High Expectations for Roger Huerta
by Zak Woods on Mar 16, 2010 11:15 AM EDT
in Analysis
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There is one downside to Roger Huerta signing with Bellator--high expectations.
Truth be told WKR is nitpicking but it is Alvarez or bust for Huerta. That isn't necessarily a bad thing as it is indicative of the overall positive perception within the MMA community of Roger's skills. But if Huerta stumbles into a strong wrestler who is willing to go Gray Maynard 2.0 on "El Matador" then Roger may see an early exit. Such an eventuality would see what is left of Huerta's stock completely plummet.
Basically, if Huerta loses, what's left of that UFC shine may be permanently stained to the point where he is no longer a "name". That's one of the reason's why WKR would've like to see Roger in Strikeforce immediately fighting a top-ten lightweight like Josh Thomson.
On the flip side there is no guarantee that if Huerta had signed with Strikeforce that he would've gotten a fight in this decade. Also, if Roger does make it to Alvarez then the signing will be hailed as genius at Huerta would've gone from not fighting to facing off against the #4 Consensus lightweight. Not too shabby.
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This will not end well for Roger. Take a look through various examples of past tournaments/grand prixs. The expected final rarely happens. Hell, look to Bellator’s last LW tourney. It was widely belived Masvidal would cake walk to the final to face Alvarez, but ended up getting bounced in the first round. IMO, it’s lose lose for Roger. If he wins it, he was expected to, not many will take notice. If he loses to anyone, it will be bad enough….lose to an unknown and he could be one step closer to becoming irrelevant.
More than the public is aware of? Care to elaborate? Or are you talking figuratively?
I think his two talking points were respect and money. Even if he wins the tournament I don’t think the respect bar is going to get much higher for him. If he beats Alvarez, then that’s a quality win and should get him in the top 10-15 in the world at LW. But it only does a little more, respect wise, than the two decision losses to Maynard and Florian did for him considering where they rank.
If heaven forbid he doesn’t win the tournament, then that $100k contract is gone. He was getting $21k to show, $21k win in his most recent bout. So while Bellator is more flexible…because they have to be…it’s not necessarilly more lucrative. Plus I’d venture to say sponsers pay less since there is less exposure, versus his UFC fights. Also, I may be wrong but the way the tournament pay is structured, its an elavating scale. IE pay starts very low in the first round and gets exponentially higher in the following rounds.
Thing is, the rest of the field at LW is pretty much a bunch of nobodies except for Imada, and even he’s not great. Face it, that inverted triangle looked awesome, but he pulled that out of his ass. I haven’t heard yet whether Masvidal is coming back, and there’s only one spot left now. Even if Masvidal came back, I’d still favour Huerta to make it to Alvarez, unless one of those other six nobodies turns out to be some undiscovered superstar or something.
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