• UFC 111

Hardy ready for date with destiny at UFC 111

Dan Hardy is ready to change the British MMA landscape © UFC

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UFC 111 comes to Newark New Jersey on March 27, for a fight card that is headlined by the welterweight title bout between Georges St-Pierre and Dan Hardy. Subscription details can be found here. Below, ESPN.co.uk previews the main card.

Georges St-Pierre v Dan Hardy
Dan Hardy has spent every single day of the past eight years building up to this one moment in his life, and on Saturday in New Jersey he will finally get his date with destiny: A shot at Georges St-Pierre's UFC title.

Hardy has been to the precipice of breaking point and back in his MMA career, beginning with a two-month training camp with the Shaolin Monks that stripped him to the core and rebuilt him as an unshakable fighting machine. Punch Hardy in the face and he will smile back at you, go five rounds and he will revel in every minute more than the last, and tell him he has no chance against the living legend that is GSP and he will simply thrive on proving every MMA critic wrong.

"I can tell people 100 times that I'm going to win the fight but people aren't gonna believe it until they see the fight. Just watch the fight," said Hardy after Wednesday's press conference.

The fact is, everything is against Hardy. St-Pierre is a welterweight phenom who does not just beat his opponents, he strips them of every tool they have in a long, painful lesson. World class strikers like Thiago Alves have been put on their backs for 25 minutes, Jiu-Jitsu geniuses like BJ Penn have been made to look like introductory day rookies, and even wrestling powerhouses like Jon Fitch have been left answerless by the St-Pierre conundrum.

Hardy believes he has one significant advantage though. He has a fighter's mentality, a thirst for the kind of pain that a five-round war can bring, and he is adamant St-Pierre is merely an exceptional athlete living in a fighter's world. Trained by Freddie Roach in the past and now Steve Papp, Hardy plans to let his hands find St-Pierre's chin on Saturday, and he is convinced he will succeed where Alves failed during GSP's last fight. In a recent chat with ESPN.co.uk "The Outlaw" made his tactics clear; accept the St-Pierre takedown as an inevitability and then let the hands fly for every second he spends on his feet.

The Matt Serra factor also looms in the background. Serra remains the last person to beat St-Pierre, a defeat that still troubles the champion, and Hardy has been given all of Serra's knowledge in the lead-up to the fight. Add that to the fact Hardy has a seriously underrated tactical mind and granite chin, and it becomes clear that a fearless, undefeated threat stands opposite St-Pierre at UFC 111.

However, GSP's ability to dictate where the fight goes will be the first and most suffocating test of Hardy's grappling game since he arrived in the Octagon. If Penn's guard can be passed with such contempt, it is likely Hardy will pose little resistance when on his back either, and therefore a second round submission victory for the champion would not come as a surprise.

Frank Mir v Shane Carwin
If there is any MMA fan in the world who could comfortably put their mortgage on the outcome of Frank Mir v Shane Carwin, they must know something nobody else does. The winner gets a shot at UFC heavyweight champion Brock Lesnar, yet that barely registers as a factor as geniune anticipation surrounds this five-round interim title battle.

So often the most outspoken of confident characters, even Mir admits the fight rests perilously on a knife-edge. "There's nowhere where I can sit there and say Carwin has a straight-cut advantage here or I think I have a straight-cut advantage there. Could I get knocked out if I get caught by him? Absolutely. Could I knock him out? Absolutely. If he takes me down, could he pound me against the cage? It could happen. If he shoots in, could I choke him unconscious and leave him on his stomach? Absolutely."

Frank Mir has been building his takedown resistance © UFC

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For Mir this is a dress rehearsal to prove whether he would now be able to cope with Lesnar's power in a rematch of his brutal loss at UFC 100. Carwin brings a huge wrestling base and hands that land like rocks, mirroring some of the qualities that Mir could not handle against Lesnar. However, Mir has added 20lbs of muscle since that defeat, and after he dismissed Cheick Kongo at UFC 107 it is now time to see if the strength gain makes a difference against a genuine threat.

Carwin wants to be known as MMA's answer to Mike Tyson, and he is going the right way about building that reputation. 11 fights have yielded 11 wins, all by first-round stoppage. In fact, he has never been in the ring for more than 131 seconds.

As a result, there are questions marks remaining over Carwin's stamina and his ground game, although he showed an impressive ability to work back to his feet under extreme adversity during his remarkable victory over Gabriel Gonzaga at UFC 96, when Carwin was rocked and taken to the mat before he got back up to knock the Brazilian out with just one punch.

On the face of it, Mir's advantage should be his black belt Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu skills on the mat, while Carwin would be expected to take control of the stand-up. However, Carwin's wrestling could nullify Mir's submissions and deliver a similar finish to the one Lesnar produced, while the fact Carwin got tagged three times by Gonzaga shows Mir's boxing cannot be ruled out while the fight is vertical.

The only thing that is certain is that it promises to be a cracker.

Ben Saunders v Jon Fitch
Although Mir/Carwin promises to be huge, it has been overshadowed in the 48 hours leading up to the fight by the hastily arranged welterweight battle of Ben Saunders and Jon Fitch.

Fitch had initially been slated to face Thiago Alves to determine the next No. 1 contender at 170lbs, but a brain irregularity on the Alves CAT scan saw him cut from the card on Thursday. As a result Ben Saunders, originally set to be fighting Jake Ellenberger, now gets the dream opportunity to take out a welterweight powerhouse that would send him soaring towards a title shot.

Saunders fights out of American Top Team and has arguably the most dangerous knees in the welterweight division. Marcus Davis can testify to that after he was knocked out for the first time in his 22-year fighting career by the Muay Thai knees of "Killa B".

Behind the scenes at the UFC Saunders is expected to reach the very top, and only Mike Swick has beaten him in his 11-fight career. A brown belt in Jiu-Jitsu, the 26-year-old is getting better with every fight he has inside the Octagon.

However, Fitch just does not lose...unless he fights St-Pierre. The champion is the only man to beat Fitch in his 11 UFC fights, ending an eight-fight tear for the AKA man who would have beaten Royce Gracie's record for consecutive victories had he taken the title from GSP.

Solid in the stand-up, Fitch's game is all about taking his opponent down and grinding them into oblivion on the mat, with Thiago Alves, Diego Sanchez and Paulo Thiago all past conquests of the 32-year-old. Saunders' tall frame and average grappling game should be made for Fitch, but there is the possibility that such a late change of opponent will play a factor, and Saunders will be well aware that Fitch did get rocked by Mike Pierce in his last fight. Whether he can repeat such a feat remains the big question.

Kurt Pellegrino has a solid wrestling base © UFC

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Kurt Pellegrino v Fabricio Camoes
When UFC 112 comes around, nobody could blame Kurt Pellegrino for casting an envious eye at Frankie Edgar. Pellegrino was supposed to fight Edgar at The Ultimate Fighter 10 Finale, but a back problem meant Matt Veach stepped in. Edgar beat Veach, and now he has a lightweight title shot.

Now Pellegrino is ready to make up for lost time against Fabricio Camoes, for whom Pellegrino has brought in an army of top coaches. Building on an extensive wrestling base that previously led him to numerous grappling gold medals, including the Pan American gold, Pellegrino is now improving his striking with the help of Miguel Torres, former WBA and WBO welterweight champion Miguel Cotto, and Kenny Florian.

Born with dyslexia, Pellegrino insists "put me in the gym and teach me a new technique and I can learn it faster than a rocket scientist." And as he comes into UFC 111 riding a three-fight win streak, including a victory over Josh Neer in his last outing, "Batman" insists he simply cannot afford to lose on home territory in New Jersey.

"I've never lost an MMA fight in New Jersey and I've fought here five times. I never said I want to be a UFC champion; I said I want to fight in the UFC. I've done that so now I have a new goal. After I beat Josh Neer, I told my wife I wanted to fight for the UFC lightweight championship more than anything. Four days later I got the call to fight Frankie Edgar and he's the number one contender now. Unfortunately, I herniated some discs in my back training for that fight and it got scrapped, but I think it happened for a reason. Now my training and level of conditioning is off the charts and I'm confident I can beat anybody."

Camoes is on an even more impressive streak after stringing together seven consecutive wins, six of which came via submission. As a second degree Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt under Royler Gracie, Camoes will certainly favour a ground fight against Pellegrino, so the improved striking of the latter could prove the decisive factor.

Jim Miller v Mark Bocek
In the other bout scheduled for the main card, Jim Miller and Mark Bocek clash in what is very much expected to be a ground war. Bocek brings black belt level Jiu-Jitsu to the Octagon, while Miller combines a brown belt in the same art with a high level wrestling base.

Both men are riding three-fight win streaks and, while Miller's run is arguably the more impressive, Bocek has a habit of finding ways to win fights that do not belong to him. This one may be one step too far though, with Miller expected to sneak a tight decision.

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