UFC 120 Preview: Michael Bisping vs Yoshihiro Akiyama
At the Ultimate Fighting Championships’ UFC 120 event taking place on Saturday in London, it’s Michael “The Count” Bisping taking on Yoshihiro “Sexyama” Akiyama in front of his fellow Englishmen in the main
event.
The event presents the opportunity for Bisping to step up and earn that elusive high profile win, and for Akiyama to erase the memory of a heartbreaking last-second defeat to Chris Leben in his last fight.
Recent form
Bisping, the winner of The Ultimate Fighter season two, has long been England’s number one representative in the mixed martial arts world and one of the most active fighters in the UFC. He’s 19-3 overall
in his MMA career and 9-3 in the UFC, but only 2-2 in his last four fights. Simply put, he was able to plow through lesser competition in his career before running into future UFC champion Rashad Evans, losing a split decision, and then losing to former Pride
FC champions Dan Henderson and Wanderlei Silva in July 2009 and February 2010 respectively. In between those two fights he picked up a win over Denis Kang, and most recently in May he captured a unanimous decision over Dan Miller.
Akiyama is 13-2, with two no contests and just 1-1 in the UFC. He tore through lesser competition in Japan, going 12-1 with 11 straight wins before he came to the UFC. His first fight saw him take a close
decision victory over Alan Belcher the same night Henderson destroyed Bisping, and then he took a lengthy hiatus to wait to fight Silva, who also took Bisping down. But Silva became injured before their fight, and Akiyama dominated Silva’s replacement, Leben,
before Leben submitted him with about 20 seconds left.
Style
Bisping in a well rounded fighter who relies mostly on a technical stand up game. He doesn’t have much power in his standing strikes, but instead relies on outboxing his opponents while using footwork to
avoid damage. Unlike many British fighters, Bisping has fairly good wrestling and also has very good defensive Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ), which he used to survive against Kang.
Akiyama is a whole different fighter all together. Unlike the polished stand-up of Bisping, Akiyama is a bit of a brawler on the feet, with a rock for a chin and heavy hands that have earned five knockouts.
Akiyama also has a top-class international Judo background, with two gold medals in pan-Asian tournaments. He displayed this beautifully against Leben, taking him down almost at will. His grappling on the
ground is also excellent, with seven submissions on his resume.
Odds, prediction
There are two x-factors in this fight.
The first is Akiyama’s cardio. Bisping is always in excellent shape, but Akiyama showed serious cardio issues in his last fight which contributed to his last-round loss.
The second is his game plan. The trick to defeating Bisping has always been to come at him very aggressively and wade through his weak strikes and be willing to land heavy blows on him. Matt Hamill first
showed it in a very controversial decision loss to Bisping, Henderson perfected it with his bone-crushing knockout, and Silva exploited it enough to win a decision.
With Akiyama’s chin and power, he has the skillset to pull it off. The question is will he?
With Akiyama at around 7/4 as the underdog, it’s worth a bet he will.
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