Rinaldi has his work cut out for him. Gillespie has the pedigree to give anyone trouble. I want back and watched Gillespie's fights last night and had forgotten them as it turns out. To simply call him a grinder, I think is a bit of wishful thinking. He does some good things off the clinch and in other spots that show real promise. For example, off the break in his fight with Gonzales he tags him with a short elbow that wobbles his opponent. The presence of mind to throw it at that moment, kinda made the broadcast team and me re-watching it remember that he does enough of these (not absurd or unexpected things) but rather good, well-timed things that are more than just his wrestling pedigree would suggest to make him a real danger for anyone in the weight class.
Gillespie won't get tired or really slow down. He will drive for the takedown, shoot and reshoot, but also come forward punching et cetera. I'm actually pretty excited about this fight now that I'm thinking about it and because I rewatched two of Gillespie's fights last night.
Jacare relocating his training to a place full of guys with whom I have no real understanding or recognition of their background in MMA concerns me, particularly because he's coming off of a layoff and because Brunson has put together a solid win streak coming off of stints at Greg Jackson's and now it appears based on the Countdown special with some East Coast folks in Atlanta. If Jacare pre-the loss to Whitaker comes out, I think he takes Brunson down by putting takedowns behind his big overhand punch. If he falters for the takedown (Whitaker managed to do exceedingly well against the massively powerful and daunting Romero) as it did with Whitaker (think Whitaker was taken down but wisely got back to his feet avoiding much real damage if I recall correctly) I think it's a tough night for Jacare. The Whitaker fight showed me a real fear isn't the right word, but a real deflation that seemed to set in when he didn't keep the takedown on Whitaker. That being said, he immediately got shoulder surgery after and that would explain it had he further damaged it mid-fight et cetera.
But it's an alarming trend: when Jacare doens't get the top position via takedown he seeks, against the very best guys, (Romero and Whitaker) he loses. Now, is Brunson in that top tier of competition? It's honestly very hard to say. I really see this fight one completely one way or the other: Jacare by takedown and submission or Brunson picking apart an increasingly frustrated Jacare over 3 rounds to take a smartly fought decision.
Fili vs Bermudez: Bermudez faces off against another Team Alpha Male prospect, but not one that can out wrestle him the way Elkins did. Seeing Elkins finish Michael Johnson does more to tell me that Bermudez lost that fight but that I don't really know how much stock I lost in Bermudez and because Elkins is just stylistically so completely different a fight than his teammate was/is for Bermudez. Bermudez hits hard. Period. He also has strong, smothering, aggressive wrestling. Fili's 4 UFC losses to the likes of now Champ Holloway, Kattar, Yair Rodriguez, and Castro are telling in that he lost each of them a different way: 2 different submission, a KO, and a decision. Bernudez does several things well, and integrated well enough to tell me that I doubt Bermudez has more routes to victory than Fili.
Bermudez got guillotined by Ricardo Lamas (Lamas has a serious guillotine, got TKO'd by Jeremy Stephens, among the hardest strikers in the division, got decisioned by a clinch heavy attack by Elkins, and a KO by Chan Sung Jung). I don't think Fili stylistically is any of those fighters. I think Bernudez lands some big shots and finishes and/or punishes Fili for however long the fight lasts.
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