At UFC 133, Brian Ebersole Will Prove He's Not Just A Flash In The Pan By Defeating Fellow 60+ Fight Veteran Dennis Hallman

My special series “A Closer Look At UFC 133” concludes its second day of posts with this entry. Here’s a quick recap: Part 1 is available here, Part 2 can be seen here, Part 3 is right here, while Part 4 is up here. For the final entry for today and the final entry before I focus on the co-main and main events, we’ll take a look at a showdown between two world-traveled MMA veterans that both sport insane fight records. Let’s dive into an interesting encounter between Brian Ebersole and Dennis Hallman.

First and foremost, this is one of the rare fights that actually benefited from UFC 133’s long string of fighter injuries. Originally, this fight would have been all the way down the card and featured on the “UFC Prelims LIVE” Facebook broadcast. Now, the fight is on the main Pay-Per-View card.

Brian Ebersole has been fighting for over ten years, and it’s taken him that long to finally get a chance to fight inside of the Octagon. Ebersole has lost fourteen times in his many years as a Mixed Martial Artist, but he’s won more than triple that: in total, Ebersole’s record stands at a gargantuan 47-14-1 with one No Contest, making Brian Ebersole a veteran of over sixty fights.

The shining moment of Ebersole’s expansive career came at UFC 127, when Ebersole stepped in as a late replacement to take on journeyman Chris Lytle. Lytle was on a fantastic hotstreak and seemed poised for another shot at top-division status, but Ebersole ended up winning the bout and pulling off a major upset.

Ebersole’s opponent, Dennis Hallman, has been fighting since 1997. Like Ebersole, Hallman has also lost more than a dozen times. Fortunately, he is also like Ebersole in the fact that both men have three times as many wins as losses. Hallman has fought in promotions all around the world, and competed in the UFC for the first time in 2000. Hallman is also a veteran of over sixty fights.

Hallman is currently 2-1 in his most-recent run inside the Octagon. After losing in his UFC return bout, Hallman is currently on a two-fight win-streak. Most recently, Hallman outworked and quickly stopped Karo Parisyan at UFC 123 back in November 2010. “The Heart” was pretty out of shape and well past his prime, but it was still a pretty good and notable victory for Hallman. Hallman has been sitting on the sidelines ever since, healing from a knee injury that kept him from competing at a “Fight Night” event in March.

I think it’s astounding that when you put Ebersole’s and Hallman’s records together, you’ve got a total of over one hundred and twenty fights. That’s literally a lifetime’s worth of experience, and that makes it pretty hard to pick a winner in this bout.

Nevertheless, I feel confident that Ebersole will probably win this fight. Ebersole may have had only one fight in the UFC compared to the plethora that Hallman has had throughout the years, but Hallman hasn’t beaten anyone in the UFC of note since miraculously submitting Matt Hughes over ten years ago. Meanwhile, Ebersole just got done defeating Chris Lytle, who was making serious waves. If Lytle wasn’t a Top 10 Welterweight when Ebersole beat him, he was just outside the list.

That’s what I think it’s going to come down to in this fight: the quality of the one opponent Ebersole beat in the UFC will beat out the quantity of UFC fights Hallman has had, and Ebersole will take the win.