UFC Fight Night 156: Shevchenko vs. Carmouche II - Predictions and Picks

#2 Vicente Luque vs. Mike Perry

Does Mike Perry have the punching power to stop Vicente Luque?

This Welterweight clash is flying under the radar somewhat, but in reality, it’s an amazing fight. Vicente Luque is on an insane run right now – winning 9 of his last 10 fights, with the only loss coming to Leon Edwards.

And more to the point, all of those nine fights have been finished in violent fashion. Simply put, he’s incredibly ruthless even for a professional MMA fighter – as we witnessed when he put away the hard-headed Bryan Barberena with just 6 seconds remaining in their fight in February.

Perry meanwhile hasn’t quite lived up to the hype he garnered when he debuted in the UFC in 2016 with two violent KO wins, but his last two wins – over Paul Felder and Alex Oliveira – have also given hope that he’s not quite the modern-day Phil Baroni – a largely one-dimensional if incredibly entertaining power puncher – that many fans feared he’d become by this stage.

Most notably, his recent win over Oliveira, in particular, was impressive. The Brazilian took the fight to Perry in the first round by forcing him onto the back foot, but in the second round ‘Platinum’ adjusted by using his wrestling to hurt Oliveira on the ground, and in the third it was Perry who pushed forward, imposing his will on ‘Cowboy’ with a more varied striking attack than we’d largely seen from him before.

No longer does Perry tend to just wing haymakers with every strike – he now seems more willing to pick at his opponent, which should bode well for him here compared to the more one-dimensional style he employed in the past.

Luque might have more of a reputation as a technician than Perry, but while that’s obviously true on the ground – he’s a phenomenal grappler and a genuine black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu – it isn’t really the case on the feet.

‘The Silent Assassin’ is a brawler at heart and he has been since his entertaining stint on TUF 21 that saw him put on an incredible shootout with Hayder Hassan.

How Luque usually tends to win – unless he’s faced with overmatched foes like his most recent victim, Derrick Krantz – is by being able to stay calm under fire and land the cleaner shots from the pocket than his opponent is able to. The issue for him in this fight is that while that worked against opponents like Barberena and Chad Laprise, it could get him into trouble against Perry.

Basically, if Luque takes the kind of shots from Perry that he took from Barberena, he’ll almost certainly get knocked out. So for me, this comes down to how good Luque’s fight IQ is. If it’s even decent, then he’ll look to use his striking to set up his grappling – largely attempting to copy the gameplan used by Max Griffin to beat Perry last year. He’ll need a lot of movement, strikes from the outside and defensive skill, and if he can do that and get Perry down, he can definitely win.

If he’s not that smart though, he’ll be drawn into a brawl in the pocket with Perry and while he’s a hard hitter and as I mentioned before, a clean striker during a brawl, he’s likely going to be outgunned by a man who’s never been stopped by strikes and who has unnatural power at 170lbs.

For me the smart pick feels like Luque – in his fight with the equally dangerous Niko Price he didn’t really play with fire, instead choosing to pick him apart with low kicks from the outside before hurting and submitting him – but if he makes one mistake this could be over. I’ll take Luque by submission, but to see Perry knock him out wouldn’t surprise me either.

The Pick: Luque via second-round submission