UFC 92 C.B. Dollaway vs. Jiu-Jitsu Master Mike Massenzio

C.B. Dollaway was considered the odds-on favorite on The Ultimate Fighter’s seventh season, but in the end, the holes in his jiu-jitsu game wound up costing him the title.

The crafty Amir Sadollah put him in a wicked arm-bar in the semi-finals that appeared to end Dollaway’s run on the show, until Jesse Taylor got kicked off and gave Dollaway another chance.

Dollaway would not make the most of that second chance, as Sadollah slapped an arm-bar on him yet again in the final in almost the same fashion, costing him a shot at a six-figure contract in the UFC.

Dollaway went on to defeat Taylor at UFC Fight Night 14 with the tricky Peruvian necktie submission, but pulling off the move, one of Dollaway’s favorite tricks, hasn’t quieted most of the critics who slammed him for losing to the same fighter twice on the same move.

Mike Massenzio is the kind of polished jiu-jitsu fighter who can make Dollaway pay for his mistakes yet again, having won five of his last six professional fights by submission.

His last win was over the ground fighting-challenged Drew McFedries but Massenzio has a history of pulling off submissions in lesser fight organizations.

Massenzio is the underdog in this fight with Dollaway listed at +175 to -135 for Massenzio, and that line seems about right for this match.

Dollaway is definitely the superior fighter on his feet and he’s probably a better athlete as well. On top of that, Dollaway is capable of finishing fights in multiple ways including with ground-and-pound or the occasional submission. That versatility plus Dollaway’s superior natural talent gives him the edge in this UFC 92 middleweight bout.

But while it’s not a bad idea to go ahead and pick Dollaway in this fight, the odds aren’t very favorable, either, and there are much better bets to be made on the UFC 92 fight card.

Dollaway might eventually be a star at the middleweight level but until he proves that the back-to-back losses to Sadollah were either a case of him underestimating the unassuming Sadollah or perhaps a flaw in his game that has recently been corrected with more training, you can’t completely trust him to pull off the win vs. a skilled ground fighter like Massenzio.