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If he can, he'll do what Georges St. Pierre and Jacare could not. That being said, Shields will likely give it a try:

"My grappling is my strongest point. I work my stand up all the time. I knockout people all the time in training, but that’s training," commented the middleweight contender. "I figure I’ll save the stand up for when I need it and work to put it toward the ground and play to my strength. There’s no reason for me to try to prove anything to show anyone. I’ll stand up when I need it, but the ground is my strength."

The two have actually trained together in the past, and are very familiar with each other’s game.

"We trained a couple of times together. It was one of those things where it was nonstop transitioning from one move to the next on the ground," said Shields. "Hopefully we’ll have that kind of fight out there."

Shields' ground and pound is good, but not excellent. On the other hand, his submissions, base and positional control are outstanding. He's a less polished pure grappler than Jacare, but a better MMA grappler as it pertains to weaving in strikes. The problem lies in that tiny space: where Jacare has overwhelming positional control, I'm not sure Shields does. And while Shields has better ground and pound, Miller's durability is far too strong for him to be affected outside of point scoring. That may be enough for Shields to win, but it means he'll have to go all five rounds with the very game Miller. That's a tad disconcerting for me.

I guess what I'm driving at is that Shields is the favorite for a reason, but he'll have to continually pour the offense on from bell to bell. Any space he gives Mayhem or time to breathe could cost him dearly. Shields has never shown a willingness to take damage to push the fight and while Miller is no Giorgio Petrosyan, he is capable of damaging Shields at any point in the fight provided they are standing.

Most importantly, though, will be the submission attempts from Shields. St. Pierre fought an emaciated Miller, but that only underscores how durable "Mayhem" is. Hungry and dehydrated, Miller withstood blistering ground and pound, superior stand-up and several close submission attempts from St. Pierre without every conceding. He lost and lost badly, but the point is that Miller is extremely difficult to put away, particularly for a fighter like Shields who can't deliver the same level of physical damage. And while Jacare put on a positional control clinic on Mayhem as he worked takedowns to mount to back control and even back to mount over and over again, Shields is candidly not the grappler Jacare is. This is a different fight, of course, and anything can happen, but if Mayhem is capable of backing up his statement that he won't let grapplers fight their fight anymore, Shields will be forced to push the pace and do more exchanging on the feet than I suspect he's willing.

As for the submission itself, Georges St. Pierre remarked that twisting Miller's limbs made him feel like he was trying to submit an alien with rubber appendages. Jacare also came close a few times, but with no cigar. Miller often gets flack for being more promotional material than championship material, but he does posses both technical defensive know-how and grit.

Shields is my pick to win, but I'm going to be biting my nails until the final bell sounds.