Fighting Fridays – UFC 119 and DREAM 16 Preview

Two major MMA cards take place this weekend, here is a preview of what will happen:

Best fight of the weekend: Hideo Tokoro vs Joachim Hansen

These two always keep coming forward and while the fight isn't really relevant in the rankings, nothing else this weekend is going to make a huge impact either. If nothing else, this will be entertaining from start to finish and worth DVR'ing at least for those who have HDNet.

Worst fight of the weekend: Hiroyuki Takaya vs Chase Beebe

While DREAM has booked the best fight of the weekend, they also booked the worst. Beebe is among the most boring fighters in the sport and Takaya isn't going to bring out the best in him from what little I have seen of him.

Safest Pick: Gegard Mousasi over Tatsuya Mizuno

Mousasi was sent back to DREAM by Strikeforce to rebuild his confidence against the weak light heavyweight division in DREAM. After this fight, mission accomplished and Strikeforce can book Mousasi against Rafael Cavalcante in a possible fireworks laden showdown.

Possible Upset: Mirko 'CroCop' Filipovic over Frank Mir

CroCop, while not his fearsome self of the past has shown he is still a capable fighter in recent fights while Mir has been up and down and all over the place. For CroCop, even as he has struggled, it has been very difficult to take him down and keep him there. Mir may not be able to it and it that's the case, I see CroCop outpointing Mir standing to take a close decision win.

Picks of all the fights:

UFC 119 – Saturday night on Pay Per View

Main Card

CroCop over Mir

Antonio Rogerio Nogueira over Ryan Bader

Chris Lytle over Matt Serra

Evan Dunham over Sean Sherk

Melvin Guillard over Jeremy Stephens

Spike TV Prelims – 6PM PT on Spike TV

Joe Doerksen over C.B. Dollaway

Matt Mitrione over Joey Beltran

Prelims

Thiago Tavares over Pat Audinwood

Steve Lopez over Waylon Lowe

T.J. Grant over Julio Paulino

Mark Hunt over Sean McCorkle

DREAM 16 – Friday night, 11PM PT on HDNet

Ikuhisa Minowa over Satoshi Ishii

Mousasi over Mizuno

Shinya Aoki over Marcus Aurellio

Jason Miller over Kazushi Sakuraba (how many more beatings can he take)

Hansen over Tokoro

Mitsuhiro Ishida over Akiyo Nishiura

Michihiro Omigawa over Cole Escovedo

Beebe over Takaya

Takeshi Inoue over Kazuyuki Miyata

Yusuke Kawaguchi over James Thompson