UFC 101 Preview: Thales Leites Promises More Action Against Alessio Sakara

UFC 101's undercard battles continue in the UFC's middleweight division with a very familiar name popping up on the event's preliminaries. Thales Leites (14-2) will make his return to the Octagon following his lackluster performance against UFC Middleweight champion Anderson Silva at UFC 97 in which both Leites and Silva were blamed for a very boring and unaggressive title bout that drew criticism from fans, writers, and even Dana White. The match-up involved a frustrated Anderson Silva using what was deemed as "cheap and dangerous" knee kicks against a Thales Leites that seemed to flop to the floor to pull guard at almost every instance in which Silva rushed him. The UFC reluctantly pushed Silva into a battle with a bigger Forrest Griffin in order to bolster an actual fight with the champion while Leites has been relegated to the undercard of UFC 101 against boxer Alessio Sakara (13-7).

Leites is one of the very best UFC middleweights to currently roam the division's upper-echelon of talent. He holds a Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt, and he's submitted some very tough black belts in MMA before in both Jose Landi-Jons and Gustavo Machado. His striking is his primary weakness, but it's constantly improving like many of the other Nova Uniao strikers have in recent competition. Make no mistake though, Leites will likely be going to the ground in this battle. Leites recently sat down with Tatame.com to answer the question as to where this fight might go:

What are you expecting of the fight against Sakara?

All the guys who I fought are strikers, but, independent of that, my strategy is always to take the fight where I feel comfortable, which is the ground fight. I’ll always search for that, no matter who is my opponent. I’m training a lot my striking and Wrestling and every time I feel more comfortable, but the striking is that thing, it’s lottery, even if the man is excellent, one time he can be knocked out.

This isn't really a surprise as most of Leites' wins come by way of submission, and Alessio Sakara isn't exactly an escape artist when it comes to jiu-jitsu holds. The real question becomes whether or not Sakara actually has a chance in this match-up.

Alessio Sakara comes into this match-up with a recent win at UFN 15 over Joe Vedepo via a head kick knockout. A lot of fans still don't understand why Sakara has stuck around in the UFC, but it's fairly evident that his style against strikers can make for some entertaining fights. This bout, however, seems more like a punishment for both Sakara and Leites as it's an undercard bout for one of the top middleweights, and Sakara doesn't exactly have the submission defense to stop Leites. Nonetheless, Sakara is still very dangerous in the stand-up department.

Sakara has a vast background in boxing, and he's battled it out in the ring professionally to a 8-1 record. In fact, he's managed to continue boxing professionally in Italy, scoring two wins this year back in March and May. Interesting how Sakara still boxes, yet the whole Fedor/Sambo ordeal was a huge issue before, isn't it? I suppose he isn't a superstar though. Sakara has also been training with American Top Team, hopefully on some sort of supplemental skill-set to compliment his boxing skills.

It's fairly apparent that this match-up comes down to Sakara's boxing vs. Leites jiu-jitsu. Sakara has the skills to catch Leites standing, but Leites is elusive enough to avoid the big blow and give Sakara all sorts of problems on the floor. I don't see any way that Leites loses to a lower-echelon fighter like Sakara. Sakara could very well be on the verge of being released by the UFC after a loss, but there could be some use of his services for some of the free Fight Night cards in which he could fight a striker vs. striker match-up purely for entertainment.