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#3 Greg Hardy vs. Ben Sosoli
This will be Hardy’s fourth UFC fight this year, and while the former NFL player has clearly been working to improve his skills at American Top Team, I’m still not really sold on him as a fighter and I’m not sure why the UFC are content to continue this experiment given his controversial past and the fact that the fans clearly don’t like him.
He struggled badly against journeyman Allen Crowder in his Octagon debut back in January and while he’s picked up two wins since then, both were questionable; Dmitry Smoliakov simply folded under the first hint of pressure while I felt his fight with Juan Adams was stopped too early as Adams was working for a takedown when the referee called a TKO in favor of Hardy.
Of course, Hardy is a tremendous athlete; a huge man at the 265lbs Heavyweight limit, he’s deceptively fast for his size and hits extremely hard too. His defensive wrestling looked appalling in the Crowder fight, but judging by the Adams fight he has been working on it, although I can’t imagine him having prime Mirko Cro Cop takedown defense yet.
Crowder also exposed a couple of other weaknesses, namely questionable cardio, as well as a lack of defense in terms of striking too. Will Australia’s Sosoli be the man to test that? In all honesty, probably not. He’s also a big Heavyweight at 265lbs, but to say he’s less than chiseled would be an understatement.
More worryingly for him, from the footage I’ve seen he’s a highly sloppy brawler who eats a lot of punches to land his own, and while he throws with power, it doesn’t look like he’s anywhere near as fast or hard-hitting as Hardy. Could he out grapple the former NFL man? Probably not; judging by his appearance on TUF 28 his wrestling is negligible, too.
Hardy will come unstuck at some point, once the UFC matches him with a higher level fighter, but no offense to Sosoli, I don’t buy him as that guy right now. This should be another squash match in favor of the former NFL man and I doubt the fans will enjoy it.
The Pick: Hardy via first-round KO
