Skip to main content

UFC 267 Preview: Glover Teixeira vs Jan Blachowicz

 We finally made it to the conclusion of our preview series for UFC 267 tomorrow morning/afternoon. This all culminates with the main event for the light heavyweight championship featuring incumbent champion Jan Blachowicz and challenger Glover Teixeira. This may be the strangest title fight I can remember. Well, maybe not stranger than Bisping vs Henderson 2, but you get the point. If you had told anyone a few years ago that we would be getting this fight for the title, they would have told you that you were crazy. Jan had been a solid member of the division, spending a lot of time in the middle of the rankings, but never really being thought of as a legitimate title contender. Meanwhile, Glover was in the middle of a stretch where he was alternating wins and losses as he quickly approached his 40th birthday. So how did we get here?

Let's start with Jan Blachowicz. This may sound weird for someone who is a UFC champion, but it has honestly gone way under the radar that Jan has won his last 5 in a row and 9 of his last 10, with the only loss coming to Thiago Santos in February of 2019. Jan's latest run has had some impressive results over a really nice looking list of opponents. His last fight was a decision win over the previously undefeated Israel Adesanya who was moving up in an attempt to become double champ. Prior to that he defeated Dominick Reyes to capture the title that was vacated by Jon Jones. In the lead up to his title fight, he had knockout wins over Corey Anderson and Luke Rockhold and a decision win over Jacare Souza. Despite this, Jan is one of the most underrated fighters and champions in the organization. He doesn't say a whole lot and when he's not fighting, he's not in the news cycle very much. He doesn't even sit cage side at other events for them to show him on TV between fights or anything like that. This ultimately contributes to his lack of love and hype, but I think fans are starting to come around to him because he's so genuine. He seems like the kind of guy that you would want to be friends with and would just be a regular guy if he wasn't a fighter. 

A lot of those things I just said about Jan Blachowicz can also be said about Glover Teixeira. Glover is also a very likable guy who has been on an great run in the latter years of his career. He has 5 consecutive wins including finishes over Thiago Santos and Anthony Smith in his last two appearances. As of the writing of this, it is Glover's 42nd birthday, which is just incredible to think about considering the level he is still competing at. While I am excited to see this fight, part of me is sad that it has to happen, because one of these guys will have to lose. With that said, we can get into the specifics of style a little bit.

This fight will see Jan Blachowicz have a slight reach advantage, which I think is important for him. Even though both guys are listed at the same height, I think Blachowicz will also have a little bit of a size advantage, which could come into play if we see this fight on the ground. Speaking of the ground, I think that is the easiest path to victory for Glover. We've seen him ground and pound Anthony Smith in brutal fashion to get that finish and he was able to submit Thiago Santos, Ion Cutelaba, and Karl Roberson during his latest run. I'm not saying Glover can't win if the fight stays on the feet, but I think that would be a lot tougher of a task for him. Blachowicz is a much better striker than I think a lot of people were giving him credit for, at least before the Adesanya fight. We all know about the legendary Polish power at this point, but Jan is a patient striker and more diverse than a lot of power punchers. Jan will use his kicks to both the legs and to the body, which was very effective against Reyes in particular. He also uses his counters very well, which Luke Rockhold found out the hard way and I think that will be a big part of this fight as it will be on Glover to close the distance with his shorter reach. Another aspect of this is that we've seen Glover's chin be a little more vulnerable lately than it had been in the past. We've seen Glover be hurt and dropped before he was able to come back and win the fight, typically on the ground. In the fight that got him here against Santos, he was dropped on two separate occasions. With someone as powerful as Jan, if he gets dropped, there may not be any opportunity to recover because the lights may be shut off for real. I don't really like simplifying fights down to a few points, but I think this one fits the bill. If Jan can get it standing and as long as he can stay off the bottom, I think he can get it to go his way. Glover's best chance is if he can get on top of Jan and land some ground and pound to potentially open up a submission opportunity.

My official picks for the full card will come out tomorrow morning before the card starts so be on the lookout for that. What do you guys think? Does Jan retain his title? Does Glover find the upset? How does this fight end and in what round? Did I miss anything important? Let me know in the comments and thanks for reading.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

MMA Thanksgiving: Fight Addition

I really don't have enough to say about last weekend's main event to make an entire post about it or really the card as a whole, so I'm not going to waste your guys time. Since it is Thanksgiving this week in the United States, I figured I would do a series of posts of things we are thankful for in MMA. MMA is a sport where we complain a lot and there's a lot of things that need altered, fixed, or changed in some way, but we all still love it for what it is. In this series I'll go over the fight I'm thankful for, male and female fighter I'm thankful for, and I'll figure out some other things for later in the week. I'm going to keep this focused mostly on this year, but I'm not necessarily limiting myself to just this calendar year because I don't want to make it a yearly awards or anything like that because I'll do that in late December or early January. This addition of MMA Thanksgiving will focus on the fight that I'm most thankful ...

UFC 269 Fallout: Sugar Sean O'Malley Racks Up Another Knockout Win

 The main card opener of Saturday's UFC 269 event showcased the polarizing Sean O'Malley against Raulian Paiva. O'Malley is a hot topic in the MMA community as almost everyone has a really strong opinion on him one way or the other. He has a really strong fan base that will ride with him through thick and thin, while supporting everything he does. He has an equally large section of MMA fans that can stand him and will stop at nothing to dismiss and diminish everything he does. I like to think I can be down the middle on most guys and formulate my own opinions of situations as they happen. I can criticize people I generally like and can give kudos to people I don't really like that much. With that said, on the spectrum, I probably tend to the side of people who actually like Sean O'Malley, so keep that in mind. When I say I like him, I mostly mean that I like watching him fight. I don't care too much for his out of the cage personality, not because I have any pro...

What Should We Make of Raul Rosas Jr?

 I've been really struggling with content the last few weeks. Between having a lot going on in my personal and professional life and a general lack of motivation, my posting schedule has gotten very inconsistent. Pair that up with a some strange booking recently and I feel like topics have been lacking outside of my main formulaic posts, but this one actually peaked my interest. Last week on Dana White's Contender Series, we saw 17 year old prospect Raul Rosas Jr earn a UFC contract. He was the talking point of the early part of the MMA week and rightfully so in my opinion. There were a lot of opinions flying around about what his future may hold and exactly what caliber of fighter that he is, so I wanted to throw in my own two cents. As for the performance that we saw against Mando Gutierrez last Tuesday, I thought Rosas looked very impressive. I don't want to make everything about his age because now that he's in the UFC, "for his age" doesn't really mat...