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The card for UFC 91 is headlined by a pair of big name fights, including the biggest fight in UFC history. We’ll preview the Brock Lesnar-Randy Couture fight on Friday, and the co-main event of Joe Stevenson-Kenny Florian on Thursday. But today, lets look at the undercard. While it might not be huge in terms of name value, it’s got some really exciting potential fights.
The UFC lost Amir Saddolah to injury, so his fight is cancelled altogether with no replacement to step in at such short notice. But it’s good news at the same time, as the Dustin Hazelett-Tamdan McCrory welterweight fight will now be pushed up to the main, televised card as opposed to the preliminary card. Hazelett is an exciting, young fighter who can finish with the best of them…he sits at 13-4. At only 22 years of age, Hazelett is already a black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and has 8 of his 13 wins by submission. But he goes up against the well rounded 11-1 McCrory, who looks lanky, but is powerful. He’s got good ground skills, but carries a lot of punching power. It should be a good fight.
The fight I’m looking forward to most on this undercard is a battle of 2 finishers. The 16-2 Nate Quarry goes up against 9-0 Demian Maia, in a clash of styles, but a very interesting matchup. Maia is a freak, straight up. He is one of the best BJJ practitioners in the world, winning the 2007 championship in Abu Dhabi. If you compete in Abu Dhabi, it means you’re good. If you win there, you’re damn good, and because of it, he’s unbeaten in his Mixed Martial Arts career. In his last fight, he continually locked Canada’s own Jason MacDonald in submission attempts before finally winning via rear naked choke. But Quarry is no pushover. He worked BC’s Kalib Starnes in Montreal at UFC 83 and is extremely powerful when standing. He delivers quick punches and solid leg kicks. This is an interesting fight, as it’s a clash of styles. We saw in the Patrick Cote-Ricardo Almeida fight that clashing styles can sometimes lead to boring fights. But I don’t think that is the case here.
Also on the card is the last guy Randy Couture beat inside The Octagon, that being heavyweight Gabriel Gonzaga. The 9-3 Gonzaga takes on a fighter making his UFC debut in the 18-4 Josh Hendricks. Gonzaga needs this win if he wants to get back to title contention. After losing to Couture, Gonzaga also lost by TKO to the recently released Fabricio Werdum before submitting Justin McCully at UFC 86. In an increasingly more stacked heavyweight division (add in Noguiera, Mir, and Kongo), it becomes paramount to string wins together.
It promises to be a pretty solid undercard of fights on Saturday night. We’ll preview Florian-Stevenson later this week and we’ll save the big preview of Couture-Lesnar for last.
