UFC on FX Preview – Jim Miller vs Melvin Guillard

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Tomorrow night, Jim Miller will face off with Melvin Guillard in a fight that could be an exciting affair. If this bout were to take place before their setbacks against Henderson and Lauzon, this fight would have been a great title eliminator. Now one fighter will be back on the path towards title contention while the other will suffer the fate of having two back to back losses.

In his last winning streak, Guillard seemed to be a new and improved fighter. His balance and takedown defense seemed fantastic. His speed and power led to amazingly brutal offense that totally shut down his opponents. But at UFC 136, Joe Lauzon was able to catch an overly confident Guillard with a short hook that rocked Guillard. It went to the ground and Lauzon was able to exploit Guillard’s Achilles’s heel – his submission defense. Guillard now really has to bounce back from such a decisive loss if he has hopes of getting anywhere near a title shot again.

Jim Miller was widely considered the best guy to fight the lightweight champion for a significant portion of 2011. Great mustache with great well rounded skills seemed to be the perfect recipe to demolish everyone not named Edgar or Maynard in his quest towards title contention. But Benson Henderson wanted to prove that he was better than what certain UFC fighters were saying. Henderson made his debut at UFC 129 in front of a record crowd, and demolished Mark Bocek, a guy who was incredibly competitive with Jim Miller. Few made the argument that if Henderson could do that to Bocek, maybe he could do something to Miller. But most thought Miller would beat the former WEC kingpin and it turned out that they were all wrong. It was a fight of the year candidate, yet it was still a clear win for Benson Henderson. But Miller is still one of the toughest and one of the best lightweights on the planet.

Guillard does have the skillset to beat any lightweight if he is able to land one of his nasty shots right on the button. But it’s hard not to favor someone like Miller, a tough and durable fighter that has excellent grappling that could capitalize on Guillard’s weaknesses. I favor Miller, but this should be a sweet match-up.

The rest of the card includes:

Preliminary card (Fuel TV and Fox Deportes)

Bantamweight bout: Joseph Sandoval vs. Nick Denis
Featherwight bout: Daniel Pineda vs. Pat Schilling
Lightweight bout: Fabrício Camões vs. Tommy Hayden
Welterweight bout: Charlie Brenneman vs. Daniel Roberts
Lightweight bout: Kamal Shalorus vs. Khabib Nurmagomedov
Middleweight bout: Jorge Rivera vs. Eric Schafer

Main card (FX and Fox Deportes)

Heavyweight bout: Pat Barry vs. Christian Morecraft
Bantamweight bout: Mike Easton vs. Jared Papazian
Welterweight bout: Duane Ludwig vs. Josh Neer
Lightweight bout: Melvin Guillard vs. Jim Miller