Junior Dos Santos vs Mark Hunt | UFC 160
As I've been lamenting over the state of the heavyweight division in MMA, let's travel back to a time when it was better.
By May 2013, Mark Hunt had done a 180 on his MMA career. The former K-1 World Grand Prix champion had started his MMA career not taking it seriously and just showing up for the check. Well Pride FC gets bought by the UFC and all of a sudden, the UFC is looking to save on cost. Hunt gets armbarred by Sean McCorkle and officially falls to 5-7. The UFC had wanted to buyout Hunt's contract and apparently this made Hunt start to take the game seriously. He goes to ATT, gets into good shape and then proceeds to win 4 straight fights (3 by stoppage). Which pushes him up into the top end of hte heavyweight division.
Junior Dos Santos was coming off losing the UFC HW title in one of the most one-sided beatings a champion has ever taken over 5 rounds. His rematch with Cain Velasquez had gone poorly, with Velasquez dropping JDS early and out wrestling him while beating him up with dirty boxing and GnP. It was such a bad beating that it would have been fair to question if JDS would be a different fighter after that fight. Well, this fight at UFC 160 would be the barometer for that.
