I am having a hard time convincing myself that Chad Mendes' second go against José Aldo is worth getting excited about.

It's daft that I should be having such trouble in amping myself up; I've made Mendes' case to friends a dozen times. Mendes is a strong, technical wrestler with punching power and speed to match, and a solid gas tank. I have often contended that getting Mendes out of there early was the best thing that ever happened to Aldo. Yet I'm struggling to practice the excitement that I preach to others.

But my advice to anyone who wants to get into writing about combat sports has always been that the first rule of fight journalism is to never discount anyone. No matter what your gut says, you must look at the fighters objectively and only say what you see. So let's take a realistic look at Chad Mendes' chances.

January 14th 2012

There was all kinds of hype following Mendes when he stepped in to challenge Aldo the first time. Undefeated at 11-0, Mendes had bested Cub Swanson and Rani Yahya, and crushed Michihiro Omigawa's career turn-around. He was thought to be Urijah Faber 2.0, and when he got in with Aldo that was exactly the problem.

Brilliant wrestling and a cracking right hand might carry you through an entire division, but if you don't have a back up plan, you end up skipping around the outside of the cage, looking for an opening that isn't there and getting picked apart with low kicks.

Mendes threw some good low kicks against Aldo, but the fight hinged on how ineffectual Mendes' takedown attempts were against Aldo. What Mendes has done well through his MMA career is duck in underneath opponents as they step in to throw strikes at him. Hell, just look at this ragdolling of the wrestling savvy Nick Lentz in his last fight. Mendes was sick as a dog, breathing hard already and still had the timing and ability to run through Lentz like it was nothing.

Mendes was timing his takedowns underneath Aldo's punches seemingly perfectly and still couldn't get Aldo down. This all comes back to what we touched on last week: Aldo is not a kickboxer with a good sprawl, he is an anti-wrestler. His stand up bouts have been the least impressive in his career—when Aldo is at his best is when he is chopping up wrestlers. Every time Aldo stepped in against Mendes he was ready for the counter right hand and shot.



Aldo jabs, keeps his left shoulder high to take the right hand counter, and is immediately ready to fight off the takedown attempt.

Because Aldo wants to get his opponent shooting. Here he attempts that long, low uppercut we saw him knockout Manny Gamburyan with. Because Mendes doesn't shoot as Aldo feints the jab, the uppercut misses, but Aldo still easily fights off the takedown because he stepped in expecting, nay, encouraging it. This is not a man who is in “striking mode” when he steps in.



Those elbows went unnoticed by most, but a couple of those will really ruin your day and make you rush to finish your takedown.

By the time Mendes got a back body lock on Aldo, he was desperate to secure a takedown. With one second left in the round, Aldo separated Mendes' wrists, turned and cracked the wrestler with a knee as he shot. Why Mendes would bother shooting so long after the ten second hammer is an issue, but it was obvious that he was desparate. Five fights and three years later, Mendes gets another go at it... but what's changed?

So What's New?

The main issue with Mendes' path back to the belt is that he didn't face anyone who was anything like Aldo. Now that's a hard critique—how many guys are out there who can sprawl on him? He ragdolled Clay Guida and Nick Lentz. But he's been out striking guys who are known for having utterly horrible striking.

When a fighter is earning their way back to the title shot you want to see them tested against a similar type of fighter to the one they struggled with. This isn't just me being a picky fan, it's important for a fighter's development.

Junior Dos Santos rebounding with a knockout win over Mark Hunt in a kickboxing match in 4oz gloves was no indication of an improved chance against Cain Velasquez, in fact it was a camp where he barely needed to work on his wrestling at all. Hell, he could have been training wrestling twice a day, but actually being in the cage against the wrestlers is a different matter. Similarly, Nick Diaz not fighting a strong wrestler for six years did not give any indication that he could beat Georges St. Pierre.

Mendes' trek back to the title shot has been more akin to driving a steam roller through a field of wheat. The problem is the opposition he's faced. He had two obvious tune ups against Cody McKenzie and Yaotzin Meza (Meza was a last minute replacement for Hacran Dias who had one fight in the UFC at the time). Then he battered Darren Elkins, Clay Guida and Nick Lentz on the feet. Great fighters but all grapplers who couldn't threaten Mendes on the feet at all.

Mendes continues to show that beautiful right hand over the top of his opponents' jabs—called a cross counter, knocking out both Diaz and Elkins with it. He's added some occasional body punches, as he used to drop Cody McKenzie. He's even added a left hook to his arsenal.



Cross counter!

Problem is that when he does attack in combination, it often devolves into wild charges. The kind that Aldo side stepped or pivoted off from routinely against guys like the Korean Zombie.

Killing the King

As I said at the start, we can't ever discount anyone. Injuries, errors in distancing or timing, appalling judges, banana peels left on the Octagon canvas—anything can happen in a fight. But let's talk a little about the ways to make Aldo's life a little harder.

As always when we talk Killing the King (and this is only an afterthought, I haven't had time to prepare the usual 2000 word scouting report), it's not about when you can catch the champ out, it's about how you can make it harder for them to do what they like to do. Fighting the champion's B game is considerably less daunting than dealing with his A game.

Firstly, too many guys go in to fight Aldo and seem to only try to check the kicks after the first eight or nine have got them limping already. Aldo is a conservative fighter, everyone has picked up on it by now. He fights on the counter and he low kicks when his opponent is reluctant to attack. There's no reason a fighter couldn't stand back and check a few just to put Aldo off kicking so powerfully and confidently.

Let's not forget that a glancing connection on Chan Sung Jung's knee broke Aldo's foot—and Jung wasn't even checking. Aldo kicks hard, and sometimes that's a little reckless. Just ask Anderson Silva, Ray Sefo, or Tyrone Spong. Kicking hard into a shin check sucks for both people, it's not a magic turn-around on the attacker, but it beats the hell out of having Aldo bounce his shin bone off of the squishy cushioning of your thigh.

Aldo loves to feed the single, where Mendes loves to run through guys with his double. Each time Mendes dived in on Aldo's hips, he ended up taking the single instead of being able to run straight through Aldo as he did to Lentz and so many others when they ran at him with combinations.



Lentz ran his hips right onto Mendes when he chased after him.



Against Aldo, each shot turned into a fight on the single, rather than driving straight through as Mendes loves to do.

With the exception of his bout with Mike Brown, where he was working a wicked switch knee which we haven't seen since, Aldo fights in a lower stance when he's fighting a guy who he knows is going to shoot. This seems to be one of the reasons that Mendes had so much success with low kicks against Aldo in their short bout. It's harder to pick your leg up in time to check if you're heavy and low on them. When Ricardo Lamas made it clear that he wasn't going to shoot, just run around and throw the occasional kick, Aldo's stance came up and looked more like when he was fighting Mark Hominick or the Korean Zombie.

What is clear is that Mendes isn't going to drop down and have Aldo run his center of gravity onto the takedown. What he might be able to do though is work Aldo's legs over effectively in the first round just enough to make Aldo aware of the need to check.

Mendes' bout with Lentz is often pointed to as a bad example of Mendes because of its ugly give-and-take nature, but in truth that might be the best strategy against Aldo. T.J. Dillashaw is the best fighter out of Team Alpha Male precisely because he's a wrestler who goes to work with his striking until he can wrestle. There's none of that chucking a right hand, circling, then attempting a takedown from way out in the open.

We talked about wild face first charges like those he showed against Elkins and Lentz, and how Aldo normally mops up against this kind of stuff, but honestly it might be better to see Mendes come out for a fist fight and come up on the short end of trading kickboxing combinations. Shooting under Aldo's leads obviously wasn't working the first time, why not turn the bout into a brawl?

Even if Mendes comes up on the short end of it, flustering Aldo and turning it into a scrap is just another way of bringing Aldo out of his deep stance and his stifling his constant mental preparedness for a shot at all times. A round of sloppy swinging and missing might lead to a second round where Mendes can secure a surprise takedown. José Aldo's gas tank, because of his enormous weight cut, is always in question—all Mendes has to do is survive long enough to make a fight of it.

Check out these related stories:

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The Serial Striking of Rory MacDonald

Chad Mendes and a Clean Sweep for the USA