How Do You Prepare for Miguel Torres? Bring in Bigger Sparring Partners

Miguel Torres towers over the rest of MMA's 135-pound division -- and when I say that, I don't just mean he's the World Extreme Cagefighting bantamweight champion and by far the best 135-pound fighter in the world.

I also mean that Torres is much taller and has strikingly longer arms and legs than anyone else who fights at 135 pounds. That was very obvious on Friday, when the WEC brought together four of the best 135-pounders in the world for a press conference promoting Sunday night's WEC 40 event.

The height and reach difference between Torres and the other three -- his opponent, Takeya Mizugaki, plus Jeff Curran and Joseph Benavidez, who will square off in the co-main event -- was more apparent than their listed heights. Torres is listed at 5-foot-9, Mizugaki is listed at 5-7, Curran is listed at 5-6 and Benavidez is listed at 5-4.

But Torres has something of a stooped posture, and I think the real length of his frame is more like 5-foot-10 or 5-11. He also has long arms and legs, meaning the advantage his stature gives him in the cage is significantly greater than his two-inch height advantage over Mizugaki would suggest.

Mizugaki knows that. He said at the press conference, "I don't think there is anybody like Miguel Torres. He has long legs and long arms and I've never had any opponents like that. To prepare for this fight I've trained with opponents in heavier weight classes so that I'd be prepared for that longer reach."

That's a good approach, but is it enough to prepare him to fight someone like Torres? I don't think there's a sparring partner alive who can replicate what Torres does in the cage, but everything Mizugaki has said this week indicates that he knows he has an extremely difficult challenge ahead of him, and he's preparing accordingly.