UFC Fight Night: Vieira vs. Tate

Garcia has had it rough in his UFC tenure. I had a lot of expectations and while I wasn’t shocked he lost to Nasrat, the Gruetzmacher fight was legitimately embarrassing. Chris’s fighting style is as ugly as it can look, but because he had a good gameplan, he weared Garcia down with body hooks until he had nothing left for him. Probably the best win on his resume (unless you wanna count an old as dirt Lauzon)

Despite this though, I think Garcia is a terrible matchup against Levy. For one, Levy is green as ****. Unless your name starts with ‘Khamzat’ and ends with ‘Nurmagomedov’ or some other ridiculous Russian dialect that looks like I face ****** my keyboard, regardless of your undefeated record, you’re simply going to lose at some point or another. Most importantly, I feel a lot of green undefeated tend to not be put on the receiving end of an ass beating, so when the fight doesn’t go their way, they almost never rebound in later rounds (The Cosce brothers are the best example of this) and I haven’t seen Natan struggle a single bit. He tends to rely on controlling his opponents, grinding them down in the clinch or through sniping the body. This leads into the second issue: his style. Natan is not going to be able to control Garcia right out the gate. Garcia is a surprisingly decent wrestler and a violent dirty boxer, so clinching will not be a walk in the park. Natan has to earn his respect like Nasrat did with his hand power. Problem is, Natan has very little hand power. Maybe I could see a head kick landing but that’s not enough for me to have faith he can tame Garcia. I think Natan will be massively overwhelmed at a much more conditioned and violent force than he’s ever dealt with in the past and he’ll eat **** as a result. 

Garcia via DEC

* Edited at 11.15.2021, 4:47 PM ET *

Garcia has gone five rounds before back at Combate. His stamina is solid, the only reason he came up short in both his UFC bout is because he fought Nasrat on extremely short notice, and Chris had the smart gameplan of exploiting his high guard and hitting his body. He ain’t no world destroyer but he’s solid enough to beat Natan. 

Words are made for eating.