UFC 87: Destroyer and Destroyee

UFC 87: Seek And Destroy -- Who'll do the seeking, who'll do the destroying?

Aug. 10, 2008; Target Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota)

UFC 87 topbills Georges “Rush” St. Pierre and Jon Fitch, but might as well have Brock Lesnar and Heath Herring as the main event. The Roger Huerta-Kenny Florian tussle is not bad either.

The only reason the GSP-Fitch fight headlines is because there is a welterweight title at stake. Defending champ Rush still seems strong and fast enough to run over Fitch, and Huerta also looks to roll over Florian. The iffier scenario is that of Lesnar and Herring.

With the most-anticipated pairing that of the supporting bout, this makes UFC 87 the most highly-stacked UFC main card since UFC 84 – a mere three promotions ago. Which is not exactly in the previous century, but it’s hard to beat a promotion which has five matches in the main card that includes Thiago Silva vs. Antonio Mendes, Tito Ortiz vs. Lyoto Machida, Wilson Gouveia vs. Goran Reljic, Wanderlei Silva vs. Keith Jardine, and B.J. Penn vs. Sean Sherk.

Brock Lesnar is a giant by any standards. But this 6-foot-2 265-pound behemoth has a soft side. Just by looking at those big gray-blue eyes (they seem gray-blue on TV) one can almost see the pain and joy, defeats and victories, not limited to thousands of hours on the wrestling mat and the World Wrestling Entertainment ring and cage. Lesnar is a huge teddy bear a child could cuddle up to, but is also strong enough to smother opponents in the mixed martial arts arena.

His opponent, Herring, is no slouch in the fighting department. Nicknamed “The Texas Crazy Horse” in Pride FC, Herring holds a 28-13-0 fight record and an enviable roster of past opponents, including: Antonio Rodrigo “Minotauro” Noguiera, Fedor “The Last Emperor” Emelianenko, Mirko “CroCop” Filipovic, and Vitor Belfort. To all whom he lost, by the way (thrice to Minotauro). And how! He fought his ass off in losing but he could take solace in the thought that he gave all of them and many others a fight they will never forget, win or lose.

Herring is strong, fast, smart, aggressive, and very seasoned. Losing to such high-quality fighters can be read as a testament to his toughness. At 30, Herring is still one of the most dangerous heavyweights in MMA.

Lesnar, on the other hand, is a generally untested entity in MMA. After making a living in “sports entertainment” in Vince McMahon’s pro-wrestling circus called WWE, which was once called WWF but was finally renamed due to a clash of acronyms with the World Wildlife Fund, “Brock” Lesnar is trying his hand at real fighting as opposed to “fake” wrestling.

A former NCAA Division 1 wrestling champion, Lesnar has the prerequisite ground skills and the size and power for a fruitful MMA career. (Think Randy Couture, Mark Coleman, Mark Kerr, Kevin Randleman, and Mall Lindland.) Lesnar’s MMA record is a middling 1-1-0 and this could be his last chance for a contract extension with the UFC. He loses and his novelty practically wears off. If the UFC hadn’t swallowed Japan’s defunct premier MMA promotion, Pride, Lesnar and others could have another option for career advancement. But as of now, the one-billion-dollar megalith that is the UFC is the only game in town that really matters.

This could go either way. Neither Lesnar nor Herring have any distinct advantage over the other. Herring is faster but Lesnar is more powerful. Herring can take a punch but Lesnar still has to prove that he can. With his solid wrestling credentials, though, plus his bulk, he can create huge problems for Herring if the fight goes to the ground and Lesnar gets on top.

If Herring successfully keeps the fight on their feet, he just might earn a knockout win. The native South Dakotan Lesnar needs all the support he can get from his fans in Minnesota, where he currently fights out of.

Roger “Matador” Huerta, like Lesnar, might find his UFC career on its last legs if he loses to Kenny Florian. But that is unlikely. Huerta has the edge over Florian in just about all departments: speed, power, skills, and marketing. The good-looking Huerta has the enviable distinction of being the very first MMA fighter to make the cover of Sports Illustrated.

Huerta is like night to Florian’s day. Coming from a hardscrabble background in his native Mexico, physically and psychologically abused as a child by both his biological parents and his stepmother, Huerta earned a living on the streets before his teens. Huerta has a lot of demons to exorcise. Fighting in the Octagon gives him an opportunity to expel those demons, while beating up on someone he might visualize as those who have wronged him. “Anger can be power/Don’t you know that you can use it,” The Clash sings in their debut record.

In Kenny Florian’s case, the Bee Gees “Staying Alive” might be apropos. That is what the middle-class Massachusetts native has to do against El Matador. When someone nicknamed The Slayer goes up against someone saddled with the rather gayish nickname “KenFlo,” it’s much easier to believe that The Slayer (Murderer, Killer, Assassin) will have KenFlo for breakfast and lunch, not counting snacks in between.

In the main event, Georges St. Pierre gets another opportunity to add to his growing legend. The soft-spoken French Canadian has only lost twice in 18 MMA fights, once by submission to his “idol’ Matt Hughes and once to Matt Serra by strikes. In MMA, unlike in boxing, a 16-2 record is a mark of excellence not a questionable record. GSP is at the top of his game right now, his confidence soaring. He avenged both his losses to Hughes and Serra and fittingly in the same way he lost.

Jon Fitch has earned the right to challenge GSP. Losing two of his first four MMA fights, Fitch has gradually gotten stronger and better and amassed 15 straight wins since a No Contest result against Solomon Hutcherson in HookNShoot -- Boot Camp on March 8, 2003.

Like GSP, Fitch is on a roll, only longer. Whose winning roll will be stopped today? That remains to be seen.