Preview: UFC Houston Prelims

Welterweights

Ramiz Brahimaj vs. Punahele Soriano

BETTING ODDS: Brahimaj (-130); Soriano (+110)

Brahimaj (13-5; 5-3 UFC) looks to win his fourth straight UFC bout in this clash of 170-pounders on surprising runs. The 33-year-old Bronx native came to the UFC as a decorated grappler but appeared to have a modest ceiling due as a smallish welterweight with striking that was raw at best. His early outings bore out that assumption, but over the past two years he has improved quite a bit. While he will never be a huge powerhouse, and his offensive wrestling remains merely pretty good, he is a much smoother, more confident boxer, and has discovered good hand speed and surprising power. Those tools, in turn, have left him comfortable and dangerous, rather than lost or desperate, when the takedowns don’t come easily. Having said that, the task in front of him on Saturday represents a step up from the last three fighters he has beaten.

Soriano (12-4; 6-4 UFC), like Brahimaj, is having a surprising resurgence with a three-fight win streak of his own. In the case of “Story Time,” the story is that he appeared to have settled in as the kind of solid mid-card middleweight that can have surprising longevity in the UFC—ask his fellow Hawaiian, Brad Tavares—when he decided, seemingly out of nowhere, to drop to 170 pounds. It was an odd move, firstly because Soriano was a burly, powerfully built 185-pounder, and secondly because none of his difficulties seemed to be particularly related to size. However, Soriano made a great job of things, retooling his physique for his new division rather than simply killing himself in the sauna, and the returns have been evident. Soriano, like his teammate Dan Ige, is a modern take on the classic “Just Scrap” Hawaiian brawler, with better defense, cardio and wrestling than most of his forebears. He has big power at welterweight, maybe even more than he did at middleweight, and he throws heavy leg kicks as well.

Brahimaj is the slight favorite here, and he could certainly pop Soriano on the feet with his ever-improving hands or haul the bigger man down and test his still-iffy submission defense. However, I lean the other way, as I’ve come around on the new welterweight Soriano. The pick is for Soriano to own the striking exchanges with his superior reach and power and remain upright often enough to pick up at least two out of three rounds for the righteous decision win.

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