It’s back to the drawing board for Shane Carwin….again. After his agonizing loss against Brock Lesnar last summer for the UFC heavyweight championship, Carwin (12-2) noticed that he needed to tweak his strength and conditioning to make sure that he never ran out of gas again. He was given the opportunity at UFC 131 as he stepped in for a sick Brock Lesnar, facing recent coach of The Ultimate Fighter, Junior Dos Santos (13-1). Not exactly a feeder fight for Carwin. But even after dropping down to a healthy fighting weight of 250lbs would not be enough to stop the Brazilian as Dos Santos took a unanimous judges decision win and even better was immediately offered a title shot later in the year against current UFC heavyweight champion Cain Velasquez.
Dos Santos and Carwin both possess one punch knockout power so it was anybody’s fight early on, but Dos Santos quickly showed how much better he is in the stand up game than Carwin as he put Shane down and then pounced on him delivering devastating ground and pound looking to the ref for the stoppage. Round 2 and 3 weren’t much different as Junior showed all those watching that he is quickly improving in all aspects of the game. Dana White has hinted at October for the clash between Velasquez and Dos Santos, but with Cain still recovering from his injury, the fans may have to wait a little longer than that for what could be a potentially be Fight of the Year.
In other main card news, Donald “Cowboy” Cerrone made his UFC debut against Vagner Rocha and showed that you can basically win fights without using your hands as he put on a kicking clinic winning over all three judges. Dave “Pee-Wee” Herman earned a big upset win over former Abu Dhabi world champion grappler John-Olav Einemo as both earned Fight of the Night honors. After taking an early shot from Demian Maia, Mark Munoz showed how much his stand up game is improving as he defeated Maia in a unanimous decision. In the co-main event of the evening, Kenny Florian made his debut at 145lbs taking on Jose Aldo teammate Diego Nunes. Florian overcame the vicious striking from Nunes and went home with his first win in the featherweight division.
UFC will be back in action on Sunday, June 26th at UFC Live: Marquardt vs. Story at the CONSOL Energy Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 9pm ET Live on the Versus Network.