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hey, fights have begun't for bellator prelimsLobsterMobster posted:I've been beaten because I was looking at pets prelim links - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODxTmy2xhu4
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Oct 29, 2022 18:42
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B League Preview! 
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catching up on bellator prelims at 1.5x speed.
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Oct 29, 2022 18:43
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LobsterMobster posted:catching up on bellator prelims at 1.5x speed. ooooh, liver kick to da leever
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Oct 29, 2022 18:45
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I am shocked, shocked I say, that the Italy Man is bad at wrestling defense
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Oct 29, 2022 18:52
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tee boat good-y
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Oct 29, 2022 18:53
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it didn't lead to a finish or even a play for a finish, but Biyong putting all his weight into his forearm against Zubco's throat for about a full minute was incredibly uncomfortable
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Oct 29, 2022 18:56
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Doug Crosby you fucker
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Oct 29, 2022 19:59
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UFC starts in thirty minutes, so: CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 36: THE CALM AFTER THE STORM  PRELIMS 1 PM PST / 4 PM EST VIA ESPN+ | MAIN CARD 4 PM PST / 7 PM EST VIA ESPN+ Everyone's got a hangover after UFC 280, and the UFC is serving you a gentle cup of pre-Halloween coffee to see the month off after that behemoth of intention. This card has taken a few hits--it was originally supposed to feature Ilia Topuria vs Edson Barboza and Drakkar Klose vs Mark Madsen--but it's still a nice, middle of the road kind of Fight Night: Genuinely good and important main event, silly but ultra-violent co-main, and a card sprinkled with prospects and veterans alike. There are potential good times to be had here before you settle in for Trick or Treaters, and by god, you'd better give them the full-size bars or I'll find you.  you've got a fremd in me MAIN EVENT: GETTING WHAT YOU ASKED FOR FEATHERWEIGHT: Calvin Kattar (23-6, #5) vs Arnold Allen (18-1, #6) Becoming a contender in the UFC, generally speaking, is not easy. Fighting your way through a division, outside of the most absurdly promotionally favored of circumstances, is not easy. But there are multiple paths to it. Calvin Kattar and Arnold Allen have both, after years of effort, made their way to the best of the best. And they took very, very different paths to get there. Maybe the best descriptor for Calvin Kattar's path is simply the fact that this is the third time I've written about a Calvin Kattar main event this year. Kattar wasn't even a hyped prospect when the UFC signed him--he was picked up not as a potential contender or a marketable prospect, but as a last-minute replacement to fill in for an injured Doo Ho Choi in 2017 against the always-game Andre Fili. Kattar secured his contract by beating Fili in a competitive but clear decision, but it was the next year's Miocic vs Ngannou card where he truly announced his presence to the world, putting on one of the best fights of the year in an all-out war with the highly-touted Shane Burgos and ultimately using his superior boxing to knock him out in the third round. The fight cemented Calvin Kattar's value to the UFC's fanbase as a purveyor of those two things: Quality boxing and complete wars. On one hand, this immediately made Kattar one of the company's favorite fighters and ensured he'd never want for matchmaking opportunities. On the other, being the guy who gets in wars is real bad for your longterm career health, and when you're continually in demand, it makes going up the ladder very, very difficult. Calvin Kattar's strength of schedule is as impressive as it is terrifying: In five years and eleven fights with the UFC he's only faced two fighters outside the top fifteen. His last three years of competition, with the notable exception of aging violence elemental Jeremy Stephens, have been against a murderer's row of top featherweights, from the streaking Dan Ige to eternal what-if Zabit Magomedsharipov to the runaway train of Giga Chikadze to top contender Josh Emmett to second-best-featherweight-of-the-generation Max Holloway. Which is crazy! That's a crazy schedule to have as someone who never hit actual top contendership. And, unfortunately, that schedule is the biggest reason he never hit actual top contendership. Calvin Kattar is one of the UFC's best strikers and toughest fighters. He's only been finished once in twenty-nine professional bouts across fifteen years, and that was not only just his fourth fight but was against someone with three times his level of experience. But he's not the best guy in the division, and the two times he's faced the best guys in the division, he's paid for it. Zabit Magomedsharipov showed the way a superior grappler could disarm him, using the persistent threat of grappling to keep his combinations at bay; Max Holloway showed the way you can beat Calvin Kattar if you are Max Holloway and thus inexplicably able to absorb a bunch of headshots without getting hurt and also throw 746 strikes without getting tired, which is, fortunately for the division, not loving common. Calvin Kattar's own constant engagements with the top of the division meant he was repeatedly rejected from being on top of the division. Which is what makes it so particularly irritating that he should, in fact, be on top of the division right now. His main-event matchup against Josh Emmett this past June was an incredibly close split decision loss; it was also an erroneous one. Ordinarily when I say this it's under the cloak of disagreeing with but understanding the inherently subjective nature of judging. I do not mean that this time. The third and deciding judge, Chris Lee, ruled the fight for Emmett by virtue of Emmett winning round 4, a round in which Kattar broke his face open with elbows, lamped him with a right hand that sent him spinning across the cage and ultimately outstruck him 2:1. Josh Emmett winning the fight is a fully conceivable thing, the first three rounds were very close; the actual score that won Josh Emmett the fight is objectively inconceivable. And because of that scorecard, instead of being a #1 contender awaiting a title fight, Calvin Kattar is about to fight Arnold Allen. Arnold Allen is an extremely good fighter. He's been an almost irritatingly complete martial artist since his UFC debut back in June of 2015: Powerful, multifaceted striking, dangerous, opportunistic grappling, the best wrestling offense a British man could hope for. He has, in fact, never tasted defeat in the UFC. "But Carl," you say, "If he joined the UFC in 2015 and he's never lost, how has he not yet reached title contention?" That's a great question! Look at how much you've learned! I'm so proud of you. I mentioned the very different paths these two fighters took. Arnold Allen's path, with all respect to the man, can be fairly described as the very slow path of least resistance. Arnold Allen, as said, has been in the UFC for most of a decade; he has only once managed to have two fights in a single calendar year. More of Arnold Allen's opponents have retired altogether from mixed martial arts than are still actively fighting in the UFC. Arnold Allen is the #6 featherweight in the world, and he achieved that not just by never fighting a featherweight ranked in the top ten, but by never fighting anyone the UFC ranked higher than him. Arnold Allen entered the top fifteen in 2020 by beating Nik Lentz, who hadn't won a featherweight fight since 2014. In 2021 he beat Sodiq Yusuff, who was ranked #11. Before the fight Allen, having had zero fights since the Lentz victory, was now ranked #10; after beating the man ranked underneath him, Allen was ranked #8. Heading into the Dan Hooker fight, Allen was now, somehow, #7. After defeating Dan Hooker, who was one for his last four, had not fought at featherweight in six years and whose last featherweight victory had come against the unranked 6-3 Mark Eddiva who retired immediately thereafter, Arnold Allen was ranked #6. It's not Arnold Allen's fault rankings have become utterly meaningless, nor is it a reflection on his skills as a fighter. But it's important to understand just how ludicrous his path to the top has been, because only in doing so can you understand how Arnold Allen, top ten fighter and eight-year UFC veteran, can still feel like such a question mark: His schedule has been so loose, and his competition so weirdly scattered across time and space, that real tests of his skill have felt few and farbetween. In all of his fights, defeating Sodiq Yusuff--being the ONLY man in the UFC to defeat Sodiq Yusuff--is the one and only example we have of Arnold Allen fighting active, ranked divisional competition. Of course, that also means we've never seen him lose. There's no tape of Arnold Allen's crippling weaknesses or losing performances. Does that mean he's a complete enough fighter to beat Calvin Kattar, a man we've seen get trounced multiple times? It's ironic that those trouncings make it seem like an even taller order. Arnold Allen is a good striker, but is he better than Giga Chikadze, the world-class kickboxer who punted Kattar in the face and couldn't put him away? He's a good wrestler, but is he better than Josh Emmett, who failed repeatedly to take him down, or a better grappler than Zabit, who couldn't get off a single submission attempt? If Max Holloway could land 274 head strikes without bringing Calvin Kattar down, does Arnold Allen stand a chance? And that, too, is what makes Arnold Allen scary. He's not as special as any one of those men in any one of those fields, but he's very good in all of them. His ability to overwhelm Kattar in any one of those disciplines isn't a threat, but his ability to seamlessly transition between them and threaten with all of them is. Calvin Kattar's gameplan is not a secret: He wants to counter you until you stop attacking, he wants to jab you until you're too afraid to come forward, and he wants to open up with combinations while you're backpedaling. Arnold Allen's path to winning this fight involves putting on five straight rounds of variable pressure, defusing the forward attacks with kicks, picking off punches when Kattar charges, and forcing enough grappling exchanges that Kattar can't ever sit down on his strikes. But he has to do that for five rounds without getting caught, and Calvin Kattar catches people an awful loving lot. Over twenty-five minutes of fighting Kattar's going to put enough offense on him that Allen's much more measured output is going to have trouble keeping up. Unless Allen can find a way to dictate where and how the fight takes place, this winds up being Calvin Kattar by decision. CO-MAIN EVENT: SHITS AND GIGGLES  WELTERWEIGHT: Tim Means (32-13-1 (1)) vs Max Griffin (18-9)There are some fights that exist because the UFC needs to figure out where contenders belong in the pecking order and who's working their way towards contendership. There are some fights that exist because the world loves violence. This is the latter. Tim "The Dirty Bird" Means has been around for a long god damned time. His UFC career started when he was picked up as the lightweight champion of King of the Cage back in 2012, meaning Means' tenure in the organization predates the flyweight division, every women's division, every UFC uniform and the days before MMA was actually legal in the entire United States of America. Tim Means has been around so goddamn long that said UFC debut took place at the UFC's own debut on Fuel TV, an extreme sports network marketed around the sounds of revving engines and late-night advertisements for erectile dysfunction pills, and said card was main evented by Jake Ellenberger and the newly rechristened Diego "The Dream" Sanchez, who powerwalked to the ring while holding up a jewel-encrusted cross like he was facing down Dracula. Jake Ellenberger is gone. Diego Sanchez is gone. Fuel TV is just a streaming channel now. Jesus is nowhere to be found. But Tim Means never stopped. And Tim Means also never got ranked, and that is, in a way, a testament to him as a fighter. Staying in the UFC at length is very, very difficult. Sticking around typically means either becoming one of the best of the best or becoming a reliably must-see competitor. Tim Means, after a decade, is 14-10 (1) in the UFC. He has only rarely met ranked opponents and never actually defeated one. However: After a decade, he has also never taken the contract-threatening three consecutive losses. The single best run of his career, in fact, came over the last year, as he defeated the highly-praised Laureano Staropoli, MMA's then-favorite punchy idiot Mike Perry, and the ultra-impressive Nicolas Dalby. The UFC gave him the serious competition he sought by tapping him for middleweight sensation Kevin Holland's second fight at welterweight--quite possibly the last chance Means had to get ranked. Holland choked him out in two rounds. Tim Means isn't here to get ranked. He's here to test prospects and put on slugfests. Max "Pain" Griffin is an arbiter of the latter, and in many ways his career is a modern mirror for Means. He's going on seven years in the UFC, he's put up a not particularly great 6-7 on the scoreboard, his rise as a name people remembered didn't come until after he, too, defeated Mike Perry, and he, too, went on the best run of his career in the last year, strung together three impressive wins, and received a real opportunity at a real opponent who could catapult him into the real rankings. Except Griffin's big win came against the depleted, once-retired comeback corpse of cagefighting championship challenger Carlos Condit, who returned to the vault immediately thereafter, and his opportunity was against the prospect killer that is Neil Magny, who dragged him through the kind of decision-length beating Magny has made his trademark. It was a fight that demonstrated both Griffin's best assets--the real danger posed by his hobbling leg kicks and the power in his right hand that nearly ended the fight in the first round--and his biggest weaknesses, as he visibly tired in the third round and was completely overwhelmed by Magny's pressure and combinations, and nearly wilted his way into a TKO loss in the process. Max Griffin is a very slight -150 favorite in this fight, and the betting logic makes sense. He's a scary power puncher who hasn't been finished since 2016 and Means is an aging veteran who got dropped and choked out in his last fight. But fight memory is short, and Kevin Holland is one of the most devastating strikers in the history of the sport. Tim Means is exceedingly tough and a far better boxer than he gets credit for, and Griffin's power-over-timing approach, while threatening, is also a big part of his persistent issues with fading as fights go on. If he can't put Means away the fight will become progressively uglier for him. Tim Means by decision. MAIN CARD: LARGE MEN FIGHT TIMES HEAVYWEIGHT: Waldo Cortes-Acosta (7-0) vs Jared Vanderaa (12-9) It's Wicker Man time for the heavyweight division. A couple months ago, in communal conversation about the state of the heavyweight division, I wrote this: CarlCX posted:One of the secret funniest parts about MMA over the last few years is how, between Stipe reaching the top, Ngannou becoming a fully-rounded fighter, Gane's meteoric rise, Aspinall as a prospect, the hype behind guys like Don'Tale Mayes and Juan Espino and Chris Daukaus etc. there was this sense that maybe, just maybe, heavyweight was finally getting to that long-theorized point where there were enough big, athletic, well-rounded heavyweights that you could finally get a top ten that looked legit and competitive and not sloppy. The prophecied date has arrived. Behold: Waldo "Salsa Boy" Cortes-Acosta is one of the UFC's newest Contender Series babies, a 6'4" boxer-grappler out of the Dominican Republic. He hits real hard, he favors punches over all other forms of strikes, he's as of yet undefeated and he was the heavyweight champion of the Legacy Fighting Alliance before he was picked up for the rich man gladiator games. Is he the chosen one? Uh, no. I admit I lumped him in with the silly side of heavyweight as a joke, having never seen him actually fight, but having now watched as much of his career as is captured on video: He's gonna fit right in with the brawler side of the division. He likes to lunge across the cage while swinging haymakers and then defend by jumping backwards with his arms fully outstretched, he likes to lead with his face, his output starts to drop after the second round, and the world of regional heavyweight has allowed all of this to work just fine. He has one submission victory in his career and it was a kimura that he at one point successfully applied while his opponent was sitting on top of him in full mount, and that just shouldn't happen. Salsa Boy does not seem great. But good news: He's fighting Jared "The Mountain" Vanderaa, who at 1-5 currently owns the statistically worst record in the heavyweight division. (Fun fact: He only has the second-worst record in the UFC altogether; he's outstripped by the 0-5 (1) Jesse Ronson.) Vanderaa's is the classic tragedy of the regionally successful heavyweight who collapsed against international competition. He's a big, strong man with power in his hands and some decent heavyweight wrestling, but he's been knocked out in three of his five UFC losses, choked out in the fourth, and outstruck by Andrei Arlovski in the last. And unfortunately, that's why he's still here. The UFC doesn't hold onto a lot of people who take three losses in a row. The number of people who somehow stick around after four is very, very small, and it falls into one of two categories: Fan favorites the UFC still sees marketing dollars in and live bodies the UFC can reliably feed to people it wants to push. Jared Vanderaa was 2020's Contender Series baby. His time is over. The UFC has a big puncher they want to have a splashy debut and it just so happens they have a heavyweight on hand who gets knocked out constantly. Funny how that goes. Get in the loving burning man, Shinji. Waldo Cortes-Acosta by TKO. MIDDLEWEIGHT: Tresean Gore (3-2) vs Josh Fremd (9-3) Tresean Gore has had a very unfortunate time in the UFC. "Mr. Vicious" was the star of The Ultimate Fighter 29, dominating his way to the finals with power-wrestling and crushing punches, but he was forced out of the championship final thanks to a busted knee, clearing the way for the ever-weird Bryan Battle to take the throne. When Gore healed up the following year the UFC immediately re-booked the two, calling it a re-do of the TUF final, and despite coming in as a betting favorite Gore was ultimately outworked by Battle's volume and tenacity. The UFC gave Gore another opportunity five months later against the occasionally chinny grappler Cody Brundage, and once again, Gore came in as a betting favorite, and once again he lost--this time getting knocked out cold in three minutes. Twelve months ago Tresean Gore was an undefeated knockout artist of a prospect with a ton of hype. Now he's facing a third loss in a row and the potential chopping block. And the UFC isn't making it easy to defend his job. Aside from his worst-in-class nickname, Josh "The Big Yinz" Fremd is a good, solid threat. A former Legacy Fighting Alliance title challenger, Fremd only made his UFC debut this past April in an ultimately losing effort to Anthony Hernandez, but not before he ragdolled him on the ground and very nearly choked him out. He's 6'4", he's a very solid wrestler, he's got a lightning-fast left hook and he's going to want revenge for his first UFC loss. And he should still be a winnable fight for Gore. Make no mistake: Tresean Gore is still a very talented fighter. His loss to Battle came down to his gunshy refusal to work early, as once he found his rhythm he began winning rounds, and his loss to Brundage came from not being gunshy enough, as he repeatedly reached the pocket and threw naked, undefended leg kicks, which ultimately cost him his consciousness. Tresean Gore hits like a loving truck and Josh Fremd tends to defend punches by dodging straight backwards. Gore absolutely has the capacity to plant a right on his chin and put him down. It's just a question of if his head will let him do it. Wrestling Josh Fremd isn't going to work for him; Fremd is too big and too good at it. This fight comes down to Gore's ability to pull the trigger. I have no scientific reason for this other than that I am simply choosing, for reasons I cannot fathom, to believe. Tresean Gore by KO. LIGHT-HEAVYWEIGHT: Dustin Jacoby (18-5-1, #13) vs Khalil Rountree (10-5 (1), NR)That's right: It's a light-heavyweight fight I'm actually, genuinely looking forward to. Feel the statistical aberration in your bones. Dustin "Hanyak" Jacoby is pretty goddamn good. He was an accomplished kickboxer and nearly won Glory's middleweight championship during their ultimately failed attempt at popularizing the sport in America, but his ventures in other combat sports kept him from focusing on MMA and saw him losing repeatedly to smaller, grapplier men. He settled permanently on light-heavyweight mixed martial arts in 2020, won a contract through the Contender Series, and has rifled off seven UFC bouts without a loss. That doesn't mean he's on a seven-fight win streak, unfortunately. His record is split in half by a 2021 draw against Ion Cutelaba, after the powerful grappler nearly finished him in the first round only for Jacoby to spend the rest of the fight dribbling Cutelaba's head with punches. This has been the patch on Jacoby as a fighter: He's still not great at wrestling and he tends to get off to slow starts unless opponents really aggressively pursue him on the feet. Which is presumably why the UFC booked him against Khalil Rountree. "The War Horse" is the kind of fighter you remember as being more successful than they actually are. Rountree had already been in the UFC for two years and run up a nearly-palindromic 2-2 (1) record when he put himself on the map. He was offered up as an intentional sacrifice to world champion kickboxer Gökhan Saki, for whom the UFC had high, high hopes, only for Rountree to drop him in ninety seconds and send him right back out of the sport. This is precisely why people remember Rountree as being particularly accomplished: When he wins, it is loving terrifying. Maybe he gets outstruck by a Marcin Prachnio or knocked out by a Johnny Walker, but then he destroys Karl Roberson's liver, or becomes the one man to successfully follow Paul Craig to the ground and pound him out, or kicks Modestas Bukauskas in the knee and severs every goddamn ligament in his leg. Rountree likes to take his time and set up his shots, and that inactivity costs him, but when he lands he moves mountains. That, in turn, makes Dustin Jacoby's tendency to not react well to strategic approaches difficult. Jacoby likes to work in solid boxing combinations, but his best work starts by countering and disrupting opponents on the attack and Rountree's measured approach makes this problematic. Presuming he doesn't destroy his body and soul with a leg kick in the first thirty seconds of the fight, Rountree is going to have to hit Jacoby often enough and precisely enough to stop him from getting his volume game working, and over three rounds I see him falling behind. Dustin Jacoby by decision. PRELIMS: COUNT DRACULA MUST FEED MIDDLEWEIGHT: Roman Dolidze (10-1) vs Phil Hawes (12-3)The prelims got shuffled at the last minute to push this up from the earliest part of the card to the featured fight, and it makes sense: It's nearly guaranteed to be a loving banger. Roman Dolidze, who is nicknamed "The Caucasian" because someone thought it would be very funny, carries the particularly unusual trait of being dangerous during transitions. He likes to march forward behind leg kicks and left hooks, but his strongest attacks come while shifting between ranges--headkicks that, rather than coming purely from range, shift him into the pocket to alter the angle of the blow, or combinations in the pocket that turn into clinch knees. The only man to beat him in the UFC, Trevin Giles, did so by taking away his ability to dictate those transitions and instead forcing him to fight out from under pressure. And pressure is the Phil Hawes game. "Megatron" is a punching machine with just a touch of wrestling mixed in to keep his opponents guessing, but his greatest successes all spring from his hands. When I say that fighters work in combinations, typically, that means there's a well-thought-out approach to how strikes are strung together and in what particular order. Phil Hawes throws combinations, technically, but those combinations involve hurting someone and then spamming left and right hooks into their face until they stop moving. And it's really loving effective. In his last fight he destroyed the entirety of Deron Winn's face, blasting him with hands and elbows alike just for sake of variety. His only UFC loss came from getting TOO aggressive--he hurt "Action Man" Chris Curtis repeatedly, charged in for the finish and got punched out of his own brain. But Roman Dolidze, for his many talents, isn't a big knockout striker. He's extremely tough and he's never been knocked out, so he's not going to be afraid of walking through the firepower Hawes sends his way to score on him, but he's also been staggered multiple times, and the firefights he tends to get into will cost him dearly here. Phil Hawes by TKO. HEAVYWEIGHT: Andrei Arlovski (34-20 (2)) vs Marcos Rogério de Lima (19-8-1) It's sometimes very difficult to believe Andrei Arlovski is still here. I regularly write about the great longevity of people who've been in the sport for a decade; Andrei Arlovski is one of the precious few fighters remaining who debuted in the previous millennium. The card directly preceding his debut was headlined by UFC 4 veteran and 1976 national wrestling champion Dan "The Beast" Severn. Andrei Arlovski has been in the UFC longer than 75% of its weight classes. Andrei Arlovski has been in the UFC longer than Dana loving White. And not only is he still here and still carefully outboxing prospects, he is, once again, on a four-fight winning streak. Which...he really shouldn't be, as his last fight was the rare split decision victory in which his opponent won on 100% of media scorecards. But judges are judges, and Andrei Arlovski, who turns 44 in February, can get a gimme here and there. And this fight should be a gimme. Marcos Rogério de Lima, in terms of the heavyweight division, is the Platonic ideal of A Guy. Nearly his entire UFC tenure has been characterized by trading fights back and forth. Beat a guy, get beat by a guy. After eight years, he has the dubious honor of becoming the UFC's unofficial You Must Be This Tall To Ride gatekeeper, as not a single fighter he has ever defeated--including ones he defeated last year--are still in the UFC, and all but two of his victims were cut from the company following their fight. He is the heavyweight division's janitor, and it shows in his style. He's an almost thirty-fight veteran with powerful hands and leg kicks who flails rather than throwing in combinations. He's a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt who was rendered unconscious by a forearm choke, the most basic submission in the world, in the year 2020, and at one point in his fight with Maurice Greene managed an entire round of top control without throwing a single significant strike or attempting a single submission. And still he plods forward, violently swinging, and it works 50% of the time, because this is heavyweight, and that is what you do. Hilariously, Andrei Arlovski is in a better position to defeat him now than he would've been ten years ago. Where he used to be overaggressive and paid for it with knockout losses, the Andrei of 2022 is cautious and defensive and happy to clinch and ride fights out. He's smart enough to stay away from de Lima's flailing power strikes, peck him with jabs, clinch him and release him, and after two rounds de Lima will be sucking too much wind to land a knockout shot. Andrei Arlovski by decision. MIDDLEWEIGHT: Joseph Holmes (8-2) vs Jun Yong Park (14-5) This fight makes me sad, man. Not because of Joseph Holmes; I like him quite a bit. At 6'4" and with 80" reach he's tied as the biggest, rangiest middleweight in the UFC, and "Ugly Man" showed it in his last fight by absolutely trouncing the woefully outmatched Alen Amedovski, dropping him thirty seconds into their fight and choking him out thirty seconds after that. It was a much-needed turnaround for Holmes after his unsuccessful debut against Jamie Pickett, and demonstrated exactly how dangerous he is as both a striker and grappler, particularly against the raft of much smaller opponents in the division. And that brings us to the sad part. I like Jun Yong Park! I like the Iron Turtle, god drat it. He's an unbelievably tough son of a bitch with some crushing clinch grappling and a deeply charming sense of humor, but he's been coming dangerously close to disaster in all of his recent fights, even the winning ones. He ran into a lot of trouble with the power of Tafon Nchukwi, he got punched to death by Gregory Rodrigues, and he only barely squeaked by Eryk Anders, one of the world's most forgettable fighters, with a split decision that probably should have gone the other way. For all of his clinch power and all of his tenacity, he's one of the smallest middleweights in the UFC and that differential makes every fight a struggle. And now he's going to be struggling against a guy with half a foot of height and reach on him. Park has an avenue to victory here, and it's rushing Holmes to the cage with punches, clinching him for dear life and absolutely refusing to let him breathe, but I just don't think Holmes is going to let him get away with it. He's too strong, too big and too aggressive. Joseph Holmes by TKO. FEATHERWEIGHT: Chase Hooper (11-2-1) vs Steve Garcia (12-5) If you weren't necessarily fully into the sport three years ago, it's hard to overstate the degree to which the UFC saw Chase Hooper as a future star. He was a winner during just the second year of the Contender Series, but being 18 at the time, the UFC asked him to go get a little more experience before they signed him, because they were still pretending to have standards. Three fights later he was in the company, and having finally gotten their big young grappling star, the UFC excitedly began promoting him. And then he got beat by Alex "Bruce Leeroy" Caceres and Steven "Ocho" Peterson and it turned out being one of the youngest UFC fighters means there are a lot of people who know a lot of poo poo you don't. Hooper's been trading wins and losses for his entire tenure as of yet, and everyone's just kind of waiting for him to grow and mature enough in both skills and strength to become a prospect. And the UFC is maybe trying to throw him a bone, here. "Mean Machine" Steve Garcia is by no means a bad fighter--he's tough, he's got real power in his hands and he's engaged in some great brawls in his career--but his UFC tenure has been less than stellar. He got dominated by lanky grappler and domestic violence jackass Luis "Violent Bob Ross" Peña in his debut, he managed to get a TKO against Charlie Ontiveros in his followup fight but not before getting nearly knocked out three times, and he did, in fact, get knocked out in his most recent fight this past June against Chinese prospect Maheshate. He's just a very offensively-minded fighter, and unfortunately, his defense fails him on a regular basis. The Peña fight is the real giveaway, here. Garcia's fallen victim to wrestlers like Joe Warren and Ricky Turcios in his career, and Peña showed how a long, tenacious grappler can completely neutralize him; long, tenacious wrestling and grappling is Hooper's entire style. Unless Garcia catches Hooper and forces him into a brawl early in the round, he's getting wrestled for the rest of it and ultimately ground down. Chase Hooper by submission. FLYWEIGHT: Cody Durden (13-4-1) vs Carlos Mota (8-1) It's time for everyone's favorite racist idiot, Cody Durden. This fight is particularly sad, as up until the week of the event Durden was scheduled to meet grappling standout Kleydson Rodrigues, who as a particularly talented submission artist was poised to give Durden, wrestleboxer and fascism enthusiast, another loss. But Kleydson pulled out and was replaced on extremely short notice by current Legacy Fighting Alliance flyweight champion Carlos "Tizil" Mota. Mota is by no means a bad fighter--flyweight's a killer's division anywhere you go--but he's got an extremely conventional, straightforward method of attack, Cody Durden, however much of a shithead, is a very tough guy with a very dangerous striking and wrestling game, and the bread and butter of Mota's style comes from punishing body kicks, which are going to get him taken down. Cody Durden by decision. I take no pleasure in reporting this. BANTAMWEIGHT: Joshua Weems (10-2) vs Christian Rodriguez (7-1)On this day in bad nicknames, it's Joshua "Wide Open" Weems vs Christian "CeeRod" Rodriguez, and may god help us all. Joshua Weems carries the unfortunate history of a) having lost his Contender Series tryout when Fernie Garcia nuked him in two minutes and b) having the same surname as a guy who deeply irritated me in high school. He's aggressive and he likes to hunt behind MMA's traditional favorite weapon, the winging Chuck Liddell overhand right, but his takedown defense is still iffy and he tries to supplement it with an aggressive bottom game. Christian Rodriguez, too, was a Contender Series loser, except he actually won his fight but was denied a contract on the basis of "you went to a decision and Dana White is in a bad mood because his morning crullers were middling." He picked up another victory after his 19-38 regional opponent verbally submitted in one minute and that was good enough for the UFC to tap him as a fill-in fighter this past February, where he was immediately wrestled to death. That presumably won't be a problem here, which means this is, in all likelihood, two guys putting their heads down and swinging soupbones at one another until someone falls over. These guys are both so unproven that trying to cleave apart the differences in their skillset feels somehow cruel, so instead, I am very literally flipping a coin, and the coin says Joshua Weems by submission.
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Oct 29, 2022 20:32
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Can you believe Arlovski is on a 4 fight winning streak?
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Oct 29, 2022 21:03
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The trick to believing it is to remember to never, ever believe in the heavyweight division.
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Oct 29, 2022 21:10
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Head movement is nice but at some point you're just walking back in to punches
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Oct 29, 2022 21:23
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It is 2022 and fighters still just shove their heads right into chokes.
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Oct 29, 2022 21:26
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Once that was locked in all he could do was force both of them to "walk" in a circle hoping Rodriguez would let go out of boredom, right?
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Oct 29, 2022 21:28
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Brut posted:Once that was locked in all he could do was force both of them to "walk" in a circle hoping Rodriguez would let go out of boredom, right? Yeah, unless you can get between the hand grip or make distance before it's locked in, you basically just have to try to get away from the control but it's pretty fuckin' hard to do. I would like Cody Durden to eat poo poo here and I am prepared to be sad.
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Oct 29, 2022 21:41
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this fight sucks
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Oct 29, 2022 21:54
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Trillhouse posted:this fight sucks You know it's gonna when you see that tattoo.
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Oct 29, 2022 21:56
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Get a boxing coach chase
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Oct 29, 2022 22:10
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4 knockdowns in a minute and Herb still has think about it jfc
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Oct 29, 2022 22:11
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drat chase got the poo poo beaten out of him gently caress.evilpicard posted:4 knockdowns in a minute and Herb still has think about it jfc
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Oct 29, 2022 22:11
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That may be the single worst gameplan and single most insane sticking to a gameplan I've ever seen.
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Oct 29, 2022 22:11
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CarlCX posted:everyone's just kind of waiting for him to grow and mature enough in both skills and strength to become a prospect. Keep waiting I guess!
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Oct 29, 2022 22:12
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well that was a beating
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Oct 29, 2022 22:12
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That looked like child abuse
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Oct 29, 2022 22:12
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oh god his face during the decision. looks like a corpse they dragged out of a car crash.
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Oct 29, 2022 22:13
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I know as an angry leftist this sport is dedicated to disappointing even my basest expectations in any number of ways but for the love of god is it really not too much to expect fighters who are good at one thing and bad at other things to do the things they're good at
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Oct 29, 2022 22:15
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CarlCX posted:I know as an angry leftist this sport is dedicated to disappointing even my basest expectations in any number of ways but for the love of god is it really not too much to expect fighters who are good at one thing and bad at other things to do the things they're good at Ronda Rousey: NYO! 
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Oct 29, 2022 22:16
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hooper's striking looked truly amateurish. an order of magnitude worse, if I were him I'd take a big break from competition and try to shore up those weaknesses.
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Oct 29, 2022 22:20
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His boxing honetsly looks like it regressed from a couple fights ago
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Oct 29, 2022 22:20
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commentary crew was not ready for a chase hooper loss
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Oct 29, 2022 22:24
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Battle of the Cool Nicknames in this fight, not sure if I want Ugly Joe or Iron Turtle to win it. These names speak deeply to the kid-watching-martial-arts-tournament-movies inside of me.
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Oct 29, 2022 22:36
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IRON TURTLE!  Sorry Ugly Joe!
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Oct 29, 2022 22:49
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nice choke by the iron turtle
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Oct 29, 2022 22:51
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I deeply appreciate and am glad for that performance. Please keep the Dong Hyun Kim spirit of beating people by bothering them in the clinch alive.
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Oct 29, 2022 22:54
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For a second I thought Andrei looked fat but turns out he was just wearing a shirt 3 sizes too large
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Oct 29, 2022 23:08
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I do not believe Andrei Arlovski is on this card. This is complicated real time CGI I'm seeing.
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Oct 29, 2022 23:08
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I am sad now.
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Oct 29, 2022 23:12
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drat.
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Oct 29, 2022 23:12
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CarlCX posted:I am sad now.
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Oct 29, 2022 23:13
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I'm also looking forward to going one for eleven tonight, because goddamn.
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Oct 29, 2022 23:15
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| # ? May 29, 2024 14:15 |
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Uhhhhhh maybe stop the fight, ref? Or get the loving doctor in there? Edit: Nah, just let him get pounded into unconsciousness on top of loving up his leg instead!
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Oct 29, 2022 23:43
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