Contributor: Ben Kohn
This Saturday night, on August 3rd 2013, the main event of UFC 163 will feature long time Featherweight kingpin and resident scary mofo Jose Aldo face off against the crazy SOB who felt Leonard Garcia’s limitless power and lived to tell the tale, the Korean Zombie himself, Chan Sung Jung. Coming off his last title defense against the always exciting Frankie Edgar, Aldo won a close but clear unanimous decision over the former Lightweight champion and now seems to be above and beyond the rest of the featherweights. KZ, who is coming off a long injury layoff, has shown that you can never underestimate him and is looking to topple the seemingly unbeatable 145-pound champion. Who will reign supreme? Will the champion show once again why he is the best in the world or will Jung be able to pull off the massive upset? Make sure to buy UFC 163 to find out.
We all know the deal when it comes to Jose Aldo by now. Check his kicks or you will limp for a long time after the fight. Aldo is an absolute killer on the feet. Even the vaunted killer Che Mills defers to Aldo in his elite killerness. In all seriousness though, Aldo is virtually the most complete fighter on the feet in the UFC today. He has vicious kicks and a boxing game that looked absolutely fantastic against Edgar in his last fight. He has uses his footwork to angle away from incoming attacks and is very aware of where he is in the cage at all times. He can be extremely patient or aggressively attack his opponents with hellacious
knees. He can also bust out some pretty flashy strikes that are extremely effective and painful should they land, just ask Cub Swanson about that. The thing that I love about Aldo is that he showed improvements in the least effective part of his game in his fight with Edgar, his boxing. Before the Edgar fight, Aldo never really exhibited very good boxing fundamentals, such as jab. Against Edgar, his jab was crisp and straight, he stepped into it and brought his head away from his body (bringing his head offline). The reason why it’s so impressive that he improved his boxing is because of who he was fighting and it shows he is also a very smart fighter as well. Edgar is known to be very good at catching kicks and countering those kicks with takedowns. This skill would’ve been a very good counter to Aldo’s favorite distance weapon. So Aldo decided to improve another distance weapon in the jab and used it perfectly throughout the fight. This improvement has just made Aldo a more dangerous fighter, which is just ridiculous since he is already insanely dangerous. His opponent though is dangerous as well, but for different reasons than Jose.
Chan Sung Jung, or as he is known the Korean Zombie, is a balls-to-the-wall nonstop attack fighter. His incredibly fan friendly style is what helped him to gain the title shot after Anthony Pettis pulled out due to an injury. KZ is not the most technically sound fighter on the feet, with a tendency to brawl at times, but there is a distinct method to his madness. KZ has an incredibly strong chin and can hurt you standing. He pressures his opponents and engages them in ways to draw them away from their strengths and advantages and force them to brawl with him. He has some decent kicking abilities to add to his technical brawling style. Against Poirer, he drew him into a brawl by constantly pressuring him. The only real success Poirer was having was when he was popping KZ with long range strikes like the front kick and a stiff jab. KZ knew he wasn’t going to win on the fringe and managed to turn the fight into a back and forth brawl which is what he likes. That’s not to say that KZ is not technical, as he exhibited some nice head movement and very fluid combinations against Poirer. But KZ knows he is at his best when he is fighting at close quarters, preferably against the cage where he likes to fling knees to his opponent’s mid-section and head. The problem with KZ is that he doesn’t really have a very effective distance weapon. KZ shines in the phone-booth range but from the outside, he is not very effective. This is where he will be at a massive disadvantage against Aldo, who has multiple weapons from that range and all of them are painful. The edge in the standup definitively goes to Jose Aldo.
The clinch and takedown game is an enigma. Aldo uses his wrestling in a completely defensive mindset in order to impose his ridiculously good striking. KZ on the other hand is incredibly dynamic on the ground and would most probably love to get it there. KZ is not a blast double or shoot type of wrestler. KZ does his best takedown work from the body lock. Against Poirer, he hit some beautiful leg trips/sweeps throughout the fight. KZ uses them to great effect, and can get straight to side control (see Poirer fight) to work his top game. Despite Aldo not being a takedown guy and KZ willingly trying to bring the fight to the ground, I really just don’t see how it gets there. Aldo is bigger and stronger, and his takedown defense is probably among the best in MMA today. Frankie Edgar and Chad Mendes were struggling just to grab a hold of Aldo and KZ is nowhere near the caliber of wrestlers they are. Edge goes to Jose Aldo again.
Grappling is where KZ has his best shot of beating Aldo. Despite Aldo being a black belt in BJJ, he has yet to really show off a black belt level submission or grappling game. In fact the one time we saw him on his back for an extended period of time, against Mark Hominick, he got the crap beaten out of him from his guard. Granted he was reportedly sick and had a horrible weight cut but that is the only sample we have to go on. KZ on the other hand has some of the slickest grappling in his division 
and is better off his back than he is on top. His guard game is just so tricky, chaining submissions together with ease in order to completely confuse and force his opponent to make mistakes, getting them caught in fight ending submissions (Poirier, Garcia). The beauty of KZ’s transitions from triangles to armbars and back again against Poirer gave me the biggest BJJ-gasm I’ve had in a while. In other words, KZ is awesome on the ground and extremely dangerous off his back in particular. The fact that his ground and pound is quite creative as well (faking to open up Poirer’s guard and then throwing a hard left to his head was awesome) just gives him another weapon to use against Aldo should he end up on the ground with him. The edge in grappling goes to Chan Sung Jung.
Cardio is an issue that has popped up here and there in Aldo’s fights as he slowed down against Hominick and Edgar in particular. The Hominick fight I can give him a pass for but in the Edgar fight, rounds 4 and 5 were very telling of how KZ can win this fight. Edgar’s constant pressure and toughness eventually wore down on Aldo and his pace noticeably slowed by the 4th round. If KZ can last and continually pressure Aldo the way Edgar was able to, he can take advantage late in the fight. The problem is that KZ’s style tires him out as well and by the 3rd round of his fight with Poirer, he was clearly very tired and was dropping his hands a lot. Despite getting his second wind and finishing the fight in the 4th round with a D’arce choke, this doesn’t really bode well for him as that was his only fight that went past 3 rounds and he has been out of action for 15 months. I don’t know who to give an edge to in the cardio department so we will just call it even but it will be interesting to see what happens should this go into the championship rounds.
Bottom line is that Aldo is better on the feet, no ifs, ands, or buts. He is damn-near impossible to takedown so that eliminates where KZ could have his only real advantage. He doesn’t have a distance weapon to counter Aldo’s leg kicks and jab and I don’t think he will be able to corner Aldo. Should he somehow get it to the ground, Aldo has shown the abilities to counter and stand back up almost immediately after hitting the ground. Aldo really seems to outclass KZ in this fight and I think it will show early. I think Aldo gets the finish by 2nd round TKO.
-Ben can be reached at [email protected] or @agentbenten.
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