UFC 144: Edgar vs Henderson and Rampage vs Bader and more

This is an amazing card.  There are seven fights on the main card and instead of three hours there will be four hours of fights.  It will be aired on Feruary 25th in the U.S. due to the time difference.

Main fight is between Frankie Edgar and Benson Henderson.  Henderson is on a three fight winning streak since coming from the WEC defeating Mark Bocek, Jim Miller and Clay Guida.  Edgar beat B. J. Penn twice, had one draw with Gray Maynard and beat him on the next fight, which was their third fight.

Edgar is a fast striker with a lot of heart as shown in the Maynard fights and has incredible conditioning.  Henderson on the other hand is a very well rounded fighter with great striking and a power wrestler.  I think Henderson will win this bout because although Edgar is a good boxer, his defensive boxing is not that great.  He was victim to power shots from Maynard on all the fights and wobbled.  If it was not for his super human ability to recover so quickly from those fight ending punches, Maynard would be the champ now.

On the co-main event fight, as long as Rampage avoids the powerful right hand of Bader, Rampage should win the fight with Bader, but a fight is a fight.  Rampage should be able to avoid the takedowns from Bader considering how well he did against Jon Jones in avoiding them.

If Akiyama can keep it on the feet and avoid the takedowns of Jake Shields, he should also win it.  However, if the fight goes to the ground, the advantage goes to Shields, who is a great grappler, as he showed by defeating Dan Henderson with his takedowns and ground control.

I am also excited to see a fight on the preliminary card on facebook:  Tiequan Zhang aka Mongolian Wolf vs Issei Tamura.  Zhang was originally supposed to fight Leonard Garcia, but he was injured. I am predicting Zhang wins by some form of guillotine choke, which seems to be his favorite weapon so far.  Looks like Kongo vs Hunt should be a great kick boxing battle.  I cant wait to see all these great fights!

UFC 144 fight card:

Main Card:

Frankie Edgar (14-1) vs. Ben Henderson (15-2) [LW Title]

Quinton "Rampage" Jackson (32-9) vs. Ryan Bader (13-2)

Mark Hunt (7-7) vs. Cheick Kongo (17-6-2)

Yoshihiro Akiyama (13-4, 2 NC) vs. Jake Shields (26-6-1)

Anthony Pettis (14-2) vs. Joe Lauzon (21-6)

Yushin Okami (26-6) vs. Tim Boetsch (14-4)

Hatsu Hioki (25-4-2) vs. Bart Palaszewski (36-14)

More SBN coverage of UFC 144

Preliminary Card:

Takeya Mizugaki (15-6-2) vs. Chris Cariaso (12-3)

Norifumi Yamamoto (18-5, 1 NC) vs. Vaughan Lee (11-7-1)

Riki Fukuda (17-5) vs. Steve Cantwell (7-5)

Takanori Gomi (32-8, 1 NC) vs. Eiji Mitsuoka (18-7-2)

Tiequan Zhang (15-2) vs. Issei Tamura (6-2)

Image source: http://www.mmamania.com/2011/12/14/2634957/ufc-144-poster-for-edgar-vs-henderson-on-feb-26-in-japan