AMADI: Comparing and contrasting Frank Mir and Junior dos Santos' UFC wins over Roy Nelson

By: Jason Amadi, MMATorch Columnist

This article is in response to one of our readers requesting a compare and contrast of the respective wins of Junior dos Santos and Frank Mir over Roy Nelson

The difference in approach between Frank Mir and Junior dos Santos is so dramatic that the only real thing their bouts with Roy Nelson have in common is that they beat up Nelson so long and so viciously that they fatigued and their victories became less impressive as a result.

There is no getting around the fact that fighting is fatiguing. Executing takedowns, defending takedowns, battling in the clinch, and taking clean, flush strikes is simply taxing on the human body. It is natural to fatigue, and while bigger fighters definitely hit harder, they will also fatigue faster.

Roy Nelson can take a beating about as well as anyone in MMA. He took shots from dos Santos and Mir that would floor most heavyweights, and doling out that type of punishment is going to tire out most men who walk around over 240 pounds.

If you look at the Frank Mir fight, Mir attacked Nelson with the full arsenal of mixed martial arts. In the first round Nelson tried to close the distance and get Mir up against the fence, but from there it was Mir that was doing damage on the inside. Every time Nelson would get in close, Mir would punish him to the face and body with knees. When Nelson pressed him up against the fence later in the first round, Mir hit a beautiful throw, achieved full mount, took Nelson's back and secured the round with those dominant positions.

In the second and third rounds Mir continued to close the distance with punches, kick Nelson to the body, and secure takedowns against the fence. That sort of high pace fatigued Mir, but it also helped him to secure all three rounds despite never being truly close to a finish in any of them.

Junior dos Santos absolutely lathered Roy Nelson when they met at UFC 117 last August. "Cigano" used uppercuts to discourage Nelson from shooting on him, and brutalized him in the first round with combinations that sent Nelson across the Octagon at one point. The real problem with the approach of dos Santos in that fight was that he could have finished the bout in the first round.

At one point dos Santos had an opportunity to take Nelson's back, achieve dominant position and possibly finish the fight that way, but he opted to simply throw more punches and continue to box with Nelson. Despite his dominance on the feet, dos Santos' affinity for boxing could get him in trouble down the line. Roy Nelson is a big puncher, as are most heavyweights, and because he couldn't get him out of there in the first, Nelson was still landing big shots on him in the third.

While Frank Mir was never really close to stopping Roy Nelson, his diversified approach kept Nelson out of the fight by the third round, whereas Nelson was still competitive with Junior dos Santos even after dos Santos secured what should have been a 10-8 first round.

As we've seen more recently with Junior dos Santos vs. Shane Carwin, and even in the continuation of the Strikeforce Heavyweight World Grand Prix, at the elite level there is a very small window to actually finish the fight; once it's gone, it's gone. The way that Junior dos Santos is able to rip through lesser fighters like so many used Kleenex but then can have trouble dispatching Shane Carwin is indicative of that fact. Once divisions separate the wheat from the chaff, it becomes less about punching power and the ability to submit, and more about strategy and technique.

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