I still have no idea how Brandon Vera managed to fight at heavyweight. This whole cutting weight and bulking up stuff just seems like magic to me. A few hundred years ago guys like Mike Dolce would have been burned at the stake for the way they manipulate body weight. I understand water loading, but that leads to horrible complications later on, as Anthony Johnson’s kidneys can attest. Whatever fight nutritionists and dieticians are doing, just like any sufficiently advanced technology, is indistinguishable from magic. Whether Vera constantly cuts a lot of weight, or he bulked up to fight at heavyweight I do not know. All I know is that 205lbs is a much better weight class for him, from what I’ve seen.
I was about to say that the problem with fighting at a more natural weight is that light heavyweight is a very dangerous division but I deleted that because I realised it was not only a cliché but also a straight up ridiculous comment to make. Aside from the four man flyweight division, I can’t think of a division that isn’t totally rammed with dangerous fighters. That’s kind of the whole point of the UFC. My case in point was going to be that the number of former champions at light heavyweight lining up for another shot at gold means getting to the title requires you to go through at least one former titleholder which is exactly what Vera is faced with after stepping up to replace Thiago Silva.
The analogy is pretty much dead so I’ll just straight up say that Shogun Rua will be fighting Brandon Vera, who was training to face James Te Huna at UFC on Fuel TV 4 on July 11. Shogun Vera will be a five-round headline bout on August 4th’s UFC on Fox 4 card. I might be alone here, but I think Thiago Silva’s injuries have given us a pretty exciting match-up. Anyone want to predict a submission victory? [source]
