CONTACTABOUTFACEBOOKTWITTERPODCAST IPHONE APPANDROID APPAMAZON APPWINDOWS APPRSS
NEW FORUM

GOT THE MMATORCH APP YET?
iPhone & iPad
Android
Kindle Fire
Windows Phone
MMATORCH IPHONE APP

MMATORCH

All the MMA News • Plus Intelligent, Brilliant, Addictive Points of View!
Independently Covering MMA Since 1993 • No Big Corporate Bosses

Interviews
MMATorch Interview: UFC commentator Brian Stann breaks down UFC Fight Night 57's Edgar-Swanson main event and more
Nov 22, 2014 - 4:30:51 PM
MMATorch Interview: UFC commentator Brian Stann breaks down UFC Fight Night 57's Edgar-Swanson main event and more
DISCUSS ALL THIS IN OUR NEW MMATORCH FORUM
...OH, ONE MORE THING - PLEASE BOOKMARK US & VISIT DAILY!



Brian_Stann.jpg


By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief

Brian Stann is back on the call with Jon Anik tonight at UFC Fight Night 57, serving as color commentator for the Fox Sports 1 broadcast from Austin, Texas. I spoke with Stann earlier this week to get his thoughts on the card, and he broke down several of the night's key fights and storylines. Here's what he had to say on some of those topics:


On UFC Fight Night 57 and which fights he's most anticipating: This is one of the cards that I've had on my calendar for about three months now, knowing I was going to get a chance to call this one, and just watching them putting the fights on there, I'm really excited for this one. There is a lot to like. I'm a little biased in that one, I've been, when I first started watching the sport, I was a big Yves Edwards fan. He was a guy that I would try to mimic, watch his combinations and see if I could do the same, things like that. Calling an Yves Edwards fight, for me, is big. He was the best lightweight in the world at the time I just started getting into the sport, so I'm definitely looking forward to that one. And you know, I think the Luke Barnatt-Roger Narvaez fight is going to be pretty fun to watch as well.


On what will determine the next UFC Featherweight Title challenger: We can say all we want before the fight. Who deserves what, who deserves this. It all comes down to who can generate the hype that's gonna sell tickets, sell pay-per-views, and put the butts in seats. So not only does winning matter, when you're in a competition with multiple people like this, it's how you win. If Frankie and Cub go out there and have a Jose Aldo-Chad Mendes style fight, then that really makes a huge case for the winner of that fight to be the next title challenger. And it's going to make people want that guy to be the next title challenger. The performance of these two guys is going to dictate who gets the next shot. For Conor McGregor, I think the pressure for him is he's got to go in there, and he's got to win in extremely dominant fashion, and most likely he's got to go and try to finish Dennis Siver in the first round. He's got to be praying that the Frankie Edgar-Cub Swanson fight is boring, methodical, and doesn't get people that excited.


On Edgar-Swanson: A big part of it is there's going to be some chance involved. Who throws what and when. That game of inches, whether your fist is a little to the right or a little to the left. There's no secret that the power is going to be on the side of Cub Swanson. He's going to want to exchange, and he's going to want to do it early. When we've seen Frankie Edgar get in trouble in his fights is early, when he can be hit, before guys start to tire, because Frankie maintains almost the same speed and pace for five straight rounds. Whereas other guys are going to start to slow down a little bit. Your power goes down a little bit each round, so I think it's important that Cub do damage early, cause in the losses Frankie's had in the close fights he's had, he's been hurt early. You know that Frankie can surge in the later rounds. Frankie's going to do what he does, which is move a lot, lots of speed, lots of variety, setups, a lot of up down ups - what I mean by that is when he's striking with you, he takes you down, he beats you up on the ground a little bit, then you have to get back up, then he does it again and continually repeats it - so you don't know if Frankie wants to hit you with the leg kicks, wants to hit you with a punch, or if he wants to take you down and grapple with you. He keeps you guessing out there, and the volume and the pace is such that he slows you down all the time, and he wins those championship rounds clearly. Cub really believes that he's faster - Frankie's had the advantage in speed in a lot of his fights - Cub feels like he has gained a tremendous amount of speed with his boxing training in the last two years. That's one of his biggest areas of improvement, and he thinks he's fast enough to keep up with Frankie Edgar.


On who the bigger challenge is to Jose Aldo between Frankie Edgar and Cub Swanson: That's such a hard question to answer. But, you've got to look at what you've seen previously. Frankie Edgar gave Jose Aldo an extremely, extremely tough challenge. When you watch that again, and you don't take damage into effect, and you count punches, takedowns, things of that nature, and there's a lot of people who thought Frankie Edgar could have won that fight against Jose Aldo. I think Frankie's biggest threat to Aldo is that it's a five-round fight. Cub Swanson's a guy - we saw Jose Aldo get rocked by Chad Mendes - Cub Swanson's a guy who can not only rock you, he can finish you as well. But we also saw how Jose Aldo responds, he is absolute dynamite whenever he wants to go. That was by far his best performance against Chad Mendes. If I had to flip a coin right now and pick who represents a bigger threat to that title, I'd probably have to say Frankie Edgar right now, but it's by a very narrow margin. That's not necessarily who I would say I favor to win the Frankie Edgar vs. Cub Swanson fight, I just stylistically against Jose Aldo.


On the Bobby Green-Edson Barboza co-main event and Green saying it might be his last fight: I'm not surprised by Bobby Green's comments, but you can't take everything out of his mouth too seriously. It's not that he doesn't mean what he says - he absolutely does, and he's a very passionate man - but his life is so chaotic. He is so used to living in chaos, and it's very unfortunate; there's been a lot of tragedy in that young man's life. But I wouldn't take that comment too far and think 'oh, his head's not in the game, he's going to lose this fight.' On the flip side for Barboza, I mean, talk about a great opportunity. I mean, he loses to Cerrone, then goes and beats Evan Dunham, and now gets a shot against a guy coming off a win over Josh Thomson, where Barboza can get himself immediately into title talk with an impressive win over a guy like Bobby Green. It's a good matchup for Barboza. When you look at where he struggled in both fights he's lost, to Jamie Varner and Cowboy Cerrone, Varner knocked him out, Cerrone basically knocked him out before he choked him out. He hurt him significantly. Bobby's not a guy who's shown one punch knockout power, he's shown he's more a volume [striker]. He likes to walk forward, he likes to box. The legs and the kicks will be there for Barboza. [Green] doesn't have that All-American wrestling pedigree. He's got a high school wrestling pedigree. But his MMA wrestling has looked awfully, awfully sharp. Josh Thomson struggled to take him down, really struggled in transitions with him. Bobby Green's wrestling in MMA has been really impressive to me.


On the two flyweight fights on Saturday's card: It's a big opportunity for these two fights because [the John Lineker-Ian McCall fight got canceled]. You've got a division that is desperate for a marketable challenge right now. Every one of these four has an opportunity to really shine. Chico Camus is coming down from bantamweight where he struggled with the size and strength advantage of Chris Holdsworth. He's coming down in the hopes that that won't happen at 125. I'll tell you what, he didn't get an easy out, taking on a guy like Brad Pickett. Brad has been looking at his career a little bit objectively and saying, you know what, there's times where he takes more risks than he needs to. He goes for finishes where other guys are going to win fights against him. So I think we'll see not a less aggressive Brad Pickett, but a little bit more calculated Brad Pickett, who knows he needs to go out there and get a win to move up the rankings. But huge opportunity. If Chico beats Brad Pickett, he moves himself way up the ranks in the flyweight division, to where he can get another marquee matchup. Now Benavidez is the guy that nobody wants to fight at flyweight, absolutely nobody wants to fight him. Except for Dustin Ortiz. Ortiz has a great thought process: you beat Benavidez, you're the next title challenger. He knows that. He can leapfrog a whole lot of dudes if he can go out there and beat Joseph Benavidez. Ortiz's style is consistent; he's a good, strong wrestler, he's got good boxing, he's going to try to overwhelm you with his strength, and he's going to try to control you, which is a really difficult thing to do to Joseph Benavidez. Now the question here is as Ortiz tries to takedown Benavidez, Benavidez is lethal in transitions. When you put that head on the outside of his hips, and he wraps his wrist around it, you can be in a whole lot of trouble, as we saw in his last fight with Tim Elliott. There's a lot of tricky position where Ortiz has to be careful in that fight. He's got to get his hands on Benavidez, get him down, get him on the mat, and control him, because in open space I think Benavidez has got a big advantage.



DON'T GO YET... WE SUGGEST THESE MMATORCH ARTICLES, TOO!
MMATorch Interview: Bellator 145's David Rickels strives to be more than "average journeyman guy"
Mike Bronzoulis on Bellator "Dynamite 1" bout with Josh Thomson: "Everyone's going to know who I am after this fight" (MMATorch Interview)
Former XFO Amateur Flyweight Champ David Williams excited for first outdoor bout in second pro fight

comments powered by Disqus
HERE ARE EVEN MORE ARTICLES THAT MIGHT INTEREST YOU

SELECT ARTICLES BY CATEGORY
SEARCH MMATORCH BY KEYWORD


MMATORCH CALENDAR OF EVENTS
CLICK HERE FOR LIST OF UPCOMING MMA EVENTS
CLICK TO SEE A UFC VIDEO BELOW

ARTICLES OF INTEREST ELSEWHERE
MMATORCH POLL - VOTE NOW!

Will T.J. Dillashaw and Urijah Faber eventually fight?
 
pollcode.com free polls

Do you think Daniel Cormier will defeat returning Jon Jones to legitimize UFC Light Heavyweight Title reign?
 
pollcode.com free polls

VOTE IN OR SEE RESULTS OF PREVIOUS POLLS

MMATORCH WEEKLY LIVECAST
Listen to the weekly MMATORCH LIVECAST on Blog Talk Radio


MMATORCH STAFF

EDITORS:

Wade Keller, supervising editor
(mmatorch@gmail.com)

Jamie Penick, editor-in-chief
(mmatorcheditor@gmail.com)

STAFF COLUMNISTS:

Shawn Ennis - Jason Amadi
Frank Hyden - Rich Hansen
Chris Park - Matt Pelkey


Interested in joining MMATorch's writing team? Send idea for a theme to your column (for Specialist section) or area of interest (i.e. TV Reporter) along with a sample of writing to mmatorch@gmail.com.

MORE MMA SITES
CONTACTABOUTFACEBOOKTWITTERPODCAST IPHONE APPANDROID APPAMAZON APPWINDOWS APPRSS
THE TORCH: #1 IN COMBAT ENTERTAINMENT COVERAGE | © 1999-2013 TDH Communications Inc. • All rights reserved -- PRIVACY POLICY