- CarlCX
- Dec 14, 2003
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We are back in the Apex. We are back to big boys brawling badly. We are on the road to UFC 300mania and we must accept this whether we want to or not.
CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 94: HOLDING PATTERNS
SATURDAY, MARCH 16 FROM THE HOWLING MEANINGLESSNESS OF THE UFC APEX
PRELIMS 1 PM PDT / 4 PM EDT | MAIN CARD 4 PM / 7 PM
There's always a weird feeling of comedown after a pay-per-view, and that's aided an awful lot by the following week's card almost always being a touch underwhelming, as though the UFC itself is pausing to exhale. Our last five pay-per-view followups have been particularly inspiring in how immediately they've fallen off:
- UFC 295's Jiří Procházka vs Alex Pereira was followed by Brendan Allen vs Paul Craig
- UFC 296's Leon Edwards vs Colby Covington, after an entire month to recover for the turn of the year, still led to Magomed Ankalaev vs Johnny Walker 2
- UFC 297's Sean Strickland vs Dricus du Plessis gave birth to the middleweight barnburner that was Roman Dolidze vs Nassourdine Imavov
- UFC 298's Alexander Volkanovski vs Ilia Topuria flowed into Brandon Moreno vs Brandon Royval 2
That last one there isn't bad! Maybe they've fixed it! We just had 299 and Sean O'Malley vs Chito Vera, and that wasn't even a great main event in the first place, so maybe they'll keep it going and this week will be a great card and boy this gag really doesn't work when you've already seen the poster. It's Heavyweights. It's Tai Tuivasa and Marcin Tybura, maybe the two most incredibly-eliminated-from-contention fighters still in the top ten. And an Ange Loosa co-main. And Ovince St. Goddamn Preux in 2024.
Will I still cheer for Ovince St. Preux? From the part of my soul that still longs for the days Yves Edwards walked the Earth, absolutely. Will it make this a great card? Probably not. Will anything keep me off the path to UFC 300? Hell no, baby. We're on a speeding train and we left the brakes in Miami. Feel the excitement! Feel the rush!
rerunning the old format for a week while i continue to fiddle.
MAIN EVENT: LARGELY HOPEFUL
HEAVYWEIGHT: Tai Tuivasa (15-6, #9) vs Marcin Tybura (24-8, #10)
I am no longer feeling the excitement or the rush.
Once upon a time it was very, very easy to get me excited about a Tai Tuivasa fight. He's a new-generation violence elemental, a fighter who combines the all-brawling all-the-time ethos at the core of the Heavyweight spirit with the footwork and finesse of an actual kickboxer! A furious pugilist made of chin checks and booze shoes! He defeated Derrick Lewis, took the Tank Abbott curse upon himself, and became the great hope of all fun-loving Heavyweight fight fans that we might, finally, get a champion who emphasized excitement over such lowly ideals as 'technique' and 'wrestling' and 'not inducing a brain injury in my opponents.'
It was a wonderful time. It was a peaceful time. But it pretty definitively Was, and unfortunately, we are Now.
There is no shame in losing to the people Tai Tuivasa has lost to. Ciryl Gane is the best striker at Heavyweight, for better or worse, and Tai still nearly knocked him out en route to being destroyed. Sergei Pavlovich has melted almost everyone he's touched, and was drat near the Heavyweight champion. Alexander Volkov is a persistently underrated contender with tricks up his sleeve in every aspect of mixed martial arts. All three men, given a chance, could feasibly become a champion. Fighting all three in a row is an incredibly tough ask; losing to all three is entirely understandable.
Tai Tuivasa is damned not by his losses, but his wins. He's 8-6 in the UFC, but of those eight, only fan favorite Derrick Lewis and Andrei Arlovski, a champion from almost twenty years ago, are still here. His record otherwise includes:
- Augusto Sakai, a journeyman who SHOULD, in fairness, still be here, but the UFC decided at 5-4 he wasn't worth it
- Greg Hardy, Dana White's failed pet project at Heavyweight, who got cut after going 4-5
- Harry Hunsucker, who got signed specifically to lose to Tai Tuivasa on short notice and got cut at 0-3
- Stefan Struve, who is and will always be one of my favorites, but by 2020 he was 13-11, 1 for his last 6 and had already retired twice
- Cyril Asker, the 2-3 Frenchman who got his poo poo completely hosed up by future Middleweight Jared Cannonier
- Rashad "Daywalker" Coulter, who went 1-3, got destroyed by Chase Sherman, dropped to 205 and promptly missed weight
I devote many words to the wasteland that is Heavyweight at mixed martial arts. I feel, sometimes, that this is misinterpreted as hatred or spite. I need you to understand that I have nothing but love for Heavyweight. Tank Abbott vs John Matua was the first full mixed martial arts fight I ever saw. I stayed up until six in the morning to watch Fedor Emelianenko vs Mark Hunt. I wrote not one, but two feature-length essays about the division's history.
I do not hate Heavyweight. I accept Heavyweight for what it is. Heavyweight is a division where Tai Tuivasa, the #9 Heavyweight in the UFC, has one top ten victory in his entire career, and that was enough to get him one more landed punch away from fighting Jon Jones for the chance to be the #1 Heavyweight On The Planet.
Heavyweight is made of dreams, fantasies and marketing campaigns, and nothing is easier to market than a big, brawling man who knocks people out. Which is why Marcin Tybura has had to work so hard to get his moment in the sun.
Because Tybura actually predates Tai! Next month will mark eight goddamn years of "Tybur" in the UFC, and he's been grinding in both the figurative and literal senses the whole drat time. His 11-7 record even bears some interesting connections and departures with Tai's:
- Derrick Lewis and Augusto Sakai, both of whom Tai knocked out, dropped Tybura
- Blagoy Ivanov and Serghei Spivac, both of whom outgrappled Tai, got shut out by Tybura
- Neither Tai nor Tybura could get past Alexander Volkov
- Both Tai and Tybura knocked out Greg Hardy, because gently caress Greg Hardy
Primarily, though, unlike Tai's hot and cold streaks--three wins, three losses, five wins, three losses--Marcin Tybura got his slump out of the way early and, since then, it's been the more traditional story of a prospect who keeps getting pushed out of the top ten by actual contenders. He ran up a five-fight winning streak; Volkov knocked him right back down the ladder. Two wins won him the right to welcome Tom Aspinall back to the UFC; Aspinall knocked him dead in 1:13.
Which was, of course, the point.
Marcin returned last summer, and he's 2-0 since coming back, but if we're being honest, he occupies no part of the greater MMA consciousness. He fought Alexandr Romanov, who was ranked two spots below him, and should by all rights have left with a draw but was gifted a decision instead, and he followed that by fighting Blagoy Ivanov, who was ranked five spots below him, and won one of the least eventful decisions of the year. Neither fight gave him momentum from either a divisional or performance standpoint, neither fight earned him a mote of grace with the fans.
And, clearly, neither fight earned him a lick of consideration from the UFC, because the degree to which they're setting him up to lose here is incredible.
If the UFC wanted, they could have thrown Aspinall in with a top contender. He's still got a bunch of fan goodwill, he's still ranked #5. If they wanted to test his ability to beat the top guys in the division, that would still have been wholly feasible. They didn't. They slotted him in against Marcin Tybura, who spent his last two fights struggling with fighters who are barely clinging to UFC employment.
Because the UFC doesn't want to see if Tom Aspinall can hang with the top guys. They want Tom Aspinall to get a win with the minimal amount of risk he won't.
These are the men Heavyweight is actually made of. For every Stipe Miocic or Josh Barnett, you have a dozen Dan Christisons and Justin McCullies. They are the meat and bones of the division, they are the ones who keep it afloat, and they are the ones who are pulled up when the UFC wants Tai Tuivasa to get a win, but not so much that they're willing to make it a sure thing.
Which is fortunate, because MARCIN TYBURA BY SUBMISSION seems distressingly likely. Tai can blast Tybura out of the water just like Aspinall did if he connects, but Tai has an unfortunate tendency to struggle against anyone who can control him in a grappling exchange, which is why, generally, the UFC doesn't book him against loving grapplers. Tybura's tendency to wade forward and push straight into the clinch is his biggest weakness here, but if he can pressure his way in and get his hands on Tai he can take him down, and if Tai gets taken down, he's in trouble.
CO-MAIN EVENT: AT LEAST YOU DID IT
WELTERWEIGHT: Bryan Battle (10-2) vs Ange Loosa (10-3)
I mean, sure. This can be a co-main event. We let Vitor Petrino/Tyson Pedro slide, so the fight's been over for quite some time.
Bryan Battle's primary role in the UFC has been to consistently disprove the idea that the company will treat you with respect if you do poo poo right. "Pooh Bear" was the dark horse of The Ultimate Fighter 29 (jesus christ) back in 2021, a seemingly awkward, lanky Middleweight with a goofy sense of humor and an array of chokes that habitually took opponents by surprise. He won the TUF championship by strangling Gilbert Urbina, he ended any lingering doubts by defeating the injury-nixed finalist Urbina replaced, Tresean Gore, and having completed his TUF obligations, he dropped to Welterweight, took on a tough ask in Takashi Sato, a man who'd just gone the distance with no less than Gunnar Nelson, and knocked him cold with a headkick in under a minute. So, at this point, you've got an Ultimate Fighter champion with two super-cool finishes in two separate weight classes, and he's charismatic, and he's in his mid-twenties, and he's 3-0 in the UFC, and he just kicked a man in his god damned face. Ideally, you're already halfway through marketing him into becoming a thing, right?
As I put it when I talked about Bryan Battle right after that fight:
No! God drat it, we have been doing this an entire year, now, how on Earth have you not gotten that I ask these questions solely to hurt myself with frustrating answers!
And now, as his reward, he gets to c-main event against the other guy who beat AJ Fletcher.
Ange Loosa has had a real bitch of a time getting his international career off the ground. Back in 2016 Loosa was a genuine prospect, an undefeated all-arounder out of Switzerland who'd just raised eyebrows by going into hostile territory in Russia, taking on a fighter with almost three times his experience in Rustam Khasanov and winning after one round when Khasanov, exhausted and hurt, collapsed and passed out. It was bizarre (and deeply concerning), but it was enough to get Loosa over to America to fight in the Legacy Fighting Alliance, where he, of course, immediately lost for the first time, as you do. He made it back five months later for a tight split decision victory over Collin Lubberts, but it was 2019 and COVID was about to destroy international commerce and what remained of everyone's brain, and, as with many international fighters, Loosa was MIA for two full years. But when he came back, it was for the Contender Series! Unfortunately, his contract challenge was some unknown guy named Jack Della Maddalena.
Ange did not win. But In 2022 he made it into the UFC through the back path: Fulfilling the company's desperate need for late replacements. He took a last-minute fight against Mounir Lazzez, despite having gone three rounds just two weeks prior, and somewhat unsurprisingly, Lazzez won in a shut-out decision. But Loosa had his contract, and god dammit, he wasn't going to let go. He bristled when the UFC tried to use him to rescue AJ Fletcher and settled for elbowing his face to pieces instead, and after spending a year on the shelf dealing with injuries, Loosa came back last September to welcome Rhys "Skeletor" McKee to the UFC, and despite fading in the third round, he still took home a decision victory and the healthy glow of another spoiled prospect.
The 'fades in round three' thing is becoming a real recurring issue with Loosa, though. In 2022 he had AJ Fletcher dead to rights in the third round but was too exhausted to finish him, and in 2023 he had Rhys McKee beat but nearly snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by being too tired to keep McKee from steamrolling him right at the end of their fight. Loosa's a good fighter with strong combinations and some secretly powerful wrestling, but his focus on pressure means his energy management persistently fails him, and when he can't exert pressure, he tends to wilt.
And Bryan Battle's just a weird loving cat, man. He snatches chokes out of clinches, he occasionally flails wildly but also lands absolutely murderous counters, he's got a hell of a chin, and I hope against hope that this will finally be his much-belated coming-out party. BRYAN BATTLE BY SUBMISSION.
MAIN CARD: MOM SAYS I GET TO BE RYU
LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHT: Kennedy Nzechukwu (12-4) vs Ovince St. Preux (26-17)
I mocked it earlier, but make no mistake: This is the fight Light Heavyweight deserves. This is the face of truth.
This is the beginning of the third attempt to make Kennedy Nzechukwu a Thing. He was one of the UFC's earliest Contender Series prospects as a huge, scary, undefeated man folding human beings in half with headkicks, and they gave him a soft landing with the 1-for-his-last-4 Paul Craig, and Craig choked him out. Kennedy started over from square one, rattled off three wins of varying quality, and was immediately knocked the gently caress out by Da Un Jung in a single round. Two years and change later, Kennedy was again rehabilitated with three wins of wildly fluctuating quality, recaptured his momentum as a big 205-pound finishing machine, earned himself a spot as the #15 guy in the division, and was, once again, ready for a real, ranked test of his abilities, this time in the form of Dustin Jacoby. Just as in 2021, it was a way to dip Kennedy's toes into the realm of ranked competition, and just as in 2021, he got knocked out in a single round. Is it time to stop the cycle? Is it time for a new prospect?
No, it is time for the total opposite! Ovince St. loving Preux, man. Nothing feels as present and vital as the #2 Light Heavyweight prospect of 2011. And I like Ovince St. Preux! I really do! The way he has somehow hypnotized multiple fighters across multiple decades into falling for the von Flue/von Preux choke is downright aspirational, and every once in awhile he'll still dust someone with a left hook out of nowhere to remind you that somewhere behind those tired eyes is a man who could have been a champion. But that last left hook was almost four years ago. OSP's 1 for his last 4, and all three of those losses were knockouts, and the only win was against please-for-god's-sake-retire 2022-era Shogun Rua, and OSP only barely won a split decision, which gives him the dubious honor of being the only person in the last entire decade of his career to not beat Shogun by finishing him. Which is funny, because OSP did finish him! In 2014. Ten god damned years ago.
The fact that OSP can be this roadworn and this aged and still be a win away from a 205-pound ranking is a reminder that this is the division of doom. We are all bastards for allowing Light Heavyweight to exist, and in whatever afterlife claims us, we will have to explain our sins and beg forgiveness. KENNEDY NZECHUKWU BY TKO.
FEATHERWEIGHT: Christian Rodriguez (10-1) vs Isaac Dulgarian (6-0)
Sometimes, your success is a thorn in the UFC's side. Christian "CeeRod" Rodriguez was picked up in 2022 on a last-minute replacement contract to fight wrestling phenomenon Jonathan Pearce, a fight Rodriguez dutifully lost after being wrestled to a decision, and it was that performance that gave the UFC confidence in picking him out as a victim for Dana White's personal child soldier and undefeated wrestling stylist Raul Rosas Jr. Christian, instead, beat the absolute loving poo poo out of him, ending the fight with an incredibly uncomfortable strikes-landed differential of 83 to 2. To add insult to injury: Christian missed weight by two and a half pounds. The UFC threw the undefeated Cameron Saaiman at him, and Rodriguez took away his undefeated streak, too, except this time he missed weight by five pounds. Two strikes--two particularly promotionally inconvenient strikes--and you're out. It's up to Featherweight with you.
Where you will fight another undefeated prospect, because baby, that's just how this works. Isaac "The Midwest Choppa" Dulgarian came onto the UFC's radar as the Featherweight champion of Missouri's Fighting Alliance Championship, which he earned by knocking out TeeJay "Bad Newz" Britton on a card Dana was openly scouting. That card also happened to include the 23-8 former Bellator champion Eduardo "Dudu" Dantas kicking a man's goddamn head off, but gently caress that, who needs him: We want Isaac Dulgarian, the guy with only first-round finishes, even if only one of them was against a guy with a winning record. Oh, and Josh Fremd. Josh Fremd also got signed off that goddamn event. Dulgarian made his UFC debut last August, fought Francis "The Fire" Marshall, chucked him on his back and methodically elbowed his entire face off in one round, even if it took almost the entirety of said round, which is an eternity by the standards of an Isaac Dulgarian fight.
But he's not bigger or significantly stronger than Rodriguez, and no one's been able to keep Rodriguez down effectively yet, and I don't think that's changing here. CHRISTIAN RODRIGUEZ BY DECISION.
WOMEN'S BANTAMWEIGHT: Pannie Kianzad (16-7, #6) vs Macy Chiasson (8-3, #10)
I love Women's Bantamweight, but boy, the hole it's in is awful deep. It's not Pannie Kianzad's fault: Her wrestling, her volume striking, and her chin have all served her well during her six years with the UFC, but the division around her, and her challenges within it, have shown just how thin the ranks really are. All of Pannie's wins have come over people on the verge of retirement. You have to go all the way back to 2019 to find a victory over an active fighter, and that was Jessica-Rose Clark, who is, respectfully, 11-9. In April of 2022, Pannie Kianzad, ranked #11, beat Lina Länsberg, ranked #12. By her next fight in July of 2023, Pannie Kianzad was ranked #6, and Ketlen Vieira beat her. It's most of a year later, and Pannie, somehow, is still in exactly the same position.
Which is funny, because this, too, is an old position for her. Pannie's first official UFC fight was in the finals of The Ultimate Fighter 28 (jesus christ), where she was choked out in two rounds by Macy Chiasson. That, of course, was at Women's Featherweight, and after dropping down to 135 for a couple of years, Macy went back up to 145 to chase a hopeful title shot. This, of course, did not happen. She instead got choked out by Raquel Pennington, scored an exceedingly narrow split decision over Norma Dumont, and, unable to choose between either weight class, fought Irene Aldana at a 140-pound catchweight and promptly got her liver upkicked out of her abdomen. So now, Macy is 1 for her last 3, hasn't fought in a year and a half, and is somehow still ranked as the 10th-best Women's Bantamweight in the UFC, despite not having actually competed in the weight class since 2021.
I don't think the math on this matchup has changed much since the first time we saw it back in 2018. Macy's still much bigger and much stronger, and with how much of Pannie's success comes from the clinch, the lack of leverage is a killer. MACY CHIASSON BY DECISION, but I'm just hoping everyone makes weight.
 MIDDLEWEIGHT: Gerald Meerschaert (35-17) vs Bryan Barberena (18-11)
This is like a mirror match of scrappy, brawling, bearded grapplers, and I am here for it. Gerald Meerschaert is stepping into his twentieth UFC fight this weekend, and as a longtime lover of underdogs choking people out, I have been a fan of his for nearly the entire time, which has been difficult, because he has spent a fair bit of it losing repeatedly. "GM3" has always struggled in the UFC. He's a legitimately solid wrestler and enough of a grappling threat to nearly beat folks like Kevin Holland, but he's just a bit too slow and a bit too chinny to get over the hump at the middle of Middleweight, and every time he's brushed up against the actual contenders of the division--your Khamzat Chimaevs, Jack Hermanssons and your Thiago Santosi--he's been violently knocked out. His club-and-sub win over Bruno Silva in 2022 is arguably his best, but he's once again on a losing streak and trying to avert the dreaded three losses in a row.
Bryan Barberena, meanwhile, is in the process of crashing back down to Earth. "Bam Bam" has been brawling around the company for nearly a decade, and his hard-brawling, clinch-grinding style--along with his big upset submission over Sage Northcutt, which remains hilarious to this day--made him a fan favorite, but kept him well out of reach of a ranking. And then, unexpectedly, Barberena went on a late-career winning streak. Was it because he matured and became a better, smarter fighter? I mean, a little, but a lot of it was opportunistic timing in matchmaking. Beating Jake Ellenberger, Matt Brown and Robbie Lawler is an amazing achievement on paper! But when he beat them Jake Ellenberger was about to retire, Robbie Lawler was about to retire, and Matt Brown had already retired twice. Bryan's still a bad motherfucker to have been capable of defeating those men at any time, but when Rafael dos Anjos, Gunnar Nelson and Makhmud Muradov all immediately put him right back on a three-fight losing streak, it wasn't much of a surprise.
And, look, Bryan, I like you. I do! I have liked you for years! But just as so many parents have a favorite child, whether they admit it or not, I have a favorite bearded grappling boy, and I'm sorry, but it's GERALD MEERSCHAERT BY SUBMISSION.
PRELIMS: WEIGHT CLASS NOT FOUND
LIGHTWEIGHT: Mike Davis (10-2) vs Natan Levy (8-1)
This is a battle of lost prospects. Both Davis and Levy came through the Contender Series--although Davis lost his fight against the now-ranked Sodiq Yusuff, where Levy choked out Shaheen "Shazam" Santana, whose subsequent success in the sport can be gauged by the number of people currently wondering if I'm making the back half of this sentence up--and upon reaching the UFC proper, both got shellacked by bigger prospects. Mike Davis found himself the unfortunate owner of the last fight of pre-crisis Lightweight Gilbert Burns; Levy lost a wild clash with Rafa García. And then both men sort of fell into holes in the Earth. Between that Burns fight and today, Davis has fought only three times: Once more in 2019, once in January of 2021, and once in October of 2022. He won all three of those fights, but thanks to repeated injuries and surgeries, he's averaged one fight per every 539 days, meaning barely anyone remembers he exists. Natan Levy got off to a winning streak of his own in 2022 after outworking Mike "TKO by Dog Barks" Breeden and Genaro Valdéz, but he spent the first half of 2023 chasing a fight against Pete Rodriguez that never materialized and the second half getting injured in training, so now he, too, has been on the bench since December of 2022.
So you've got two similar wrestleboxing stylists with similar layoffs and similar levels of ring rust. Davis is bigger; Levy is slightly more active. I still favor MIKE DAVIS BY DECISION but I cannot help feeling this is closer than the betting lines think.
WOMEN'S BANTAMWEIGHT: Josiane Nunes (10-1, #13) vs Chelsea Chandler (5-2, #14)
I know I just complained about the trainwreck that is the Women's Bantamweight rankings a few fights ago, but I just want to reiterate, here: Josiane Nunes is the 13th best woman at 135 and she has one victory at the weight class, and it was the 2-0 Bea Malecki back in 2021. Chelsea Chandler is the 14th best woman at 135, and she has never competed at 135 in the UFC. Both of these women were Featherweights. Josiane Nunes was the company's only real up-and-coming Featherweight contender, which is especially hilarious given that she's 5'2", and Chelsea Chandler inexplicably made her Featherweight debut in what is, as of now and for the foreseeable future, the very last Women's Featherweight bout the UFC ever promoted, a losing effort to Norma Dumont last July. Both women are now pressed back down to 135, where they are considered some of the best fighters on the planet by, essentially, default. And this is, altogether, the silliest poo poo in the goddamn world. There were a million ways to avert this reality and the UFC chose to pursue none of them, and now we have a fight between a woman who hasn't made Bantamweight in five years and a woman who was fighting at Featherweight despite being shorter than almost every Strawweight in the company, and both of them are good, but the world around them, the divisions they're inheriting and even the stakes of this fight itself are all so meaningless that my mind slides off their respective skills like crude oil off a duckling in a commercial for hand soap.
JOSIANE NUNES BY DECISION while we all wait for the UFC to ignore everything else and give the next title shot to the winner of Holly Holm/Kayla Harrison anyhow.
FLYWEIGHT: Ode' Osbourne (12-6 (1)) vs Jafel Filho (15-3)
Jafel! Hey, buddy! It sure is good to see you again!
Yes.
Did you see that Muhammad Mokaev is in the top ten and the UFC's trying to get him into a title shot now? That's crazy! You were like thirty seconds away from beating him! Isn't that just wild?
Yes. Yes it is.
Aw, buddy. I know it's tough, but you did strangle Daniel Barez the last time we saw you, and it was great, and honestly, that's almost as good as being a top ten guy in the division, isn't it?
It is not.
That sounds unseasonably angry, Jafel. Are you feeling okay? Do you need someone to talk to?
That is not what I need.
So what do you need?
I need to break a man's loving leg.
JAFEL FILHO BY SUBMISSION.
LIGHTWEIGHT: Thiago Moisés (17-7) vs Mitch Ramirez (8-1)
I feel like Thiago Moisés lives in that terrible hell of being persistently right on the cusp of mattering, but just not quite there. Tapping Michael Johnson and outworking Bobby Green and Alexander Hernandez is a real solid run, but it only gets you to the periphery of the rankings, and while getting shut down by Islam Makhachev is in no way disqualifying, being punched out by Joel Alvarez is a bit tougher. Hell, half of what got Benoît Saint Denis his shot at Dustin Poirier last week was pounding Thiago flat. His bad luck is continuing here, too. This was an extremely favorable fight for Thiago--he was scheduled to meet Brad Riddell, who, as much as I love him, is a smaller, grappling-challenged fighter coming off three straight losses and two straight submissions, making him red meat for Moisés--but Riddell got hurt, and his last-minute replacement is Mitch "The Fight Stalker" Ramirez, who is neck and neck with David Terrell in incredibly forced fight nicknames. Ramirez is a reheated Contender Series leftover who got knocked out by Carlos Prates in his contract mill appearance, but the UFC is never not looking for fighters who go all-out for knockouts, and if you're willing to accept a short notice replacement contract for the minimum possible amount of money, hey: You're gonna get in sooner or later. And it's a hell of an opportunity, because Ramirez is bigger, stronger, a much heftier puncher, and most importantly, the kind of hungry that comes from knowing a few months ago you were fighting Aireon "The Hyphy Kid" Tavarres in a hotel.
I miss when hyphy was a thing. I miss when bay area culture wasn't just Twitter and Salesforce. THIAGO MOISÉS BY SUBMISSION.
FEATHERWEIGHT: Josh Culibao (11-2-1) vs Danny Silva (8-1)
The sheer difference in trajectory of Contender Series vs non-Contender Series folks is wild. Josh Culibao joined the UFC as a last-minute replacement back in February of 2020, and in that four-year period he hasn't had a single easy, notable fight. Jalin Turner, Charles Jourdain, Shayilan Nuerdanbieke, Seung Woo Choi, Melsik Baghdasaryan--every single one an incredibly tough prospect sunk down on the prelims. And when, after defeating those last three men in a row, Josh was finally put on a main card, it was to play victim to the undefeated Lerone Murphy as a treat for his hometown crowd on an all-UK card. And with that one, single loss, Culibao is all the way back down to being buried at the start of the prelims, dealing with welcoming a Contender Series favorite to the company. Danny "El Puma" Silva is a Cub Swanson-trained striker who's barely 27, 2-1 in the Legacy Fighting Alliance, and just got a contract after beating the extremely similarly-situated Angel Pacheco on the contract show. Pacheco also got signed. A couple years ago, Canaan Kawaihae--the one man to beat Danny Silva--fought on the Contender Series himself, only to get knocked out by Jonas Bilharinho. Bilharinho is 11-2-1, a personal training partner of José Aldo, and won that fight with a goddamn spinning wheel kick knockout, and Dana White saw that and decided he just wasn't quite worth signing. A lot changed in three years.
If this sounds like I have a rank disinterest in Danny Silva, it's because I apparently do. I don't see anything wrong with him, but I also don't see a reason to pick against JOSH CULIBAO BY DECISION.
WOMEN'S STRAWWEIGHT: Cory McKenna (8-2) vs Jacqueline Amorim (7-1)
I've come to deeply appreciate Cory McKenna, who is trying as hard as she possibly can. She came off the Contender Series with a remarkably well-aged win over Vanessa Demopoulos, she beat Kay Hansen, she looked like a real solid divisional prospect, and then she lost a huge upset to the generally-ignored journeywoman Elise Reed and lost all her hype overnight. The UFC gave her a rebuilding fight with Miranda Granger, whom McKenna dutifully choked out, and Cheyanne Vlismas was a tougher challenge, but McKenna still pulled it out. Once again, she's on a winning streak, and once again, she's on the verge of having some divisional momentum again, and this time, she has to defend it against another troubled prospect. Jacqueline Amorim had a great deal of hype when she jumped to the UFC in 2023 as the undefeated Strawweight champion of the LFA, and the UFC felt very safe giving her the constantly embattled Sam "Sampage" Hughes for her debut, and despite being a -300 favorite, Amorim gassed completely midway through the fight and got pummeled to a unanimous decision loss. It was a humbling wake-up call, and she got a tune-up fight of her own against Montserrat Ruiz, who I will always appreciate but who, unfortunately, gets punched out an awful lot. Amorim wrestled her and pounded her out in the third, and she would deeply like to do it again.
But McKenna doesn't really get stopped. She's tough as hell and has a fantastic gas tank, and I'm not convinced being put under heavy pressure again won't get Amorim right back in trouble. CORY MCKENNA BY TKO.
BANTAMWEIGHT: Chad Anheliger (12-7) vs Charalampos Grigoriou (8-3)
I try not to do the 'tee hee, funny name' thing, because it's the lowest form of ignorant American comedy, but, as I am an ignorant American, I must point out that 'Charalampos Grigoriou' is just an incredibly fun name to type. It makes me happy, and I can't tell if that's a sign of appreciation or if I'm just infantilizing Cypriot culture. Either way, this is a setup fight for him to win. He's the Contender Series baby who knocks everyone out, it's not subtle. It is in fact so unsubtle that Grigoriou was supposed to face Japan's Toshiomi Kazama here, a Road to UFC veteran who's 0-2 in the company after two straight knockout losses, but an injury forced Kazama out and left the UFC scrambling to figure out who else they had under contract on a two-fight losing streak. Chad Anheliger, come on down! You're 12-7 overall, you're one of the incredibly rare guys who got signed off the Contender Series despite committing the unforgivable sin of winning by split decision, you knocked out Jesse Strader a couple years ago in a fun comeback that you were real close to losing, and since then it's been one loss a year and the quiet wondering of what, if anything, is next.
This is next. Next is the UFC trying to feed you to their new prospect. I hope you upset the apple cart, but CHARALAMPOS GRIGORIOU BY TKO feels a lot more likely.
Prelims in 30.
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Mar 16, 2024 20:32
