The UFC has been very diligent at filling in their fight calendar for the remainder of the year. Dana White and Joe Silva were busy recently signing Georges St-Pierre and Jon Jones to a couple of big title fights before the end of the year.
[adinserter block=”1″]Georges St-Pierre will make his twelfth defense in his current UFC welterweight title reign at UFC 167 against the undisputed number one contender Johny Hendricks. GSP will fight outside of his home country for the first time since UFC 111 and head to Las Vegas in what will headline the unofficial 20th anniversary show from the Ultimate Fighting Championship.
UFC light heavyweight Jon Jones will try and break Tito Ortiz’s record of successful title defense at 205 as he defends against a somewhat disputed number one contender Alexander Gustafsson. Jones and Gusftafsson will headline UFC 165 on September 21 at the Air Canada Center.
The fights answer a lot of questions moving forward towards the end of the year in the UFC. Specifically the question of super fights is answered and the answer is that fans won’t be getting one this year. Dana White promised a fight between Anderson Silva and either Bones or GSP by the end of the year. With GSP and Bones both locked up it looks like the earliest either of them would fight Silva is the first quarter of 2014.
I am pumped for the Hendricks-GSP clash. I feel that Hendricks is the most dangerous fighter GSP has faced throughout his current title reign. I don’t think GSP has ever fought a striker as lethal as Hendricks. Additionally, Hendricks is highly underrated on the ground and should easily hold his own against GSP. I predict a major upset here with Hendricks taking the title before the fifth round ends.
[adinserter block=”2″]Gustafsson is not as universally regarded as the top contender as Hendricks is in his division. Dana White proclaimed last year that Lyoto Machida was the number one contender for Jones and Machida hasn’t lost a fight since that proclamation. Gus is good but this fight is just pure business. It’s an intriguing fight but I’ve seen nothing from Gus that leads me to believe that he’ll give Jones much trouble.
Of course in the UFC all fights are subject to change. As of now it appears that the UFC will keep things hot moving into winter with at least two interesting championship fights, one specifically which could go down as a classic.
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