In the main event of the evening, twenty-three year old National Junior College wrestling champion Jon Jones (10-1, 4-1 UFC) will aim to continue his quick rise toward the top of the UFC’s light heavyweight ranks as he takes on Belarusian wrestler and former IFL light heavyweight champion Vladimir Matyushenko (24-4, 2-0 UFC). In Jones’ last performance, he destroyed the once heavily hyped Brandon Vera in a little over three minutes in the first round, breaking Vera’s face. In previous appearances, he crushed Matt Hamill before being disqualified for illegal use of the elbow, submitted Jake O’Brien, and defeated Stephan Bonnar and Andre Gusmao via unanimous decision. An impressive list of wins for a fighter who only just turned 23 years old.
Matyushenko’s recent run in the UFC has been successful as well, although his strength of competition is a notch lower than that of Jon Jones. “The Janitor”, as he’s nicknamed, defeated both Eliot Marshall and Igor Pokrajac via decision at UFC on Versus I and UFC 103 respectively. The 39-year-old will play old man in this showdown between youth versus experience, and it doesn’t look like the outcome will be too favorable for Matyushenko.
Honestly, I’m not too keen on this match-up. A 39-year-old wrestler versus a 23-year-old wrecking machine? It’s definitely a nice fight to help Jon Jones progress, but I don’t think Matyushenko has anything to offer that Jones hasn’t seen before. Matyushenko is primarily a wrestler, but he’s shown some improving stand-up skills in his last couple of fights. He can be a pest by relentlessly putting opponents on their backs, but Jones has never been outwrestled in the cage.
Matyushenko’s best chance is to press the pace so hurriedly that Jones’ huge frame begins to fatigue. While that seems like an impossibility, Bonnar was able to take advantage in late rounds of technical deficiencies in Jones’ stand-up game when he became tired. Matyushenko has to get this fight into the later rounds and tire out Jones, otherwise this is a closed case.
Why such the gloomy outlook on this main event? Stylistically, Jones has all the gifts to crush Matyushenko in one or two rounds of action, and all the great training partners in the world that Vladimir has been bringing in aren’t going to change the fact that he’s going to be very surprised by Jones’ strength and frustrated by his unpredictability. There’s also that other problem of Jones being freakishly powerful enough to implement his own wrestling game on the ground and mount opponents at will.
Jones will win on Sunday night. While I’ve been a fan of Matyushenko for quite a long time, his time has come to succumb to the younger generation. Jones is just far too gifted to lose here, and unless Matyushenko pulls off a Mike Russow miracle in the striking department — he’s going to find himself in very dangerous situations with a monster like Jones on top of him. Jon Jones via TKO.