The name “Jose Aldo” warrants both fear and respect among featherweight fighters these days, but how much praise does a champion’s training partner deserve before he’s even made his WEC debut?

At “WEC 49: Varner vs. Shalorus“, fight fans will get an opportunity to draw their own conclusions about Renan Barao — training partner of the current WEC champ and a 20-1 Brazilian fighter whose current 20-fight win streak dates all the way back to his pro debut — but while all the hype seems to surround Barao for his upcoming WEC bantamweight debut, people shouldn’t be too quick to count out the challenger, Anthony Leone.

One of several undefeated fighters from Team Bombsquad, Leone himself is no stranger to trading punches with champions. At 21, he left Long Island, NY and headed to Hilo, HI to study MMA under former UFC Lightweight Champion B.J. Penn. Since then he’s compiled an undefeated record of 8-0 and is just as eager as Barao to get his name out there this Sunday at WEC49.

“My opponent is pretty good. He’s 20-1, with a 20-fight win streak, I know that, but he’s never really faced a wrestler or somebody who will switch it up on him like I can,” Leone said. “All the guys he’s fought are mostly Muay Thai fighters… I don’t know, I think he’s got a lot of hype behind him.”

Leone on the other hand has been winning quietly the last two years, jumping back and forth between the 145 and 155 lb. divisions, but always in the mix with the best around and consistently coming out on top by submission or decision.

Before coming back from Hawaii in 2008, Leone turned to the popular MMA forum The Underground in search of a quality camp to join when he got home to New York. Right away, all signs pointed to Cortland based Bombsquad.

“That was all Zack,” said Leone. “We met on The Underground and he asked me, ‘What type of opponents are you looking for?’ Then he gave me three options; an easy opponent, a hard opponent or whoever we put in front of you. I said, ‘I don’t really care.’ I was 1-0 at the time and feeling pretty good. The rest is history.”

Leone has kept busy since he got back to the mainland and has been in and out of the cage just about every three months for his entire career, but it wasn’t until he took a single fight at 135 that he got noticed by the likes of the WEC.

He and his manager had decided a few months back that the WEC was just too stacked at 145 to make a run at a featherweight contract, so when a new promotion called the XCFL offered Leone a title shot and a chance to drop to 135 for a fight with undefeated Boston Sityodtong prodigy in Teteki Matsui, he jumped at the chance.

The result was a bantamweight debut that contained more memorable moments than most’s career highlight video.

Leone revealed new found speed and the same kind of power against Matsui. He took him down with slams from the front as well as behind, unloaded straight left and right punches at an incredible pace and ate more than one headkick as well as an illegal knee to the head while he was down.

“I had to cut 30 pounds to make 135,” said Leone. “I think i got a lot faster but those guys [in the WEC] are so much faster too. It’s got its ups and downs.”

The real difference in the wrestler’s game came when he moved Upstate so he could train with the Bombsquad full time. He explained there were people to roll with in Long Island but nothing could match the sparring he received day in and day out with his brothers at arms in Cortland.

“Moving up to Cortland has been great for me,” he said. “Back when I used to train in Long Island we’d mostly work on my wrestling or jiu-jitsu, but not spar. Then, I come up to Cortland and we’re forced to spar atleast three or four times a week. I never used to like to get hit, but now I’m used to it. I’m never scared to get in cage and take a shot. I know it’s going to happen — I know I’m going to get punched — it’s just a matter of doing it back to him.”

As World Extreme Cagefighting continues to gather up the most talented fighters under 155 pounds, more and more exciting fights have found their way onto the undercard. This weekend’s event will feature Wagney Fabiano along with Raphael Assuncao and Diego Nunes competing in the featherweight and bantamweight divisions, and fight fans can’t afford to miss Barao and Leone.

Rodrigo Cavaca (Check Mat) has his hand raised after defeating Andre de Freitas (Gracie Fighter) at Grapplers Quest in 2009. Both will be competing at this weekend’s 2010 Pan Jiu-Jitsu Championship.

To limit the influence of super large jiu-jitsu teams overwhelming a certain bracket to ensure points for earning a medal, each team can only enter two competitors in a single division.

Here’s what I mean. Let’s imagine that you manage a large team of Brazilian jiu-jitsu competitors and have a dozen black belts that can compete at medium. While having a dozen competitors in a single division on one’s team does not absolutely ensure a medal for any of them, it would make the work of a team with far less competitors much harder, reducing the chances that they make it to the podium at the end of the day. Because the tournaments are supposed to represent who the best individual fighters are and not whose team is the largest, the International Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Federation prohibits you from entering all twelve of those athletes under your flag in the event. Your team’s leadership can only pick two of them.

Here are a couple of examples coming from this weekend’s 2010 Pan Jiu-Jitsu Championship. Take these competitors in the notoriously competitive lightweight division:

Alliance Lucas Lepri
Alliance Michael Langhi
Alliance Atlanta William Cooper

Gracie Barra Bruno Amorim
Gracie Barra Sergio Rodrigo de Oliveira
Gracie Barra America Joao Sobrinho
Gracie Barra America Rodrigo Freitas
Gracie Barra Long Island Joe Scarola

You’ll notice that there are only two names listed next to Alliance, and two names listed next to Gracie Barra. This means that if Lucas Lepri or Michael Langhi earn a medal, only their points would go to the Alliance team points. (A gold medal earns 9 points, a silver medal earns 3 points, and a bronze medal earns one point.) If Bill “The Grill” Cooper wins a medal, his points would be accumulated with everyone else’s who was registered under the team named Alliance Atlanta.

The same thing goes for Bruno Amorim and Sergio Rodrigo de Oliveira. They bear the responsibility for bringing home the points for Gracie Barra’s main team.

Of course, should Cooper, Sobrinho, Freitas, or Scarola do well and bring home a medal, we in the public will still associate them with their parent organization (Alliance or Gracie Barra). But in terms of how their points are counted this weekend, only two athletes will be under that pressure. They are their organization’s “A Team”.

Top UFC welterweight contender British striker Dan Hardy (23-6(1)) has moved his training camp to North America in preparation for his title bout with champion Georges St. Pierre on Saturday March 27th in New Jersey in the headliner for UFC 111.

Hardy has made his way to Long Island to meet up with former UFC champion Matt Serra, who will prepare the Brit in his last couple weeks of training.

Hardy was a recent guest of MMAWeekly.com’s Radio program and spoke about training with Serra.

“He’s 1-1 with GSP, obviously the first time he smoked him pretty quickly, and then the second time obviously it didn’t go his way. You know he spent some time in there with him, any kind of information with a guy who’s been in there with your opponent is always useful,” Hardy said. “I can sit down and talk with him, see what kind of experiences he had, and his opinions on GSP and the way he approaches the fight.

“It will just be an interesting experience what he can add to my game plan.”

UFC 111 will take place on Saturday March 27th from the Prudential Center in Newark, NJ and will air on PPV, with two preliminary bouts finding their way to SPIKE TV that evening.

MAIN CARD

- Georges St-Pierre vs. Dan Hardy (for welterweight title)
- Shane Carwin vs. Frank Mir (for interim heavyweight title)
- Jake Ellenberger vs. Ben Saunders
- Thiago Alves vs. Jon Fitch
- Mark Bocek vs. Jim Miller

PRELIMINARY CARD (Spike TV)

- Nate Diaz vs. Rory Markham
- Ricardo Almeida vs. Matt Brown

PRELIMINARY CARD (Un-aired)

- Fabricio Camoes vs. Kurt Pellegrino
- Jared Hamman vs. Rodney Wallace
- Tomasz Drwal vs. Rousimar Palhares
- Matthew Riddle vs. Greg Soto

Follow former UFC welterweight champ Matt Serra on Long Island, NY as he prepares for his UFC 109 fight against Frank Trigg.

Click here to view the embedded video.