{"id":217446,"date":"2010-01-18T14:25:47","date_gmt":"2010-01-18T19:25:47","guid":{"rendered":"urn:newsml:sports.yahoo,yhoo:20050301:mma,article,yhoo-ept_sports_mma_experts-214254:1"},"modified":"2010-01-18T14:25:47","modified_gmt":"2010-01-18T19:25:47","slug":"melendez-says-hed-give-penn-a-real-fight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/217446","title":{"rendered":"Melendez says he’d give Penn a real fight"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/embed><\/p>\n

After repairing his reputation, Gilbert Melendez is on a mission.
\nMelendez stormed out to a 13-0 start to his career then suffered upset losses in two-of-three fights to Mitsuhiro Ishida and Josh Thomson. He beat Thomson<\/a> last month. That mini-saga is done, now Melendez wants to look ahead
\nto the rest of the 155-pounders around the world. First and foremost
\nShinya Aoki, then down the road to UFC champ B.J. Penn. Melendez and
\nThomson both echoed the sentiment<\/a> that they were getting little respect
\non the world scene. Melendez told Cagewriter he can beat anybody in the
\nUFC or Japan:<\/p>\n

"B.J.’s
\non another level," said Melendez (17-2). "[But] I think I could do better than a lot of guys do
\nagainst B.J."<\/p>\n

Penn, the UFC lightweight champion, has won his four 155-pound title fights (Kenny Florian, Sean Sherk, Joe Stevenson and Diego Sanchez) without really losing a round. He finished all four fights in nasty fashion.<\/a> <\/p>\n

"A lot of guys sit back and want to last with B.J. I’d
\nrather get knocked out in the center of the ring and go for it, than
\nsit back and try to figure it out. If things aren’t working, I’m
\ngoing to charge B.J. and try to knock him out. It’s better than just
\nrunning away and not being able to engage."<\/p>\n

Melendez, a student of Cesar Gracie along with the Diaz brothers, is hoping to get his first big test against Japanese phenom Shinya Aoki. The 26-year-old Aoki added to his legend by breaking Mizuto Hirota’s arm<\/a> in his last fight:  <\/p>\n

"He’s
\nprobably on a mission right now. He’s full of confidence. Before he
\nwas probably a little more of student. He’s a master now," Melendez said of Aoki, who has become very boisterous the last year about how he’s ready to go and "kill" fighters<\/a> in the U.S. "This guy
\nis sounding pretty tough."<\/p>\n

Melendez said he’s far from afraid of Aoki and his submission skills. He feels like his game is well-rounded enough to take out Aoki on the feet and he’s comfortable hitting the ground with him. He also pointed to Nate Diaz as a guy who can mimic Aoki well in training.  <\/p>\n

Melendez just wants to fight. He’d like to make the Strikeforce CBS card in April with or without Aoki.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After repairing his reputation, Gilbert Melendez is on a mission. Melendez stormed out to a 13-0 start to his career then suffered upset losses in two-of-three fights to Mitsuhiro Ishida and Josh Thomson. He beat Thomson last month. That mini-saga is done, now Melendez wants to look ahead to the rest of the 155-pounders around […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4012,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-217446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4012"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217446"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217446\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}