Affliction: Day of reckoning main event could be MMA classic

The sporting world provides countless examples of an “alternate” course of action working out better than the original plan. The New York Yankees were happy with Wally Pipp as their first baseman until he sat out with a headache one day, allowing his backup—Lou Gehrig—to become a legend. Kurt Warner didn’t get his shot to start for the St. Louis Rams until Trent Green suffered an injury and led the team to a Superbowl championship. Two players were chosen ahead of Michael Jordan in the 1984 NBA Draft and it’s doubtful that the Chicago Bulls ever regretted only having the #3 pick.

A similar phenomenon could be at work in the main event of the Affliction: Day of Reckoning MMA card scheduled for October 11 in Las Vegas. The original main even was to be a WAMMA heavyweight title defense for Fedor Emelianenko against Andrei Arlovski. That plan was scrapped due to Fedor’s nagging hand injury, forcing Affliction to change the main event to a match between Arlovski and “The Babyface Assassin” Josh Barnett. The winner of the match will become the #1 contender for the WAMMA belt (assuming that Randy Couture remains embroiled in his legal battle with the UFC, of course) and will meet Fedor on a future Affliction card, most likely in spring of 2009.

The winner of the Arlovski/Barnett matchup will be “battle tested” and have proven himself as an even more legitimate contender to the title. It gives Fedor a chance to heal his hand injury, and gives Affliction more time to promote the Russian fighting god’s next appearance. For Barnett, it gives him a chance to prove himself once again before an American audience and to possibly earn the shot against Emelianenko that eluded him during his career in PRIDE. While it may seem that Arlovski—who’s gone from having a title shot to being part of a “challenger eliminator—is getting the worst of the situation, there’s even a silver lining for him. A victory over Barnett would prove him to be a worthy challenger in the ring, as opposed to just being the “most marketable” opponent. Furthermore, dealing with the heavy hands and ground mastery of the “Baby Face Assassin” is likely as good of a preparation as any for fighting Fedor. Should he get past Barnett he’ll have a better shot at upsetting the WAMMA heavyweight champion that he would have if he’d not had the intermediary fight.

Barnett, a former UFC champion and reigning King of Pancrase, is one of the best submission wrestlers in the world. He’s also a very effective standup fighter with KO power as he demonstrated in his Affliction Banned rematch victory over Pedro Rizzo. Barnett is also an incredibly intelligent fighter—his gameplan in the Rizzo fight is an excellent case in point. It looked during the first round like he was struggling with Rizzo’s good standup defense and slick counterpunching; in reality he was sizing him up and looking for an opening. This paid huge dividends during the 2nd round, when he timed a Rizzo counter perfectly and landed a fight ending KO punch over top.

Arlovski is also something of a reverse mirror image of Barnett—while he’s shown a tendency in his recent fights to favor his ever improving standup skills it’s easy to forget that he’s a very effective groundfighter. He’s got an extensive background in Sambo and has been studying Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu throughout his MMA career.  More recently, he’s been training with Randy Couture who has improved his effectiveness in the clinch and in using “dirty boxing” techniques.

For a “Plan B” fight, Affliction would have been hard pressed to come up with a better matchup. This could be a “fight of the year” contender and has the potential to go down as one of the epic heavyweight battles in MMA history. The winner will definitely have earned the right to face Fedor for the title of best heavyweight in the world.  The biggest winner, however, could be the MMA fan base as Barnett/Arlovski shapes up to be a potential classic. Everyone’s heard the old line that “styles make fights”—and in this case the styles matchup perfectly.