Bloody Sunday: Jens Pulver & WEC 34

With the repercussions of this Saturday's CBS Elite-XC fights permeating message boards and MMA websites alike, Urijah Faber's fight with Jens Pulver seems to have gotten lost in the mix. This is a big fight, ladies and gentlemen. Sunday will prove which of these two fighters gets a chance to take their respective careers to the next level. On one hand, Urijah Faber is coming off his most decorated win against Jeff Curran (28-9-1), a top 10 ranked featherweight fighter with an absolutely nasty (really good) submission game, who saw defeat at the hands of the California kid (20 -1) via guillotine choke. Urijah dominated Curran without finding himself in too much trouble even while losing top control in the first round of their bout. Now, take Jens Pulver (21-8-1) who after a reattempted step back into UFC glory met defeat at the hands of Joe Lauzon, while shortly after losing to B.J. Penn upon completion the 5th season of The Ultimate Fighter. On paper, it would seem Urijah has the advantage in all aspects of the "fight game", save the stand up striking which both fighters have promised to pursue. But it is in the opinion of this writer that this fight come this Sunday is not Urijah's to lose and will actually prove to be more competitive than fanboys of the "California kid" would believe. While Urijah is the more proven wrester, let's not forget that Jens himself has been wrestling since a very early age, earning two state championships on the high school level. Later, he would qualify as an "All American" for the NCAA and was accepted into the prestigious Boise University wrestling program. Case in point, Jens can wrestle. Moreover, Jens has worked with Matt Hughes and the Miletech camp noteworthy for its hard work ethic and more importantly, its MMA adapted wrestling program. Now while I don't believe Pulver game plan is to wrestle Urijah, Jens should be able to neutralize or at the least, minimize the top control of Faber. Faber would have us believe that he loves to trade shots while standing, as true as this may be his bread and butter often lie horizontal to the mat, not vertical to it. Faber recently trained with B.J. to help prepare the Hawaiian for his Sean Sherk bout as well as to gain some insight in how to defeat Jens, but this is the 145 pound division where Jens is taller and bigger and with what looks to be a reach advantage that should prove significant.

This match is too close to call, while Urijah is on the hotter win streak, Pulver has faced the tougher competition, constantly going up against opponents who walk around 20 to 30 pounds more than Pulver ever does. What we should expect to see is not only a war but an easing in of Pulver into the division as he brings relished star power to the UFC's sister company, the WEC. Just the fact that they booked the Arco Arena, an event that held both a UFC LW championship bout (Sherk vs. Franca) and a MW championship one (Silva vs. Marquardt) at UFC 73 is blatant enough that Zuffa looks to the WEC and  specifically this Sunday's event with much promise and potential. Expect the loser of this Sunday's main card event to fight once, maybe twice more and then an immediate rematch for the featherweight title. We can also expect that if the fight this Sunday garners enough attention, the WEC will be receiving a lot more media press, funding and overall attention by Dana White, countdown shows, larger venues, pay-per-views? The possibilities are endless, the effects both positive and negative and an article that I'll focus on after WEC 34.

The other main card fights of the night:

• Champ Miguel Torres vs. Yoshiro Maeda -- for WEC bantamweight title
• Chuck Grigsby vs. Mark Munoz
• Kenneth Alexander vs. Rob McCullough

On a sidenote: Zuffa did an excellent job of promoting this fight though I wish they could've expressed more enthusiasm for the Miguel Torres vs. Yoshiro Maeda fight which will prove to be incredibly significant to the bantamweight rankings.