Kyte: Everyone would love a 10-second knockout or a quick submission, but that’s not often how these things go, especially not at the championship level. Instead, it’s usually the competitor that has crafted the better game plan and did the better job of executing things inside the Octagon that comes away with their hand raised and the gold around their waist.
So, how does either man get it done on Saturday night?
Madden: For Volk, I think he’s going to be decent shape. I don’t think he’s the type of guy that is ever going to let himself get too far away from where he needs to be. I think since February, they’ve been thinking about this fight — they didn’t know when it was going to happen, but I’m sure that right away, they got to work on the mistakes that he made in that first fight and started working to make the necessary adjustments.
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I think what we just talked about — Volk shifting forward, catching Islam, and to use a phrase Trevor Wittman uses all the time, “breaking the base,” which is getting Islam, who is the bigger fighter to give up some ground, compromise his stance. Volk did it well a couple times in the first fight where he backed Islam up and made him pay for that.
I’d like to see him commit to that blitz, break Islam’s base with it. I’d like to see him add in more low kicks because that’s another way, I think, to break the base, and we know if we can do some damage to that front leg early on, that’s going to impact Islam’s ability to wrestle later on; his ability to be explosive, and level change, his ability to be explosive when he throws his left hand or left kick.
