mma / Columns

Cain Velasquez: The Self-Injuring Prophecy

January 26, 2016 | Posted by Evan Zivin

Hey everybody. Remember Five Quick Rounds, the 411 column that took a look at various MMA news items from the past week in a fast, snappy format, or at least it did until some idiot took the column over and torpedoed the concept, forever banishing it to the depths of Internet lore, at least until Lorenzo is having trouble thinking of something to write about for a week?

I don’t. They were pretty bad. All of them, especially when I did UFC fight recaps, where I’d always start by mocking the opening line of Saturday Night Live, which I did for the following reasons:

1) Most UFC events are on Saturdays…at night…and they’re live (I know, I’m sooooo clever)
2) Saturday Night Live is awful and I derive joy from making fun of it

The show hasn’t always sucked but, for the better part of 20 years, it sure has, and there is little that has been done in recent years to make it any better, aside from bringing back old cast members to play popular political blowhards because the current cast isn’t good enough to do it themselves.

All of this is to say that last Saturday’s show, hosted by former UFC Women’s Bantamweight Champion Ronda Rousey, was bad, but it had nothing to do with her. Ronda, who is still in the early stages of her acting career, did a good job. It’s just there’s only so much you can do when the writing is piss poor and when very few of the cast members are entertaining in any way.

So, even though Kenan Thompson makes for a more constructive cornerman than Edmond Taverdyan, the show was still painful to watch.

You know what else was painful to watch? Cain Velasquez pulling out of another title fight with an injury.

Actually, I’m kidding. I couldn’t be happier.

All right, “happy” may not be the best word to use here. I’m not thrilled to see Cain pull out of his rematch with UFC Heavyweight Champion Fabricio Werdum at UFC 196 on February 6, but I’m also not that bummed about it either.

I mean, it’s not like Velasquez deserved an instant rematch for the title. Werdum steamrolled him at UFC 188 last June, beating Cain every single second of that fight and choking him out in the third round.

Of course, there has been noise made about how the altitude of Mexico City, where the fight took place, played a factor in how the first fight went and that a second fight would determine who is truly the better man, but the first fight already showed who is better. Werdum was the fighter intelligent enough to not only train for his opponent but for the location as well and he got the result he wanted because of it. It’s not Fabricio’s fault that Cain wasn’t willing to go down sooner to get better acclimated to the climate. It’s all a part of the game.

It’s also hard to feel bad for the former champion when he has such a high injury rate. The man has fought 8 times in the last six years. He’s a two time champion but the first reign saw him go 11 months before defending the title (in a fight he lost) and his second reign saw him defend the title twice, then go a year and a half before his next defense (a fight he also lost).

It’s truly disappointing to see Cain, who is one of the best fighters the sport has ever seen, struggle just to make it into the cage. Whether you like the guy or not, whether you subscribe to the idea that Cain keeps getting hurt due to his gym’s “prehistoric” training methods or if you just think he’s the unfortunate victim of one freak accident after another, the fact remains that, once again, Cain Velasquez is out of a fight, and that sucks.

Oh well. At least we’re still getting a heavyweight title fight. Cain Who, amirite?

This is the big reason I’m glad that Werdum beat Cain for the belt, since, while Cain is an unreliable champion due to his inability to get through a fight camp without hurting himself, Werdum is always ready to go.

Fabricio has been at the UFC’s beck and call since he returned to the organization in 2012. The man has won six straight fights in the last 4 years and, not only did he defend his number one contender status once, in a one-sided drubbing of Travis Browne in April 2014, he did it again the following November, knocking out Mark Hunt and winning an Interim Championship in the process. He won undisputed gold the following June against Cain and, with only two weeks until his next fight, is ready and willing to face whoever the UFC gives him. In this case, it’s Stipe Miocic.

That’s another thing I like about this turn of events, since, after years of rematches surrounded by a logjam of contenders being forced to fight each other in a combative purgatory, all thanks to a certain champion’s level of inactivity, we’re getting a fresh match-up for the title with a contender getting his first crack at UFC gold.

Now, UFC could have given this fight to Alistair Overeem, who knocked out former champion Junior dos Santos and has a win over Werdum, and who knows? Maybe they offered him the fight and he turned it down. Miocic didn’t, though, and, with the memory of his knockout of Andrei Arlovski at UFC 195 still somewhat fresh in our minds, this is a great way to cash in on that momentum. Plus, it’s a UFC title shot. You’d have to be crazy to pass that up without a good reason.

I think, even with the change in opponent, UFC 196 will still give us a great title fight and provide a big platform for Werdum to show why he is the champion, although I do hope that Miocic makes the most of this opportunity. Stipe better because, if Cain was champion right now, who knows how long he would have to wait to finally fight for the title. Talk about painful….

Also painful? Spending all this time writing up how great Fabricio Werdum is only to then find out he’s also pulled out of UFC 196. Well, I look stupid. I wonder how I’m going to get out of this one…

…LIVE FROM NEW YORK, IT’S SATURDAY NIGHT!

Awful. Just awful.

Evan Zivin has been writing for 411 MMA since May of 2013. Evan loves the sport, and likes to takes a lighthearted look at the world of MMA in his writing…usually.

article topics :

Cain Velasquez, Evan Zivin