Cain Velasquez is in talks to compete in Real American Freestyle, according to his longtime AKA head coach Javier Mendez.
MiddleEasy reported Mendez’s comments this week. The details are thin. There’s no opponent, no date and no announced match. Mendez says Velasquez and RAF are discussing an appearance, and for now that’s the whole story.
It’s still a big name to attach to RAF. Velasquez is a former UFC heavyweight champion whose résumé includes wins over Brock Lesnar, Junior dos Santos and “Bigfoot” Silva. Bloody Elbow credits that run to his cardio and his gas tank, which is a polite way of saying he made very large men very tired.
Velasquez is still the measuring stick
The timing is funny. In the same news cycle, Velasquez’s name surfaced in a completely different conversation: the UFC heavyweight title fight.
Newly promoted champion Ciryl Gane (14-2 MMA, 11-2 UFC) defends against Josh Hokit (10-0 MMA, 4-0 UFC) in the UFC 334 main event on Nov. 14 at Madison Square Garden. Gane’s head coach, Fernand Lopez, told MMA Junkie that Hokit is the closest thing the division has seen to Velasquez in years.
“I think that besides Cain Velasquez, that’s a long time we didn’t have a kind of wrestler that can punch you, make you guess, go for wrestling,” Lopez said.
Lopez called Hokit a “huge challenge” for Gane. He also said Hokit set a heavyweight record with 177 significant strikes against Curtis Blaydes and finished Derrick Lewis in the second round. He expects Hokit to disguise his takedowns behind his striking instead of shooting right away.
“The good way to strike is pretend that you will be wrestling someone,” Lopez said.
That matters because, as Bloody Elbow pointed out, Gane’s UFC losses came from holes in his wrestling and grappling defense. Not everyone is sold on the booking, though. Alex Pereira has criticized the fight and claimed the promotion was pushing an agenda to convince fans it was the right one to make. Hokit has pushed back. He has also gone after Gane in one of his skits, which Lopez waved off as a guy selling the fight.
What we actually know about the Velasquez talks
Very little beyond the fact that they exist. Mendez didn’t put a timeline on it, and RAF hasn’t announced anything. Until a matchup and a date show up, this is a conversation.
My take: I’ll give Mendez credit for putting his name on it. A head coach saying it on the record beats an anonymous whisper from somebody’s cousin who works in event production. Still, “in talks” has buried more fights than bad weight cuts ever have, and I’d like to see a name and a date before I start planning travel. The part that sticks with me is that a coach preparing a heavyweight champion for Madison Square Garden reached for Cain Velasquez to describe the most dangerous wrestler in the division. Velasquez can wait on RAF. Hokit gets his shot at proving the comparison on Nov. 14.
