This Saturday Night: Urijah Faber vs Scott Jorgensen

This Saturday night, live on FX, “The California Kid” will attempt to rack a second victory in a roll when he steps into the octagon against Scott Jorgensen. This is a fight that would have been a great WEC main event and it’s still a pretty good fight between two top-ten bantamweights.

Since the first loss to Mike Thomas Brown, Faber has made a career of beating top ten fighters— except the ones that hold championship gold. Faber’s first fight in the UFC was against former WEC bantamweight champion Eddie Wineland. It was far more competitive than we anticipated. We later realized that Wineland had really improved since his WEC days. He lost to Dominick Cruz in a great title bout, but bounced back by destroying Brian Bowles (uppercuts, elbows and guillotines!). But lost another big title fight to Renan Barao, this one being really one-sided. In his last fight, he tapped Ivan Menjivar out to remind us that he has given us some of the best submissions in Zuffa history.

Jorgensen has had mixed results since entering the UFC. He did finished both Ken Stone and John Albert in exciting fights, but those two are hardly top fighters. He also won a competitive fight against Jeff Curran, a fighter that I really like but he was past his prime at the time. The two losses in the UFC were very decisive ones to Renan Barao and Eddie Wineland (who brutally KO’d him in the 2nd frame). On one hand those fighters are top five bantamweights right now, (they are fighting against one another for the interim title) so there is no shame in losing to those two. But on the other hand, he wasn’t very competitive with either guy and I think it’s shown that the division has moved on without him.

The fight between these two will inform us of where Faber is at this point. If Faber loses, that’s a huge blow to his career. But I think Faber’s role will continue, his role being the exciting fighter that creates memorable moments against top ten opposition. I see Jorgensen joining the list of fighters that include Menjivar, Bowles, Mizugaki, and Assuncao. It’s going to be a fun scrap.