Was anyone else really impressed with Brandon Vera at tonight's WEC? He won the 4-man heavyweight tournament with little trouble. In his first fight, he brutally KO'd Minotauro's student Mussi with knees to the head followed by some huge punches while Mussi was on the ground. He then went on to beat Miletich fighter Mike Whitehead by breaking his nose with a knee.
This guy Vera looks like the total package. Great knees, great wrestling and looked to have a very good jiu-jitsu game when he was on the bottom of the much heavier Whitehead. The only thing is Vera will need to add some more lbs to compete with the real big UFC caliber heavyweights. Anyone else really impressed with his performance tonight at WEC? BTW, the WEC show on hdnet was awesome. I wish they would have shown the entire card, but the hour they showed was really entertaining. WEC rocks.
Brandon is very good. Solid Purple belt in jiu jitsu under lloyd Irvin,
sparring partner of Dean Lister, kickboxing skills where he has the
ability to fight at lower level K-1 and an awesome greco guy to boot.
Happy to hear he did well.
How did the rest of the card look? I'm specifically interested in Van
Damme vs Shonie Carter.
I dont know, they only showed the 4-man heavyweight tournament and two other fights. They showed Jody Poff VS Houssain Oushani. Poff won with a guillotine choke in the first round. Pretty sloppy fight there. Then they showed Allan Weickert vs Jeremy Freitag. Weickert won by KO from punches on the ground. mmaweekly's doing play by play on their sound off forum but they haven't posted any results to the fights that weren't shown on HDnet yet.
Friday night I photographed Brandon Vera In the studio after the weigh-in. He impressed me as someone with good manners and a good head on his shoulders. Before and after his fights last night he showed respect and concern for his opponets. He will be a hard man to beat with his speed and skills.
Vera's fight with Whitehead was okay. I'm going off memory so some minor details might be off.
First round: Whitehead came in and immediately went for the takedown. Vera fought it off at first but was taken down right against the fence. The heavier Whitehead tried to work punches on the ground but was totally stalled out by Vera. Vera was very active on the bottom, attempting and successfully reversing Whitehead a few times. He got Whitehead off him but Whitehead pounced back on him. The rest of the round was spent with Whitehead on top, but unable to do anything at all. The ref stood the fight up with about 20 seconds left in the first round, but there wasn't enough time for anything to happen there.
Second round: Vera came out and worked the stand-up. I think he landed some nice thai leg kicks and then landed a knee to Whitehead's face (i'm pretty sure this is what broke the nose) which stunned Whitehead. Vera immediately followed with a high kick to Whitehead's head. I dont think the kick landed flush but it might have grazed him. Whitehead shot for the takedown, Vera sprawled but was taken down halfway with a single leg takedown. Whitehead kept working for the takedown and the camera showed tons of blood flowing from Whitehead's face. Vera began throwing punches to Whitehead's face when the ref realized Whitehead was bleeding badly. He stopped the action and Whitehead's nose was obviously broken. Cut on the bridge of the nose with blood everywhere. I think Whitehead told the ref he couldn't continue and the fight was stopped.
Brandon really needs a call up to the UFC. His striking is awsome (picture Yves Edwars as a heavyweight) very technical Muay Thai. However, I would hope he can get down to 205lb's. He is why to small for the top heavyweight fighters (picture him next to a Tim Sylvia) and his ground game did not impress me much as others have said. He was not able to get up at all vs. Whitehead, and he'll have to improve on that.