- CarlCX
- Dec 14, 2003
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It's Derrick Lewis fight time and also other people are here. Kevin Jousset/Jared Gooden got cancelled before weigh-ins due to medical issues with Gooden, otherwise we are intact.
CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 101: A NEW ERA FOR HOT BALLS
SATURDAY, MAY 11 FROM THE ENTERPRISE ARENA IN ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI
PRELIMS 1 PM PDT / 4 PM EDT | MAIN CARD 4 PM / 7 PM
An awful lot of the last couple years has been spent yo-yoing wildly between high-octane numbered-UFC pay-per-views with white-hot crowds and no-number, no-name Fight Nights in the empty warehouse of the UFC Apex the following weekend. There's an unavoidable sense of sorrow to watching Adesanya/Pereira or Prochazka/Pereira in front of screaming fans and tuning in the following week and seeing Jeka Saragih give Lucas Alexander CTE in front of a few dozen day-drunk VIPs.
I think the UFC finally realized just how unflattering a viewing experience that was for their product, because they've been trying--not always succeeding, but trying--sometimes--to follow pay-per-views with cards in actual real-world locations again, to the point that UFCs 301, 302, 303 and 304 are all scheduled to have real live fight cards their following weekend. This is the first of those, and honestly, it's not that bad. It's got an awful lot of the same 'ranked fighters fighting unranked fighters for some reason' problems last week's did, but if the fights are good, one can only be so mad about it.
Or I just miss Derrick Lewis. It could be that.
there've been worse.
MAIN EVENT: THE ONGOING PLACEMENT OF DERRICK LEWIS
 HEAVYWEIGHT: Derrick Lewis (27-12 (1), #12) vs Rodrigo Nascimento (11-1 (1), #15)
I can't help feeling like I've written an obituary for Derrick Lewis three or four times already, and I cannot help feeling like we're doing it again because it's the only real story of this fight.
At this point, going down the list of UFC accolades for Derrick Lewis is an exercise in treading water. He's the all-time knockout leader for the entire company, he's the biggest fan favorite left in the Heavyweight division, he's even the official Something Awful 2023 Tank Abbott Tournament Champion. They're all great accomplishments. Amazing accomplishments!
But they're also the things you say when you know a fighter is never getting to the top. The problem with writing off Derrick Lewis is you can't write off Derrick Lewis. He could be 50 and still have the power to knock out top ten Heavyweights. But he's had three separate runs to the top over the last decade, and each time he's been knocked off in progressively more violent fashion. Back in 2017 he went toe to toe with Mark Hunt over four ultra-close rounds before finally getting stopped, one insanely busy year and a half later in 2018 he was fighting Daniel Cormier for the Heavyweight Championship of the World and hung in as best he could before getting choked out in the second round, and three years later in 2021 he met Ciryl Gane for the Interim Scab Championship and took the most one-sided, almost 10:1 beating of his entire life.
Unlike those previous losses, there's been no rebuilding period for Derrick Lewis this time. Lewis is 2 for 6 since that championship loss, and three of those four losses were devastating, one-sided stoppage losses, and all three of them happened in a row. Before those losses he had the slight comfort of being one of the four consecutive men to punch out Chris Daukaus, and the world tried to conjure some hope for his return after he broke that losing streak with a loving flying knee knockout over Marcos Rogério de Lima last July. But unfortunately, Marcos Rogério de Lima is also a man who got submitted by a forearm choke in the year 2020, so when Lewis was announced opposite next-big-thing Jailton Almeida a few months later he was a +380 underdog, and unfortunately, that was neither under nor dog enough. Lewis took twenty-five straight minutes of wrestling that was as dominant as it was uneventful, and it was back to the bottom of the ladder.
And this is, in fact, the bottom of the ladder. When I say that Derrick Lewis owns the only real story of this fight, I am hearkening back to that same aforementioned Almeida/Lewis Fight Night, which was, coincidentally, the last time we gathered to discuss Rodrigo Nascimento.
Rodrigo Nascimento is a top fifteen heavyweight, which is impressive, because not only has he never beaten a ranked heavyweight, he's never fought a ranked heavyweight. In fact, 3/4 of Rodrigo Nascimento's UFC career thus far has come against people who aren't actually here anymore. And he only barely beats them. Six months ago he fought Ilir Latifi, got thoroughly outwrestled and scraped out a narrow split decision. Before that? He desperately wrestled Tanner Boser to, once again, a narrow split decision. He knocked out Alan Baudot before that--but for one, Alan Baudot is one of the least successful heavyweights in UFC history, for two, he was beating the crap out of Nascimento until he kicked Baudot in the junk, and for three, Nascimento pissed hot so the fight legally didn't happen anyway. And before that, Nascimento was getting knocked out in 45 seconds by Chris Daukaus. And none of those guys are in the UFC anymore! Who was, in fact, the only person Nascimento's fought who's still actually here?
Why, it was Don'Tale Mayes. That's right, baby, this isn't just a heavyweight bout, it's a heavyweight rematch.
Look. I talk a lot about the cruelty of numbers and the ladder of contendership; they don't matter here. They don't matter at Heavyweight. I have devoted hundreds of hours of my singular life on Earth to discussing the myriad ways in which Heavyweight is not a real division, and every word I have typed is true, but their truth belies the power of fantasy. No combat sports division on Earth is built to allow for storytelling like Heavyweight. The quick swings in the rankings, the hot-potato nature of its championships, the way nearly every Heavyweight could kill nearly every other Heavyweight with one well-placed punch: It is a weight class built more for myths than men, no matter what sport you're in. If you can inspire people to feel something about you and you can win fights in a memorable fashion, you, too, can be a top Heavyweight.
Being a ranked, 4-1 (1) Heavyweight in the UFC and having so little cache with the audience that you occupy almost no mindspace in the fandom? That's a failure to turn yourself into a great tale of the large man fight times. Being a Heavyweight on a three-fight winning streak and coming in as a betting underdog to a going-on-40 Derrick Lewis in the twilight of his career? That's a failure to establish yourself as much of anything at all.
And, more the lemming I, I cannot help but agree. I wouldn't insult Rodrigo Nascimento by saying the UFC set him up as a sacrificial lamb--we've seen sacrificial lambs. Rodrigo is a capable all-around fighter. He's not a bum, he's not a can, he is free of all the disrespectful labels we place on fighters to denigrate their achievements.
But he's also the guy who got clocked by Chris Daukaus in under a minute just a few fights before Chris Daukaus got murdered by Derrick Lewis in under a round. Rodrigo isn't a big knockout striker, he's not a very successful wrestler, he hasn't demonstrated himself as an enormous submission threat, and the last time he fought a power striker he got dropped in seconds.
He doesn't have a story or a reputation. Derrick Lewis does. Either Lewis continues that story by racking up another victim, or Nascimento becomes a part of his last chapter. But anyone outside of Nascimento's camp who's rooting for something other than DERRICK LEWIS BY TKO is lying.
CO-MAIN EVENT: MOVING FORWARDS BY GOING BACKWARDS
WELTERWEIGHT: Joaquin Buckley (18-6, #11) vs Nursulton Ruziboev (34-8-2 (2), NR)
This is a tale of two very different contenders.
Joaquin Buckley was a meme at Middleweight. A very successful meme, to be sure, but a meme. He was good enough to hang around the border of the top fifteen, but in combat sports it's awful hard to get past the coolest thing that happened to you. Joaquin Buckley is fortunate, in that his one-legged jumping spinning reverse loving screw kick knockout over Impa Kasanganay was something he did rather than something that was done to him, which, as Ben Askren can tell you, is vastly preferable. But if you can't do something equally cool, or rise high enough in the ranks to eclipse the coolness of that achievement, you get stuck. Joaquin Buckley hit hard and hit often, but as a 5'10" block of muscle, he was not suited for the Middleweight division.
So he dropped to Welterweight at the start of 2023 and it has suited him just loving fine. He knocked out Andre Fialho, which admittedly is pretty standard-issue for a 170-pound UFC fighter, but then he comprehensively outfought Alex Morono, which is generally reserved for folks who are very good at mixed martial arts, and just a month and a half ago he scored the best win of his career after pounding out the once-king of violence, Vicente Luque. I remain baffled by Luque's performance in the fight--he seemed gunshy and frozen in ways that are deeply uncharacteristic for a man with his love of fisticuffs--but at the end of the day, Vicente Luque fell. Joaquin Buckley is enshrined at the top ranks of the Welterweight division, safe at last from Middleweight and its lanky, 6'5" Middleweight monsters.
Nursulton Ruziboev is, of course, a 6'5" Middleweight monster. He is dropping down to 170, because sometimes you flee the flood and run into a hurricane. A little over one year ago, Ruziboev was known almost solely to obsessively online fight fans, wild-eyed degenerates who follow Caposa on Twitter and write essays on Substack and fill the void in their lives by answering questions like "who ARE the best Russian prospects who aren't Dagestani wrestlers?" Ruziboev was on an eight-fight winning streak, held championships at two different weight classes, finished drat near everyone he fought in the first round, and had the occasional obligatory jobber squash just for good measure. He was, in short, everything the UFC wants in a prospect.
Which is why they did not sign him until they desperately needed a last-minute replacement for a Contender Series baby. The undefeated Brunno "The Hulk" Ferreira lost a fight and Ruziboev was brought in with just a week to prepare, and he dutifully knocked Ferreira dead in a round. To make his career trajectory even weirder, the UFC decided his second fight should be against one of their other favorite Contender Series prospects, the then 4-0 Caio Borralho, and when Borralho had to pull out they replaced him with, of all people, Sedriques Dumas, and Ruziboev dropped him in a round (after poking him in the eyes) too. So, now, having had two consecutive last-minute-replacement Middleweight fights, Ruziboev is fighting what will, if it comes to fruition, be the first-ever fully-scheduled UFC fight of his career--and it's a top fifteen Welterweight bout between two guys who just fought 42 days beforehand.
What even is matchmaking anymore, man. What is anything. I like Buckley, and I like the performances he turned in against Morono and Luque, and I think his physicality is a problem for anyone at Welterweight. Hell, thanks to the selective humor of biology, despite being most of a foot taller Ruziboev has the same exact reach as Buckley. But arm reach doesn't stop him from being a long-legged fucker who can punt Buckley upside the head from the other side of the octagon, and Ruziboev's way too many submission wins for Buckley's pocket wrestling game to be a truly safe answer.
If Buckley can stay in Ruziboev's face and put keep him too uncomfortable to find the long counters that serve him so well, Buckley's got a huge advantage. If Ruziboev fucks up the by no means simple task of cutting to 170 pounds when you are Six Foot loving Five, Buckley's got a huge advantage. But all things being equal on fight night? NURSULTON RUZIBOEV BY TKO.
MAIN CARD: TALL AS gently caress
LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHT: Alonzo Menifield (15-3-1, #11) vs Carlos Ulberg (9-1, NR)
I cannot fathom how frustrating the last couple years of Alonzo Menifield's career must have been for him. He gets matched up with Askar Mozharov, who turns out to have faked half of his mixed martial arts record, and trashcans him easily. This lets him fight the momentumless, three-fight-losing-streak owner Misha Cirkunov, whom he trashcans easily. Now on a winning streak, Menifield gets Jimmy Crute, who is also on a losing streak: Menifield beats him, but he loses a point for a fence grab and the fight is ruled a draw. Five months later Menifield finally gets a ranked opponent in Dustin Jacoby and, in Menifield's biggest test in years, he wins. Menifield is finally ranked, he finally has some momentum, he's on a five-fight unbeaten streak in a division where stringing back-to-back wins together is notable, and he is finally free to move up the ladderface an unranked guy the UFC is trying their hardest to push.
Seriously. Carlos Ulberg, man. He's by no means bad: He's got good hands and a solid chin and he's visibly improved a whole bunch since we saw him! But that's because when we first saw him he was signed to the UFC at 4-0 and completely unprepared for high-level competition. But now he's on a five-fight winning streak, so clearly, that's changed! Except those five wins were over the 0-3 Fabio Cherant, the 2-4 Tafon Nchukwi (who'd just been knocked out three months earlier and shouldn't have been fighting at all!), a truly weird duology where he beat Nicolae Negumereanu and followed it up by beating Ihor Potieria, the man Negumereanu had just knocked out, and most recently, in arguably his best win, he beat Da Un Jung, who was already on a two-fight losing streak. The UFC didn't even want this fight: They wanted to feed the once-powerful and now terribly diminished Dominick Reyes to Ulberg, but it didn't quite work out.
Ulberg's a big favorite here, which is what tends to happen when you knock a bunch of people out, but as much as I enjoy Ulberg's offense, and as much of a size advantage as he has, I don't have enough faith in his defense. We just saw Menifield deal with a big, seasoned, rangy striker in Dustin Jacoby and nearly knock him out repeatedly; I'm not convinced Ulberg's steady diet of half-tests is enough for Menifield's experience and grit. ALONZO MENIFIELD BY DECISION.
LIGHTWEIGHT: Diego Ferreira (18-5) vs Mateusz Rębecki (19-1)
The concept of the divisional gatekeeper is an inherently disrespectful one, but when you manage to gather it in two separate eras across an entire decade of time, it's probably there for a reason. Diego Ferreira, like virtually all seasoned Lightweights, is very, very good at fighting. He's got killer power and great jiu-jitsu and every other one of the qualifying aspects of fighting you find yourself saying about fighters so you feel less guilty about insulting them a sentence later. He also got rejected pretty solidly for contendership by Beneil Dariush and Dustin Poirier almost ten goddamn years ago, and when he looked like he might have another run in him in 2021 he took an even worse drubbing from the threepeat of Mateusz Gamrot, Gregor Gillespie and Dariush a second time. I've been a fan of his fighting ever since he made the first factory model for Colby Covington we knew as Colton Smith look stupid, but that was 2014, Lightweight is not kind to age, and there are always new fighters waiting to capitalize on fallen gatekeepers.
Mateusz Rębecki's one and only loss was, in fact, just three months after that Colton Smith fight. That was his fourth fight and he was goddamn 21. Rębecki was a no-brainer for the Contender Series, a near-undefeated Polish champion who stopped almost everyone he faced, and at 155 pounds finishers are worth their weight in gold. The big question surrounding Rębecki was how he would look facing UFC-calibre competition, and despite being 3-0 in the company, thanks to the magic of scheduling, we're still kind of not sure because only one of his fights has gone as planned. He was supposed to fight Contender Series prospect Omar Morales in his debut, but an injury meant he fought the underqualified Nick Fiore instead. He drew the undefeated Nurullo Aliev for his third fight, but a busted leg meant fighting the only just re-signed Roosevelt Roberts instead. Rębecki was supposed to meet the borderline-ranked Joel Alvarez on this card, but yet again, the new guy is unavailable, and yet again, we've got a replacement. Rębecki has been doing his part by crushing people, but boy, the dude really needs an opponent to stick around.
I feel for Ferreira. He took two and a half years off to nurse injuries and rebuild himself, and when he came back last summer he was victorious--but it was a victory where he spent the first round getting batted around the cage by Michael Johnson. I hope there's room for Ferreira to stick around and get fun fights, because he is, still, a fun fighter and someone well deserving of a veteran's placement on cards, but I think his time fighting prospects is over. MATEUSZ RĘBECKI BY TKO.
FEATHERWEIGHT: Alex Caceres (21-14 (1), #15) vs Sean Woodson (11-1-1, NR)
The late-career Alex Caceres contendership run has finally hit the skids. After fourteen years of fighting under the UFC banner, "Bruce Leeroy" put together the best winning streak of his career, made a bid for the top fifteen, and promptly ran into the brick wall that is Sodiq Yusuff. Two more wins plus a killer knockout got him the chance to face Giga Chikadze in the latter's big return from a year and a half on the shelf, but that, too, proved too much for him. After three years' worth of thinkpieces about Alex finally graduating from his ultra-loose style and emerging as a tight, refined fighter, in practice, the New Alex Caceres never really materialized--he just got better at doing the things he was already doing. Which is great if you're Julian Erosa and someone baseball-sliding into a headkick will catch you offguard, but against the top ranks, his gameplan is as effective as it always was.
Sean Woodson is a much weirder cat to figure out. I was very, very high on Woodson's prospects back in 2021, but I've gradually fallen off the hype train, and that's deeply unusual for a guy who hasn't actually lost a fight in that timeframe. Woodson is still 5-1-1 in the UFC, and he's still got a well-aging knockout over Terrance McKinney on the Contender Series to his name, and beating Youssef Zalal looks pretty goddamn good nowadays. But there's this unshakable sense that there's something missing in his performances. He's a 6'2" Featherweight whose reach outstrips most Heavyweights, and in those heady, long-past days of 'a few years ago' his combination striking and body punching looked devastating. But as his competition has gotten better, his offensive output has gotten worse. His patient defense borders on passivity, and it's that kind of thing that leads to situations like his last fight, where he outstruck Charles Jourdain in every round but still only barely scraped a split decision victory because the judges just don't like the way his fighting looks and he isn't doing enough damage to counter that.
I still think SEAN WOODSON BY DECISION is the safe bet here. Caceres and his loose striking approach are entirely too vulnerable to Woodson's jabs and he'll have a big strength and leverage advantage in the clinch, which is where a good chunk of Alex's best grappling comes from. But Woodson needs to tighten his offense and up his volume or he's going to keep getting in trouble even when he didn't have very much.
HEAVYWEIGHT: Waldo Cortes-Acosta (11-1) vs Robelis Despaigne (5-0)
I feel like I've been waiting for this fight for two straight years. Waldo Cortes-Acosta is a living MMA punchline waiting to happen. Heavyweight? You better believe it. Silly nickname? "Salsa Boy" is absolute top-tier stuff. Pushed as a knockout artist? Buddy, you cannot get through a single Salsa Boy fight without hearing Jon Anik describe his great boxing background. Not actually a knockout artist? Not only is Waldo rocking four decisions to one knockout in the UFC thus far, he's the only man to not beat mid-forties Andrei Arlovski through a finish in five goddamn years. But he came from the Contender Series, and he doesn't like takedowns, so by god, we're stuck with him until the UFC finds a big boy they like better.
Oh, hey, what do you loving know, it's Robelis "The Big Boy" Despaigne. He, too, is a Heavyweight punchline, but in the opposite direction: He's an absolute loving giant at 6'7" with an insane 87" reach, he's an Olympic bronze medalist in Taekwondo, and he's not just undefeated, he has not just knocked out all of his opponents, but he has done so with such ridiculous efficiency that, at 5-0, his total MMA career fight time clocks in at just about five and a half minutes--and 4:54 of that was his first fight. When he made his UFC debut this past March against Josh Parisian he looked huge and gangly and flaily and awkward to the point that he knocked himself down throwing a headkick, and he still dropped Josh Parisian with a single bolo punch in eighteen seconds while jogging backwards.
Despaigne is either going to be the greatest Heavyweight on the planet or the funniest thing that has happened to it since Ray Mercer knocked out Tim Sylvia, and I am not prepared to bid farewell to his comedic potential just yet. ROBELIS DESPAIGNE BY TKO.
PRELIMS: CHRISTMAS IN MAY
LIGHTWEIGHT: Chase Hooper (13-3-1) vs Viacheslav Borschchev (7-3-1)
God dammit, UFC, I thought we had a deal. I complain slightly less about the Contender Series and the preferential treatment all of its graduates get, you extend that treatment to Viacheslav loving Borschchev. "Slava Claus" is an absolute treasure in both aggressively silly charisma and exceptionally fun striking performances, but he is not a wrestler, and every time he fights a wrestler, unsurprisingly, he gets wrestled. There was a period in Chase Hooper's career during which he decided to eschew his wrestling background in favor of the facepunches, but then his face was, in fact, punched through on multiple occasions, and it turns out nothing is as motivating for returning to your roots as getting your nose rearranged. I fuckin' love Borschchev. His combination punching is genuinely impressive for the UFC, the viciousness with which he goes to the body is deeply gratifying and he also has a 36% takedown defense ratio. He has only one promotional fight in which someone has failed to take him down, and that was Maheshate, who had never tried to wrestle in the UFC before and has refrained from doing so since.
In my brain, Hooper puts Borschchev on his back within about ninety seconds and the story of the fight becomes Slava Claus landing a handful of punches between getting ragdolled around the cage. In my heart, I cling to the memory of Hooper running facefirst into Steve Garcia's fists and pray for a repeat performance. VIACHESLAV BORSCHCHEV BY TKO.
LIGHTWEIGHT: Terrance McKinney (15-6) vs Esteban Ribovics (12-1)
Earlier I said Heavyweight was the land of myths and fables, but the power of narrative runs to lesser extents throughout the divisions of combat sports, and getting on its bad side is a career killer. No reasonable human thinks Terrance McKinney is a bad fighter. He folded Matt Frevola in seven seconds and he nearly killed Drew Dober; you do not do these things without having serious gas in the tank. But most reasonable mixed martial arts fans have begun to think McKinney is not up to the task of facing high-level competition. Crushing people like Mike Breeden and Brendon Marotte in single rounds is cool, but when you're also getting thrashed by up-and-coming prospects between those victories, the story begins to turn against you. Esteban Ribovics represents a helpful narrative middlespace. He's not really at prospect status, but he's already established himself as a fighter worth watching: He came pretty close to getting a decision from two-time PFL finalist Loik Radzhabov in his debut and he battered Kamuela Krik in his last fight. He's tough, he's barely lost, he throws vicious heat in the pocket and he is very, very hard to keep on the ground.
Which puts McKinney up against the wall. Twenty-one fights into his mixed martial arts career, he has somehow only won a single bout that got past the first round. When he can overwhelm and crush an opponent in minutes, he's drat near unstoppable. When someone can pace their way through his onslaught, historically, he loses every single time. I was a big early adopter of the McKinney-for-champ hype, but I've fallen off a little more with each subsequent performance, and at this point I cannot help feeling I'm off the train entirely. ESTEBAN RIBOVICS BY TKO.
WOMEN'S STRAWWEIGHT: Tabatha Ricci (9-2, #11) vs Tecia Pennington (13-6, NR)
Look, I'm not an idiot, I know the big men will always be where the bread is buttered when it comes to fighting, but really? You couldn't have put a near-top ten Women's Strawweight matchup above, like, Diego Ferreira? One fight ago Tabatha Ricci went toe-to-toe with Loopy Godinez and lost but came close to winning a split, one fight ago Tecia Pennington (who you may know better as Torres; congratulations to Tecia and Women's Bantamweight champ Raquel Pennington on the wedding) went to war with eternal marketing favorite Mackenzie Dern and arguably should have won a decision but, of course, she did not. Both of these women are incredibly solid fighters with proven records behind them and whoever wins this fight is knocking on the door of the top ten, and in the way this always, inevitably goes, that rates them just slightly higher in the marketing order than Billy Goff. But for god's sake, just push a drat story. Tabatha Ricci is a world grappling champion with just one loss in the weight class! Tecia Pennington is a former top contender who beatalmost beat Mackenzie Dern and now she's making a comeback from taking two years off to have the world champion's baby! For a company that once heavily promoted a Walt Harris comeback card built entirely around his tragically murdered daughter, there is a newfound disinterest in trying to tell the stories of your fighters' lives.
But they're not Mackenzie Dern, I guess. TABATHA RICCI BY DECISION.
WELTERWEIGHT: Trey Waters (8-1) vs Billy Goff (9-2)
I'm sorry this fight caught some strays in the last paragraph. I have nothing against either of you fine fisticuff gentlemen, and in fact, I owe you both apologies. Waters and Goff both made their UFC debuts in their last fights--Waters as a last-minute replacement to keep Josh Quinlan on the card, Goff as a Contender Series winner looking to upset Yusaku Kinoshita--and I doubted both fighters, picking both Quinlan and Kinoshita as bigger hitters with more experience against outmatched opponents, and in both cases, I was dead wrong. Trey Waters proved one of the precious few tall fighters with enough understanding of range that, as a loving 6'5" Welterweight, he was able to pretty effortlessly bully Josh Quinlan around the cage and double him up on strikes in every single round. Billy Goff--well, he actually got hit quite a bit by Kinoshita, but his strikes did a lot more damage and did a lot more to discourage Kinoshita from pursuing him, and a big shot to the solar plexus ended the fight in the first round. In hindsight, maybe it was silly to so terribly underrate a man like Goff, who won regional belts in two weight classes in back to back fights just a month apart from one another. Maybe I should have more faith in his fighting instincts.
Anyway, TREY WATERS BY DECISION.
FLYWEIGHT: Charles Johnson (14-6) vs Jake Hadley (10-2)
I don't want to pick against Charles Johnson, man. I've been a dyed in the wool Charles Johnson Appreciator since they brought him in as a warm body for Muhammad Mokaev and he, well, lost, but he made Mokaev look human in a way that presaged the UFC's own reluctance to really get behind him. Maybe it's his steadfast refusal to ever die, maybe it's the achievement of hitting 20 fights without ever getting finished, maybe it's the willingness to stick with "InnerG" as a nickname despite all sensible reasons not to. The UFC just keeps pitching him favorites and he keeps sticking around, right down to a last-minute-fill-in upset victory over Azat Maksum this past February. Jake Hadley is yet another favorite, and he's one the UFC has also had trouble keeping consistently in the pushed lane. His angry British fists and his angry British wrestling were enough to get him signed despite missing weight on the Contender Series, but he's only 2-2 in the UFC, and, at risk of giving away the pattern, the two men who beat him have combined UFC records of 7-4-1, and the two men he beat have combined records of 2-7.
I'm picking JAKE HADLEY BY DECISION because it's the most likely thing to happen, given how Johnson struggles with strong, physical wrestlers, but I am rooting for Johnson and would much rather my picks percentage fall another hundredth of a point.
WELTERWEIGHT: Jared Gooden (23-9) vs Kevin Jousset (10-2)
NITE. TRAIN. Jared Gooden's career is one of my favorite things just for its neverending absurdity. He got cut from the UFC back in 2021 after going 1 for 4 and missing weight by 3 pounds in his last fight, he went to the regionals, and he earned three stoppage wins in a year, and every single one of them was loving weird. First Curtis Millender after Millender's leg broke planting after taking a kick, then Doug Usher after Usher broke his own wrist punching Gooden in the chest, and finally, Demarques Jackson, who was so tired from Gooden beating on him that he knocked himself down throwing a haymaker and faceplanted. And when Gooden got back to the UFC? He missed weight again, by twice as much as the last time he was around. But he was taking the fight on a week's notice and he lost anyway, so gently caress it, roll the bones again--and this time Gooden becomes the one and only man to ever submit Wellington Turman. And now, after all that trouble, he gets to fight Kevin Jousset, one of France's best Welterweights, even though one fight ago Jousset was beating the stuffing out of Song Kenan, a man who was drat near the top fifteen just a couple years ago. Jousset has looked shockingly good through his two UFC fights thus far, rife with accurate leg kicks and flicking jabs and a visible sense of bemusement at people charging at him while he picks them apart.
KEVIN JOUSSET BY DECISION. Gooden's tough as hell, and given a chance to tee off in the pocket he could put Jousset in real trouble, but Gooden's also historically bad at fighting bigger, more accurate opponents.Cancelled over medical concerns.
WOMEN'S FLYWEIGHT: JJ Aldrich (13-6) vs Veronica Hardy (8-4-1)
JJ Aldrich fights a few times a year, and every time she fights I remember absorbing a surprising amount of hype about her inevitable future as a UFC champion all the way back in 2017, and I have no idea where it came from. You can trace a lot of hype jobs back to blatant marketing campaigns or favorable matchmaking or long competitive histories, but there just isn't any of that tape on her. She was a runner-up on The Ultimate Fighter 23 (jesus christ), she got into the UFC after one fight in Invicta, she's never really approached a ranking or contendership and the UFC never really put an engine behind her. She's just been here, for eight years, being Pretty Good At Fighting. Which is awesome, and watching her out-grit people and ground-and-pound ostensibly superior grapplers has been very satisfying. But I want to know what wind brought the whispers to my ears, and I never will. Veronica Hardy's comeback after three years off to heal up concussion symptoms has been both unexpectedly successful and vaguely understated. She beat Juliana "Killer" Miller, homicide suspect and winner of The Ultimate Fighter 30 (jesus christ), but Miller has turned out to be not quite UFC-ready just yet. She pulled a split decision off of Jamey-Lyn Horth last December, but Horth was, herself, making her first walk into the UFC as a rookie.
I also picked against Hardy in both of those fights, and I was wrong. I should learn my lesson. But: JJ ALDRICH BY DECISION. How else will she be a champion one day?
Prelims in about 25-30.
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May 11, 2024 20:38
