Pat Barry Bashes His Own Ground Game, Says He Wants Stefan Struve Next

(Photo courtesy of Combat Lifestyle's UFC 104 post-fight party set.)

If you were listening to a very special Tuesday edition of Ben vs. Ben this week, you heard Ben Goldstein suggest a heavyweight sight gag in the form of 5’11 Pat Barry taking on 6’11 Stefan Struve.  Both fighters were victorious at UFC 104, and they are the shortest and the tallest UFC heavyweights respectively.  It turns out that Barry actually thinks that’s a pretty good idea, and he's asking for the UFC to set that one up.  In a chat with FightHype.com, Barry said he wants Struve next because “it would be a David and Goliath…I would like to fight him next and then work my way up to Kongo.”

Clearly this is a man who knows how to pick his style match-ups.  Struve obviously has some submissions, but he's no takedown the artist.  The weakest part of Barry’s arsenal right now is undoubtedly his ground game.  The more fights he can get with guys willing to stand and trade with him, the more time he has to shore up his takedown defense.  In fact, there’s probably no one more critical of Barry’s ground skills than himself right now.  In a bit of self-deprecation that borders on self-loathing, Barry described his takedown defense as “very suspicious” and said that one thing he’s shown in his three UFC fights thus far is that he’s “very suspect on the ground.”

Not that we’d disagree with that assessment, but damn.  How about a little optimism, Pat?  You don’t hear Bob Sapp running around and talking about how he has the cardio of an eighty-year-old emphysema patient.