Guida vs Huerta 2? Please…

Talking about tonight’s (this afternoon’s?) UFC 99 from Germany with a couple of buddies at the gym, each of us throwing darts at a board with our picks for who would win what bouts and when/how, when the Cheick Kongo/Cain Velasquez fight came up. I could barely muster a shrug. Don’t really care. They’re both beasts, it’ll be fun to watch the big boys bang, but really, I’m not that excited to watch the heavyweights, any heavyweights.

You ask my why and I’ll point to one fight that says it all: Clay Guida vs. Roger Huerta at the TUF 6 finale. Two lightweights scrapping it out full-tilt, balls-out, pedal-to-the-metal for just shy of three complete rounds, punches and kicks thrown, landed, absorbed, submissions applied, escaped, reversed. Easily one of the most exciting UFC fights ever. Watched it again a couple nights ago. It’s still exciting, still involving, to the point that I forgot who won the bout till very near the end. Made me wonder why Dana White hasn’t scheduled a rematch between these two. So, in short, lightweight fighters are generally more dynamic and have more tools in their toolbox; they may not deliver the stunning knockout blow, but then again, heavyweights usually don’t offer up much of a ground game beyond ground-n-pound.

By the way, I’m a huge Clay Guida fan and there’s a pretty decent feature on him in the June issue of Fight! (the one with Diego Sanchez on the cover trying not to drool on himself). Guida’s called the Carpenter, partly for his workmanlike approach to fighting (in sporto terms, he brings his lunch pail to the office everyday), partly because he’s a union-dues-paying construction worker (Guida’s non-stop style, like a Tasmanian devil, also makes me think of a carpentry-themed song, something about having a hammer and hammering in the morning and evening and all over the land).

But I was surprised to learn the Illinois native also spent time working as a fisherman in the Bering Sea. And that his first fight was on a whim – he was at an event in which his older brother was fighting when the P.A. announcer said that a fighter had dropped out and they needed a replacement. With some high school wrestling and little else under his belt, Guida figured what the hell, hopped in the ring and quickly got himself choked out. Tenacious, down-to-earth, and that crazy hair… what’s not to love? Hollywood could make a movie about him, maybe get “Marky” Mark Wahlberg to play him and cast the Geico gekko as Huerta.

UPDATE: Seems Huerta’s next fight is completely up in the air. The MMA pretty boy (and the first MMA fighter to appear on the cover of Sports Illustrated) hasn’t fought since he lost to Keny Florian at UFC 87. According to Inside MMA, he’s now in the UFC doghouse after complaining about not being paid enough for personal appearances. Compounding the issue, El Matador, who has one fight remaining on his current contract, turned down a new contract offer in January so he could concentrate on his acting and modelling career. Then he refused a fight against Joe “Daddy” Stevenson on the UFC 95 card in February. Now, he’s just waiting by the phone for Dana White to call. I can imagine he’s feeling like the girl in He’s Just Not That into You, picking up the phone receiver to see if it’s working, wondering if the call might’ve come while he as listening for a dial tone, while eating tubs of Haagen Dazs. So maybe Huerta could play himself in that movie about the Guida fight.