The Sports Informant

Already labeled the “greatest Featherweight fight of all time,” Sunday’s upcoming championship battle between current 145-pound champion Mike Brown and former champion Urijah Faber should indeed be a barn burner. Whether or not the fight will live up to the hype is another question, but one both fighters are eager to answer inside the cage.

The label is an easy one to claim when it’s narrowed down to one weight class, especially one relatively new, one only slowly picking up steam. To say this could be the best fight ever in the World Extreme Cagefighting’s Featherweight class is like saying I was the best speller in my fourth grade class at Roosevelt Elementary. Sure, it was true, I kicked some serious butt in our spelling bee that year, and I have the certificate somewhere to prove it, but I wouldn’t consider myself the best speller in the world. Shoot, you might find a typo in this article (you better not).

Still, there’s some pressure from any “greatest” title, just ask the fifth grade me who lost the spelling bee that following year. I had a whole classroom looking for me to defend my title. I couldn’t.

These mixed martial artists will have a possibly sold-out Arco Arena to perform in front of on top of a nationwide audience tuning in for free on the Versus channel. If that’s not pressure to make the fight one of the greatest, I don’t know what is.

Yet despite all the advertisements promoting “WEC: Brown vs. Faber II” as such, neither fighter wanted to admit it’s having an effect on them.

“It’s not more pressure,” Brown said in a conference call last week with Faber that had several national MMA writers on the phone, including myself. “There’s pressure for me in every fight. It doesn’t matter how big or small the fight is. Every one is important.”

Someone seems to be handling it well. Maybe that’s why he’s the champ. Faber saw it more as another day in the life of a champion, even though he doesn’t have the belt anymore.

“I’ve had some form of belt since my third fight,” Faber said. “It’s always the same thing about hype. There’s gonna be two people in there with the same mentality and we’re going to fight. I would fight the same if I was in my kitchen as if I was out in front of all of these people.

“That’s important for viewership, but for me, I’m not that type of person that’s gonna let himself get beat up. I’m just not gonna let that happen.”

A good fight is a good fight regardless, and there is an entire nation of fans waiting to watch this one. While the UFC (whose owner Zuffa also owns the WEC) dominates the pay-per-view scene, and once a month has the whole world tuning in for an event, the WEC is still trying to get out of the UFC shadow and into the limelight. Every time Faber fights, that seems to happen. The fact he’s coming off of a loss and fighting the first guy to beat him in years makes it that much more enticing. Oh, and he’s fighting in front of his home town, too. That should rev things up a bit.

The fight will have to be better than the first to earn the proclamation. Most recall the shocking conclusion of the first meeting last November, where Brown caught Faber trying to throw a lunging elbow and planted a right hook into his chin. The first round knockout wasn’t Faber’s greatest moment, but it was a lesson every fighter needs to learn. I can guarantee something like that won’t happen again.

The truth is that Brown’s got the power to knock anyone out. He’s proven that. He’s big for his weight class and both intimidating and imposing. Yet, in the end, he’s still no Urijah Faber, and that’s what could make this fight so great.

On paper, Faber’s the better fighter. He’s more technical, faster, accurate and has a track record of almost nothing but success. If he can fight his fight, he’ll pick Brown apart like he did Jens Pulver in Arco Arena last June. With Brown’s power, though, that becomes a bigger “if” than usual.

All fight long Brown will be looking for that one-shot knockout, and that’s all he’ll need. While Faber will have to play cat and mouse for five rounds to get his belt back, all Brown needs is five seconds, anywhere in the 25 minutes he’ll get, to finish the fight in his favor.

It comes down to this. If Faber can get this fight going his way, it could turn out to be a really great fight to watch. We’ll see both land some good shots and battle back and forth for any kind of advantage. The technical maneuvers, both standing and grappling, will be a tactical display any fight fan would enjoy watching, especially if each of them gets knocked down once or twice and recovers.

But if the fight goes Brown’s way, and early at that, this won’t be the greatest fight we’ve seen at all. It’ll be a disappointing reminder of November, an embarrassing display for the WEC and a waste of money for the 18,000 fans who’ve waited a year to see a fight again live.

Let’s all hope for Faber’s sake, for the WEC’s sake, and for the fans’ sake, Brown doesn’t deliver.