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By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief
When Cain Velasquez enters the cage on Saturday night at UFC 160, he's got just one goal in mind: win. After all, in his first attempt at defending the UFC Heavyweight Championship, he failed on the largest stage ever, with over ten million people ultimately catching that knockout loss to Junior dos Santos on Fox. Sure, he avenged that loss in December, and he's defeated Antonio "Bigfoot" Silva once before, but the most important thing is to get that first title defense under him.
That title defense will be the first step in achieving his goal to be considered amongst the greatest fighters in the sport's history.
"When you say you want to defend the title for a long time, what does it really mean?" Velasquez's trainer, Javier Mendez, wondered in an interview with ESPN.com. "Remember, no one has defended the title more than twice, so if he's talking about wanting to keep defending that title, he wants to be remembered by everybody as one of the greatest, like Fedor [Emelianenko]."
"Look at what it's done for GSP [Georges St-Pierre]. Look at what it's done for Anderson Silva. So I think it's humongous if Cain can hold that title. It's huge for the UFC. It's huge for everybody involved. It's huge for me. It's huge for his management. Everyone wins when an individual, a champion, continues to win."
It's a long road to walk to get himself into the realm of the aforementioned Fedor, GSP, or Anderson Silva, especially considering he's not yet defended the title. And his lack of sound bytes has him under the radar on the star scale as well. But if he can do the unprecedented, and make a run with that title the likes of which hasn't been seen in the heavyweight division, Mendez thinks his results will speak for themselves.
"Cain is not a Chael Sonnen,” Mendez said. “So he's not going to say those catchy lines. He's just going to take all comers, and he's going to go to war. People will respect him for the humble champion that he is. It's going to take him a little longer to get down that road, because he didn't use his mouth. He used his fists. He used his fighting to speak for itself."
Penick's Analysis: Velasquez has already proven to be a fantastic heavyweight fighter, but going from great to "all-time best" is a much larger leap than going from good to great. And he has to prove himself with consistency, because if he loses that title again and the belt starts changing hands, then there isn't going to be a place for him amongst GSP, Silva, and Fedor. Jon Jones is the young Champ who has dominated enough to get himself in that conversation, and that's where Velasquez wants to be. It starts Saturday night, though there's still a lot more that will need to happen to get him there.
[Cain Velasquez art by Grant Gould (c) MMATorch.com]
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Jamie Penick, editor-in-chief
(mmatorcheditor@gmail.com)
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Frank Hyden - Rich Hansen
Chris Park - Matt Pelkey
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