Recent history does not favor Brandon Vera. Just ask “Babalu” Sobral. Or Mike Brown. Or “Minotauro” Nogueira.
All three fought meteoric prospects. All three are on the wrong side of 30. All three needed to be scraped off the mat.
In mere hours, Brandon Vera steps in with Jon Jones, a 22 year old Greco-Roman killer. Brandon Vera is 32 years of age. Do you see what I’m suggesting here?
In 2006, Vera stopped Frank Mir in just over a minute, acquiring the title of Next Big Thing in heavyweight MMA. The honeymoon didn’t last long. Vera found himself entrenched in a contract dispute with Zuffa, counting his proverbial eggs before they hatched. He returned just under a year later, and the MMA world still wonders when he’s coming back.
Vera is in serious danger of becoming Jon Jones’s Frank Mir. “The Truth” has logged 86 minutes in the Octagon since the Mir fight. He’s looked impressive for five of those minutes, and that’s being generous.
Each time out, Vera hypes a new twist on the same story. He’s found his old self. He’s ditched his old self, but found his new self. He’s reinvented himself as a fighter. He’s rediscovered his roots. Yet, we get the same Brandon Vera in the cage. Hesitant. Tentative. Second guessing.
This is the Brandon Vera that will step into the cage in Broomfield, Colorado; not the Brandon Vera who stopped four middling UFC heavyweights, the fighter anointed by God himself to wear UFC gold. That guy fell by the wayside long ago, if he ever existed. Now he’s little more than a paschal lamb for Jon Jones’s ascent to superstardom.
Jones is a hulk of a man: six-foot-four with an 85 inch reach and a sizable cut down to the 205 pound limit. For all intents and purposes, Jones is undefeated in ten fights, defeating four solid-if-unspectacular fighters in the Octagon in the process. Mate Brandon Vera’s talents with an NFL linebacker’s frame, sprinkle in the artist’s creativity, and you have the Man They Call Bones.
Jones hasn’t just beat people though. He’s blown through them. He outstrikes people with much more impressive pedigrees. He tosses 215 pound men like bales of hay.
Where Vera is afraid or unwilling to attack, Jones is always on the offensive. There’s a saying in the poker world: no limit hold’em rewards bold and aggressive play. Jones is the bold and aggressive player. He’s betting, raising, daring you to show him a better hand. Vera’s the weak-tight nit, always cursing his “bad luck”.
That’s what we’ll see tonight on Versus. Jones will make Vera react to him. Jones will put Vera on the defense. Vera will be overwhelmed by offense, just like Joshua Clottey froze in the face of Manny Pacquiao’s 1,200 punch onslaught. The truth hurts.