While Ronda Rousey's return fight against Amanda Nunes is garnering most of the headlines in the lead-up to UFC 207 on Friday, December 30, the co-main event featuring a bantamweight title fight between Cody Garbrandt and Dominick Cruz is an even more compelling matchup.
Cruz has made a career, as he pointed out in a segment of trash-talking (warning: NSFW language) at December 17's UFC on Fox event, of beating up fighters who train out of Team Alpha Male in Sacramento, California, from founder Urijah Faber to Joseph Benavidez to their former teammate TJ Dillashaw. Can Garbrandt, the latest representative of the team, snap that five-fight losing streak?
Garbrandt has risen quickly since debuting in the UFC in January 2015, knocking out four of his five opponents in the promotion in devastating fashion. Only Henry Briones has survived the 15-minute distance with him, and Takeya Mizugaki, Thomas Almeida and Augusto Mendes all fell in the first round in 2016 to cap off his current streak.
The 25-year-old Ohio native has picked his matchups well and delivered on his promise, which has put him in position to take on Cruz in a high-profile fight.
Cruz has rebounded from a rough four-year stretch that was marred by injuries. He defended his bantamweight title for the last time in October 2011, defeating future flyweight great Demetrious Johnson, but then missed the next three years with a series of knee and groin injuries. He returned with a first-round finish of Takeya Mizugaki in September 2014 but promptly lost the next 16 months to still more ailments.
Dillashaw, the reigning and defending bantamweight champion, put up a tough fight in their January 2016 meeting, but Cruz came out on top in a razor-thin split-decision win. He defended his reclaimed crown in a third fight with Faber in June to set up the fight with Faber's protege, Garbrandt.
This is a great matchup on paper and a compelling meeting of new school and old school. Garbrandt might be the future, but is he the present as well?
Dominick Cruz
Record: 22-1 (7 KO, 1 SUB, 14 DEC)
Height: 5'8"
Reach: 68 inches
Cruz's game is built on his constant movement. Sidesteps, shuffle steps, backward and forward steps, pivots, and stance switches all combine into a seamless whole that creates a flow chart of available options. This variety of potential responses is constantly in motion, depending on the precise angle and distance Cruz occupies relative to his opponent.
There's no division between the different phases of the fight, or even between offense and defense, in Cruz's approach to MMA. The same angle that allows him to land a combination also has built-in head movement to avoid a counter—and instead of a combination, he might change levels and shoot a takedown. Moreover, his flow chart builds on itself over the course of the fight.
Consider a simple pivot in the face of an opponent who's trying to pressure Cruz. Once he executes the movement the first time, Cruz might use the opportunity to escape into open space. The second time, he can stop, plant his feet and throw a combination. The third time, he might change levels and shoot a takedown from a dominant angle. The fourth time, he might fake a level change and then come up with a combination.
That's just one example of a basic movement, and it's not even an exhaustive list of everything Cruz can do with that one pivot. Cruz's game provides an almost infinite variety of those movements and options for building on top of them.
In terms of what he actually does in the cage, Cruz is fairly meat and potatoes. He throws a consistent jab from both stances, cracks away with round kicks, and mixes in the occasional straight and hook. But he isn't a big puncher and rarely sets his feet long enough to dig in and throw with power. Volume and offensive output make up for that, and he's so hard to hit that it's not difficult for him to pile up big edges in landed strikes.
Wrestling is a strength of Cruz's game. His blending of strikes and takedowns means he usually starts in on his opponent's hips, and from there he can finish chains of authoritative singles, doubles, knee taps, trips and suplexes with ease. It's difficult to take him down and even harder to hold him there.
Those takedowns mostly serve as a change of pace for Cruz, an opportunity to break his opponent's rhythm and confuse him, and he rarely looks to control from top position for long periods. He's happy to let his opponent scramble out, which creates opportunities for Cruz to land punches and knees as his opponent stands up.
Cardio is the foundation of this game. Cruz can fight five hard rounds with ease while working at an incredible rate, and only Dillashaw has succeeded in keeping pace with him into the latter part of a championship fight.
Cody Garbrandt
Record: 10-0 (9 KO, 1 DEC)
Height: 5'8"
Reach: 65 inches
Garbrandt is a puncher with exceptional speed, athleticism and raw power. The veteran of 33 amateur boxing matches is far from a wild brawler, however, and backs up his physical gifts with strong fundamentals. His punches are crisp and technical, and he has sharp footwork that allows him to move efficiently and cut angles from which to throw his devastating shots.
Everything Garbrandt throws carries fight-ending power, and he has a few technical tricks that allow him to place his power on his opponent. Garbandt does a good job of jabbing on the outside to gauge the distance and draw the opponent's eyes and hands out of position, and for the most part, he works his way into his preferred range slowly and methodically behind his active lead hand.
Given a choice, Garbrandt prefers to operate in the pocket, where his quick hands and crushing power can most easily be applied. Though he excels at taking small steps and pivots to create angles, he's not especially crafty in exchanges and mostly relies on a quick trigger and his length to avoid the worst of what his opponent throws. Head movement isn't a strength, and he's hittable in these ranges.
That's the best of what Garbrandt has to offer. He can operate at range for brief periods—sticking his opponent with jabs and the occasional kick or hitting big, forward-moving combinations—but whether he can do that for rounds at a time against a technically sound outside fighter is still an unanswered question.
We don't know much about the rest of Garbrandt's game. He has a background in wrestling and shoots explosive, technical takedowns from time to time, preferring doubles, knee taps and trips in clean chains. His takedown defense hasn't been tested, though, and neither has his grappling repertoire. On top, he hits hard and can control, but that's about all we can comfortably say.
Betting Odds
Cruz -210 (bet $210 to win $100), Garbrandt +175 (bet $100 to win $175)
Prediction
Garbrandt is a quick starter with huge power, and if he lands cleanly, he can put anyone in the division to sleep. He has a few tricks up his sleeve, and given how little we've seen him truly pushed in his UFC career, he may well have things in his game that we haven't seen yet. Cruz is getting older and has never faced someone with Garbrandt's combination of speed and pop.
With that said, this is Cruz's fight to lose. He has a great chin and is hard to hit in the first place, especially to the head; if he were more inclined to work the legs and body, Garbrandt might open up the big shot upstairs, but he's almost exclusively been a headhunter.
Unless that changes, he'll do a lot of swinging and missing. That's bound to get frustrating, especially because he's never shown the kind of pressure game that can pin Cruz against the fence and make it easier to track him down for a big punch.
After the first few minutes, Cruz is bound to figure out what Garbrandt is trying to do, and when that happens, the fight will turn into a long process of Cruz darting in and out of range, landing shots and takedowns and avoiding Garbrandt's attempts to counter.
The champion will have to overcome a few scary moments, but Cruz will walk away with a 49-46 or 50-45 decision victory.
Odds courtesy of OddsShark.
Patrick Wyman is the Senior MMA Analyst for Bleacher Report and the co-host of the Heavy Hands Podcast, your source for the finer points of face-punching. For the history enthusiasts out there, he also hosts The Fall of Rome Podcast on the end of the Roman Empire. He can be found on Twitter and on Facebook.
