- CarlCX
- Dec 14, 2003
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CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 21: NEW BLOOD RISING
PRELIMS 4:00 PM PST/7:00 PM EST VIA ESPN+ | MAIN CARD 7:00 PM PST/10:00 PM EST VIA ESPN+
This card is a pretty big oddity by UFC standards: An all-prospects showcase. There's no fallen main-eventers or heavyweight main attraction anchoring the lineup, the main event is a genuine clash of upcoming contenders and most of the fights are people trying to establish their place in their division. It's one of the most interesting cards I've seen the UFC put on. And after two consecutive weeks of ultraviolence, it's probably going to have a lot of decisions.
okay, there's one heavyweight bout, but i assure you: it is not attractive
MAIN EVENT: CROWNING A CONTENDER
LIGHTWEIGHT: Arman Tsarukyan (18-2, #11) vs Mateusz Gamrot (20-1, #12)
It's oddly difficult to write about a UFC main event that doesn't have some kind of gimmick behind it. There's so often some sort of promotional angle or suspiciously advertising-friendly grudge or championship stakes that it's come to be something of a crutch, and I find myself oddly disarmed by what used to be a staple of old-school Fight Night cards: A main event that's just two well-matched contenders jockeying for position.
Arman Tsarukyan had long been tapped by MMA prospect-watchers as an potential hooks-and-doubles lightweight successor to Khabib, which made it extra awkward when his UFC debut came in a co-main event against Khabib's actual successor, Islam Makhachev. It was a prolonged wrestling match that saw Tsarukyan refusing to ever stay on his back and at one point taking Islam down himself, but he was still ultimately outwrestled and controlled to a decision loss.
And he was really mad about it, and proceeded to take out that anger by constructively wrestling four of his next five opponents at length, the outlier being Christos Giagos, the only UFC fighter he dropped and pounded out. Typically, steamrolling five people in a row gets you noticed as a contender; in Arman Tsarukyan's case, it only got him to the top fifteen. To some extent this is because it's lightweight, the single most talent-dense division not just in the UFC but the world; to some extent this is because a lot of people still don't necessarily believe in Arman Tsarukyan.
I am, in fairness, one of them. I picked Joel Alvarez for the upset over Tsarukyan in his last fight, which wound up being, uh, extremely incorrect, as Arman broke his entire face open in seven minutes. Why would I pick a wrestling-challenged kickboxer over an accomplished wrestler? Mostly, it's because Arman Tsarukyan has some control problems, primarily against other talented wrestlers, but also against larger lightweights, which is to say: All of them. At 5'7", Arman Tsarukyan is tied with Clay Guida, Ilia Topuria and Rafa Garcia as collectively the shortest lightweight in the UFC. He's dealt with this in part by turning himself into a giant meat-brick of muscle, but he gives up size and physicality to virtually all of his opponents, and it shows.
And then, by contrast, there's Mateusz "Gamer" Gamrot. Gamrot was both featherweight and lightweight champion in his native Poland's KSW and the last man to defeat Rizin sensation Kleber Koike Erbst before he was snatched up by the UFC. Where Tsarukyan was hailed by prospects for his wrestling focus, Mateusz Gamrot's reputation comes from being a disgustingly complete fighter, not just good enough to vary between striking and wrestling but enough to use one to fake the other. He will use right hands to set up ankle picks, and then he will fake an ankle pick to land a right hand. He has three UFC victories and he finished each one of them.
So why isn't Gamrot more of a thing already? Mostly, his opposition hasn't done him any favors. His first UFC fight was the first loss of his career, a razor-close split decision that went to the similarly incredible Guram Kutateladze, which Guram himself said was undeserved. His three subsequent victories, while each very impressive in execution, have been against favorable opponents: A Scott "Hot Sauce" Holtzman who'd just been destroyed by Beneil Dariush, a long-in-the-tooth Jeremy Stephens coming off four straight losses and soon to be released, a once-dominant Diego Ferreira on the worst losing skid of his career.
None of these men are slouches. They're all extremely tough, well-rounded fighters whose losses have come almost universally against some of the best competition on the planet. Jeremy Stephens may have been on a skid and past his prime, but he's also a fighter who's been in the cage with Anthony Pettis, Charles Oliveira, Renato Moicano and Zabit Magomedsheripov. They needed a decision to beat him: Mateusz Gamrot submitted him in sixty-five seconds. Gamrot's performances are impressive as hell. But he has yet to be tested in the UFC against a true peer at the same level in their present career.
And thus, we arrive at the moment of trial. Two fighters, two very impressive winning streaks for two very different reasons, one spot. Who gets through?
I'm going out on a limb and denying the betting lines: Mateusz Gamrot wins a decision. Arman Tsarukyan is a very aggressive wrestler and will almost certainly get Gamrot down, but he's going to have to work like hell to get and keep him there, and Gamrot is the kind of fighter who's more than capable of making him pay for the attempts. I don't think Tsarukyan can maintain the pace needed to smother Gamrot for five straight rounds and I think his own tendency to get overpowered by counter-wrestlers is ultimately going to cost him.
CO-MAIN EVENT: THE FIGHT THAT WILL TEAR OUR COMMUNITY APART
 WELTERWEIGHT: Neil Magny (26-8, #10) vs Shavkat Rakhmonov (15-0, #15)
I treasure and dread this fight. This fight pits the two greatest segments of our beloved community against one another: Those of us who memed Neil Magny into existence and those of us who recognize the best base for MMA is traditionally fuzzy eastern-European headwear.
It borders on pointless to introduce Neil Magny to anyone at this point in his career. He's Neil Magny. He's been a relevant in-the-mix fighter at welterweight for most of the last decade. He beat Kelvin Gastelum and Johny Hendricks, he was the first man to knock out Hector Lombard, he was the point at which everyone realized Main Event Robbie Lawler was finally, painfully over. Neil Magny holds the record for most decision victories in UFC history. Not Georges St-Pierre, not Andrei Arlovski: Neil "The Haitian Sensation" Magny.
And it's not hard to see why. Neil Magny is a decidedly unfair man to fight. He's a 6'3" welterweight with 80" of reach, a solid jab, good wrestling skills and enough of a gas tank to punch, clinch and wrestle for three rounds without once stopping. He's the Semmy Schilt of welterweight. His main troubles, then, have come from people who can decidedly outgrapple or outstrike him--all the wrestling in the world won't necessarily save you from Demian Maia, nor from getting lamped by Santiago Ponzinibbio. Even his most recent bout against Max "Pain" Griffin was a case study in how Magny can be put in trouble by fighters who can walk through his offense and pressure him.
Which brings us to Kazakhstan's own Shavkat Rakhmonov. Rakhmonov is the kind of fighter who should, debatably, have even MORE hype than he already does: A 6'1", 77"-reach 15-0 former M-1 world champion who's not just undefeated, and hasn't just stopped every opponent he's faced, but has rarely even appeared to have trouble in the process. Rakhmonov was picked up by the UFC in 2020 and immediately thrown against two of its stiffest longterm gatekeepers in Alex Oliveira and Michel "Trator" Prazeres and one of its most interesting prospects in Carlston Harris, and he didn't simply destroy all three, he destroyed them with a minimum of effort.
He's never been taken down, he's excellent at both maintaining range and stringing together combinations, he's dropped his last two opponents with spinning wheel kicks to the goddamn head between effective wrestling and grappling exchanges. Shavkat Rakhmonov has dropped all three of his UFC opponents en route to finishing them and he's done it by landing a grand total of 47 significant strikes in three fights. That translates to just about one knockdown per every dozen significant strikes landed. I cannot begin to tell you how batshit of a statistic that is.
Neil Magny, of course, is a different kind of guy. Neil Magny isn't a gatekeeper, he's a title contender perennially in search of an opportunity. Is the destruction of a prospect his ticket back into the conversation, or is he a stepping stone for the next generation?
Shavkat Rakhmonov by submission. I love Neil Magny, but this is one of the times I cannot follow him into Hell. Magny has historic problems with people who can outwrestle him like Michael Chiesa and people who can outpressure him like Lorez Larkin and people who can outpunch him like Santiago Ponzinibbio. I'm genuinely pretty sure Rakhmonov can do all three of those things. He's too long and too canny a combination striker to get stuck behind Magny's jab, he's too solid a clinch grappler to get stifled against the fence and he's too powerful a grappler to get outwrestled. He's going to hurt Magny on the feet and he's going to choke him out on the ground.
MAIN CARD: LET'S NURMAGOMEDOV AGAIN, LIKE WE DID LAST SUMMER
 HEAVYWEIGHT: Josh Parisian (14-5) vs Alan Baudot (8-3 (1))
By god, I thought I was free of Alan Baudot. I hoped I was free of Alan Baudot. I said this card had no cosmopolitan heavyweight fights anchoring it, and it doesn't, because this is the opposite of an attractive heavyweight contest. Let us not mince words: This is a fight between two heavyweights who haven't really demonstrated that they belong in the UFC.
Josh Parisian won his way into the UFC thanks to a Contender Series victory over Chad "Big Rig" Johnson that saw him throwing some of the most awkward, loping back to back spinning kicks I've ever seen in my life. He did, in fact, throw more spinning back kicks (4) than he did jabs (0). He entered the UFC and promptly went 1-2, which would easily be 0-3 were it not for a questionable split decision victory over Roque Martinez. He was an absolute wrecking machine on the regional scene, but it's much easier to be a wrecking machine when you're fighting 8-15 Marcus "The Mauler" Maulding.
And then you have Alan "The Black Samourai" Baudot, who really doesn't even have a great regional record to fall back on. By the numbers, the best victory of his career was a 5th-round TKO over the 15-9-2 Shunsuke Inoue, whom he outweighs by 50 pounds. Baudot, in fact, was knocked out in twenty-five seconds by Dalcha Lungiambula, whom you can currently find on the bubble of being fired from the UFC's middleweight division. His last victory wasn't even a victory: He was choked out by Todd Stoute in Canada's regional promotion TKO, but when Stoute tested positive for 100 nanograms of marijuana, the fight was inexplicably turned into a disqualification loss. Baudot himself should also be 0-3 in the UFC, but he's 0-2 (1) because Rodrigo Nascimento tested positive for loving Ritalin after knocking him out.
Mixed martial arts is one of the hardest sports on Earth. It's hard to critique fighters without feeling abjectly disrespectful. I deeply respect both of these men for the thing that they do. But there's no point in analyzing the sport if we can't be objective about fighters, their performances and how they stack up against their peers.
With respect: No matter who wins here, I don't think either of these guys is long for the UFC. For now, Josh Parisian jabs, front kicks and clinches his way to a decision and we all feel a little older.
LIGHTWEIGHT: Thiago Moisés (15-6) vs Christos Giagos (19-9)
It's a battle of those who almost were. Thiago Moisés is the kind of fighter who should be more than he is--sharp kicks, dangerous grappling, more than enough cardio for three hard rounds--but his hands have never been able to match his feet, and against fighters with more specialized striking and wrestling games he's tended to suffer, most notably in his utter obliteration at the hands of Joel Alvarez in his last fight.
His wrestling will be tested again: He's fighting Christos Giagos, one of the endless legion of fighters who nicknamed themselves The Spartan, and who has taken the lessons of Sparta to heart by becoming an endless takedown machine. Giagos has been fairly successful in the process, to be fair; his only losses in the UFC have come against Charles Oliveira, Drakkar Close and Arman Tsarukyan, all of whom are real serious dudes.
This fight is almost certainly going to the ground. Moisés is a grappler first and foremost, and Giagos' reliance on grappling for his offense opens himself up to a lot of danger. Giagos also has some real heavy top control, however, and while Moisés has had success getting out of bad situations by spinning for unexpected leg locks, against someone with heavy pressure like Giagos, that becomes a very dangerous proposition that opens him up for very quick, very painful damage.
Ultimately, I think Thiago's combination of leg-heavy offense that opens him to takedowns will cost him positional control and he won't be able to work through the pressure, but he will be able to stop the submissions attempts. Christos Giagos grapples his way to a decision.
BANTAMWEIGHT: Umar Nurmagomedov (14-0) vs Nate Maness (14-1)
On the topic of Khabib's successors, here's his literal cousin. Umar Nurmagomedov is another in the long line of potential Dagestani wrecking machines, an undefeated wrestling machine who improves further upon the Abdulmanap formula that led to Khabib's victories by working in a shockingly fast kicking game. He likes to close distance behind quick, whipping kicks to the head, primarily because he has no actual fear of grappling exchanges and would rather try to punt you in the face a couple of times before he gets there.
Nate "Mayhem" Maness is his theoretical victim. He's a former bantamweight and featherweight champion up in Canada's TKO, and his short stint in the UFC has already been really loving weird. He made his debut on the notoriously cursed Brunson vs Shahbazyan card in 2020, was completely outwrestled and controlled by Johnny Munoz Jr. and somehow won a thoroughly inexplicably decision anyway. He followed this with two straight fights that saw him get absolutely thrashed in the first round only to come back and when in the second after his opponents got brawly and were subsequently crushed by wild right hands. He's tough and powerful and scrappy.
And he's a fall guy. It's not particularly subtle, either. Umar Nurmagomedov is a precision striker and a dominating wrestler and they're giving him a fighter who gets rocked and taken down in every fight he has. Umar's a -800 betting favorite and the UFC clearly expects it to go no differently.
Neither do I. Umar Nurmagomedov gets the rear naked choke again. I would be surprised if it takes more than one round.
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Chris Curtis (18-8) vs Rodolfo Vieira (8-1)
This fight has serious nonsense potential and I love it.
In just two fights, "The Action Man" Chris Curtis has established himself as must-see-TV for hilarity in mixed martial arts. It's reductive to call him a brawler, he's got visible technical skills and some surprisingly strong clinch defense, but his fighting style is predicated entirely on figuring out the most efficient ways to punch you. He headhunts with a low guard, he throws hard at the body to make people wilt and he passes up on chances to follow fighters to the ground in favor of hitting them in the head some more, and this has led him to two straight UFC knockout victories that saw him getting dominated right up until the point that he reduced his opponents to ash with singular counterstrikes. His power and accuracy, given an opening, are very, very real.
Rodolfo Vieira is forever fighting the stain of his sole loss. Vieira, to be clear, is an absolute monster in the world of jiu-jitsu with more world championships than most people have socks, a super-grappler who's beaten everyone from Braulio Estima to Rafael Lovato to ludicrously decorated people like Xande Ribeiro and Keenan Cornelius. By the end of 2020 he supplemented this with a 7-0 MMA record and two straight UFC wins and seemed entirely positioned to be a contender. And then he fought Anthony "Fluffy" Hernandez, a man no one had paid any particular attention to, and shockingly gassed out after three minutes, got his head punched in and was humiliatingly choked out in the second round. He made a successful comeback just five months later, but no one remembers it, they remember him getting choked out by a dude named Fluffy.
I like Chris Curtis, but I don't think this is a great matchup for him. While he did successfully come back against Brendan Allen's grappling assault and stop him in the second round, it was only after spending an entire round with Allen backpacking and ragdolling him. Rodolfo Vieira is much more capable of backpacking you than Brendan Allen is, and much, much more capable of capitalizing on the opportunity.
If Curtis makes it out of the first round, anything can happen. Unfortunately, I don't think he will. Rodolfo Vieira by submission in the first.
PRELIMS: SHAYILAN NUERDANBIEKE IS POUND FOR POUND THE MOST FUN NAME TO WRITE
LIGHT-HEAVYWEIGHT: Tafon Nchukwi (6-2) vs Carlos Ulberg (4-1)
Tafon "Da Don" Nchukwi is a fighter I cannot help constantly feeling should be more successful than he actually is. He's a big, technical Muay Thai fighter with painfully accurate kicks who gets scary when he opens up with combinations and elbows on the inside, but he's been too gunshy to close the show on fighters in the UFC, and despite outstriking them he's dropped two fights after leaving openings his opponents eventually swarmed him through.
Carlos Ulberg is an example of the difference marketability makes: He got his Contender Series audition as a 2-0 fighter thanks to either his success as a regional kickboxer or his looking like a human action figure. You decide which one Dana cares more about. He slanged and banged his way to a 1-1 UFC record, briefly scaring Kennedy Nzechukwu before getting sparked out in the second round and taking a decisive if not enormously memorable decision over Fabio "The Water Buffalo" Cherant.
On paper, I really think Nchukwi should win. He's got the more versatile striking game and he's demonstrated more power. In practice, I think he has serious trouble with fighters who can use their physicality to get through his strikes, and Ulberg is a bigger, stronger fighter who matches him in range and will gladly jab and clinch him until he wilts. Plus, Tafon's still Team Lloyd Irvin, so gently caress 'im. Carlos Ulberg by decision.
FEATHERWEIGHT: TJ Brown (16-8) vs Shayilan Nuerdanbieke (36-10)
This is a potentially very interesting little grappling match. "Downtown" TJ Brown entered the UFC intent on being a commercially appealing wrestleboxer, but two straight losses--which should have been three, averted by one of the most egregiously bad decisions I've ever seen against Kai Kamaka III--have turned him into a progressively more conservative wrestler. In his last fight almost all of his strikes were focused on setting up double-legs, ground and pound and arm triangle attempts, and it paid off with the biggest victory of his career.
Shayilan Nuerdanbieke, too, is a wrestling-focused fighter to the point that he was in fact once upon a time training to become a professional wrestler before being inspired by Conor McGregor to try bludgeoning people for money instead. He's 1-1 in the UFC and his style shows why: Against a more brawling-focused fighter like Sean Soriano he was able to dictate the pace with his clinch trips and ground control and ultimately win a decision, but against the faster, cannier Josh Culibao he was sprawled on, jabbed and kicked to a decision.
There are two ways wrestler vs wrestler fights go. One way is a very interesting grapplefest where we see who has the better actual control on the ground. The other is a sloppy brawl between two people who are profoundly uncomfortable with their striking. In either case, I'm picking Shayilan Nuerdanbieke by decision. He's less hook-happy than Brown and I think it'll work well for him in a brawl. I think Brown's got the better takedowns but Shayilan has the better sweeps and control.
BANTAMWEIGHT: Raulian Paiva (21-4) vs Sergey Morozov (17-5)
Raulian Paiva has had an unfortunate time in the UFC. He's 3-3, but the 3 have been painful: He started in the flyweight division and immediately ran into the brick wall of future top contenders Kai Kara-France and Rogério Bontorin, and despite two further wins he found himself unable to continuing making the weight cut to 125 and was forced to move up to bantamweight, where he is smaller and stubbier and was thus a prime candidate to be fed to the UFC's favorite animate whippet elemental Sean O'Malley.
Life isn't getting any easier: His next draw is Sergey Morozov, a Kazakh wrestleboxer who himself has had a very difficult run. He made his UFC debut against Umar Nurmagomedov, who proved far too much of a grappler for him, dominated the ever-tough Khalid Taha on the feet and the ground, and drew Douglas Silva de Andrade next, nearly knocked him out and submitted him in the first round and promptly got out-toughed and choked out in the second. This is the patch on Morozov: Like so many, he's amazing at being the bully and falls apart when faced with someone whose physicality matches his own.
But he's facing Raulian Paiva. Paiva has had issues staying on his feet against smaller, less accomplished wrestlers. Morozov's biggest threat in the fight is Paiva's kicks, and against as good a wrestler as he is, that's as much of a weakness as a strength. Sergey Morozov gets a decision.
FLYWEIGHT: Cody Durden (12-4-1) vs JP Buys (9-4)
When last we left Cody Durden: American Wrestler he had said a bunch of racist poo poo about his Chinese opponents before getting flying kneed and guillotined in less than one minute by his Dagestani-British opponent. He's continuing his tour of international opponents to say something silly about, as his draw this time out is the considerably less accomplished "Young Savage" JP Buys out of South Africa, who at 0-2 in the UFC on a Contender Series contract is most likely facing a pink slip if he loses here.
I would love to tell you we're going to get another Cody Durden humiliation festival here, but unfortunately, I don't think so. Buys has seemed outclassed in both of his UFC fights, uncomfortable on the feet and unable to keep from getting grounded. He has a very active sweep game, but it's active primarily because he has to continually try due to his sweeps rarely working. Against a specifically solid wrestler like Durden I think he's getting grounded out. Cody Durden by ground and pound TKO.
BANTAMWEIGHT: Mario Bautista (9-2) vs Brian Kelleher (24-13)
Poor Brian Kelleher. Brian Kelleher has just passed the five-year mark in the UFC and he's pretty firmly enshrined as a low-level bantamweight gatekeeper. In 14 UFC fights he has never strung together more than two wins at a time. He's the kind of choke-snatching wrestleboxer you assume has to be a Team Alpha Male prospect, but he in fact fights out of Farmingdale and is coached by Ryan LaFlare and Dennis Bermudez, which, arguably, may be part of the problem. Mario Bautista isn't exactly new himself--he joined the UFC in January of 2019 and is already on his sixth fight--and he's acquitted himself as a stand and bang soldier who will dutifully sling hooks in the hopes Dana White looks down from his elephant tusk throne and gives him a fraction of a bitcoin.
If Brian Kelleher chooses, he really shouldn't have trouble shooting on Bautista; he likes throwing wild and committing to things like throwing flying knees and following them up with more flying knees, and a competent wrestler could eat him for lunch. Brian Kelleher is not always wise enough to make this choice. I'm still going with Brian Kelleher by decision, but I'm gonna be preemptively wincing.
WOMEN'S STRAWWEIGHT: Jinh Yu Frey (11-6) vs Vanessa Demopoulos (7-4)
We're opening the show on our one and only women's match of the night. Jinh Yu Frey is an embattled all-arounder: Her best offense comes from jabbing and calf-kicking her way into the pocket and using it to either land repeated hooks or lunge into the clinch and go for trips. Vanessa Demopoulos, respectfully, is mostly just a grappler. She'll throw jabs and leg kicks and one-twos but there's very little on them and she's visibly outmatched in almost every striking exchange, so it's fortunate that half the time people jump on her she submits them immediately. Her threat as a grappler is extremely real.
But I think Jinh Yu Frey's experience and composure will keep her from making that mistake. She's more than content to potshot and control the fight on the feet, and there's very little reason to think she won't be able to. Jinh Yu Frey gets a decision.
Prelims for this weirdly late card begin an hour from this post.
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Jun 25, 2022 22:59
