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By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief
"We've been studying for a while, and his biggest weakness is his inexperience. That's the only X factor in this game. Everything else, he's almost like a seasoned vet, so we're going to try to look for holes and exploit them. His game is tight. His striking is good. His defense is good. His footwork's good. I can’t prepare for his spinning elbows or his spinning kicks and stuff like that. There’s just no way. The same goes for him training and preparing to fight me. Nobody kicks as hard as I do. Nobody kicks with the malicious intent that I do and he hasn’t gone against anybody whose Thai clinch is as good as mine. We’re both going to have to find out a lot about each other that night... I'm going back in to just trying to hurt people again like I used to; I used to go into my fights with the mindset that I just want to hurt my opponents badly. When I first came out, I would just bang on people and roll people just to see them break. I got away from that somehow. I don't know what happened; I don’t know if I got sucked into the MMA world of trying to not disappoint people. I'm over it."
-Brandon Vera talks to UFC.com about preparing for Sunday's bout with Jon Jones at UFC on Versus in Colorado and getting back to his old mindset.
Penick's Analysis: If Vera can get back to the way he fought at the outset of his career in the UFC this is going to be a very interesting bout with Jones. Vera is an extremely dangerous opponent for Jones, and despite a lackluster handful of fights recently he's got the tools to be one of the top fighters in the light heavyweight division. If, and it remains an if until he shows us otherwise, he can get his mind back to that killer instinct that he had when he rolled through Frank Mir, this is his fight to lose, despite the fast rise of his young opponent. I hope that he gets back to that because it will make for a better fight and a much bigger challenge for Jones.
[Brandon Vera art by Cory Gould (c) MMATorch.com]
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Jamie Penick, editor-in-chief
(mmatorcheditor@gmail.com)
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