With his quick and decisive victory over Mark Munoz last Saturday, Gegard Mousasi showed that the rest of the division needs to watch out for him.
Mousasi is a fighter out of the Netherlands that is 35-4 in his mixed martial arts career and was a former Strikeforce light-heavyweight champion and a Dream multi-divisional champion. Even though he is relatively new to the UFC, he is known around the world as a serious top-level fighter. He holds victories over UFC contenders Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza, Mark Hunt and Hector Lombard. Even though he is a striking-based fighter, he has 12 submission victories along with his 18 knockout victories and has only 5 victories by decision. His record truly shows that he is always looking for the finish. He showed that against Munoz by brutalizing him with punches and finishing with a rear-naked choke.
His UFC Career started in the light-heavyweight with a decision victory over Ilir Latifi. Even though is wasn’t the most impressive victory, he took that fight with some serious problems with his knee that he later had surgery on after that fight. Mousasi then came off of a long 10 month layoff and surgery to fight former UFC light-heavyweight champion Lyoto Machida at middleweight. He ended up losing a decision in that fight and had trouble chasing around the karate-based Machida, which is known to avoid back and forth exchanges in most of his fights and just moved in and out constantly. Many feel like Mousasi did not lose a fight, instead he failed to figure out the puzzle of Machida and lost a “game of points”.
An interesting characteristic about Mousasi is his face expression during and even after the fight. “There is no expression.” He is very similar to the legendary mixed martial-artist Fedor Emelianenko in the lack of expression he shows. In a fight with Renato “Babalu” Sobral, he brutally ground and pounded Sobrol unconscious and walked away as if he just washed his hands in the bathroom. Mousasi is all business and he tries to evolve his skills and travels the world so that he can become a complete mixed martial-artist.
He expressed a desire to fight this September in Japan. Some contenders in the middleweight division he expressed interest in are Luke Rockhold and Tim Kennedy. Jacare Souza is also a top contender without a fight that may want to avenge his loss to Mousasi. Whoever it ends up being, they better watch out. Mousasi is a proven fighter that is finally healthy again and he wants to work his way to the top.
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