Cain Velasquez Wants Brock Lesnar And He’s Ready For The Challenge
bleacherreport.com
Wednesday March 3, 2010 BY ifight365
Fresh off of the biggest victory in his young MMA career, a first-round knockout of the former PRIDE and UFC Heavyweight Champion Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira, Cain Velasquez has staked his claim near the top of the UFC’s Heavyweight division and if he gets his wish, he’ll be facing off against current champ Brock Lesnar sooner rather than later.
As Velasquez told MMA Fighting, he’s more than ready to face off against the hugely talented, hugely dangerous and just plain huge Lesnar;
“Yes. I’m ready. I think I’ve been ready for a while. The way this sport works is you’ve just got to prove yourself when you get the chance. I want to fight the best so I can be the best … I don’t know what I do better than (Lesnar) but I do know I’d be ready. I know what I can do, I know I train with really tough guys, and I know I’d prepare myself to give him a really good fight — I think it would be a really good fight between us … I think I’d have to wear him out for the first two or three rounds, because he’s so big and strong. I’d need to be weary of him at the beginning. I think that’d be my best option, trying to do that. He’s a great athlete, and he has wrestled in the NCAAs, and you have to be a top athlete to do that, but I think that would be my best bet.”
Velasquez’s MMA record currently sits at 8-0 with six of those victories coming inside the Octagon. Velasquez is known throughout MMA as being one of the more fit Heavyweight fighters in terms of cardio, which could prove to be an asset in a five-round title fight, but he has yet to have shown it fully.
Only one of Velasquez’s eight fights has gone the distance, a UFC 99 victory over Chieck Kongo, and only two others have made it out of the first round, meaning that there may still be a question mark as t how Velasquez would handle the pace should an eventual title fight go all five rounds.
As it is, the answer to that question may have to wait as UFC President Dana White has stated that the winner of the Shane Carwin/Frank Mir interim UFC Heavyweight Championship match at UFC 111 later this month gets first crack at Lesnar, with Velasquez likely to step in to face the defending champ if the winner of the interim title bout is unable to compete in the summer. |
