The Ultimate Fighting Championship's next show gives Yushin "Thunder" Okami a chance to prove the first time wasn't a fluke.
If he scores the upset Saturday at UFC 134 in Rio de Janeiro, Okami would be the bookend for either side of middleweight titleholder Anderson Silva's 14-fight win streak. Silva hasn't lost since Okami beat him in 2006.
Okami's victory at that Rumble on the Rock event in Hawaii was a win only in the most technical sense. Silva had his way during the stand-up action before Okami scored a takedown, shortly before officials disqualified Silva for kicking Okami illegally.
"I felt that was just an accident," says Okami, who prefers to dismiss that experience. "I'm focusing on my next fight."
UFC's first show in Brazil since October 1998 marks a return to one of the birthplaces of mixed martial arts. Brazilians have been present in the highest echelons of modern MMA since the Gracie family emigrated to the United States and eventually helped start UFC in 1993.
Despite its role in MMA's development, Brazil as a whole treated the sport as an unsavory spectacle for years even as it grew in the U.S. and Japan. But the expansion UFC has driven mixed martial arts into a bigger spotlight — Saturday's show (6 p.m. ET, online Facebook stream; 8 p.m., Spike TV; 9 p.m., pay-per-view) sold out its allotment of at least 14,000 tickets in 74 minutes, UFC says.
"Brazil has the tradition in mixed martial arts," Silva says. "The sport is from the Gracies ... the Marco Ruases, the Pedro Rizzos. I'm watching these guys for a long time."
Silva has surpassed them. He holds UFC's record for consecutive title defenses, receives accolades as the sport's most explosive and imaginative striker, commands respect as a dangerous submission practitioner and deflects criticism as an occasional clown in the cage.
UFC President Dana White calls Silva the greatest MMA fighter to date, even compared to other icons such as welterweight champion Georges St. Pierre. White isn't alone in his effusive praise; Online sportsbooks list Silva as a 4-1 favorite despite the previous loss to Okami.
"The first fight (between) me and Okami, I didn't have the big experience for the fight in the cage," Silva says. "This time, I have experience. I have technique. I have condition."
On paper, Okami has the right skill set to beat the champion. Though he lacks Silva's quickness and creativity as a striker, Okami's boxing has been sound enough to produce a few knockout wins. Perhaps more important against Silva's notoriously subpar takedown defense, Okami can use his striking to set up the wrestling clinches he uses to grind his way to decisions.
He's also trained with the only UFC fighter who has come close to beating Silva, Chael Sonnen, who controlled the champ on the ground for most of five rounds before succumbing to a late triangle choke.
"I have learned many things from Chael's experience," Okami says.
If Silva and his 13 countrymen on Saturday's card represent one crux of mixed martial arts, Japan's Okami represents another. Gracie jiu-jitsu started almost 100 years ago as an modification of Japanese judo, and Japan's contemporary MMA scene has roots in professional wrestling organizations that were operating in the 1980s and early 1990s before the Gracies conceived of UFC.
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Several UFC 134 fighters, including Silva, Mauricio "Shogun" Rua, Antonio Rodrigo "Minotauro" Nogueira, Stanislav Nedkov and Okami, competed in Pride or other Japanese promotions. But critics of the Japanese circuit such as Sonnen and White dismiss some fight records from Japan as overrated and inflated by inferior competition.
To White, Okami is the exception. Okami's 10-2 UFC record is by far the best for any Japanese athlete in the organization.
"Yushin Okami's the best fighter to ever come out of Japan," White says. "This guy didn't come up fighting cans and get this built-up, mythological record. ... This guy hasn't got the credit he deserves."
Post je objavljen 27.08.2011. u 12:16 sati.