UFC 80: Gabriel Gonzaga vs. Fabricio Werdum
Gabriel Gonzaga will return to the octagon in January to take on Fabricio Werdum at UFC 80 in Newcastle, England reports Gracie Mag.
Prior to his loss to Heavyweight Champion Randy Couture at UFC 74 in August, Gonzaga had been defeated just once, losing to Werdum in 2003 at Jungle Fight 1. Gonzaga, who accepted their first meeting on short notice, will look to avenge the third-round TKO loss and get back on track following his loss to Couture. Prior to being defeated in his first UFC championship attempt “Napao” had won four straight UFC fights including a highlight-reel knockout of then-heavyweight contender Mirko “Cro Cop” Filipovic.
Werdum enters the fight with a 9-3-1 record including notable wins over Gonzaga and Aleksander Emelianenko, the younger brother of top-ranked Fedor Emelianenko. In his UFC debut in April Werdum was defeated by Andrei Arlovski via unaninmous decision, a fight that caused Arlovski to be absent from any subsequent UFC cards to date.
For more on UFC 80 check out the MMAFrenzy.com rumors section.
Tags: Fabricio Werdum, Gabriel Gonzaga
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Does anyone know how many fights Werdum has on his contract?
No clue. I think this is a great match up though. Werdum is a surprisingly tough individual. Every time I see him he does something that I don’t expect. I think I will take Gonzaga to win though. We will see if Werdum has any tricks up his sleave.
I guess we’ll see how mentally tough G.G. is now.
I’m actually gonna go with Werdum in this one. He is in a must win situation after his last fight and in my mind he just faced a superior striker than GG in AA. Werdum possesses a top notch bjj game and a solid chin. Hopefully(and surely) he realized and improved his apparent weakness in striking. His best strike was a slap in the Arlovski fight.. Perhaps Arlovski will be granted similar chance at redeeming himself in the near future as well..?
If I had to guess it’s likely 3 or 4 fights but that is based on their standard deal lengths. I like Gonzaga to win this fight but it could go either way. I think the key here will be Gonzaga pressing the action to make sure he avoids the same fate as Arlovski.
Hopefully Gabe has worked on his “chicken fight” i mean “dirty boxing” defense.. Ha Ha.. I’m not calling Gabe the best but if Randy would have fought man up instead of hugging and poking, he would have been destroyed.
so sean… your saying that if randy cotoure didn’t TRY TO BEAT gabe gonzaga… then he wouldn’t have beaten gabe gonzaga? sounds about right… lol
No i’m not taking anything from him.. I personally just don’t like that style of fighting.. I have faced opponents that try to use that “dirty boxing” style.. It makes the fight boring and slow in my opinion.
I personally think that Gabriel Gonzaga is way overrated just because his LUCKY head kick to Mirco Cro Cop. And then he automatically got a title shot against Randy Couture. I believe that Fabricio is a very good matchup for Gabe though both extremely well on the ground and both some what ok with their standup. I see this fight ending in a summition or decision no knock out here. Oh and Randy Couture is the best thats why hes the champ!
I don’t know if he’s overrated.. he did dominate that whole round before that head kick. Fabricio is a good fighter as well i do agree this is a good matchup and more than likely will end in a submission.
Cro Cop is not the fighter he was in Pride. He hasn’t been mentally tough (or physically for that matter) in his lsat two fights in the UFC. Hard to gauge GG on an opponent like that. We’ll see how he bounces back after the Randy fight.
Yeah I don’t know if he is OVERRATED but all he has really done in my eyes is flash KO a shadow of the former cro cop. There isn’t a guy in the UFC that is incapable of KOing someone so I’m not ready to jump aboard the GG bandwagon yet.
Just heard from a friend at a certain MMA Magazine, that two big fights are penciled in for UFC 80, they are…….. Brandon Vera Vs Andrei Arlovskie & Evan Tanner Vs Dan Henderson! Sweet.
I thought mmafrenzy just reported that Dan H. was fighting in December. Also, I thought Even Tanner was having some “issues” that were sure to keep him out of the octagon for quite another while. He admitted he hadn’t trained in months. Kinda hard for him to jump right back into it, I would think, but we’ll see.
Both guys need a win bad; Werdum has to redeem himself for his performance against Arlovski where Werdum pretty much did nothing and Gonzaga has to win to try to at least justify some of the hype that is or was surrounding him.