Pettis: I’ll beat dos Ajos in the first

Muhammad Ali made a point of calling the round he would win in. “The Greatest” even did it in verse, although sometimes he hedged his bet.

He will be mine, in round nine, and I ain’t lyin’.

He must fall in eight, to prove that I am great.

He wanted to go to heaven, so I took him in seven.

If he’d be in a word of fix, I cut it to six.

If he keeps talkin’ jive, he will fall in five.

If he makes me sore, I’ll get him in round four, like before, with Archie Moore, on the floor.

If that don’t do, we’ll get him in two.

If he runs, we can get him in one.

If he don’t wanna fight, he should keep his ugly self at home that night.

Conor McGregor said he would beat Dennis Siver within two minutes. Siver’s coach upped the ante, saying he thought a minute was right.

Now UFC lightweight champion Anthony Pettis says Rafael dos Anjos is going to lose in the first round on March 14 at UFC 185.

For his part, dos Anjos says he sees holes in Pettis’s game, and the title is going to Brazil.

“I respect that he has to talk,” said Pettis to Shaun Al-Shatti for MMA Fighting. “‘He has to convince himself that I have holes in my game, but I don’t know what fights he really watched besides Clay Guida to get a gameplan, and I fixed that a long time ago. Honestly, I think it’s hard to even prepare for me.”

Dos Anjos has been winning by pressuring his opponents, and plans to do the same to Pettis. Rafael said he knocked out Benson Henderson, and will do the same to Pettis.

“Everybody says that,” said Pettis. “And that’s the key with any fighter. To beat anybody, you’ve got to break their will and then you can get them to tapout or quit.

“But these guys think they can pressure me, but they don’t understand that I’m a counter fighter. I’m very good at countering right now. I have a unique range, I control it, and if you’re coming at me hard, the harder you come at me, the easier it is to knock you out or hurt you. So I like that they all have that gameplan of pressure, but I mean, Melendez did the same thing. I think he’s going to be surprised when he actually feels how strong I am and how technical I am and the angles my strikes come at. It’s just different.”

“I’m going to finish the fight. I don’t know exactly how. My last few fights were submissions so I’m due for a knockout. But if he thinks he’s going to stand there and bang with me, then I think this fight will definitely end in a knockout, and I don’t see it going out of the first round. I mean, even though Melendez got me into the second, I actually fought that fight a little safe. Even though it didn’t go so long into the second round, I just fought it safe. I was inching along out there, but I think now I’m back at it. I don’t think I need more than five minutes to take this guy out.”

The only thing MMA lacks right now is someone able to rhyme these predictions. Want to take a stab at it?