OWGP Finals Demand Superhuman Expectations
Posted by RB, 07 Sep 2006
It is five days until the Pride Open Weight Grand Prix Finals 2006, and it is time for the betting man to put his money on the table. A quick look at the lines leaves me glancing back and forth between the odds on one hand and just the card on the other. Put simply, this card is insane; it is every MMA fan's wet dream, and easily the best card I have seen on paper in the five years I have been following the sport. An event may have had more names stacked on it before (with an emphasis on the word "may"), or have had matchups with more pre-card buildup (i.e. Fedor vs Cro Cop). But the finals card this Sunday represents something: it catches the Pride heavyweight division at a critical juncture in its history.
The Pride heavyweights are essentially the top dogs of MMA -- they easily outclass the same division in the UFC many times over in depth of talent, and while there are other stellar weight classes to be reckoned with, the UFC Welterweights being the forerunners, the old truth remains that heavyweights draw. A breed of talented heavyweights will usually garner more attention and leave a longer lasting mark on the sport than all the fighters in the lower weight classes combined, whether in boxing or MMA. With Pride, their vastly superior heavyweight division is enough to single-handedly raise the organisation's stock above that of the UFC in the views of many fans, if given the chance.
It might be said that Pride's heavyweights are the most important fighters in the sport right now, and on Sunday we will find out who among them has the best chance to dent Fedor's armour. Yes, it comes as a gift that 'The Russian Experiment' could not recover from his hand injury in time to participate in the tournament: his participation would have left fans half-excited and half-resigned to the fact of his ultimate victory.
The way the tournament has turned out is much better: we have a final four so competitively dead level that it is impossible to come to a consensus on who the favourite to win it all is. Ask twenty fans, and their answers are likely to split four ways into groups of five. It's that competitive.
Sunday's undercard alone is worth the price of admission: Arona and Alistair Overeem square off in Arona's first bout of 2006 -- better late than never -- after his decision loss to Silva last New Year's Eve. Alistair Overeem makes it onto the finals card in a non-tournament bout after Nog knocked him out of the tournament at an earlier stage.
Both combatants should be eager to reassert their elite calibre, and I anticipate a good ground fight with Arona working in his usual element, stalking around the ring, chin high like some kind of proud big cat before the shot, and Overeem doing a good job of keeping the fight alive and kicking when it reaches the canvas.
Then we have Alexander Emelianenko and Sergei Kharitonov battling for alternate status -- probably the sleeper on the card that could turn out to be the night's most exciting fight.
Of course beyond that are the semi finals matches of the tournament. We have an epic battle between two of the very best MMA strikers of all time, Cro Cop and Silva, and we have an epic battle between two of the very best MMA grapplers of all time, Nog and Barnett. Tournaments are supposed to turn out this way, but rarely do. A battle leaving only the best the higher up the tournament ladder you climb.
Usually a spanner or two drop into the works, and by the time you get to the semi-final stage the Four Left are not always the Four Best. In this case, things turned out as they were supposed to: Fedor aside, the four finalists are almost certainly the top four heavyweights in the sport (Wanderlei, despite having fought most of his career as a middleweight, is a hair's breadth away from proving his talent is equally applicable as a heavyweight after his brutal dismantlement of Fujita in the previous round). These four men being brought together in tournament competition while they are all still on top of their game is a true dream scenario.
Some icing on the cake worth mentioning is the inclusion of Shogun and Cyborg on the card, albeit against a lesser class of opponent (Shogun is being fed a tomato can coming back from injury). All in all, I can't possibly see how this card could prove to be less than spectacular.
As for this betting man's picks, I have Arona over Overeem and Alexander over Kharitoniv, and Cro Cop and Barnett winning in their semi-finals matchups.
Just to get tricky, I can easily envision a bone breaking war between Cro Cop and Silva leaving neither fit to continue to the finals. This would leave Barnett and Alexander facing one another again in the finals by my reckoning -- which would indeed prove to be a strange scenario since Barnett has already knocked Alexander out of this tournament once. What is interesting is the matchups such a series of events would set-up: a brother-versus-brother showdown between the Emelianenkos, or a fight between Barnett and Fedor with Barnett having beaten Fedor's brother twice in the same tournament.
But in reality any of the four finalists could win on the night, and expert opinion is divided accordingly. For now, all that's left for me is to place my bets accordingly, sit back, and avoid all MMA sites until Monday late afternoon, by which time I should have been able to attain a copy of the event over here in the Pride PPV-less land of the UK.
Then I will fire up the projector and watch the future of the heavyweight division unfold before my eyes, seven foot wide by seven foot high. It surely doesn't get better than that.
