4 Reasons why Frank Mir can beat Dos Santos

1. Underrated Striking

Frank Mir’s striking seems to be overshadowed at times by his ground game. Many people focus on his BJJ when describing his skills and forget about his much improved boxing. His ground game is rightly feared but that does not mean his hands and feet should be overlooked. Ever since he knocked out Minotauro Nogueria at UFC 92 Mir himself has spoken proudly of the development of his stand up. This advancement has been rubber stamped by his impressive victories over Mirko Cro Cop and Cheick Kongo.

2. Ground Game

As I said above, Frank Mir’s ground game is notorious and is the one clear area in which he has an advantage over the champion. It is his ground game that makes this an intriguing match up. Dos Santos has yet to face anybody with Mir’s BJJ ability (how could he, Mir is the best in the division) and it would be very interesting to see how Junior would fare if forced into a deadly ground battle with the former champ. He has however fought high level practitioners before such as: Fabricio Werdum, Stefan Struve, Gabriel Gonzaga and Roy Nelson but none of them were ever granted the opportunity to test the Brazilian on the floor, there inlies Mir’s dilemma and the mystery of this fight- will it ever reach the mat?

3. Less Pressure

I don’t know how much of a factor this could potentially be but Frank Mir has considerably less pressure on him to win heading into UFC 146. Mir is highly unfancied for this fight, as he was for the Velasquez fight, despite this he is only one big punch away from becoming an unlikely champion. He has nothing to lose, he’s getting a title show not many imagined he would get, considering how much of an underdog he was going up against Velasquez. Dos Santos on the other hand has went from facing a 50/50 pick’em to being the overwhelming favourite. How will that affect him heading into his first title defence?

4. Well-Rounded

Frank Mir has spoken of having less to worry about in facing Dos Santos as opposed to Velasquez. Unlike Dos Santos, Velasquez has been known to take the fight to the ground and use ground and pound or throw a variety of kicks. Dos Santos so far has been able to get by on his boxing alone. Utilizing a Chuck Liddell-like style of combining great takedown defence with unstoppable knock out punches, Dos Santos has forced opponents to reluctantly play his game to their demise. There are question marks over how he would cope should someone disrupt this game plan. The fact that his one loss came via an armbar submission is curious.

Now I am not for a second going to be outlandish and declare Mir favourite or even deny that he should be underdog. I doubt that we will leave with the belt but I also believe he has more of a chance than people think. I’m not sitting on the fence but this is a much more interesting fight than people are giving it credit for. As Mike Goldberg likes to say ‘Stylistically, it’s a great match up’.

What did we learn from UFC 131?

Although the heavily predicted knockout never came, Junior Dos Santos gave Shane Carwin a striking clinic at UFC 131 to re-earn his title shot against Cain Velasquez.

Carwin revealed his game plan early in the first round by shooting for takedowns, perhaps he correctly foreseen how the fight would play out on the feet. Going into the fight, most fans knew that Dos Santos was the better boxer but few would have expected him to openly engage with Carwin so frequently. To stand and trade with Shane Carwin for three rounds is a risk for any fighter, no matter how good a boxer you are.

Before the fight, many MMA pundits had presumed that Carwin’s key to victory would be through grappling and dirty boxing. Carwin’s dirty boxing is probably the most deadly in MMA as he can put you to sleep with very short punches from the clinch, just ask Frank Mir. Either that or he would look to drag the Brazilian to the ground and hopefully expose an untested hole in his game.

Another expected key to the fight was in its length. Carwin was exposed by Lesnar in his last fight for having a questionable gas tank and it was believed if Dos Santos could take Carwin into the deep waters Carwin might once again wilt. However, Carwin’s well documented diet plan appears to have worked. Carwin 2.0 survived to the end and his weary legs can be blamed on the level of punishment rather than muscular fatigue. Due to the broken nose he suffered in the first round, he had to finish the fight breathing exclusively from his gaping mouth while a river of blood flooded out from his gaping facial wounds.

So we’re back to where we were a few months ago with Dos Santos scheduled to challenge Cain Velasquez. The big thing that we have learned about Dos Santos from UFC 131 is that he can stuff takedowns from top level wrestlers like Shane Carwin and that when he is taken down it’s hard to keep him there. This is important evidence to look at when it comes to predicting the outcome of the fight with Velasquez.

Both fighters are very well rounded and both like to keep the fight standing to utilise their boxing. However on the feet you would have to give a slight edge to Dos Santos who has knocked out top level strikers like Mirko Cro Cop. I wouldn’t be surprised if Velasquez uses his background in wrestling to try and take the fight to the mat but Dos Santos has just proved that that’s no easy task.

So what did we learn from UFC 131? Well that you can’t always guarantee a knockout and that Dos Santos is undoubtedly the biggest threat to Cain Velasquez.