- CarlCX
- Dec 14, 2003
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CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 30: KICKING SHOES VS DRINKING SHOES
 EARLY START TIME 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 TIME WARNING
This random Parisian fight night, believe it or not, has two matchups on it to determine the #1 contender in each respective division. Except only one of them is likely to determine a title challenger. And the rest of it is silly, and less than a week before fight night 1/3 of the card hadn't been officially announced. It's complicated, but gently caress it, it's France.
they shuffled this thing three times and it was driving me insane
MAIN EVENT: THE REVENGE OF THE TANK ABBOTT CURSE
HEAVYWEIGHT: Ciryl Gane (10-1, #1) vs Tai Tuivasa (14-3, #3)
Six months ago, I told the world about the Tank Abbott curse.
Tai Tuivasa slew Derrick Lewis that night and took Tank Abbott's thorny crown from his corpse. Now, one fighter later, Tai Abbott is called upon to wage the latest chapter in the greatest holy war mixed martial arts knows: Brave, brawny brawlers vs thoughtful, technical tacticians. Up for grabs: The very soul of heavyweight.
Representing the new breed of athletic, technical heavyweights: Ciryl "Bon Gamin" Gane. Gane came into mixed martial arts with some major bonafides to his name, having come up in French Muay Thai scene, which, despite the seeming clash of national cultures, is actually one of the major hotbeds of talent in the sport. There are French Muay Thai fighters who've defeated kickboxing legends like Hesdy Gerges, Rico Verhoeven and Ismael Londt; Ciryl Gane went a perfect 13-0 in that scene and knocked out nine of those opponents in the process. His penultimate kickboxing fight was against the man who held every relevant international superheavyweight Muay Thai championship for three straight years. Gane dominated him. When he retired from kickboxing in 2018 to pursue mixed martial arts, there were equal parts hype and skepticism surrounding him--heavyweight kickboxers are impressive and terrifying, but MMA history is writ large with striking specialists who couldn't make the jump to a broader skillset.
Ciryl Gane's MMA debut came less than two months after his final Muay Thai fight. He made a point out of finishing it by shooting a power double, battering "Bloody" Bobby Sullivan with a series of elbows, and ultimately choking him out with a guillotine. It was a very intentional statement.
Within ten months he was the heavyweight champion of Canada's TKO, and within one year, at just 3-0, he was in the UFC. Gane presented a threat the heavyweight division hadn't seen before: A superlatively skilled striker with 81" of reach and a massive 6'5" frame who could move like a middleweight. It wasn't enough that he could outstrike his opponents, he was so defensively sound that at the highest levels of competition, fighting some of the best strikers in the sport, he was nearly untouchable. In his first five UFC fights, which included victories over fellow kickboxing champion Jairzinho Rozenstruik and former UFC champion Junior dos Santos, Gane outstruck his opponents by a combined 373 to 141--and he'd even submitted two of them just to prove that he could. By 2021 he was 9-0 and the UFC's contractual issues with their champion Francis Ngannou led them to make an extremely unnecessary interim heavyweight championship that would be decided in a fight between Gane, heavyweight's best striker, and Derrick Lewis, heavyweight's best knockout artist. It wound up being the most one-sided fight of Gane's career: He outstruck Lewis 112-16, picked him apart with almost no effort and finished him in three rounds. However unfair its creation, he was the interim champion of the world, and a unification showdown was inevitable.
No one really knew what to expect from Ngannou/Gane. On one hand, Francis Ngannou was one of the most terrifying punchers the sport had ever seen, but his form was sometimes awkward and sloppy and exploitable; on the other, Ciryl Gane was a technical wizard, but he worked in volume and time rather than power, and that left numerous opportunities for Ngannou to catch him. Theories flew wildly about whose technique was a better match for the other. All of them were interesting; all of them were wrong. This is heavyweight combat sports, and heavyweight combat sports, above all, run on comedy. The fight was called correctly not by the analysts, but the shitposters: After two rounds of getting steadily outstruck, Francis Ngannou, a man with one takedown in thirteen UFC bouts, abruptly decided he was a wrestler and used his incredible strength to just heave Gane around like a sack of potatoes for the rest of the fight. It was the first loss of Gane's career--not just in mixed martial arts but in combat sports, period. Technique had been ambushed by technique.
Representing the old ways of wild, untamed brawling: Tai "Bam Bam" Tuivasa. Tuivasa, too, comes from a dual-sport background, but instead of kickboxing it was rugby, which isn't exactly NOT a combat sport, I guess. He was good, too: A big, athletic 6'2" wrecking ball who got easily signed by the Sydney Roosters, one of the most prominent national rugby teams in his native Australia. In another life, Tai Tuivasa might've had a long, successful career working his way up to the national team. In ours, he quit before he could make a name for himself. He bristled under the coaching, he missed his home, and his unhappiness had led to a gambling habit that was losing him tens of thousands of dollars. Besides which, he reasoned, his favorite part was always the fighting anyway.
Tai was an instant success in Australia's heavyweight scene--which is funny, because he abandoned it immediately. He quit MMA just four months after he started, going fulltime into training as a boxer instead, intent on fighting in the local Frank Bianco Cup--an eight-man, one-night boxing tournament that served as a launchpad for Australian boxers and ultimately helped create multiple national and international champions. Tai made a good showing for himself, ultimately reaching the finals of both the 2014 and 2016 cups, but was outfought in each. Tai had the power, the will and the chin, but the rigidity of boxing and its evasive defensive style put a ceiling on his success. He needed small gloves. He needed knees. He needed violence.
Within a year of his return to mixed martial arts Tai was the heavyweight champion of Australia, and within a year of that fight he'd tossed the belt and gone off to pursue destiny in the UFC. He was an immediate sensation, scoring the rare heavyweight flying knee knockout in his debut, and in half a year he was 3-0 in the UFC and had just notched his biggest win by defeating former champion Andrei Arlovski--but he was displeased, as it was the first time he'd ever failed to finish an opponent. It, unfortunately, portended bad things. After a perfect 9-0 start to his mixed martial arts career Tai dropped his next three straight fights, getting TKOed by former champion Junior dos Santos in one, taken to the limit by Blagoy Ivanov in the second and choked out by Sergei Spivak in the third. Tai Tuivasa, a rising star, was suddenly on the verge of being fired.
Two things happened to change his fortunes. For one: He went back to aggressively knocking people the gently caress out. For two: The UFC gave him, respectfully, some aggressively less painful competition. A returning Stefan Struve, who retired immediately after the fight. Harry Hunsucker, one of the statistically worst fighters in UFC history. Greg Hardy, a Dana White pet project who had proven less fruitful than hoped and was so lacking in fight IQ that he had a win scrubbed from the records for using an inhaler in mid-match. Augusto Sakai, a once-promising prospect who was coming off two straight knockout losses. The UFC had decided Tai was marketable: A fun heavyweight brawler who never had a boring fight and had made a trademark out of his adorably disgusting habit of drinking beer out of a shoe after every victory. (Some people try to call him Shoeyvasa; do not trust any of them in a dark room.) Matching him with Derrick Lewis was a no-brainer, and Tuivasa knocking him out in two rounds was heralded as the passing of a torch. The brawler who just two years prior looked possibly done with the sport was suddenly the #3 heavyweight in the world.
And thus, as somehow always happens, we have the elemental heavyweight showdown. The adroit technician whose educated feet and thoughtful gameplanning brought him mass success; the wild-eyed beer-belly brawler whose reckless abandon made him a star. As it has always been, so it shall always be. Tradition dictates the brawler takes a fall in the end, but Ciryl Gane is coming off the first loss of his career and Tuivasa has all of the momentum behind him. Can it carry him into upsetting a +400 underdog betting line and felling destiny itself? Is Tai Tuivasa the man to finally break the Tank Abbott curse?
Here's the thing: Ciryl Gane is hard to hit. Like, really hard to hit. Tai Tuivasa...is not. It is an absolutely true statement that Tai is on a five-knockout streak: It is an equally true statement that he came dangerously close to losing several of those fights. Stefan Struve kicked him in the face repeatedly. Greg Hardy almost knocked him out. Derrick Lewis almost knocked him out. Harry Hunsucker only landed two strikes in the forty-nine seconds their fight lasted, and one of those two was somehow still a right hand that spun Tai's head around. When Tai Tuivasa fought Derrick Lewis, he was nearly finished by him twice and won by punching fearlessly through a brawl and just barely managing to come out on top. When Ciryl Gane fought Derrick Lewis, he absorbed five strikes per round and made him look like an amateur.
I like Tai Tuivasa. He's a lot of fun to watch. But 'fun' is a historically tragic fighting style. Fun gets you chopped up by superior strikers with a half-foot reach advantage. Fun, like Tank Abbott, doesn't win championships. If Tai can catch up to Ciryl, pin him on the fence and force him to fight in the pocket he has a chance, but I'm not sure Ciryl will give it to him; the leg kicks and elbows that give Tai an edge over other brawlers are a liability against a longer, faster kicker like Gane.
And five rounds is a long time to be fun, especially for a fighter who's only been to decision twice in his life. Over twenty-five minutes those body kicks are going to add up, and eventually, one of them is going to get the job done. Ciryl Gane by TKO.
CO-MAIN EVENT: PRINCE OF ASHES
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Robert Whittaker (23-6, #1) vs Marvin Vettori (18-5-1, #2)
There is a latent tragedy in fighting to be second best.
Robert Whittaker is doomed to never get the credit he deserves. Middleweight was one of the UFC's premier divisions thanks to the legendary, 2,457-day championship reign of Anderson Silva, but the division descended into chaos after he fell. Chris Weidman held the belt, but could only manage to fight through injuries once a year. Luke Rockhold took his title, but fell immediately to Michael Bisping. Bisping ignored every real contender in the division in favor of a rematch with the retiring Dan Henderson. For one particularly surreal month in 2017, Georges St-Pierre was the middleweight champion of the world. No one was sure who the champion was. But everyone who paid attention knew who the best was.
Robert Whittaker was the king of the lost years of middleweight. The division during the chaos years was a shark tank of dangerous contenders; Robert Whittaker defeated all of them. Uriah Hall, Rafael Natal, Derek Brunson, Jacaré Souza, Jared Cannonier, Kelvin Gastelum: Whittaker, a man who'd once washed out of the welterweight division 15 pounds below, turned into a 185-pound wrecking machine and beat them all. Fast, powerful, accurate hands, murderous killer-instinct combinations and deceptively skillful wrestling tied his style together and made him a nightmare for everyone he faced.
Everyone, that is, except Israel Adesanya. Adesanya ended Whittaker's reign and became the first man to knock him out in half a decade. Whittaker earned his way back to a rematch in February of 2022, and he turned out an extremely close performance that a few media outlets thought he'd won, but the consensus, and unanimous, decision went to Adesanya. Robert Whittaker was the best fighter out of a lost generation, a fighter who cleaned multiple top contenders out of a division and held its championship for two and a half years, and thanks to bad scheduling and Yoel Romero missing weight, he doesn't even have a title defense to his name.
Marvin "The Italian Dream" Vettori is a considerably different story. Vettori came out of the Italian fight scene, shockingly, as one of the legions of people inspired to pursue mixed martial arts thanks to the pageantry and opulence of Pride FC. He cross-trained exhaustively, made his debut at 19, and immediately lost. Over the next two years he'd fight his way up the regional ranks in England, Italy and Croatia alike and get his shot at a regional welterweight championship--and immediately lose again. Fortunately, when he returned home, he happened to be at the right place and time for the launch of what would become Italy's biggest MMA promotion, Venator FC, and was at the right place and time to win Venator's welterweight championship, launching him as Italy's biggest MMA star.
Or it would have had he not been stripped of the belt one fight later after missing weight by six pounds.
This began the pattern of absolute loving weirdness that defined Marvin Vettori's career. He came to the UFC within a year and almost immediately hit the skids, outgrappled by a man named Shoeface, fought to a draw by future PFL finalist Omari Akhmedov, and beaten in a clear decision that was somehow rendered a split by the just-debuted Israel Adesanya. Vettori's style was as straightforward as it was effective: He wanted to march across the cage, wing punches to force opponents into the fence, take them down and grind them into paste. Against grapplers like Shoeface or strikers like Adesanya, this was a liability, but for most of the division, it was perfectly acceptable--and it led to a five-fight win streak and a title rematch with newly-crowned kingpin Adesanya, which Vettori cited as revenge for the split decision he felt he should have won.
It was, to be blunt, a shitshow. From blustering, comically nonsensical trash talk to ambushing the champion in hotel lobbies to showing up to film his official hype packages with his shorts on backwards, Marvin Vettori seemed woefully out of his depth, and that proved a bellwether for their fight. The champion outstruck him in every round, defended 10 of his 14 takedown attempts and won a shutout decision that made it clear they were at different levels--clear, that is, to everyone but Marvin Vettori, who adopted the Diaz strategy of claiming he won the fight, judges were stupid, and moreover, his opponent had committed the cardinal sin of, quote, "fighting like a bitch." He hoped a fight with fellow Adesanya victim Paulo Costa would get him back into contendership, but Costa missed weight so badly it became more visible than the actual contendership stakes of their fight itself.
And thus, we wind up at the start of the circle. Whittaker and Vettori are two of the undisputed top contenders of the weight class. They also have no chance of getting a title shot by beating one another. Both men have now lost to the champion twice, and getting a third bite at the apple is very, very difficult to talk a promoter into unless you're willing to engage in acts of turbo-racism or you happen to have an entire country's fanbase behind you. So if this fight is for pride more than position, who wins?
On paper, Robert Whittaker is a terrible match for Marvin Vettori. He's just as fast, he's considerably more powerful and he's a better wrestler, which takes away the constant double-leg threat that lets Vettori lower his opponents' guard and work freely with his hands. Here's the thing that gives me pause: It's a three-round fight. Rob likes to stick and move, but Vettori likes to press opponents right back into the fence and work them, and he's proven he has the gas tank to do it for five rounds without fatiguing. In a three-round battle, it's very possible that he could simply deny Rob's gameplan and grate him against the fence for fifteen minutes.
At the end of the day, I'm still picking Robert Whittaker by unanimous decision. But there's absolutely a path to victory for Vettori here, and it could be a lot closer than most folks think.
MAIN CARD: MIRROR MATCH
 MIDDLEWEIGHT: Alessio Di Chirico (13-6) vs Roman Kopylov (8-2)
Yeah, things on this card go downhill real fast after the top two. International fight nights, baby! Alessio Di Chirico is the other middleweight fighting pride of Italy, and a cautionary tale about regional vs international competition: He joined the UFC in 2016 as an undefeated 8-0 prospect and has gone 4-6 with the organization, and two of those wins were split decisions, and he probably should've lost one of them. He would almost certainly have been cut last year had he not shocked the UFC by knocking out viral sensation Joaquin Buckley with a headkick knockout, and would still be riding the high from that upset victory had he not, himself, been headkicked and knocked out in his next fight. Di Chirico's not a bad fighter by any means, he just suffers from being very straightforward in his approach: He wants to kick your legs and he wants to kick your head, and he will walk towards you while attempting to do either, and if you can keep him from doing either, he will start to make mistakes.
The UFC has seen fit to match him with his Mirror Universe counterpart. Roman Kopylov was an undefeated 7-0 star of the Russian scene when he joined the UFC in 2019, a knockout artist who'd stopped all but his very first fight and faced every opponent in his career at a massive experience disadvantage--his third professional fight came against Artem Shokalo, who was making his 42nd professional appearance--and held a regional middleweight championship before taking off for the UFC where he was, immediately, defeated. Karl Roberson ultimately outstruck and submitted him, and then COVID, injuries and visa issues gave Kopylov two full years to stew over the loss before he fought again. This time it was against fellow Russian star Albert "Machete" Duraev--and he was, once again, outstruck. This has been the patch on Roman Kopylov's style: It, too, becomes predictable. He wants to hit you with hooks and he wants to sneak kicks in when you give him an opportunity; at range, he has trouble.
But the bigger concern is cardio. The Duraev fight was by no means easy, Kopylov was pressured all fight, but by the third round he was so tired he couldn't keep his mouthpiece in. Kopylov and Di Chirico are about equal in terms of striking and brawling acumen, and both are more than capable of shutting the other off, but the longer the fight goes, the more it tilts in Di Chirico's favor. That said, it should be a wild loving fight while it lasts. Alessio Di Chirico by decision.
LIGHTWEIGHT: Nasrat Haqparast (13-5) vs John Makdessi (18-7)
Nasrat Haqparast is at best fighting to stave off becoming a gatekeeper and at worst fighting to keep his job. He's good--very good, even--but his willingness to let opponents lead the dance in his fights and his difficulty deviating from his close-and-punch gameplan have gotten him continually bounced from the upper echelons of the lightweight division. It was one thing when he was getting outgrappled by Marcin Held or outpunched by Drew Dober; his last two fights, both losses to Dan Hooker and Bobby Green, were thorough and total shut-outs that saw him getting picked apart and unable to mount any meaningful returns against the superior strikers.
And that, presumably, is why he's fighting John Makdessi, a fighter who's been in the UFC so long his highlight reel is sepia-toned. Are you an old enough UFC fan to remember when Makdessi got famous for that one perfect spinning backfist knockout? Yeah? That was eleven years ago. The guy he did it to has been retired for more than a decade. John Makdessi has defeated 18 men in his mixed martial arts career: 12 of them are now retired. You might think I am saying this to mock Makdessi: I assure you, I mean the precise opposite. John Makdessi turned 37 this year, he's been fighting professionally for almost twenty years, and he has stayed somehow relevant for that entire run. In his last fight he was pitted against Ignacio Bahamondes, a kickboxing and MMA champion with half a foot of height, 8" of reach and 12 less years on his side, and Makdessi outstruck him and nearly knocked him out twice.
This is absolutely a test for Nasrat Haqparast. He's knocked on the door twice and been turned away both times, and now, on the first two-fight skid of his life, he has to defend his place against one of the oldest, canniest veterans in the lightweight division. It's not an easy task. Haqparast has conditioning and toughness on his side, and he could drown Makdessi in volume given a chance, but his chin has been cracked by powerful counterstrikers before, and Makdessi is as dangerous on the counter as anybody. Nasrat's straightforward style is going to be a liability against someone as adept at finding holes as Makdessi, and while it's slightly more hunch-based than I tend to like, I'm going with my gut. John Makdessi by TKO.
FEATHERWEIGHT: William Gomis (10-2) vs Jarno Errens (13-3-1)
It seems like there's a new tradition of the UFC holding one debuting prospect fight on the main card, and I am here for it. William "Jaguar" Gomis has appeared on a couple prospects-to-watch lists over the last couple years as a top talent out of France, and the inclusion is deserved. Aside from just being a multi-regional champion at featherweight, and aside from being on a nine-fight win streak, Gomis has a style you don't often see outside the long-forgotten king of sports, Shootboxing. (For the youngsters in the audience: Long-pants kickboxing where grappling and submissions were only allowable from a standing position.) He works in fast, kick-heavy attacks and will often chain them together off opposite feet, and when opponents close into range he'll rush into clinch grappling and immediately attempt to circle into back control rather than establish a neutral position. It's a weird, tricky style.
Jarno Errens is a much more orthodox threat. A kickboxer out of the Netherlands and a student of the last decade's Dutch champion Ben Boekee, Errens is closing in on his eighth year of fighting and comes into the fight as the one-time featherweight champion of Belgium's now-defunct STRENGTH AND HONOUR CHAMPIONSHIP, but he failed to capture regional titles on two occasions in his primary stomping grounds in Germany. This is largely because of the kryptonite of every striking specialist: Filthy, dirty wrestling. Errens has very good timing on his intercepting strikes and his footwork, while it tends to fall into basic circling, is at least fast, but strong wrestlers have been the bane of his career, not just in their ability to put him on his back, but in making him too afraid of defending the inevitable shot to let his strikes flow freely.
Not that it should be a problem, here. This is almost assuredly staying on the feet, which is almost assuredly why the UFC booked it in the first place. As with so many regional debut fights, it's also an unknown quantity. Both fighters are the stiffest test the other will ever have faced. While I think Gomis and his fluid style is a solid counter for Errens and his orthodox footwork, it's also entirely feasible that Errens could catch him with leg kicks coming in and slow him down enough that it stops mattering. It's a coinflip, but my coin comes up William Gomis by decision.
FEATHERWEIGHT: Charles Jourdain (13-5-1) vs Nathaniel Wood (18-5)
Charles Jourdain tries so goddamn hard, man. The Quebecer fights his rear end off and has a memorable performance every time he fights, but unfortunately, they just don't tend to go his way. It took seven UFC bouts just to string two wins together, and then that record, too, was broken by Shane Burgos, who squeaked past him in a fight so evenly matched the media scorecards were a perfect 50/50 split. Charles Jourdain's problems stem more from control than ability. His striking, wrestling and grappling are fast, powerful and deadly, but his control over them is slippery. He'll commit too hard on takedowns and get choked out, or go in too hard on combinations and get wrestled to death. His near-win over Burgos came down to being so focused on attempting to control himself that he stifled his own output. He's a young, talented fighter, but watching him, you get the sense he has yet to find himself as a martial artist.
Nathaniel Wood is desperately trying to get back on track. He was Britain's best bantamweight when the UFC signed him in 2018, and his first three fights under the umbrella seemed to bear that out. And then John Dodson knocked him the gently caress out and Casey Kenny outwrestled him and a mixture of injuries and scheduling problems made him miss two years of his athletic prime. Pressed into a corner, Nathaniel Wood made the only sensible choice: Move up a class and become a 5'6" featherweight. It worked, in that he dominated and defeated Charles Rosa and notched his first UFC win in years, and having defeated one featherweight Charles, by god, he's going to try to complete the set. Wood is a great all-around fighter; his only real losses have come from ground specialists who could control him or athletic marvels like John Dodson who could run circles around a housefly.
Charles Jourdain is neither. Jourdain has the power and ferocity to overwhelm Wood if he gets a punch or two through and swarms him, but he'll have to catch him first, and as fast as "Air" Jourdain can be, Wood is faster. Nathaniel Wood gets the decision.
PRELIMS: PROBABLY HAPPENING THIS WAY, BUT WHO CAN BE SURE
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Dustin Stoltzfus (14-4) vs Abusupiyan Magomedov (24-4-1)
The wheel turns quickly. Two years ago, Dustin Stoltzfus was a highly touted, 12-1 wrestling prospect and international champion with a brand new Contender Series contract and the entire world ahead of him. One fight ago, he was 0-3 in the UFC and staring down the barrel of release. He managed to stave off disaster by just barely wrestling his way past Dwight Grant, and just six weeks later he's fighting again as a rebooking replacement against a debuting international star with more wins than Stoltzfus has fights. This is, generally speaking, a Bad Idea. Abusupiyan Magomedov--American promotions call him 'Abus' because that's presumably easier to fit on a chyron and trust fans to spell--is a bad motherfucker. He's been a champion in three separate German promotions, he's irritatingly talented as both a striker and grappler, and he was one fight away from winning PFL's 2018 championship. His one demonstrated weakness is a slight overconfidence in his skills that lets him sometimes get lackadaisacal on defense, which ultimately lost him said PFL title and gave him his only loss in seven years.
Stoltzfus is a sacrificial lamb. The UFC thought highly enough of Abus to give him Makhmud Muradov as a debut opponent; Stoltzfus is lower on the totem pole. Dustin tends to get caught and hurt repeatedly in striking exchanges and his successes come from his wrestling abilities; Magomedov is a bigger, stronger, superior striker and he's also a decent wrestler, which is going to make Stotlzfus' escape plan very difficult. Abusupiyan Magomedov gets a TKO.
LIGHTWEIGHT: Fares Ziam (12-4) vs Michal Figlak (8-0)
It's prospect testing time, baby. France's Fares "Smile Killer" Ziam is a big-rear end, 6'1" lightweight, and I note that first because it's a central part of his skillset. Ziam is one of the rarest things in mixed martial arts: A fighter who actively uses their size and reach advantage. He's excellent at staying on his back foot, poking out jabs and leg kicks, scoring points and circling out of trouble, and tends to close in on engagements only when he thinks he has someone hurt. This is also why his only two UFC losses have come to fighters who rush him, crowd him and force him to the floor. Michal "Mad Dog" Figlak is one of the hottest prospects out of the Cage Warriors scene, an undefeated Polish lightweight who decided to jump over the pond as a #1 contender rather than wait to win the belt first. Figlak prefers to keep fights standing, but his comfort zone is in the pocket, where he can force opponents into prolonged boxing exchanges and land right hands. He's given a number of good fighters very bad nights with right hooks against the fence.
In other words: It'a a test to see if he can chase Ziam down and cut off his escapes. I think he's got a fairly good chance at it. Figlak's good at stringing punches together to catch fighters trying to escape from prolonged exchanges, and Ziam's eminently comfortable at range, but his escapes TO range are where he runs into trouble. I don't see this fight so much as a question of if Figlak can neutralize Ziam's running game so much as if Figlak has the cardio to do it for three rounds. Michal Figlak gets a decision.
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Nassourdine Imavov (11-3, #12) vs Joaquin Buckley (15-4)
I like Nassourdine Imavov, but this feels like a bad time to be nicknamed "Russian Sniper," especially when you actually live in France. Imavov is a very good fighter with a very well-rounded skillset, and he's particularly tricky at stringing punches together with choke attempts or dump takedowns, but he doesn't always navigate range well, which is what got him into trouble against Phil Hawes in his one and only UFC loss--which was shockingly close and could still, arguably, have gone the other way. Joaquin Buckley is a fighter forever haunted by having scored one of the best finishes in the history of mixed martial arts itself with a jumping, spinning, reverse screw kick knockout back in 2020, and consequently, everything else he's done has felt somehow underwhelming, which is cruel and unfair, as he's a very good, interesting competitor who's been showing additional wrinkles in his game over his last few fights, growing more patient and even more wrestling-friendly.
That said: It's easier to look patient and well-rounded against fighters who are neither, and Nassourdine Imavov is both. He also has about a half-foot of height over Buckley--which is funny, because Buckley actually has a 1" reach advantage thanks to the miracle of arm lengths, but fighting up is always harder than fighting down. This should be a very competitive fight, but ultimately, Nassourdine Imavov by decision.
LIGHTWEIGHT: Benoît Saint-Denis (9-1 (1)) vs Gabriel Miranda (16-5)
Poor Benoît Saint-Denis has had an extremely strange UFC career. He made his debut in 2021 and was instantaneously mired in controversy--not for anything he did, but for getting his rear end kicked so egregiously during his fight with Elizeu Zaleski dos Santos that for the first time in UFC history a referee was fired between fights for gross incompetence and disregard for fighter safety. After that absurd display, he got booked in against German champion Niklas Stolze and abruptly became a wrestling machine, shutting Stolze down with a half-dozen takedown attempts and submitting the unsubmittable fighter in two rounds. For his efforts he was booked against standout Christos Giagos, but Giagos had to pull out at the last minute and now Saint-Denis is, instead, fighting Gabriel Miranda, a fighter out of Brazil's notorious jobber-packed record-inflation federation FACE THE DANGER, whose most identifiable trait as a fighter is his killer Von Kaiser impersonation.
Saint-Denis is an incredibly tough dude who's been challenging himself against the best. Gabriel Miranda has spent the last half-decade crushing cans in organizations that book real fighters against competitors who are 22-24 and tap out in ninety seconds. Benoît Saint-Denis by submission.
BANTAMWEIGHT: Khalid Taha (13-4 (1)) vs Cristian Quiñonez (16-3)
Khalid Taha is one of the best fighters facing an extremely likely firing. On one hand, Taha is powerful as hell, capable of dropping any bantamweight on the planet if he catches them, and well-conditioned enough to fight hard for three straight rounds even when constantly getting taken down and hurt. On the other: We know this because he is constantly getting taken down and hurt. Taha is 1-3 (1) in the UFC, and all three of those losses saw him falling victim to superior wrestlers and being simply unable to stop their control. He had one submission victory on the ground--but it was turned into a No Contest after he tested positive for furosemide, a diuretic typically prescribed to heart failure patients. In one sense, Taha should be happy the UFC's giving him a fighter who prefers to stand; in another, he's been busted down to gatekeeper for Contender Series winners. Cristian Quiñonez is the bantamweight champion out of Ultimate Warrior Challenge, Mexico's best can-crushing federation, but he somehow got actual competition out of it. He likes to fight behind long jabs and bodylock takedowns, and is far more likely to go for ground and pound than submissions.
This should be a fantastic fight. Taha's fighting for his life, Quiñonez is an angry young prospect whose biggest flaw is getting too aggressive, the potential for fireworks is very high. Taha has a definitive strength and power advantage, but if he, too, overcommits, he could very easily get roped to the ground and have to deal with his ground and pound nightmares all over again. I'm still picking Khalid Taha by decision, as I see his power punches giving Quiñonez and his loose style fits, but there's a lot of promise in him.
WOMEN'S FEATHERWEIGHT: Ailin Perez (7-1) vs Stephanie Egger (7-3)
Stephanie Egger is a very solid fighter and grappler--she competed at the ADCC world championships against Gabi Garcia, who had half a foot of height and 100+ pounds of weight on her side and still took her to a decision--which is all the more reason she was incensed when, last month, she lost by submission without having, necessarily, submitted. One minute into her fight with Mayra Bueno Silva she was caught in an armbar, and the referee stopped the fight when Silva claimed Egger had tapped out--but Egger protested that she hadn't. The arm she would have used to tap out wasn't visible to the camera, making an instant replay review impossible, but judge--not referee, judge--Ron McCarthy swore he'd seen her submit, and as it turns out, that's a legal way to rule a fight over. Meanwhile, the UFC scouted Argentinian bantamweight and Samurai Fight House champion Ailin "Fiona" Perez as a possible future star. On one hand: She's mobile, she's got a good kicking game, and her bodylock takedowns are quick and well-timed. On the other: She's only defeated one person with a winning record, and that was Stephanie Bragayrac, who retired out of exhaustion and was once knocked out by Katlyn Chookagian, winner of eleven straight decisions, in forty-five seconds. Oh, and despite being 5'5" Perez is moving up to women's featherweight and wants to fight Amanda Nunes.
This is a win-win for the UFC. If Egger wins, she gets to stop complaining about her last fight. If Perez wins, the UFC gets a new fighter at a division with three people in it. Both fighters have the same inherent gameplan: Crash the cage, get a takedown from the clinch, ground and pound until a submission opens up, the opponent stops fighting back, or the fight ends. In a face to face, I'm going with the fighter who survived the Gabi Garcia experience. Stephanie Egger by submission.
Prelims start in like 10 minutes because this card starts in the morning here and feeding the dogs and taking them out comes first.
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Sep 3, 2022 16:55
