The Best and Worst from UFC Fight Night 107

#2 Best: Is Nelson living up to his potential?

After losing in a largely one-sided effort against Demian Maia, it felt like Gunnar Nelson was losing a lot of the lustre that he had as a top prospect.

His reputation had already taken a bit of a kicking when he lost to Rick Story – a fringe contender, no offence – but being dummied by Maia in the grappling realm, supposedly where Nelson was strongest, really didn’t look good, even if Maia’s grappling is basically unmatched in MMA.

A strong win over Albert Tumenov last year – when Tumenov was considered a top ten fighter – helped him to regain some of his lost mojo, but last night’s win over Alan Jouban was even better.

Nelson was expected to have an advantage over the model on the ground, and sure enough, he took the first round with aplomb, dominating Jouban from the top after he got a takedown. The second round, though, was more impressive.

Avoiding an aggressive rush from Jouban with some slick head movement, Nelson countered with a picture-perfect right hand that stunned ‘Brahma’ and practically knocked him down. Gunni’s shown striking power before, but the accuracy here was jaw-dropping. Most impressive was how Nelson followed up, though.

Often we see fighters jump onto a downed fighter with a submission attempt, but often it backfires too – see Tyron Woodley in the first Stephen Thompson fight for instance. Nelson, though, is a different animal on the ground, particularly when he has an opponent stunned.

In this instance, Jouban was tapping seconds later to a tight high-elbow guillotine.

With Welterweight losing Lorenz Larkin to Bellator, and a bit of a dearth of contenders at the top due to various issues, Nelson could easily find himself in title contention if he can keep performing like this.