Cain Velasquez will be a top level fighter in about 4 or 5 years but not when he fights Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira. Despite having 6 knock outs in his last 7 fights Velasquez is not the heavy striker that most people make him out to be. Yes Velasquez can KO people, but he is a "chucker" and he throws the wild over hand right with a lot of power. The difference between theses 2 fighters is power versus technique.
Nogueira may not have more power than Velasquez but he is a better technical striker. If you look at his fight with Cheick Kongo he was picked apart with technical striking. Kongo only hit him with a couple of shots but Velasquez was hurt and you could see the holes in his striking game. If Kongo was a better fighter his striking would have set up other aspects of fighting like grappling.
If you look at Cain's last fight with Ben Rothwell he used his dominate wrestling game to pin down Rothwell. He came in for single leg takedowns and used his dominate wrestling game to impose his top wrestling game. From there he was able to land strikes. Yes he won the fight by strikes on the score sheet but it was his wrestling that set it up. He will not be able to do the same thing he did against Nog as he did against Rothwell. Nogueira's is too good to be pinned down. Nogueira has an incredible bottom grappling game and he will not let Velasquez pin his shoulder or hips down like Velasquez has down with other fighters.
Nogueira is a top level fighter that is something that Cain does not have yet. Nogueira is the first and only fighter to have held Championship titles in both the Pride and the UFC. He holds notable wins over Tim Sylvia, Dan Henderson, Sergei Kharitonov, Mark Coleman, Valentijn Overeem, Ricco Rodriguez, Mirko Filipovi, Jeremy Horn, Josh Barnett, Heath Herring, Fabricio Werdum, Semmy Schilt, Bob Sapp and Randy Couture.
Who has Cain beaten? He has not fought a top ten fighter in his career. UFC betting wise the -120 lines for Nogueira is a good price to wager at. I would have set the Nogueira betting lines a bit higher, so to be this is a high value bet.
This fight will eventually go to the ground and Cain will try to maintain top position but Nogueira will bait him into one position and Velasquez will over commit and that is when Minotauro will submit him.
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