- CarlCX
- Dec 14, 2003
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Welcome to a hilariously hosed up card. Everyone predicted the swan song of the Diaz Bros in the UFC would somehow be a clusterfuck, no one could have predicted they would be the comparatively smart, sober ones.
This card got so hosed up that it necessitated two different writeups:
CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 31-2, SUPPLEMENTAL: 170, MOTHERFUCKER, 170
This sport is the dumbest thing in the world.
Hello again, my friends. A funny thing happened on the way to the forum. The harbinger of doom was first sighted yesterday when, for the first time in promotional history, the pre-fight press conference was cancelled right as it began after a report of a massive disturbance backstage. Eventually, we discovered Khamzat Chimaev and Kevin Holland had resumed chirping at each other, Chimaev had kicked Holland in the chest and a brawl had erupted between their camps, which was defused only by the timely intervention of--and old-school fans will be the only ones who understand how funny this is--former fighter turned trainer Tiki Ghosn, who successfully separated the camps and made peace...except then Nate Diaz and his entourage walked by, saw what they perceived to be Tiki being friendly with Khamzat Chimaev, and as they thought of Tiki as a friend and Chimaev as an enemy, they took umbrage at this act of betrayal and began immediately chuckling water bottles at him. It was a massive fracas and it jeopardized the entire card, but fighters were separated, camps were soothed, cooler heads prevailed, and the show was saved.
And then Khamzat Chimaev missed weight by almost ten pounds.
According to Dana White he was suffering muscle cramps so bad doctors ordered him to stop cutting weight. But it's not bad enough that he can't have a five-round fight a day later, so, y'know, gently caress it. In almost any other circumstance the UFC would put the full-court press on the other fighter to keep a main event together, but a) it was an entire weight class worth of weight and, much more importantly, b) it's Nate Diaz. If you put pressure on him, he'll just tell you to go gently caress yourself and then he'll leave. An entire afternoon of scrambling and backroom dealings later, the card was saved by, less than twenty-four hours before it begins, shuffling opponents across every top-card fight.
It's incredibly unprofessional. It's beyond silly.
And the card is actually much, much better now.
Because this sport is loving stupid.
Let's take a look at our three new topliners.
MAIN EVENT: THE BIG GOODBYE
WELTERWEIGHT: Anthony Armand "Tony" Ferguson Padilla (25-7, #11 at Lightweight) vs Nathan Donald Diaz, Esq. (20-13, #209 everywhere else)
The funniest thing is, not that long ago, this was a lightweight bout people were clamoring for. When Tony butchered Kevin Lee to become the UFC's Interim Lightweight Champion, he found himself presiding over a very messy division. Conor McGregor, the actual champion, was chasing a big boxing paycheck. Khabib Nurmagomedov, the top contender, was injured. Edson Barboza, the #3 contender, had been destroyed by Ferguson just a few fights ago, and Eddie Alvarez and Justin Gaethje, the #4 and #5, were booked against one another. And who was at #6 but Nate goddamn Diaz.
It would have been a genuinely interesting fight. While Tony and Nate have very different fighting styles, they hinged on the same strategy: Wearing opponents down with accumulated damage until they broke and either left themselves open for a submission or stopped fighting altogether. Where Tony liked to do it through constant motion, lots of mixed attacks and tearing people apart with elbows from inside the pocket, Nate liked to do it by standing in front of them and just punching them, frequently. Nate Diaz's best weapon in the clinch range is giving his opponents loud verbal updates with regards to their bitch/not bitch status. Two fighters at the top of both their divisions and their own athletic primes, both incredibly adept at hurting their opponents, both capable of taking unreal punishment without slowing down, both with the cardio to fight five rounds. The potential fireworks were off the charts.
But that was also five years ago.
In the time since, both fighters have had the crap repeatedly beaten out of them. Nate's fans cling to his nearly knocking out Leon Edwards and Jorge Masvidal only beating him by cut stoppage, but Leon had him bleeding and limping for 24 minutes and Masvidal dropped him three times. Tony, meanwhile, took a life-altering beating from Justin Gaethje and got faceplanted by Michael Chandler. Tony's almost 40 and Nate may be outright retiring from the sport after this fight. Neither guy is in their prime, neither looks as good as they did back when they were two of the best fighters on the planet. Does that condemn this fight to the depressing "who's the most deteriorated" territory that so often comes up in battles featuring aging MMA fighters?
Surprisingly: I don't think so. I think this is still just a really good fuckin' fight.
Nate vs Chimaev and Tony vs Li were hopeless depression states waiting to happen, but even if the two have degenerated, they have degenerated parallel to one another and are still fantastically matched because of it. Sure, their chins aren't what they used to be, but they're not fighting two of the hardest hitters at higher weight classes anymore. Their conditioning is still great and as the first round of Tony/Chandler and the last round of Diaz/Edwards showed, they're still more than capable of fighting to their strengths.
So it's five years too late, but we got a fight we always wanted. How's it gonna go?
It's an interesting loving question. Unlike most of Nate's opponents at lightweight he doesn't have a range advantage, and Tony probably has a faster jab. Tony DEFINITELY has better kicks, but every time he plants to land one he's going to be open to the long right Nate's used to stun dozens of people, and Tony doesn't want to give Nate a chance to start opening up on him. Nate's face is about 75% scar tissue by volume, and if he lets Tony into the pocket without controlling his wrists he's got about two seconds to get out before all of his blood is on the outside of his body. I frankly don't think grappling is going to be a big part of the fight--Nate doesn't want to spend a lot of time in the clinch where his takedowns come from and Tony Ferguson hasn't attempted a takedown in a fight since 2016--but Nate's definitely got the grappling edge if it winds up there.
I think this fight stays standing. And I think, over five rounds, Nate Diaz gets a TKO. He's not going to back down from Tony's attacks but he's also not going to pull a Chandler and dive facefirst into power punches. This is two guys chipping away at one another and I'm not sure either's UFC tenure survives past it, quite frankly.
But it'll be great while it lasts.
CO-MAIN EVENT: THE FIGHT ISLAND SHOWDOWN
MIDDLEWEIGHT, SORT OF: Khamzat "You Boo? gently caress You" Chimaev (11-0, #3 at welterweight for like 72 more hours) vs The Severely Underpaid Kevin Holland (23-7 (1), undefeated against street criminals)
In some ways, this was inevitable. Kevin Holland and Khamzat Chimaev got famous in exactly the same way: Taking tons of fights in unusually rapid succession during the COVID era when we were all too desperate for combat sports to think about how terribly unhealthy it was to have people fighting every four weeks. While Fight Island was a horrible experiment that got tons of fighters sick and statistically-speaking almost certainly killed a handful of people, it worked out gangbusters for these two, who went from relative unknowns to two of the biggest stars in the UFC. Kevin Holland crushed Jacaré Souza and became a main-event talent, Khamzat Chimaev made Gerald Meerschaert look like a punk and then, uh, got COVID, nearly died and temporarily retired because there was too much blood in his lungs before returning and immediately becoming the top contender at welterweight.
And then he missed weight for a Nate Diaz fight, so he's a huge pariah and it'll be years before anyone forgives him or doesn't think he's a huge shithead! Which I cannot get over, because I fervently remember when Nate Diaz missed weight for the Rafael dos Anjos fight and proceeded to flip him off and tell him he was a pussy for caring because real men just fight, which was agreed to be a perfectly reasonable response by basically his entire fanbase.
But that's the power of Diaz Reality.
This is a much better fight than either of their previous fights. Holland/Rodriguez was an out-of-class-for-no-reason battle between two potential prospects who gained nothing from fighting one another and Chimaev/Diaz was less of a fight than a slaughter. Khamzat and Holland have been chirping at each other for years, they literally got into a fight backstage, they're both dudes who bounced between welterweight and middleweight and a fight thus makes sense for either, and they were both the crown princes of Fight Island*, making a showdown between them spiritually inevitable.
*I am aware the actual crown prince of Fight Island is Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, but a) he sucks and b) we'll never get to see him get triangle choked by anyone, so gently caress 'im.
This, too, is an interesting loving fight for a number of reasons. Here's the thing: Kevin Holland left the middleweight division because he was getting wrestled to death by the Derek Brunsons and Marvin Vettoris of the world, and Khamzat is bigger, stronger and a more credentialed wrestler than both of them. If he wants this fight on the ground, he can and will get it there. But Kevin Holland is very difficult to keep down. It took Brunson 12 takedown attempts to get through five rounds with him. It took Vettori 17. We've only seen Khamzat Chimaev make it to a third round once in his career, and he was visibly exhausted by the end of it.
Granted, that was a war with Gilbert Burns, but that, too, is a problem. Burns is 5'10" and has 71" of reach. He used to fight at lightweight. Kevin Holland is 6'3" and has 81" of reach. He is the first opponent Khamzat has ever faced in his entire life where he's giving up size. And Holland hits very, very fast, and very, very hard. A central part of Khamzat's wrestling attack, oddly, is his standup: He has a great deal of very deserved faith in his ability to knock people stupid, as he hits like a truck. Kevin Holland is not only a better striker than he is, he can ping him upside the head half a foot before Khamzat can reach him.
I think the most likely result of this fight is still Khamzat Chimaev by submission. Holland's been spending his camp preparing for a prolonged striking battle, and now he has to face one of the most dangerous wrestlers in the UFC, and that's a very bad adjustment to make on one loving day's notice. If Khamzat can keep him down, he should be able to pound his way into back control and strangle him.
But Chimaev clearly had a terrible loving weight cut, and Kevin Holland is never not in amazing shape. If Holland can get up, or keep from getting taken down altogether, Chimaev is in big, big trouble, and that trouble multiplies with every passing round.
THE NEW TOP OF THE MAIN CARD: POOR, POOR LI
WELTERWEIGHT, BUT NOT REALLY: Li "I've Got Spurs That" Jingliang (19-7, #14 at Welterweight, just wanted people to see his really nice new suit) vs Daniel "The Maniel" Rodriguez (16-2, 1-1 in the Quiet Cannon Boxing Circuit)
The one person who really, truly got the short end of the stick in all of this is Li Jingliang.
At the start of this week, the world was Li's. He had the biggest fight of his career against an opponent he had every advantage over, he was going to get a big win on an extremely visible and guaranteed-to-be-viral card, and he was very, very proud of the snappy new suit he'd bought that he was very excited to show off.
Look at how happy that man was. He had the world in his hands.
Li Jingliang is the man sacrificed by the fickle hands of fate to give us a really good top two fights. Instead of a gimme fight with a big size and power advantage over a compromised and aging-to-retirement lightweight, with all of the other opponents having found fancy new homes, Li now gets to fight Daniel Rodriguez, who is bigger, stronger, hungrier, and, most distressingly, is probably better than Li at all of the things he's known for.
Jingliang is a wrestleboxer. He has kicks, he uses them and has even gotten a knockout that started with a kick to the body, but his bread and butter is forcing people to care about takedowns so he can punch them in the face. Daniel Rodriguez, in his last fight, made Kevin Lee--one of the best wrestlers in the sport, who was only kept from NCAA victories by his desire to compete fulltime in mixed martial arts--struggle and whiff 60% of his takedown attempts en route to breaking his face. He's never been stopped in MMA, and his durability is so notable that Mike Perry, who for all of his faults has undeniable stopping power, hit him with a haymaker and he barely even moved.
And that's before you take into account that Daniel Rodriguez was on weight for a fight ten pounds heavier than Jingliang's.
It's a raw loving deal. Jingliang's a bad, bad man for being willing to take the fight at all, and I hope the UFC gives him a serious under the table bonus for it, but it's very hard to imagine this going any way other than Daniel Rodriguez by decision after battering him for three rounds.
CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 31: THE PENSION PLAN
this is so goddamn stupid
WOMEN'S BANTAMWEIGHT, EXCEPT THEY BOTH hosed UP SO IT'S 140: Irene Aldana (13-6, #4) vs Macy Chiasson (8-2, #10)
Gather around, children, it's time for another episode of the Women's Weight Classes Are Screwed Up Show. Irene Aldana is, in theory, a dedicated bantamweight--the second-largest in the division, in fact, at 5'9"--except she's missed the weight limit for the class twice in her career, most notably in her last fight against Yana Kunitskaya. She's a good, solid fighter, with unusual power for the class and just enough grappling chops to stay competitive. That said: She also got blown out by Holly Holm, outgrappled by Raquel Pennington, and at one point nearly knocked out by Bethe Correia.
Macy Chiasson is not a bantamweight OR a featherweight. She won The Ultimate Fighter 28 as a featherweight, and in her post-fight interview, announced her intentions to immediately return to bantamweight. She went 4-1 at the weight class, but decided to take a late replacement fight at featherweight--which she missed weight for, after which she was promptly choked out. She then stayed at featherweight and defeated Norma Dumont, who also missed weight, by split decision in a fight that saw the judges inexplicably give Chiasson a round in which she was outstruck by a 10-2 margin, got nearly knocked out twice and choked out once. Chiasson celebrated her victory over an actual women's featherweight by announcing her intention to drop back down to bantamweight again.
Macy Chiasson has three fights at women's featherweight, only one of which saw both fighters actually make the featherweight limit. She is ranked #10 at women's bantamweight, hasn't fought at women's bantamweight in a year and a half, and of her five bantamweight opponents, only two are still in the UFC, and the only one of them who beat Macy is somehow ranked lower than she is. Irene Aldana, the woman she is fighting, hasn't made the bantamweight weight limit in two years: She is the #4 women's bantamweight in the world. Whoever wins this fight is, at worst, one fight away from the bantamweight world championship.
I love women's MMA, but it's a loving trainwreck. Irene Aldana by decision.
LIGHT-HEAVYWEIGHT: Johnny Walker (18-7, #13) vs Ion Cuțelaba (15-6-1 (1))
Two years ago, this could have been a legitimate top contender fight. Now both dudes are fighting to keep their jobs. MMA is harsh.
Johnny Walker was one of the first real Contender Series sensations, an insanely powerful knockout artist who won three UFC fights over legitimately talented light-heavyweights in just 168 seconds and became one of the most hyped prospects in the sport. And then, in a testament of things to come, he dislocated his shoulder doing The Worm during his post-fight celebration. He's now 1-4 in his last five fights, including two violent knockout losses, one of which he is currently coming off of. Walker is still power and range incarnate, and can shut off anyone if he touches them, but he seems visibly confused about how to fight, alternating between being thoroughly gunshy and entirely too reckless.
Ion Cuțelaba never quite reached the top, but he was a tough, gritty top ten staple for years, to the point of crushing Khalil Rountree and at one point nearly knocking out future champion Glover Teixeira. And then he had that fateful fight with current #3 contender Magomed Ankalaev that saw him lose a 40-second screwjob thanks to a terrible refereeing mistake, and he sacrificed a year of his career pursuing a rematch that, once he finally got it, saw him getting unequivocally knocked cold. Things haven't gone much better since: He fought Dustin Jacoby to a draw, beat an overmatched Devin Clark, and then got immediately choked out by Ryan Spann. His skills are sound, but his berserker style has been finding its limits.
And fighting like a charging berserker is a really terrible idea against a fighter with a 7" reach advantage and the power to knock you out with any of his limbs. This is Johnny Walker's fight to lose, and, to be certain, that sentence means he is absolutely capable of losing. If he hasn't straightened out his approach, if he's too wary to pull the trigger, Cuțelaba will get inside on him and hurt him repeatedly. I am choosing to believe Johnny Walker remembers he can still throw front kicks. Johnny Walker by KO.
PRELIMS: SOME NUMBER OF FIGHTS, DEPENDING
 FEATHERWEIGHT, BUT DAWODU hosed UP SO IT'S 150: Hakeem Dawodu (13-2-1) vs Julian Erosa (27-9)
This fight might have the highest potential violence quotient on the card. Both of these guys are borderline top fifteen featherweights trying their hardest to break the rankings. "Mean" Hakeem Dawodu is a crisp, dangerous volume striker who averages a genuinely impressive 180 strikes attempted per fight (caveat: I'm excluding his first UFC fight because he got choked out in thirty seconds before he could do anything), with a great sense for mixing up strikes and inflicting damage across the head, body and legs in equal measure, and his only loss in the last four and a half years came against Movsar Evloev, the undefeated #10 in the world and the only person who was able to successfully wrestle Dawodu. Julian "Juicy J" Erosa, in addition to helping found the Three 6 Mafia, is one of the most hot and cold fighters in the sport. In one moment, he'll be using his wild striking and quick grappling to knock out Nate Landwehr or choke out Charles Jourdain; in another he'll be getting ragdolled by the Seung Woo Chois and Bobby McIntyres of the world. This is, in some ways, the price of his style: He's a wildman who loves flying knees and haymakers and jumping on chokes, and entirely too often, he dies by the sword.
This fight is going to be dictated by mistakes. Hakeem Dawodu is an extremely composed fighter--arguably sometimes a little too composed, as his several split decisions show--but he has supreme control over his attacks, which is why he's able to throw as frequently and accurately as he does. Julian Erosa will throw the kitchen sink at people to get them out of the cage, has knocked himself over with his own power, and will dive on a neck if it's exposed for more than three seconds. This fight is control vs fury, and I'm betting on control. Hakeem Dawodu by decision.
CATCHWEIGHT, 220 LBS, BUT THIS ONE WAS ALWAYS THIS WAY: Jailton Almeida (16-2) vs Anton Turkalj (8-0)
Jailton Almeida might actually be the best Contender Series prospect. A 6'3" light-heavyweight who's been boxing and doing jiu-jitsu essentially since he was a fetus, "Malhadinho" joined the UFC at the start of 2022 and easily won his first two fights, which gets much more impressive when you consider the second fight was a weight class up and at a forty-pound weight disadvantage against 13-6 heavyweight Parker Porter, a change Jailton took on a month's notice. It went so well that Jailton had actually intended to take another fight at heavyweight on this card, but his original opponent, the #14-ranked Shamil Abdurakhimov, had visa issues and couldn't get out of Russia. So, this time on a week's notice, Jailton accepted a new replacement.
Anton Turkalj scraped out a win on the Contender Series two months ago. I could tell you that his biggest strength is grappling and thus he's going to be in a lot of trouble here, or that his striking is sort of loping and awkward and that would easily get him dropped. I am not going to tell you those things. I am going to tell you that his nickname is The Pleasure Man, and this is his profile picture on the internet's biggest MMA database.
Jailton Almeida by submission.
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Denis Tiuliulin (10-6) vs Jamie Pickett (13-7)
This is going to be a weird fight. Both fighters are large middleweights, with Pickett having a slight advantage at 6'2" with 80" reach to Tiuliulin's 6'1" and 77", and both have similar styles, preferring to work from behind their hands and close into clinch range before they begin dragging the fight to the ground. Tiuliulin likes to work in a more focused, pressure-heavy attack, while Pickett has two range settings: Stand away from you and hit you in the guts and jump into your face and clinch you as hard as I can.
This is the biggest pick 'em of the card. We barely got to see any of Tiuliulin's skills in his UFC debut, as he spent the whole thing getting wrestled, and how he'll cope with Pickett's very similar gameplan is a big question mark. My instinct is Jamie Pickett by decision, but I say it with all the ferocity of a gentle shrug.
HEAVYWEIGHT, EXCEPT CHRIS BARNETT WAS TOO HEAVY FOR HEAVYWEIGHT SO IT'S 268: Jake Collier (13-7) vs Chris Barnett (22-8)
The most damning thing I can say about the UFC's heavyweight division is, in a just world, Jake Collier would have one of its longest active winning streaks. Collier SHOULD be riding four consecutive victories: He dominated Gian Villante and choked out Chase Sherman, and after each of those fights he outstruck Carlos Felipe and former champion Andrei Arlovski and somehow lost split decisions in both contests. The Felipe fight, at least, was somewhat close; 100% of media outlets scored the Arlovski fight for Collier. He has one of the sport's most common problems: His style is ugly. He throws sloppy punches, he clinches on the fence, and when he gets hit he looks like he wants to die, and that makes the judges think he's losing even when he's winning. Chris "Beastboy" Barnett, by contrast, is a fighter you desperately want to love, but that love will only hurt you. Despite being 5'9", which by average height would place him around the featherweight division, Barnett spent most of his career fighting between 285 and 330 pounds, bouncing between federations with super-heavyweight or just plain openweight divisions. It worked, in the sense that he won more fights than he lost, but respectfully, the competition at superheavyweight in mixed martial arts is very, very thin. He wouldn't have sniffed the UFC were it not for Ben Rothwell losing four opponents in two months and needing an ultra-last minute replacement, and he wouldn't still be here had he not scored a hilarious wheel-kick knockout over Gian Villante in the latter's retirement fight.
I want to be abundantly clear, here: I do not in any way mean this to disrespect Barnett by calling him a bad fighter. He's anything but. He's powerful, he's deceptively fast and he's a 5'9" heavyweight with a god damned wheel-kick knockout. But he's a 5'9" heavyweight. His output drops off quickly and his defense follows soon after, and against someone as tough and bread-and-butter as Jake Collier, that's a tragic combination. Jake Collier by TKO.
WOMEN'S FEATHERWEIGHT: Norma Dumont (7-2, #15 at Women's Bantamweight) vs Danyelle Wolf (1-0)
Guess what: We get two episodes of Women's Weight Classes Are Screwed Up on one card.
Norma Dumont has 5 UFC fights, in which she is 3-2. Four of those fights have been contested at Women's Featherweight, the most recent of which she failed to make weight for. She has one fight at Women's Bantamweight, a 2020 victory over Ashlee Evans-Smith; she missed the bantamweight limit by almost five pounds. Because of her one bantamweight victory, two years ago, over someone who was 1-4 since 2016, Norma Dumont is ranked #15 at Women's Bantamweight, a class for which she has never made weight in the UFC. Danyelle Wolf is a 39 year-old amateur boxing champion who never turned pro and switched to mixed martial arts after failing to qualify for the Olympics. She made her MMA debut on Dana White's Contender Series in 2020, won an extremely controversial decision, and promptly went on the shelf for two years.
This is a fight between a fighter who is 2-2 at Women's Featherweight in the UFC and a fighter who is 1-0 in any professional combat sport and has never fought in the UFC. The winner will be the UFC's #2 at Women's Featherweight, because there are, in fact, only five women at Women's Featherweight, one of them is the champion, and two of them are 0-1 and 0-2 respectively.
There are a lot of things in mixed martial arts that aren't real. Nothing is less real than Women's Featherweight. Norma Dumont by submission.
BANTAMWEIGHT: Chad Anheliger (12-5) vs Alatengheili (15-8-2)
The last time I talked about Alatengheili I predicted he would have a lot of trouble dealing with Kevin Croom's concerted grappling attack, and instead Croom got punched stupid in less than a minute. He's growing into his wrestleboxing style, mixing fast, accurate straight punches with quick dives on single-leg takedowns, and I had vastly underestimated the improvement in his hand speed. By contrast we've only gotten to see Chad Anheliger fight under the UFC banner once, and it was a brutal, back-and-forth affair with Jesse Strader that Strader was just barely winning up until Anheliger knocked him out 90 seconds before the fight would have ended. He likes to trade, he likes to brawl, and he likes to open up opportunities by taking a punch to give one.
And that's going to cost him against someone this quick and powerful. Alatengheili by decision.
WOMEN'S STRAWWEIGHT: Elise Reed (5-2) vs Melissa Martinez (7-0)
This is one of the rare times I feel some confidence in a regional women's prospect. "Super Melly" Melissa Martinez got picked up after winning the strawweight championship at Combate Americas--specifically as the co-main on the incredibly silly event where Tito Ortiz fought professional wrestler Alberto del Rio--and while it was a very close split decision win, it showcased her ability to engage in prolonged clinch battles, defend herself in bad ground positions and maintain her cardio for three full rounds. She was originally going to fight Hannah Cifers, but all the way back in July Cifers withdrew with an injury and got replaced by Elise Reed, which is, in its way, a better fight for Martinez: Not only is Reed a more credible opponent, but she's a better stylistic match.
Elise Reed has a very solid base and deceptively solid punches, but she likes to hit and run, which is a problem against someone who closes distance as quickly as Martinez, and she tends to fatigue towards the end of her fights, which is a much bigger problem. Reed's tough as nails and the fight would stay close, but the longer it goes the more of an advantage Martinez has. Melissa Martinez by decision.
WELTERWEIGHT: Darian Weeks (5-2) vs Yohan Lainesse (8-1)
The UFC's getting the housecleaning fight out of the way first, for once. Yohan Lainesse is probably still safe if he loses--he's a Contender Series baby who only made his UFC debut this year, a KO loss to "Gifted" Gabe Green, the real GGG--but Darian Weeks, who's 0-2 in the UFC and facing his potential third loss in a row, is firmly planted in a zone of danger, and that's firmly on the UFC's head, which has gleefully used him as a sacrificial lamb. You can tell how much the UFC cares about a prospect based on how careful their matchmaking is: In the case of Darian Weeks, who was a still thoroughly inexperienced 5-0, they gave him Bryan Barberena, one of the most durable, most experienced fighters in the division. And after he extremely obviously lost that fight, they threw him to Ian Garry, their next Irish McGregor cloning project. And now, at the most precarious moment in his career, he's getting a bigger, stronger, more experienced knockout artist.
And it is, one last time, a very bad matchup for Weeks. His best offense comes from probing kicks and diving wrestling attacks; Lainesse is a stronger, faster kicker and wrestler, and I can't see this fight not resulting in Weeks getting picked apart. Yohan Lainesse by decision.
Prelims begin in half an hour. Jesus christ.
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Sep 10, 2022 22:28
