Belfort and Mousasi battle for middleweight gatekeeper supremacy for UFC 204 this October 8, 2016 at the Manchester Arenain Manchester, England.
One sentence summary:
David: Enigmatic prizefighting itself finally gets its championship fight.
Phil: The UFC continues what will likely be a long and depressing pattern of juicing the dessicated husk of Vitor for all the relevance they can get.
Introduction / History to the fighters
David: Belfort is the most polarizing of figures. He's a crucifix necklace with brass knuckles attached at the end. A stereotype of pious brutes, all he's known for lately is his addiction to denying steroid use and making confusing animal clade analogies. Hearing him speak makes you wonder what audience he's playing the notes for. Kind of like a Hootie and the Blowfish cover band. Thankfully he's mostly just here to crack skulls.
Phil: Vitor is what you get when the manic self-belief of a Portuguese Tom Cruise spends many years in an environment even more bizarre and physically and mentally destructive than Hollywood. You get a weird dude.
For example, Vitor recently said that he wished that Brazil would have been colonized by Britain rather than Portugal. Which does at least raise the fantastic mental image of an alternate reality where all our favourite Brazilian stars are instead snooty gentlemen and leery cockneys.
David: Mousasi is not ‘back on track' really. He's just getting better stylistic matchups. Granted, his style hasn't changed much if at all through the years. His relevance in the division is directly proportional to his game's maturity ten years ago.
Phil: Maybe. He's certainly a good way away from his Strikeforce / Dream incarnation, where he'd mostly just hang around and wait for the opponent to give him something to counter, or get taken down and try to beat them up off his back. In a Bisping-Hendo world, Mousasi as champion isn't outlandish, just unlikely.
What's at stake?
David: The soul of enigmatic prizefighting itself. Let's face it. If Belfort beats Mousasi, Mousasi's soul will fuse with Belfort's to create a lament's configuration of could-have-been sanctioned violence. If Belfort loses, maybe Pinhead stays trapped inside a cenobite puzzlebox forever, but like Pinhead, the violence will never be truly contained.
Phil: I enjoy how blunt Mousasi was about this one, when he admitted that Belfort was past his prime and that beating him got him nowhere. I think he underrates the value of these kind of fights, though. Dominic Cruz-Urijah Faber III was utterly pointless, yet still people talked about how Cruz was looking better than ever afterwards. Wins over names never fully lose their relevance.
Where do they want it?
David: Belfort wants the fight anywhere the power of Christ compels him. For Vitor, that's on the feet, avoiding atonement. I've always been impressed by Vitor's counter striking abilities. The problem with Vitor is that he doesn't have the demeanor for proper counter fighting. Like a kid that wants a torrent program to write his term paper for him, he wants to find the opportunity to land as quick as possible, and then call it a day.
Phil: Vitor has undergone a steady progression of glass-cannon violence, changing from a blitzer to a counter-fighter. Any organic progression has been essentially constrained by the way that he's never really fixed his inability to fight back from positions of discomfort. Whether it's getting ground against the cage, or taken down and worked over, or simply failing to land on the feet, any kind of pushback has normally meant bad things for Mr. Belfort.
David: Gegard will never develop a natural urgency. It's not in his DNA. Mousasi, despite all of his kickboxing gifts (and durability, which doesn't get enough credit), fights too much with a misplaced philosophy on fighting. There are ways to approach pugilism. Top down, with an emphasis on a specialized tool (like strong kicks, a jab, or takedowns) that everything else supports. Bottom up, with an emphasis on scouting and gamplanning for what can be developed on the fly. And then there's Mousasi's front to back philosophy, with an emphasis on gradual output (stirke some, grapple some, and hope the accumulation itself rules the day). This is what has always hurt Gegard's status. Granted, his philosophy is not as misguided as that weird Kung Fu propaganda film coming out ostensibly about Bruce Lee but starring White Default Guy. But it still hurts him.
Phil: Gegard was the classic example of the fighter with so many tools that he didn't know which one to pick, and instead waited for his opponents to dictate the terms of the fight. That slightly lackadaisical approach has never gone away entirely, but I think of him a bit like John Dodson- his reputation for drifting through fights is more of an artifact of his early career than people give it credit for. Recently he's more likely to build an approach by working off the jab, hitting takedowns, and landing cracking low kicks and counter right hands.
Insight from Past Fights
David: What is past is prologue I guess.
Phil: Vitor looked incredibly bad against Jacare. For all his muscular deflation since TRT was banned, he's still been someone who can land a single piece of high-quality offense in every fight he's in. Not against Souza. He just got beaten up.
X-Factors:
Phil: Will Vitor be inspired by fighting in what he clearly considers to be his spiritual home?
David: Only the Loki gif can follow up such a burn.
Prognostication
David: Vitor won't be able to blitz Mouasi like he can regular fighters. While I think this is that rare fight Vitor can win by decision, Mousasi should have more than enough tools to get the job done. Honestly I don't expect a lot of fireworks here. Gegard Mousasi by Decision.
Phil: Mousasi is incredibly tough and fairly defensively sound. Even an in-shape Vitor would have a tough time with him, with the only real dangers being leaning into a Vitor headkick or an uppercut. I don't think that's going to happen, and we'll likely just get a mauling which will honestly make me a little bit sad. Gegard Mousasi by TKO, round 1