Both Werdum and Condit Exemplified Smart Gameplanning

Both of the main events were paragons of two fighters implementing what they wanted, while two other fighters struggled to cope and failed to adjust.

In both main events of last night's event, the victors, Fabricio Werdum and Carlos Condit established effective gameplans and their opponents, Roy Nelson and Nick Diaz, were unable to enact theirs or react to the ones that Werdum and Condit implemented on them.

Let's start with the co-main event of Roy Nelson losing a decisive battle to the Muay Thai attack of Werdum.

all gifs are via IronForgesIron.com

Fabs expertly trolls Roy with a little misdirection and follows it up with a 1-2 and a knee that goes around the blocking elbows of Nelson to land not on the chin/nose, but on the side of the jaw/ear/temple area. In his fight with Stephan Struve, Nelson was able to get in on the lankier fighter and land that big overhand right that he was looking for tonight against Werdum. Werdum was able to use his length very well tonight, keeping Roy at bay for much of the fight.

Here we see Roy go for the lead hook, only to whiff air as Werdum lands a solid front/push kick to Roy's grill. Why? The leg is longer than the arm, and Werdum uses head movement to avoid even a grazing blow. I've not been a huge Werdum fan since the tepid fight he had with Bigfoot Silva, but we saw a much improved and diverse attack from Vai Cavalo than I think we've ever seen before.

For good measure, here's one last gif of Werdum using great movement to make Roy hesitate before he threw a kick and bailed (even though it missed):

Click this here link to check out the Diaz/Condit portion of the article originally posted at HeadKickLegend.com

Do note this post is going to be exceedingly gif heavy, so if your interwebs are just a series of tubes, you may not want to click on the jump until you upgrade from your Commodore 64.