- CarlCX
- Dec 14, 2003
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CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 25: BBC RE-RUNS
 EARLY START WARNING | PRELIMS 9:00 AM PST/12:00 PM EST VIA ESPN+ | MAIN CARD 12:00 PM PST/3:00 PM EST VIA ESPN+ | EARLY START WARNING
Remember four months ago when the UFC put on a card in London and stuffed all their would-be British stars on it and it was a big hit? Yeah, we're doing that again in a nearly literal sense. It's still London, it's still the O2, and eight out of fourteen fights have repeat performers from the first show--and it'd be ten if injuries hadn't scrapped two of them. Fire your prime ministers and import all your good cuisine from India, it's British fights time. Again.
co-main event chris curtis is very funny to me for some reason
MAIN EVENT: HEAVYWEIGHT BEING GENUINELY GOOD IS DEEPLY DISARMING
 HEAVYWEIGHT: Curtis Blaydes (16-3 (1), #4) vs Tom Aspinall (12-2, #6)
Heavyweight is the second-easiest division in mixed martial arts to rag on. (Sorry, Women's Lightweight.) The average heavyweight is visibly less conditioned, less seasoned and less skilled than an equivalently-positioned fighter in any other division. You cannot get out of the top fifteen at heavyweight without finding fighters who visibly gas within three rounds. In some dark corners of the world, Ryan Bader vs Fedor Emelianenko is a heavyweight superfight--in 2022.
All of this is to say: A genuinely great heavyweight fight between two genuinely great heavyweights is a loving rarity.
Curtis Blaydes is a great heavyweight. If anything, his apparent greatness has become an albatross around his neck. He was a juco wrestling champion, he walked onto the UFC after less than two years as a professional fighter, in his eighth-ever fight he outgrappled 66-fight submission machine Aleksei Oleinik, in his ninth he dominated K-1 champion and former world title contender Mark Hunt, and in his tenth he took on one of the most decorated, well-rounded heavyweights in the sport's history in Alistair Overeem and broke his entire face with elbows. His wrestling is dominating and near-inexhaustible in its pressure and his capacity for hitting like a loving truck backs it up.
And for a lot of folks, that still makes him a disappointment, because he should've been a champion by now. Blaydes has the misfortune of sharing an era with two of the biggest power punchers in the history of the sport--Francis Ngannou and Derrick Lewis--and both put big, terrible brick-wall stops to his rise. Ngannou was there to knock Blaydes out in his UFC debut and he did it again in a top ten rematch five years later, and four more fights down the line, Derrick Lewis launched Blaydes into orbit with an uppercut he still has no recollection of. He got bounced from the best of the best twice in close succession in the exact same manner, and that tends to make people rule a fighter out as a lost cause.
Curtis Blaydes is very unhappy about this ruling. Curtis Blaydes took it personally enough that in his last fight against the fast-punching striking stylist Chris Daukaus, whom he could very easily have taken down and destroyed, he made a point out of standing with him and knocking him the gently caress out instead just to remind people he's more than double-legs and ground and pound. Curtis Blaydes has no intentions of being left behind. He wants the goddamn belt.
Unfortunately: So does Tom Aspinall.
Hyped prospects are not a rarity at heavyweight. The division is full of Tanner Bosers and Augusto Sakais that string together impressive wins over the lower echelons only to get tested against top competition, fail, and fall right back down the totem pole. Gathering hype is, comparatively speaking, easy. Justifying it is rare. Tom Aspinall coming into the UFC as a 6-2 Cage Warriors veteran isn't that crazy. Tom Aspinall running up a couple UFC wins by knocking out Jake "I used to be a middleweight" Collier or grounding out the recently fired Alan Baudot isn't particularly crazy.
Tom Aspinall outdoing Frank Mir and Fabricio Werdum by becoming just the second man to ever submit Andrei Arlovski in a fight he was already winning on the fight before deciding to unceremoniously dump and choke him out in seconds? A little crazy. Tom Aspinall entering the top fifteen after shutting off Sergey "jase1 Is My Guardian Angel" Spivak's lights with a single clinch elbow? Marginally crazier.
Tom Aspinall being given the biggest test of his career in a fight with former Bellator champion Alexander Volkov, an incredibly skilled, durable man who's fought and beaten some of the absolute best in the world, and effortlessly chucking him to the floor and breaking his god damned arm in one round? That, my friends, is loving crazy.
There is no question left about Tom Aspinall's status. He's not a hyped prospect on the rise: He's a contender and he has arrived. His takedowns are fast, powerful and unexpected, his striking is fluid and accurate, and his elbows as he exits the clinch are some of the best I've ever seen. He fights with the unmistakable confidence of someone who's finished every fight they've ever won.
The UFC would like him to win this. They by no means dislike Curtis Blaydes, he's a reliable main event talent, but Dana White salivates at the concept of champions for the British market, and Aspinall is the rare fresh face in the title mix at heavyweight that actually justifies their presence. This fight isn't happening in Vegas or the Apex, it's happening at the O2, where twenty thousand superspreaders-in-training will be there to scream Aspinall's name and propel him to victory over the toughest test of his career: A physically dominating wrestler he shouldn't be able to ragdoll at will. This is a legitimate fight, but it's also an attempted coronation.
And as much as I enjoy it when the UFC's best-laid plans go to waste, I think this will work out exactly the way they want it to. Curtis Blaydes is a terrifying fighter, and he has paths to victory here--anyone who wrestles and hits as hard as he does is more than capable of beating anyone on the planet--but while I do think he can ultimately get Aspinall down if he wants him there, Aspinall's showed a quick, tricky sweeping game off his back and the ability to get right back up. Aspinall's speed and accuracy are solid standup advantages against Blaydes' power punching, and his clinch strikes in particular make prolonged grappling on the fence inadvisable.
The x-factor here is time. Tom Aspinall is very, very good, but he's also never had a professional fight reach a ninth minute. He's amazing at being the hammer; he's untested as the nail. If Blaydes can get him down, hold him there and wear on him, it's fully feasible by the third round Aspinall will be a dead fish and Blaydes will be able to do whatever he wants.
But I'm not convinced it'll get there. Tom Aspinall by TKO. But it'd be nice to be wrong, because nothing is more fun than an entire arena of quiet, angry drunk people.
CO-MAIN EVENT: NOW 100% LESS BRITISH
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Jack Hermansson (22-7, #8) vs Chris Curtis (29-8, #9)
The middleweight division is a funny thing. Light-heavyweight, as the heavyweight's division kid brother, is largely populated by bruisers and brawlers who get by on physicality as much if not more than technique; welterweight, as arguably the sport's greatest midpoint of talent and power, produces some of the most well-rounded rankings in mixed martial arts. Middleweight has always been the odd duck, as likely to produce an esoteric martial artist like an Anderson Silva or Israel Adesanya as a scrappy workhorse like Brad Tavares or Tim Kennedy.
One of the artifacts of middleweight's existence as the midpoint of smaller and larger weight divisions its tendency to always, generationally, have someone in the top ten who's just A Guy. No flashy martial arts traditionalism, no bruising physical prowess, no hyperdefined skillset--just a simple, stable all-arounder, a checks-the-boxes fighter who says a quiet prayer to patron saint Evan Tanner before every fight. They rise on toughness and composure and, inevitably, they fall when they run into the freaks of the sport who are just too strong or too good to stop.
Jack Hermansson is A Guy, and he's trying to fend off the inevitable fall part of his story arc. Once upon the far-away time of 2019, Hermansson was a 19-4 star on a four-fight winning streak who'd just choked out the perennially underrated David Branch in a minute and outgrappled jiu-jitsu monster and permanent contender Jacare Souza. He was a single win away from being in the mix for a title match. Unfortunately, he was A Guy breathing the rarefied air of the specialists, and Jared Cannonier ejected him from the top five in violent fashion, and he's never managed to get back. He submitted Kelvin Gastelum but got wrestled to death by Marvin Vettori; he outwrestled Edmen Shahbazyan only to get outworked by 2022's A Guy, Sean Strickland.
There's nothing wrong with Jack Hermansson. He's got solid conventional striking, solid conventional wrestling, solid conventional grappling and a solid, conventional gas tank. He was supposed to have another Guy-off tonight, this time with Britain's greatest conception of A Guy, Darren Till, until Till's knee exploded again. Enter: The Action Man.
No, Chris Curtis doesn't know why he's here, either. On a card built entirely around trying to make British people happy, Chris Curtis, a Cincinnatan who just fought less than a month ago, will be waving awkwardly before trying to punch a Swedish wrestler in the face while the audience waits impolitely for Tom Aspinall to come out. And yet, Curtis is not in any way undeserving of a top-fifteen placement test--arguably more deserving than Till, who has hung onto his ranking thanks to a single split decision victory back in 2019. After years of toiling in the b-leagues, Chris Curtis is having a late-career resurgence and is on a three-fight streak in the UFC, each performance more impressive and unexpected than the last.
And that's good, because those first two victories were unexpected primarily because he was getting the poo poo kicked out of him right up until he won. Phil Hawes was outstriking him 2:1 and on his way to an easy 10-8 round before Curtis caught him with a left hook out of nowhere and obliterated him; Brendan Allen was controlling him with kicks until Curtis found the big right hand and put him down. It's only Curtis's last fight against jiu-jitsu ace Rodolfo Vieira that saw him in the driver's seat for two out of three rounds. This is why people still aren't sure how to rate him: He's tough, powerful and incredibly dangerous, but his tenure thus far is defined by winning by the skin of his teeth.
And he's still a betting favorite. And, with respect to Jack Hermansson, I get why. Curtis may be his lowest-ranked opponent in half a decade, but stylistically, this is a troublesome match for him. Jack's bread-and-butter striking and wrestling approach works well when exploiting fighters who are deficient in one of the two areas, but Chris Curtis is a solid wrestler and physically strong enough to wave off takedown attempts, and Jack's normal one-two-leg-kick weardown combinations are a dangerous tactic against someone like Curtis who has power enough to take his head off with one good connection.
I like Jack Hermansson. I've always been a fan of A Guy fighters. But I think Chris Curtis gets the TKO and difficult questions get asked about Hermansson's future.
MAIN CARD: WHENEVER PADDY'S NOT ON SCREEN, ALL THE OTHER FIGHTERS SHOULD BE ASKING, "WHERE'S PADDY"
LIGHTWEIGHT: Paddy Pimblett (18-3) vs Jordan Leavitt (10-1)
That's right, everyone, it's already time for the Paddy Pimblett show again. Padbert Pamplemousse is the latest and inexplicably most successful attempt by the UFC to desperately make a new Conor McGregor, which is to say taking an international fighter with a pre-existing fanbase, giving them some favorable matchmaking, marketing them to the point of absurdity and then waving their hands and saying "It's just something about him! Padtrick Plumbrog just has that x-factor that makes people care! You can't teach it!" while quietly burying millions of dollars in advertising under the rounding errors in the accounting books that pay for Dana White's exotic skull collection.
I don't even inherently dislike Padme Pimpinela, I just wish they didn't pretend they were powerless to do this to any of the fighters they could and don't care about. Give me an Ilia Topuria megapush, god dammit.
Paddy Pimblett is here. His philosophical stardom is already apparent, but in practice he's still working on securing his spot. He was the Cage Warriors featherweight champion, but was struggling with some championship losses before the UFC picked him up. He made his UFC debut against an Italian brawler in Luigi Vendramini and was getting lit up and nearly finished before he brawled his way to a comeback victory. He was hurt badly by Rodrigo Vargas in his last fight, only for the career striker to inexplicably choose grappling and get choked out in short order. He's looked vulnerable in every fight he's had--which is, arguably, part of his charm.
Jordan Leavitt is, in a feat of matchmaking, simultaneously a deeply favorable draw for Paddy while still being just enough of a challenge to carry credibility. Leavitt hopped into the UFC by way of the Contender Series, the immutable engine that will one day consume us all, and made a quick impression by ending the ill-advised unretirement of Matt Wiman after slamming him on his goddamn head in twenty seconds. "The Monkey King" is, and I mean this as a compliment, a weird loving fighter. He's by no means devoid of standup talent, but instead of jabs and crosses he tends to work in probing teep kicks and knee stomps. He aggressively chains together takedown attempts, but he has a bad tendency to focus on positional riding and give opponents opportunities to sweep him.
He's a talented fighter. He wants to choke Paddy out and twerk over his unconscious body. Paddy Pimblett, while it has been largely forgotten, is a grappling specialist. Jordan Leavitt's at a power disadvantage on the feet, he's going to want the fight on the floor: Whether he can get Paddy down and control him consistently is the central question of the fight.
Paddy Pimblett gets a decision. Clown or no, Pimblett isn't a bad fighter or a bad grappler, and he's the stronger wrestler and striker of the two. I don't think he's in danger of submitting or pounding Leavitt out, but I think he'll be able to neutralize his grappling attacks and land the better strikes between takedowns.
LIGHT-HEAVYWEIGHT: Nikita Krylov (27-9, #11) vs Alexander Gustafsson (18-7, NR)
My friends, I am prepared to be sad.
Nikita Krylov has fallen on hard times. Despite having a sufficiently successful run that the UFC wanted to re-sign him, he opted to leave the company in 2016 so he could go back home, focus on training and improving, and return one day bigger, better, and prepared to be the champion. After two years of toil, he returned in 2018, determined to make his second tenure the one that wrote his name in the stars.
It's not going great. He's 2-4. They're by no means bad losses--there's no shame in getting beat by Jan Błachowicz, Glover Teixeira or Magomed Ankalaev--but there's a little shame in becoming the latest person to beat up Paul Craig, inexplicably dive into his guard and get submitted. Primarily, though, it's about desire. Nikita Krylov wants to be the best. He has the capacity for it: He's got 78" of reach, he's a solid grappler, and he hits hard enough that he has knockout victories at heavyweight. He just can't keep his poo poo together.
And he's fighting maybe the living icon of that self-same problem, Alexander Gustafsson. For a solid five years, Alexander Gustafsson was the consensus #2 light-heavyweight in the world, and, many argued, deserved to be #1. A 6'5" kickboxer with some of the smoothest hands in the division, Gus ran up a 15-1 record en route to his shot at world champion Jon Jones--pre-cocaine, pre-drama, pre-falloff Jon Jones--and took him to his limit and an extremely close decision much of the world still thinks he should have won. It was a devastating loss, but it massively raised his stock: He fought the best fighter in the world as a +600 underdog and very nearly took him out.
This is traditionally where I say "and then he fell apart," but the thing is, he didn't. He got knocked out by Anthony Johnson, but a lot of people did. He took Daniel Cormier to an even closer decision and nearly knocked him cold in the process. He dominated future champion Jan Błachowicz and obliterated the man who'd ultimately take the belt from him, Glover Teixeira. He was still the second-best, and he was ready for his long-sought rematch with Jon Jones, and this time, he wasn't going to leave it in the hands of the judges.
And he didn't. He instead came in looking gunshy and scared and got controlled and ultimately knocked out in three rounds. The "and then he fell apart" part had apparently happened offscreen somewhere, because the Alexander Gustafsson who fought Jon Jones in 2018 looked nothing like he had in any fight in his career to that point. Six months later he got handled and choked out by Anthony Smith and retired; a year later he came out of retirement as a heavyweight, inexplicably decided to grapple with Fabricio Werdum, got submitted in seconds and immediately re-retired.
I think, as a general rule, fighters should stay retired. For every Randy Couture that comes out of retirement to success and acclaim there are a thousand Chuck Liddells who injure their bodies and destroy their legacies. Fighting is both incredibly difficult and incredibly cruel, and when some part of your brain finally comes screaming back to sense and tells you to stop, not only do you owe it to your health to listen as a general concept, you very, very rarely get back to that confident, foolhardy place of prior ignorance that leads to combat sports success. Very few people come back from retirement anything but diminished. Very rarely do comebacks end happily. Very rarely does the old guard do anything but get consumed by the active and hungry.
So anyway, Alexander Gustafsson wins a decision.
Look: Randy Couture didn't just succeed because he was good, he succeeded because he correctly identified the heavyweight division to which he was returning was bad. Alexander Gustafsson beat two of the last three light-heavyweight champions, and he fuckin' crushed the last one, who took the new champion to his absolute limit. Gus's skillset is extremely vital in the 2022 era of light-heavyweight. He could easily be top five. He could potentially be a champion. It's not a question of skill potential, it's a question of if you believe he still has it.
I am choosing to believe.
But I am prepared to be sad.
WOMEN'S FLYWEIGHT: Molly McCann (12-4) vs Hannah Goldy (6-2)
Boy, that was a lot. Don't worry, we're done being verbose for the card, it's all downhill from here.
Molly McCann! I liked Meatball a lot more when I started working on this breakdown at the outset of this week, and then she decided to join the 'fighter pay is great and I am very happy' chorus of Dana White's favored guests and I cannot help feeling disappointed. McCann's fun as hell to watch, a scrappy pressure fighter whose style centers entirely around using footwork and sheer volume to trap opponents against the cage so she can sling rights hands into their face and ribs until they fall over, with the occasional trip takedown or slam just to spice things up.
And she's good at it. She, in fact, has yet to meet anyone who can match her in sheer striking aggression. Which is why all of her losses come instead from superior grapplers dragging her to the floor and taking her apart somewhere she cannot stop them. Her ability to bully fighters in the clinch is genuinely impressive and has paid dividends, as seen in her knockout-of-the-year contender spinning elbow KO her last time out, but her trouble with ground control is an albatross around her neck.
Which is probably why the UFC has seen fit to have her fight Hannah Goldy, who conveniently was dominated last year by Diana Belbiţă, whom McCann thrashed. Goldy is, in fact, 1-2 in the UFC, her one win coming against the recently fired, 4-5 Emily Whitmire. Oh, and also, she lost to Diana one weight class down from here. Oh, and the loss was because she couldn't deal with Diana's pressure striking or her combinations and got repeatedly lit up in the pocket up against the cage.
Wait, that's how she lost her other fight, too? Getting picked apart by a superior, higher-pressure striker just outside of her range?
Wow. How crazy. You'd almost think they set that up on purpose.
Molly McCann by TKO. I'd probably think the UFC was great, too.
LIGHT-HEAVYWEIGHT: Paul Craig (16-4-1, #8) vs Volkan Oezdemir (17-6, #9)
Look, I'm not going to waste your time.
Paul "Bearjew" Craig is a supremely awkward fighter who gets constantly hurt on the feet by superior strikers and gets his face half-caved in with ground and pound in goddamn near every fight he has. He's kind of slow and loping and uncoordinated with his standup, and he knows it, because his striking attacks are formulated specifically to end with him on the ground. He spams front kicks he knows can be easily caught, he hangs out in clinch range with his weight on people to try to get them to take him down, he is a 205-pound fighter who straight up pulled guard and willingly threw himself into a defensive position in his last two fights. He does not want to stand with you.
Volkan Oezdemir does. "No Time" earned his nickname by flatlining two top ten fighters in twenty seconds apiece, which is terrifying not just for its brutal efficiency, but for the way he generated that knockout power in just a few inches of space. Unfortunately: That was also half a decade ago. Over the ensuing five years he's gone 2-5, and, realistically, that would be 1-6 were it not for a deeply questionable split decision over Aleksandar Rakić. He's still fast and powerful, but his skills just don't stand out as well in a division with wildmen like Jiří Procházka or all-around bruisers like Magomed Ankalaev. His evolution as a martial artist has been slow, and when everyone knows you have murder hands, they figure out how to avoid them.
But that shouldn't matter here. Paul Craig is a slow, awkward striker who tends to be both hittable and droppable. Volkan Oezdemir is a gifted striker with tons of stopping power who's dropped much stiffer challenges. Paul Craig has a highlight reel a half-dozen fights long of competitors inexplicably choosing to enter his guard, whether from grappling overconfidence or the sense they had Craig on the ropes, and getting submitted within seconds for their hubris. This is an immeasurably winnable fight for Volkan Oezdemir. All he has to do is the thing he's already very good at, and all he has to not do is the thing multiple fighters have been caught on tape doing. There is absolutely no reason for Volkan Oezdemir to not win this fight by simply stinging Craig with punches and staunchly not engaging with him in any sort of grappling context.
Paul Craig wins by submission after Volkan Oezdemir inexplicably engages him in some sort of grappling context.
PRELIMS: JAIKIESE
LIGHTWEIGHT: Mason Jones (11-1 (1)) vs Ľudovít Klein (18-4)
This fight got added to this card on Monday. Klein was supposed to be fighting Ignacio Bahamondes at UFC 277, but visa issues pulled Bahamondes from the card, and I guess accepting a last-minute fight a week ahead of time is better than not fighting at all.
Mason "The Dragon" Jones was the simultaneous lightweight and welterweight champion of Cage Warriors before, like all of their champions, he dropped them like hot rocks to join the UFC. As an undefeated Welsh double champion he had no small amount of hype, which made it extra funny when he was immediately defeated by supernerd Mike "Beast Boy" Davis and followed it by nearly blinding Alan Patrick with an eyepoke and only got on the winner's board in his third attempt by narrowly decisioning David Onama, who took the fight six days before the card. All of this is a touch unfair to him--he's a talented if brawly fighter with some solid takedowns in his back pocket--but he has trouble maintaining composure enough to keep his gameplans steady.
Ľudovít Klein, by contrast, is all gameplans. He's a technical striker who likes to pick people apart at range and will, every once in awhile, work dumping double-leg takedowns just to keep his opponents guessing, but his best work comes on the feet. If there's a patch on him, it's sometimes being TOO adherent to plan--fighters like Mike Trizano were able to catch onto his rhythm and disrupt it, and his inability to adjust and improvise cost him.
I think it'll be a problem for him here, too. Klein's been preparing for a 6'3" distance striker, he has to very abruptly adjust to a 5'10" pressure fighter and that's a tough matchup for him even ideally. Mason Jones gets the decision.
LIGHTWEIGHT: Marc Diakiese (15-5) vs Damir Hadžović (14-6)
Marc Diakiese is in an interesting position. He's fended off potential release twice now, having stopped his most recent losing skid by knocking off Viacheslav Borschchev back in March, but most interestingly, he defeated the dangerous kickboxer and saved his job by foregoing his own traditional striking strengths and wrestling him to death. The UFC clearly want to see if he'll do it again: Damir Hadžović, very sensitively nicknamed "The Bosnian Bomber," is so thoroughly dedicated to the art of the brawl that he was once taken down and nearly submitted by Yancy goddamn Medeiros, who never met a punching war he didn't love. Hadžović is tough as poo poo and likes nothing more than to swing every limb he has, but his knockout power is a bit lacking--he's more overwhelming than devastating.
That said, this might get forced to the feet. Damir isn't a great wrestler, but his defense is decent. Diakiese is going to have to mix up his game to compete. Ultimately, I'm still favoring Marc Diakiese by decision based on varying up his attacks, but it won't be as easy as his last outing.
FEATHERWEIGHT: Nathaniel Wood (17-5) vs Charles Rosa (14-7)
Nathaniel Wood was a prospect once, man. He signed with the UFC as the 13-3 bantamweight champion of Cage Warriors and immediately rifled off three straight UFC wins, each impression, each by submission. And then John Dodson knocked him out, and then he struggled with John Castañeda, and then he got outfought by Casey Kenney, and then he got repeatedly scratched from fights for two god damned years. He hasn't had a match since 2020, he turns 29 next month and thus missed a chunk of his prime, and he's pissed. Charles Rosa has been a reliable UFC journeyman since 2014: Skilled enough to gatekeep people who don't belong in the UFC, low enough on the totem pole that in almost eight years he hasn't strung together two back to back wins. He is, respectfully, a test from the organization to see if Wood still has it.
And he should. Nathaniel Wood's success comes from the kind of varied assault that historically leaves Rosa unable to comfortably set up a counterattack. He's tough as hell to finish, so I doubt he'll get the stoppage, but Nathaniel Wood should comfortably get a decision. If he can't, there are some unfortunate questions to ask about his future at this level.
FEATHERWEIGHT: Makwan Amirkhani (17-7) vs Jonathan Pearce (12-4)
Mister goddamn Finland! Last March Makwan became Britain's greatest enemy as, in one of those moments of horribly dark comedy that can only come from our godawful sport, he almost instantaneously choked out British wrestler Mike Grundy in front of not just his countrymen but his terminally ill father, who was watching his son compete in the UFC in person for the first time. This should, with any hope, be a deeply entertaining grappling match: Amirkhani and Jonathan Pearce are both wild, scrambly grapplers, with Makwan favoring a slightly more fluid approach that allows him to set up chokes and "JSP" (ugh) centering around a wrestling-heavy assault that lets him soften his opponents with ground and pound and force them down the positional ladder until they wilt.
I think Amirkhani's going to be trouble for him, though. We've seen Pearce struggle with sweep-heavy fighters, and it's hard to find someone better at scrambling and capitalizing on opportunities. Makwan Amirkhani winds up winning, as I'm not sure either of them will be able to keep the other down at length and Amirkhani will be landing the better strikes between rounds of grappling.
FLYWEIGHT: Muhammad Mokaev (7-0 (1)) vs Charles Johnson (11-2)
Last time out, Muhammad Mokaev became one of my favorite new UFC signees by meeting racist jackass Cody Durden and choking him out in one minute. A lot of people much smarter than I am had their eyes on him for quite some time--he pulled a Vasyl Lomachenko and spent years as an amateur amassing a hilarious 22-0 record before turning pro--but blowing out a tough guy like Durden that quickly got him a lot of attention. He's incredibly fast, his wrestling and grappling are hyper-aggressive, and, hell, how many UFC fighters can say their very first strike in the organization was a completely successful flying knee? Charles "InnerG" Johnson is in no way a slouch, himself: He's LFA's flyweight champion, he's on a five-fight winning streak that includes some real tough guys, he's got a fantastic gas tank and he's willing to punch people for five rounds if need be.
But he's kind of slow on the defense, and he kind of gets taken down a lot, and he's basically here to get smashed. Muhammad Mokaev by submission. It'd be a bigger upset than the +350ish odds look if he took Mokaev out.
LIGHTWEIGHT: Jai Herbert (11-4) vs Kyle Nelson (13-4)
You know all of those times I typed 'hyped Cage Warriors champion comes to UFC, gets repeatedly thrashed'? Yeah. The Black Country Banger, Jai Herbert, was the lightweight champion at Cage Warriors, left the org to come to the UFC and is now 1-3, having been knocked out twice and choked out once. He had a featured spot on the main card back in March, but unfortunately, said spot saw him get folded in half by an Ilia Topuria right hook. On one hand, Ilia Topuria is pegged by many as a future champion; on the other, if you're a 6'1" lightweight getting knocked out by 5'7" featherweights, you may be in trouble. The UFC's giving him another crack at the featherweight-as-lightweight bat: Kyle Nelson is also 1-3 in the UFC, has also been knocked out twice and choked out once, and also likes to crash into the pocket to work takedowns behind big right hands. He's also been gone for two years, meaning Jai Herbert's entire UFC career fits almost perfectly into the same since last we saw him.
This should be an eminently winnable fight for Herbert. Nelson isn't a great wrestler and he tends to make his offense work by taking shots on the way in, which is a very poor idea here. It's been two years, so maybe he's been quietly improving this whole time, but barring that, Jai Herbert should get a KO.
WOMEN'S FLYWEIGHT: Mandy Böhm (7-1 (1)) vs Victoria Leonardo (8-5)
Mandy Böhm has had a rough time getting on television. The women's flyweight champion of Quebec's TKO, despite being a German from Germany, made her major-promotion debut at Bellator Milan, where she defeated Griet "Painapple" Eeckhout, and if you think I included this whole anecdote just to write down that name, you know me well. Then she was supposed to go back to the German scene, but she had to pull out to join the UFC and fight Taila Santos, except the entire fight night got scrapped and rescheduled, and then she got rebooked along with it for a month later but Santos pulled out and she was rebooked against Ariane Lipski, and then that, too, got rescheduled another two weeks out and she finally fought and got the crap kicked out of her, and has been on the shelf ever since. 7-0 and a promising international prospect with some fun fights and good pressure assaults two years ago; unseen save one loss and at the back of the line now. The sport is cruel.
Victoria "Fury" Leonardo is also present. She's 0-2 in the UFC, she's 2-2 in Invicta, she's...okay? Her wrestling isn't great, her striking is visibly uncomfortable and a lot of her career success comes from forcing and capitalizing on scrambles, which is an unfortunate part of why it has failed her at this level of competition. Mandy Böhm is a much more reasonable level of competition for her, but it's still hard not to see her getting overwhelmed. Mandy Böhm by decision.
WELTERWEIGHT: Cláudio Silva (14-3) vs Nicolas Dalby (16-3-1 (1))
Both of these guys have had weird loving careers. Leon Edwards, who is about to fight for the welterweight championship of the world, has only two UFC losses in his career: Kamaru Usman and Cláudio Silva. Silva's combination of deceptively dangerous kicks and violent jiu-jitsu led him to a five-fight win streak at the perennially difficult welterweight division, and it ended at the hands of that hot young prospect the half-retired James Krause, followed up by a soul-crushing loss at the hands of the inevitable Court McGee. Five quality wins, two losses, and he is curtain-jerking against "Danish Dynamite" Nicolas Dalby. Dalby was, say it with me, a Cage Warriors champion, but his UFC tenure ended in an unfortunate 1-2-1 record that saw him topped by luminaries like Peter Sobotta. He went back to Cage Warriors, he became the champion again, and he returned to the UFC in 2019--where he is now 2-1 (1), having himself just been outworked by a gritty veteran in Tim Means.
This should be a really solid curtain-jerker. Both fighters are good everywhere, both fighters are tough as nails, both are in deeply unfortunate professional positions they need to dig themselves out of. And I think Nicolas Dalby will do a better job of it and get a decision. On paper I think Cláudio is the better-rounded fighter, but his last couple of fights have made him seem like he's turned a corner into being done--and with his 40th birthday coming in September, it might just be about time.
The fights have already started and Silva/Dalby is over because for the first time in three years my dogs did not wake me up at six in the morning.
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Jul 23, 2022 17:27
