James Meinhardt/Sherdog.com
"Mayhem" is in for a long night.
Thanks to
Cung Le’s Hollywood B-movie dreams, Shields and Miller now get the chance to settle up for the vacant middleweight title. The match itself essentially comes down to a case of two grapplers, with one, Shields, being markedly better than the other. Miller, however, has proven slick and even managed to keep his limbs and airways intact after 15 minutes on the mat with
Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza.
By the same token, Miller was thoroughly dominated in that bout, and Shields presents the same problems as “Jacare.” A superior wrestler who remains vastly underappreciated as an elite jiu-jitsu player, Shields has suddenly developed a mean streak after spending most of his career as an anthropomorphized blanket. That combination of stultifying top control and newfound killer instinct will make life painfully difficult for Miller, whose appeal to the state commission for quality of entrance to be included in the judging criteria was denied.
If you want to point to a weakness in Shields’ game, historically, it has been his conditioning. To be fair, Shields has not been the type of fighter who starts gasping for air halfway through the introductions, but he does fade late in fights if his opponent can force him to work from the opening bell.
Miller has proven himself as active as any fighter in MMA, and he has become borderline impossible to stop thanks to his own masochistic love of punishment. Fighting someone who can smile through a dislocated elbow seems like an unsettling experience, and if Shields cannot keep up with Miller, he will discover he is not the only grappler out there who likes twisting limbs and smashing faces.
This looks like a bad matchup for Miller. Worse yet, his army of Mayhem Monkeys will not be allowed to pull a Bobby Heenan and save him when the going gets rough. Nasty will be the adjective that best describes this fight, as Shields muscles down Miller early and batters him every step of the way. Sooner or later, the referee’s compassion switch will flip, and Miller’s grill will live to bling again.
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