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News Rodolfo Vieira vs Andre Petroski is set for Feb. 15
- Thread starter BoxerMaurits
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Did Malkoun get injured? I thought he was supposed to fight Vieira.
Anyways, I think this is a decent match up for Vieira. He's probably the cleaner striker, and I doubt petroski will want to grapple too much with vieira. Not only that, but petroski isn't really a cardio machine capable of exposing vieira's cardio issues.
@Safton What are your thoughts on this one?
Anyways, I think this is a decent match up for Vieira. He's probably the cleaner striker, and I doubt petroski will want to grapple too much with vieira. Not only that, but petroski isn't really a cardio machine capable of exposing vieira's cardio issues.
@Safton What are your thoughts on this one?
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He was, but Petroski is replacing him
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Tough fight to pick -- they kinda have the same strengths and weaknesses. I feel that Andre has the superior wrestling though so I guess I'll side with him.
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Andre hits harder so maybe that swings things his favor.
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viera looked like a killer in his last fight, very strong and he immediately took petrosyan's back and subbed him, he is improving every fight and I think he will make Petroski look silly
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It very well might. Andre is so hard to get a bead on. One day he looks like a chinny wreck who can't more than a round without gassing out or getting KO'd. Other fights he looks like a million bucks who can wrestle with the best of them, has a solid top game, and power in his hands. Plus I thought Vieira was going to walk right through Brundage (who's like a dollar store version of Petroski), but Rodolfo got dropped early and was in all sorts of trouble until Cody remembered that he's the literal dumbest fighter on the roster and jumped guillotine because of course he did.
Petroski's striking is pretty barebones. I struggle to remember anyone he's cleanly outstruck for any extended duration. In the first round he's dangerous on the feet simply on the basis of his explosiveness and takedown threat, which lets him swing with much better strikers with some modicum of success. After that he tends to fall off a cliff. Rodolfo, meanwhile, has legitimately surprised me with the strides he's made in his striking. Dude sneakily developed one of the best jabs of all the unranked Middleweights (and probably better than a lot ranked dudes, in all honesty) more or less overnight. That thing is a piston. He also has solid calf kicks. People forget that Chris Curtis largely nullified his wrestling, yet Rodolfo was still able to make that fight surprisingly competitive across 15 minutes simply by forcing Chris to respect his jab and low kicks. I'm tempted to say that in any protracted striking exchange (especially outside of the opening frame), Rodolfo probably edges Andre out on volume... but there will always be that sizeable chance of Petroski cracking Vieira like Brundage did.
Both dudes historically slow down the longer a fight goes and both have shown the ability to find a second wind and score late finishes... so I struggle to give either one an edge in cardio.
The grappling is difficult to assess. I don't know if Rodolfo can reliably take Petroski down. He has 80% TDD. GM3 and Turman got him down one time each, but it was only after extending the fight and in both cases they only got about 1.5 minutes of control time. Malkoun couldn't take him down at all on multiple attempts and like you I seriously rate Malkoun's offensive wrestling. I think Rodolfo could get maybe one or two opportunistic TDs if he manages his gas tank better than Andre and sets them up well with his striking or maybe counters a sloppy shot of Petroski... but I don't see him winning wrestling exchanges outright. On the other hand, the question of whether Petroski will wrestle Vieira? I honestly think he might. The only person to try it was Dustin Stoltzfus and he failed on multiple attempts, so there's that. However, Petroski has shown a willingness to try and take down and outgrapple other grapplers, even those with ostensibly good submission games like GM3 and Turman. We don't really know if Vieira's bottom game is that good in an MMA context, especially if a grinding wrestler with crushing top pressure like Andre gets on top of him... I also suspect he's lost confidence in his chin and just feel safer smushing dudes these days. But I dunno, maybe he'll respect Rodolfo's credentials and try to sprawl-n-brawl.
I'm leaning Vieira, but I won't deny that there's some bias involved. I think his more educated volume-based striking game is hard to ignore and will age better across the rounds as both men get tired versus Petroski's haymakers. I trust his chin more, too. I also think that Rodolfo on bottom is not the end of the world and might pull something off or at least be able to make Andre uncomfortable, whereas if Andre slips up and lets Vieira take his back in a scramble it's bad news. Not hard to see it going the other way, though.
