Marquardt tightens up wrestling, pays no heed to Palhares’s reputation
Coming into his September 15 fight at Ultimate Fight Night 22, you might think that Nate Marquardt doesn’t have too much to lose. He gained the headlining spot after Alan Belcher pulled out of his fight against Demian Maia, forcing that fight to be cancelled. Marquardt went from fighting on UFC 118 to getting a high-profile headlining fight on free TV, giving him a good shot at vaulting back into the title picture. But if you think he doesn’t have a lot to lose, you might not have heard of his opponent, Rousimar Palhares.
Palhares is known as simply one of the best submission fighters in the middleweight division. At 5 ft 9in, he’s one of the shortest and stumpiest fighters (his nickname, Toquinho, means “tree stump”) in the 185lb weight class. Of his 11 wins, eight have come by submission, including his past two fights. His last fight is what drew attention though, as he held onto a h**l hook on Tomasz Drwal after Drwal tapped and the referee called the fight, which earned him a suspension of 90 days from the athletic commission. The potential for the strong Brazilian submission artist to do serious damage to an opponent is ever present, but Marquardt isn’t too concerned.
"I've heard that, that he holds on to stuff too long, but I don't really care about that. When I go to fight, I fully expect guys to do whatever they can to win, and if that means them trying to cheat or whatever, you have to be ready for that. You have to protect yourself at all times and that means even from things that are illegal. I'm going to come prepared and I'm going to do my best to stay out of any kind of submission hold so that issue won't even come up,” Marquardt told MMAfighting.com’s the MMA Hour.
Marquardt was one fight away from a second title shot at UFC 109, where he came in as a 4-1 favourite to defeat American upstart Chael Sonnen. Sonnen though defeated Marquardt and as a result he got a shot at Anderson Silva, recently losing to a last-second submission victory at UFC 117. For Marquardt, the loss was a setback. He’d wanted another shot at Silva, having lost in a title bout at UFC 73 in the first round. He told MMA Hour it still bothers him.
"I guess I'm still not over the heartbreak or whatever," Marquardt said. "It still bothers me, but I'm definitely looking forward to my next fight and I feel I've learned my lessons from that fight. I expect to go into this fight and execute my game plan, and I think that's one of the biggest mistakes that I made against Chael."
According to Marquardt, his biggest error was not treating Sonnen’s wrestling game seriously enough.
"There's a few technical things and possibly a few things in my training that I had to change or had to tweak, but really the main thing is I don't feel I followed my game plan to fight a wrestler. If you fight a wrestler the wrong way, it's very easy to get taken down, and I think that's what happened. My take-down defence is much better than I showed, and I will be able to prove that in my next fight here."
He’ll have to. Marquardt will easily have the advantage in the stand-up department, Palhares’s game plan will be simple. Take down Marquardt, and submit him. That’ll be easier said than done, but so, for Marquardt, will be bouncing back from a loss to put himself back into the title picture. He’ll have to overcome the heartbreak, improve his wrestling, and make sure he doesn’t get intimidated by the vicious submission game of Palhares.
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