I appreciate the welcome and glad to make my official debut in “The Face-Off” series, but the only who will find himself in a world of pain come Saturday is Mark Munoz.
My colleague is quick to point out Munoz’s motivation, determination and wrestling as clear-cut advantages, and I am certainly not going to take any of that away from Munoz. Now a clear-cut contender, he has displayed over and over again that those three elements can win him fights, having lost only to Yushin Okami in his last four contests.
But Leben needs only one thing to win him this fight, and that lies in his hands.
Yes, it has become a bit cliché to hear about how Leben can knock anyone out with one punch. We hear it endlessly before every single one of his fights.
Still, in order to utilize that strength, one has to put himself in position to earn the knockout. Munoz is a solid game planner, as we’ve seen in his contests against Demian Maia and Aaron Riley, but Leben never seems to fail in his efforts to turn a contest into a straight-up brawl at one point or another. And when this fight undoubtedly does go into brawl mode, with his granite chin, Leben won’t have to worry about getting knocked out, only about delivering the type of punishment he has become famous for.
With a scheduled 25 minutes set for Saturday evening, Leben will have more than enough opportunities to find the button and earn another “Knockout of the Night” bonus; not that he’ll need all five rounds to find the victory, but you should already know that.
