UFC 99 Morning After: Future Heavyweight Champ Cain Velasquez?

Cain Velasquez had by far the biggest win of his young mixed martial arts career on Saturday in Cologne, Germany, when he dominated Cheick Kongo at their fight in the co-main event at UFC 99. And now the big question is this: Is Cain Velasquez a future UFC heavyweight champion?

I think he is. Velasquez has a great athletic base as a former All-American wrestler at Arizona State, and he's rapidly learning the nuances of MMA. He's 26 years old, and that makes him one of the youngsters in a UFC heavyweight division where interim champion Frank Mir is 30, champion Brock Lesnar is 31, Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira is 33, Shane Carwin is 34 and Randy Couture is about to turn 46.

Along with the 24-year-old Junior dos Santos, Velasquez is one of the young, up-and-coming heavyweights who will represent the future of the division. But while I expect Velasquez to fight for the UFC heavyweight belt some day, Velasquez told me before the fight that even if he looked impressive in beating Kongo, he didn't expect to be given the next shot at the heavyweight title.

"I don't think I'm fighting for a title shot," Velasquez told FanHouse. "It's up to the UFC, but my opinion is that I don't have enough fights yet. ... The UFC will decide, but I don't think I'd get one right away."

That's the right attitude, and the truth is, Velasquez isn't ready to fight Mir or Lesnar just yet, mostly because he has a lot of work to do on his striking, both offensively and defensively: He needs to learn how to do more damage with his punches, and he needs to learn how to avoid getting punched. All three rounds started with Kongo landing good, hard punches while they were standing up, and even though Velasquez always weathered those punches and took Kongo down, he can't keep going through his career taking shots like that.

And I also believe Velasquez needs to work with a strength and conditioning coach who can help him put on some muscle. That might sound crazy, because he's already big and strong enough to overpower a tough guy like Kongo. But in the era of Brock Lesnar, it's not enough to be big and strong. If Velasquez wants to be UFC heavyweight champion, he's going to need to be huge and strong.

There's no reason that Velasquez can't keep improving, though, and if he does, the rest of the heavyweight in the UFC need to watch out.

"The caliber of fighter of Cheick Kongo blows away my past opponents," Velasquez said in the opening of the pay-per-view broadcast. "So beating him tonight will show people that I'm the real deal."

Velasquez did, indeed, show that he's the real deal.


My favorite sight of UFC 99
The opening of the third round of the main event fight between Rich Franklin and Wanderlei Silva, when the two men nodded at each other and slapped hands in a show of respect before five more minutes of brawling. Franklin vs. Silva was a fight I'd personally wanted to see for a long time, and although it's a little sad to see that Silva is getting a little long in the tooth, it was a great fight between two legends, and great to see how much respect they had for each other.

Quotes of UFC 99
"Marcus is a cool guy. I want to say I respect him and his team. Everybody who supports Marcus, keep supporting him." -- Dan Hardy, explaining after he beat Marcus Davis that he had no personal hard feelings toward him, despite a long war of words leading up to the fight.

"For the uneducated fans, this is kind of tough to appreciate how good both these guys are, and how they're both canceling each other out. Sometimes it's more exciting to see somebody just get their ass kicked, but what we're seeing right here is two masters that are both trying to impose their games. For an MMA purist, someone who really appreciates the game, this is an excellent fight. ... For someone who really understands what these guys are doing, this is really interesting. For your casual drunken meathead, not so much." -- Joe Rogan during Spencer Fisher's unanimous decision win over Caol Uno, a fight that was booed at times by the fans in Germany.

UFC 99 Awards
Fight of the Night: Rich Franklin vs. Wanderlei Silva got the award, making it the third time in the last five big UFC shows that the main event was the Fight of the Night. (Diego Sanchez vs. Joe Stevenson at UFC 95 and Rampage Jackson vs. Keith Jardine at UFC 96 were also the Fight of the Night winners.)

Knockout of the Night: Mike Swick, for an impressive second-round stoppage of Ben Saunders.

Submission of the Night: Terry Etim, who used a D'arce choke to stop Justin Buchholz.

Franklin, Silva, Swick and Etim each get $60,000 bonuses.

Good call: I love the UFC's decision to show six fights live on the pay-per-view broadcast. I hope that becomes common practice for future UFC shows that don't include any title fights; the next pay-per-view show that doesn't have a title fight, UFC 102, is a stacked card that definitely has six pay-per-view worthy fights on it.

Bad call: Referee Dan Miragliotta missed a rather blatant eye poke from Mirko Cro Cop on Mostapha Al-Turk. Although I believe Cro Cop was going to beat Al-Turk anyway, Miragliotta should have given Al-Turk time to recover from the eye poke before allowing the fight to continue. Instead, with Al-Turk bent over in pain, Cro Cop easily finished him and benefited from an unintentional foul.

Ground game: The fans aren't the only ones who sometimes get tired of long stretches on the ground: Sometimes the fighters get tired of those long stretches, too. After Ben Saunders held Mike Swick in his guard for a couple minutes in the first round, Swick could be heard yelling to Saunders, "You gonna f**king hold me all night?" It was a funny moment, but Saunders wasn't doing anything wrong, he was just doing what he needed to do to protect himself.

Stock up: Dennis Siver, who excited the fans in his native Germany with a first-round submission win over Dale Hartt. It's a testament to how far MMA has come that no matter where the UFC goes, it can find good home-town fighters to step into the Octagon.

Stock down: Wanderlei Silva, who's still a fun fighter to watch but is no longer an elite fighter. I don't think Silva needs to retire, but I do think he's probably done fighting against big-time opponents at the tops of their games.

Fight I want to see next: Cain Velasquez vs. Shane Carwin. Carwin would represent an even tougher challenge for Velasquez than Kongo did, but if we learned anything about Velasquez on Saturday, we learned that he doesn't back down from tough challenges.

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