Contributor: Ben Kohn
On Wednesday night, in the main event of the evening, two Middleweights will battle to stake their claim as a top ten fighter in the UFC. Tim Kennedy, the former two time Strikeforce Middleweight title challenger, will look for his second win since joining the promotion and to establish himself firmly above the mid-tier fighters of the division with a win over Natal. Natal will be looking to raise his win streak to four and announce to the rest of the division that he has what it takes to hang with the better fighters in the division.
Kennedy has clearly established himself as a very good fighter but he struggles to crack the top ten of the division consistently and needs to get himself a top win. While Natal will not be that win, it is a chance for Kennedy to demonstrate that he is far above the mid-tier fighters of the division and Natal personifies that role perfectly. Despite having impressive performances, Natal does not have any victories over top fighters and has struggled to distinguish himself from the middle pack of fighters. Kennedy has already demonstrated on multiple occasions in fights with Luke Rockhold and Jacare Souza that he has the ability to hang with the best but he needs to show he can beat them too.
Natal’s UFC tenure has been up and down but overall is relatively impressive with a record of 5-2-1 since joining the promotion. His current three fight win streak has got him a fight with the much higher ranked Kennedy and will be his first big step up in competition. Despite looking impressive, showing off some really improved striking and an excellent ground game, he has never been able to put it all together to gain any real momentum until now. Should he manage to win against Kennedy as the underdog, it will be a huge feather in his cap and he will have firmly established himself as a fighter on the verge of being in the top ten.
Kennedy’s fighting style can be summed up as a jack-of-all-trades yet master of none. He possesses a wrestling base with a strong submission grappling game to bolster it. He also has a fundamentally sound kickboxing game as well that is quite serviceable. In describing his actual application of these skills though, the best word would be grinder. Kennedy is a grinding, grueling, tiring fighter to have to face. He can finish you by submission but he will not jump on them with reckless abandon. He can hurt you on the feet and ground with strikes but will methodically wear you down rather than go balls-to-the-wall. He 
embraces the grind of fighting more than almost any other fighter I can think of and that’s what makes him so difficult to fight. He has only been stopped once by a doctor stoppage in his very first fight and is extremely tough to hurt. He has been on the ground with Jacare and Roger Gracie and survived against both. Kennedy is really tough and can handle himself more than adequately in all phases of combat. His opponent though is a submission grappler with striking that has vastly improved. The question is if it has improved enough to deal with the grinding style of Kennedy.
Natal’s submission grappling is really good. While not elite, it has given him wins in many fights and in his last fight against Tor Troeng, he demonstrated the ability to fight from on top and sweep from the bottom. This ability to reverse positions on the bottom will really come in handy as Kennedy is extremely hard to take down and is adept and controlling fighters when he is on top. Natal will need to continue to work those sweeps and keep Kennedy from ever getting comfortable when he is on bottom. Natal’s striking looked very good in his last fight as he looks more fluid in every fight he has. His hands looked awesome as he hurt Troeng multiple times with the right hand, his leg kicks were used very effectively, and his constant stance switching was really effective at confusing Troeng and getting proper angles on him. Striking is something Natal has really worked to improve and he has which makes him an underdog that has some real bite to his bark. This is a fight that at first clearly favors Kennedy but Natal can surprise everyone if Kennedy doesn’t take this fight seriously.
Kennedy does not have flashy striking in any sense of the term. He is really bare bones, basic strikes that he uses effectively. He has good leg kicks, and will enter into range with left and right straights and hooks. That pretty much sums up his entire striking game. Kennedy uses his serviceable striking against better grapplers and will use his striking to close the distance against better strikers. The problem is that he can struggle when dealing with rangier guys on the feet. Against Luke Rockhold, a very good kickboxer, that’s understandable but against Roger Gracie, someone he should have outclassed on the feet, he still struggled to get inside of the rangy Gracie’s long jab and straight punches. While Natal is only an inch taller, at six feet to Kennedy’s five foot eleven, he does have long arms with a 76 inch reach. Natal’s long arms could pose a serious problem to Kennedy as he attempts to get inside and Natal is a pretty good range striker which makes this fight dangerous on the feet for Kennedy.
Natal has improved greatly on the feet as mentioned before. His performance against Troeng was really impressive as he hurt him twice, one of those times dropping Tor on his ass, with hard right hands both times. Both times he caught Tor just as he began to enter into range to throw his own strikes. The timing of those right hands was perfect and Natal set up his massive right in the second by faking a jab. Natal has also displayed power in is head kicks and can drop you hard with them. His leg kicks are also something he is really active with and overall, his striking looks really good recently. The problem with Natal is that despite all these good qualities, he is not very good at blending his striking together very well. When he is throwing kicks, he is not throwing punches and vice versa. He also has trouble blending his striking into his grappling and will either be in striking mode or grappling mode. This can be a big issue against Kennedy who is very good at blending his striking and wrestling together. Despite this, I am actually going to give the edge to Natal. Despite his lower level wins, he has shown himself to be much more dangerous on the feet, something Kennedy does not display. Edge in Striking goes to Natal.
The clinch and grappling is going to be interesting for me personally. Kennedy definitely has the wrestling edge but Natal’s submission grappling and tricky clinch submission attempts and takedowns are no joke. Natal will drop back for submissions, specifically guillotines, in the clinch if he feels he has a good grip because of his confidence in his ability to sweep his opponents should he get stuck on bottom. Kennedy for his part is a top game grappler with an emphasis on control of his opponent. His submission game is actually very good with most of his wins coming by way of submission. However, he is not very varied in his submission game with all of his submission wins coming by way of chokes, all from wrestling style positions 
(RNC, north-south, and guillotines). His ground and pound can be really painful and he has finished opponents with it but for the most part, Kennedy will look to control you on the ground, taking few risks, and wearing his opponent out from the top. Natal is exactly the opposite, diving for submissions, sweeping from the bottom, and looking to pass the guard constantly with minimal use of ground and pound. When hurting his opponent though, Natal will wildly attempt to strike his opponent on the ground which usually allows his opponent to recover as seen in his last fight with Troeng. The thing is, as good as Natal is on the ground, Kennedy has shown time and time again that he is not going to be submitted. Kennedy survived having his back taken by Roger Gracie for fucks sake! Natal is not going to submit him unless it’s a complete fluke or he rocks the hell out of him. Kennedy is a tough and durable submission grappler whose strong wrestling base will allow him to control Natal on the ground. That’s all there is to say really. Edge in grappling goes to Kennedy.
This fight is one that I am actually more intrigued by the more I watch tape on these guys. Kennedy is really good at nullifying his opponent’s game and making the fight into a grinding match while Natal has shown the ability to have some really dynamic fights and finishes. This is going to come down to whether Natal can avoid brain farts like he has before and staying focused and measured in his approach rather than going wild and rushing to try and finish whenever he sees an opportunity. Kennedy needs to do whatever he can to make sure Natal is unable to get distance, either for striking or on the ground, in order to avoid his powerful strikes and excellent sweep game. The final deciding factor here is that Natal has never fought in a five round fight before while Kennedy has and could play a huge factor in this fight. Personally, I think we got a live dog in Natal here but Kennedy’s experience and performances against top competition is too much for me to ignore. I think this fight is his to lose but Natal should not be counted out.
Final Prediction: Tim Kennedy by Unanimous Decision
-Ben can be reached at [email protected] or @agentbenten.
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