Category — Tale of the tape

Whoever said “styles make fights” never saw Keith Jardine in the cage. Bouncing like an under-inflated football, hands held high and wide, back curved like a question mark, chin swaying in the breeze. It’s embarrassing to call what he does a style. He’s like a drunken hunchbacked orangutan.

Somehow, though, he makes it work. And that makes him one of the most dangerous strikers in the UFC light heavyweight division, someone Thiago Silva, his opponent at UFC 102, needs to be very wary of.

Just look at how Jardine picked apart Chuck Liddell two years ago, an overhand right dropping Liddell in the opening frame and chopping kicks to the legs and body for the remainder. But Jardine is a rollercoaster. He knocked out Forrest Griffin and was knocked out by Houston Alexander five months later. A split decision over Liddell before being dropped by Wanderlei Silva’s right hand. Another split decision over Brandon Vera before running into Quinton “Rampage” Jackson and losing on the scorecards.

Which Keith Jardine will we see on Saturday? That’s the question his posture seems to be asking.

As for Silva, he’s positively quantifiable by comparison. He’s a Chute Boxe product, possesses the stalking Chute Boxe style, like a younger, faster Wanderlei Silva, who stopped Jardine at UFC 84 with a massive right hand and then pounced on his crumpled body for the ground-and-pound finish. Silva is also a Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt, not that anyone expects the fight to go to the ground.

To beat Jardine, Silva needs to do what comes naturally – be aggressive and press the action, force Jardine into a gunfight, which Jardine is a sucker for. It’s a tactic that backfired when Silva faced champ Lyoto Machida, who served up Silva’s first pro loss with a first-round KO.

But Jardine is no Machida. Elusiveness is not in his vocabulary. Neither is patience. And Jardine is a notoriously slow starter (two of his four UFC losses were knockouts inside of 60 seconds), which means Silva has to end it early or he’s in trouble. Also in Jardine’s favour is the number of top-ranked fighters he’s faced. He’s battle tested. Silva has really only fought one big fight and he came up wanting.

While it could come down to whoever lands first, I’m going to go with Jardine on this. His unorthodox style is hard to get a bead on, and once he finds his rhythm he’s scary. And he can take a punch as well as anybody. Silva, not so much.

Floyd Mayweather Jr. continues to hype his return to boxing after a 16-month retirement (he faces Juan Manuel Marquez in a 144-pound catchweight bout on Sept. 19). Coming on the heels of UFC 100 and all the attention it’s been getting, it’s no surprise he throws a few jabs at mixed martial arts, starting at the 0:35 mark.

In a nutshell, Pretty Boy says it takes “true skills to be in the sport of boxing,” the implication being that MMA doesn’t require true skills. He says that MMA is for beer drinkers (what do boxing fans drink? Cristal?), he likens the fighters to animals in a cage, and he says that MMA was created so that white fighters could be competitive in a combat sport.

This isn’t Mayweather’s first jab at MMA. Prior to his May 2007 fight with Oscar De La Hoya, Mayweather stated that any quality boxer could easily become the UFC champion. UFC president Dana White offered to put him in the octagon with then-lightweight champ Sean Sherk. Mayweather politely declined and apologized.

And this is just more of the same, a chance for Mayweather to shoot his mouth off, grab a few headlines with some controversial comments, nothing more.

Every interview I see or read with Floyd Mayweather Jr., the more he starts to sound like his father. By that I mean he sounds like an angry homeless dude.

Mayweather, the former welterweight kingpin (39-0 with 25 knockouts), did a conference call a couple of days ago to promote his soon-to-be-overhyped return to boxing, a Sept. 19 bout with Juan Manuel Marquez (50-4 with one draw and 37 knockouts). Kevin Iole over at Yahoo! Sports said Mayweather was “rambling” and “frequently incomprehensible” as he discussed his comeback.

Iole says Mayweather complained about the way the media portrays him, that he’s been accused of ducking quality opponents. “They can write what they want to write,” Mayweather said. “I don’t read that negative stuff. ‘Floyd’s ducking this guy,’ or ‘Floyd can’t beat that guy.’ You all never get on there and talk about the real thing. Go talk about Manny Pacquiao being knocked out twice. Talk about stuff like that. Talk about Shane Mosley taking steroids. How can Shane Mosley be the official welterweight champ if (Carlos) Baldomir was the undisputed champ and I beat him?”

The bottom line, though, as Iole makes clear, is that Mayweather, who hasn’t fought since beating Ricky Hatton two years ago, needs to fight  Pacquiao to prove he’s still the best and to prove he’s the top attraction he claims to be. (Mayweather’s two biggest pay-per-view fights were with Oscar De La Hoya and Hatton, both of whom were a bigger reason for people to tune in.)

Canadian boxing great Arturo Gatti, 37, who died on Saturday in Brazil, was apparently strangled to death by his wife while he slept/was passed out in their hotel room. Reports indicate that the couple had a deeply troubled relationship. I’m not going to dwell on that, or his death. Instead, I’ll focus for a moment on the fighter.

A former world junior lightweight and junior welterweight titleholder, Gatti fought the likes of Oscar De La Hoya and Floyd Mayweather Jr. He cemented his reputation as the toughest of the tough with a trio of bouts against “Irish” Micky Ward in 2002-03, winning two of the three. The two went toe-to-toe each time and both delivered and received an ungodly amount of punishment. The clip above is from round 9 of their first fight. I know the Rocky theme music certainly helps but this is still damn rousing stuff.

Gatti last fought in 2007, losing by seventh-round stoppage to Alfonso Gomez. He finished with a record of 40-9, with 31 knockouts.