Fight Nite Aug 23rd Play

Chad Laprise currently fights at Tristar under Firas Zahabi in Montreal which means he’ll have home advantage on his side for this fight. Home advantage is huge in Canada because the Canadian fans are passionate and they work hard to support their fighters and to generate an intimidating atmosphere for their opponents. The Canadian judges are also notoriously biased towards Canadian fighters.

UFC Fight Night 74 is taking place in Saskatoon, which is situated in a remote part of Canada. This means that it will be difficult for foreign fighters to travel to the location of the event. Travelling long distances often has an impact on a fighter’s performance because they suffer from Jetlag and the travelling can interfere with their weight cut. Francisco Trinaldo will have to travel a long distance from Brazil to Saskatoon and I’m almost certain that this will have an adverse effect on his performance.

Francisco Trinaldo has competed in the UFC 10 times and only 1 of these fights has taken place outside of Brazil. This means that Trinaldo has had home advantage in 9 out of his 10 fights in the UFC. The only time he fought outside of Brazil was at UFC 173 against Michael Chiesa and he lost that fight. This means that Trinaldo is not used to competing outside of Brazil and he’s not experienced at cutting weight in different countries. As a result, I believe Chad Laprise’s home advantage is very significant because Trinaldo will be competing in unfamiliar circumstances against a very skilled opponent.

I believe that Chad Laprise is better than Francisco Trinaldo everywhere and I’m finding it really difficult to see any way that Laprise could lose this fight…

The only area where Trinaldo has an advantage over Laprise is pure Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, but I don’t believe that Trinaldo will be able to use this advantage because Chad Laprise has excellent takedown defence having defended 78% of all takedowns in his 3 fights in the UFC. This is all the more impressive when you take into account the fact that he’s faced two strong grapplers in Bryan Barberena and Olivier Aubin-Mercier. Francisco Trinaldo has poor offensive wrestling and Laprise’s ability to quickly scramble back to his feet when he gets taken down makes it unlikely that this fight will stay on the ground long enough for Trinaldo to steal a round or catch Laprise in a submission.

I believe that Laprise will be able to use his footwork and takedown defence to keep this fight standing, which will give him an easy path to victory. Laprise is in a different league when it comes to striking and his speed and footwork will be too much for Trinaldo to handle. Laprise lands almost double the amount of strikes per minute than Trinaldo and I don’t see this fight being competitive standing up.

Francisco Trinaldo doesn’t even really have a punchers chance of causing an upset here because he isn’t known for his ability to finish fights. This is backed up by the fact that his last 5 fights have all gone the distance.

Chad Laprise is 7 years younger than Francisco Trinaldo and this match up is a classic example of oldschool vs new school. In matchups in these circumstances the younger fighter almost always wins. At 36 years old, Trinaldo is competing outside of Brazil against a young, talented fighter with home advantage on his side. This is a very tough match up for Trinaldo and I don’t believe he has the skills, cardio or power to pull off an upset.