked basically defeated after the first round. This time around, Dos Santos is going to have to make Velasquez work harder as the fight goes on. Dos Santos recently was quoted in the media stating ‘Cain hits like a girl’. This is crafty gamesmanship from the Brazilian, who really has very little chance of winning the fight on the ground. Dos Santos has 1 win by submission over his career, so it is safe to say that working off his back against Velasquez is something Dos Santos needs to avoid at all costs. The best he can hope for is that Velasquez comes in and looks to test his standup game, giving Dos Santos the chance to land his big punch. Dos Santos has taken the loss to Velasquez and he actually found a positive – he knows Velasquez threw the kitchen sink at him for 5 rounds, and he took it. What he has to do is get off his shots and start to slow Cain down, because just taking Cain’s onslaught is just going to get him beat up. Velasquez is a quiet fighter, but he is cerebral and he has an incredible team preparing him and his game plan, so it is unlikely that Cain will play the standup game. After seeing what Dos Santos did to Mark Hunt, his game plan will be to avoid a stand up boxing style match at all costs. Dos Santos knows what is coming, and he knows he has to do damage and make Velasquez pay on the way in. The fighters have several months of preparation before the fight and Velasquez has shown himself to have great condition and precision, but he is going to have to get Dos Santos down and finish him, because fighting a 25 minute fight of control is very hard to do, and in this case, to do again. Dos Santos getting beat up for 50 minutes total would be an amazing feat to pull off.
