This Saturday at UFC 138 in Birmingham, England, Brazilian bantamweight Renan Barao will face hometown favorite Brad Pickett. The fight is slated as the co-main event along with headliner Chris Leben vs. Mark Munoz, and there's a reason for that. And it's not because Pickett is the Britishest-looking fighter in the history of the notion of combat.
These two guys are both young guns and potential stars at 135 pounds. If it wasn't for Michael McDonald, you'd hear a lot more phenom talk around each of these names.
Pickett (21-4) is a transplant from the WEC and will finally make his Octagon debut after substantial injury delays. Primarily a boxer by background, "One Punch" Pickett is never averse to throwing down in the center of the ring, as evidenced by thrilling recent wars with Ivan Menjivar (a win) and Scott Jorgensen (his first loss in three years).
But unlike some of his British contemporaries, Pickett seems to have memorized well the modern landscape of mixed martial arts. He knows you need more than "one punch" to make it, so he went out and learned himself some jiujitsu. And that's no window dressing, either; Pickett has nine submission wins on his résumé, including a Peruvian necktie in his WEC debut that earned him Submission of the Night honors.
At just 24 years old, Barao (26-1-1) already has plenty of victories under his belt. In fact, he hasn't lost since his first professional fight back in 2005. To be fair, though, nearly all his competition came in B-level promotions in his native Brazil; his WEC debut in 2010 marked the first time he'd ever fought outside his home nation. He has now done so three times—and with his record unblemished during that time, it appears that's not such a huge deal for him.
But maybe traveling to England (fighting on a UFC main card and fighting before a hostile crowd) will be. The guy's just 24; you never know. As always, we shall see.
Inside the cage, Barao has a style somewhat similar to training partner and current UFC featherweight champion Jose Aldo. His stand-up game tends to be of the wild kick-and-knee variety, though his attack there is not nearly as dangerous as Aldo's. Barao brings a far richer skill set to the ground phase, though as with his striking, he tends to swing for the fences instead of playing chess. Against a seasoned veteran in Pickett, that could be problematic.
But Barao should still have an advantage there. You don't get more than 40 percent of your wins by submission for no reason, and he showed in his last bout, a decision win over Cole Escovedo, that he's not afraid to go for a dip in the deep water.
So what does Barao need to do to win? He needs to trust his skills. He needs to let the fight come to him. He needs to look for the line-drive single as well as the home run. And in his first UFC main-card fight and first fight outside of the Americas (and only fourth outside of Brazil), Barao needs to keep his composure. He needs to drown out the fan noise.
If he doesn't do these things, if he lets his adrenaline get away from him, he will lose to Brad Pickett. But if he doesn't leave his head, he has the skills to head back to Rio a winner.
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Source: http://bleacherreport.com/articles/925059-ufc-138-fight-card-renan-barao-vs-brad-pickett-preview
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