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How ARE you doing? This poll is closed. |
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| Things are great |
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2 | 25.00% |
| Things aren't great |
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1 | 12.50% |
| Things are |
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2 | 25.00% |
| This is a level of emotional vulnerability I am uncomfortable with in poll form |
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3 | 37.50% |
| Total: | 8 votes | ||
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Four people missed weight and Josh Parisian had some sort of heart episode last night, so the card's in real good shape. CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 37: WE'RE LOWERING THE STANDARD IN A PROCESS SELECTIVE  PRELIMS 1 PM PST / 4 PM EST VIA ESPN+ | MAIN CARD 4 PM PST / 7 PM EST VIA ESPN+ Look at poor Marina Rodriguez. Even her face is saying "yeah, I know. I know." Much like Grasso/Araújo last month, this is another card that was supposed to have a big main event--in this case, undefeated fighters and potential title contenders Bryce Mitchell and Movsar Evloev--but it got scratched thanks to injury, and the UFC decided to, once again, move a women's fight they had never intended to main or even co-main into the top spot with virtually nothing supporting or advertising it. It irritates me to complain about this, because I want more top spots for women in the UFC. I just wish they happened because they actually chose to put them on and promote them as opposed to deciding they just don't give enough of a gently caress about a card to bother and letting women have the scraps. You don't get an advertising blitz, you don't get promotional appearances, you don't get a UFC Embedded on the loving Youtube channel, but hey: You get to share a main card with Chase Sherman.  like half of these fights are reschedules MAIN EVENT: DON'T KID YOURSELF, YOU KNOW: THEY WANT MONEY WOMEN'S STRAWWEIGHT: Marina Rodriguez (16-1-2, #3) vs Amanda Lemos (12-2-1, #7) In May of 2022, Carla Esparza got a shot at the UFC Women's Strawweight Championship. Virtually everyone on the planet agreed this was not just due, but overdue. Carla was on a five-fight win streak, had victories over three of the four top contenders in the division and had just knocked out the fourth. Dana White, as he so often does, put his foot down in strenuous disagreement. He didn't want a Carla Esparza title shot, nor did he care about her journey through the rankings or her credibility as a contender: She wasn't marketable, nor was a fight between them, and that was what counted. The line he went with was the ominous "We have other options." But those options failed to materialize, and Esparza didn't cave to the pressure to take yet another contendership bout, and Dana eventually gave in. Carla Esparza won the championship in what is widely considered to be one of worst UFC title fights of all time. The UFC didn't get the winner they wanted, the division's biggest draw in Rose Namajunas was deeply damaged as a draw thanks to her own inexplicable performance, and the new champion opened in betting as an underdog to virtually every opponent she could conceivably face. None of that would have happened if Carla Esparza did not defeat Marina Rodriguez in 2020. And by god, they will never let Marina forget it. Between May 13, 2017 and May 7, 2022--exactly five days short of half a decade--the Women's Strawweight Championship was contested by exactly four people, back and forth, over and over. Joanna Jędrzejczyk beat Jéssica Andrade. Rose Namajunas beat Joanna Jędrzejczyk. Jéssica Andrade beat Rose Namajunas. Zhang Weili beat Jéssica Andrade. Rose Namajunas beat Zhang Weili. Back and forth, over and over, with the rare defense sprinkled in where possible but only ever against one of those four women. The UFC is wholly intent on continuing this pattern, as on the same card that saw Carla Esparza take the title, they held a title eliminator to determine who would be next in line: Said eliminator was a match between, once again, Joanna Jędrzejczyk and Zhang Weili. Here is the reason I am belaboring this point: Marina Rodriguez is, as of this card, the one and only person in the entirety of the UFC's Women's Strawweight rankings with multiple consecutive--intentional--wins. You can go down the whole ladder. Namajunas just lost the belt, Zhang has the Joanna win but otherwise lost to Namajunas twice, Andrade has only been back in the division for one fight and appears to be leaving all over again, Xiaonan Yan just snapped a losing streak by beating Mackenzie Dern, Mackenzie Dern failed her marketing test yet again. Amanda Lemos, who we'll get to in a couple paragraphs, got choked out by Andrade earlier this year. Tecia Torres hasn't won a fight since August of 2021. Amanda Ribas is still ranked and she isn't even in the weight class anymore, and the last time she was, she beat Virna Jandiroba, who's next down on the list, and SHE beat Michelle Waterson-Gomez, who might be retiring, and Angela Hill has one win after losing her previous three, but she's about to face the next down, Emily Ducote, who has--you guessed it--one win in the UFC. The only other person in the rankings to also have consecutive wins is #14 with a bullet, Luana Pinheiro. She has two. One of them is a disqualification for getting kicked in the face while she was on the ground. That's how bad the UFC's matchmaking at Women's Strawweight has been. They've been so myopically focused on exactly two things--the championship carousel between their already-marketable fighters and their desperate and repeated attempts to shoot Mackenzie Dern straight into title contention--that the entire division has become a shambles. No one has been elevated, no one has a fanbase, no one has so much as a speck of momentum. Except Marina Rodriguez. In four years, Marina's run up a UFC record of 6-1-2, and the tail end of that record is indicative of how, aside from the UFC's marketing department, her real career roadblock has been judging. She's first and foremost a defensively-minded boxer, and is very, very good at sticking and moving, and as anyone who's watched the sport knows, if a mixed martial arts judge watches you walk in any direction but forward, they immediately assume it is a sign of terrible distress and that you may, in fact, be in need of a doctor. This, plus her equally traditional boxing habit of struggling with good wrestlers, have been the catalyst for her only speedbumps. She boxed the crap out of Randa Markos and went toe to toe with Cynthia Calvillo, but despite having the advantage in both fights, got stuck with a draw. She broke Carla Esparza's face and soundly outstruck her by 2:1 margins in two rounds of their fight, but she got taken down repeatedly, so she lost a split decision that had media scores divided right down the middle. Many wrote her off as yet another in the long history of strikers who would never get over the grappling hump. But she kept winning, so the UFC tried to feed her to mega-grappler and marketing dream Mackenzie Dern. Rodriguez busted her face, stuffed 7 of her 8 takedowns, and ultimately beat her on the significant strike count 144 to 49. It was, once again, a statement: A three-fight win streak in a division starved of momentum, a main event slot against one of the UFC's most consistently hyped fighters, and a dominant performance that proved she was working on her greatest weakness. They had, despite themselves, built a contender, and now they could capitalize. They capitalized by booking her against Yan Xiaonan, winner of 0 straight fights, on the prelims of UFC 272. Not even the prelim headliner; just a prelim. The main card, after all, had to open with Greg Hardy. But hey, gently caress it, whatever! It's fine! It's fine. Rodriguez won again, and it was a really fun firefight, and now she had four straight wins AND the new champion is someone she had a ridiculously close fight with just two years prior, and everyone else is coming off losses, and why am I still typing this. This doesn't matter. You know this doesn't matter. My introductory paragraph for this topic was about the precise degree to which this doesn't matter. Zhang Weili's getting the title shot because she's a former champion and a marketable, well-known Chinese fighter and she beat a Joanna who had just retired, unretired and then immediately retired again thereafter. Marina Rodriguez gets Amanda Lemos, because nothing matters. That sounds very dismissive of Amanda Lemos. I do not mean to dismiss Amanda Lemos. Amanda Lemos had an absolute rollercoaster of a career even before the UFC came calling, parlaying her interest in grappling and boxing into a professional fighting career for pure fascination and finding immediate success, thanks as much to her clinch throws and grappling credentials as her vicious hands. Fifteen months after her professional debut she was an undefeated 4-0, the reigning Women's Bantamweight Champion of the legendary Jungle Fight, and one solid title defense later, undeniably one of the best women's bantamweights in Brazil. As one of those reminders that MMA is still a distressingly small pond, that amounted to almost nothing. It wasn't even enough to get her guaranteed fights. She retired from MMA after just two years of competition because it was unironically easier to make a living as a motorcycle taxi driver than as an MMA champion, and when she broke her back on the job, it just further cemented her fighting career as a thing of the past. Which was--of course--when the UFC finally called, needing a last-minute replacement to fight Leslie Smith. With one spinal fracture, two weeks to prepare, three months since she'd even bothered to train and an opponent five inches taller than her, Amanda Lemos, being a mixed martial artist and thus a sane and rational person, jumped at the chance. She gassed out and got crushed in two rounds and then got suspended for two years because she'd used stanozolol to prepare for the fight. In maybe the one and only time this has ever been true, her PED suspension was actually good for her: It gave her time to finally get her spine fixed and recover from, y'know, having trained and had a professional mixed martial arts fight with a broken loving spine. When she returned to competition it was at her new home in the strawweight division, where she immediately began throwing fighters left and right into dumpsters with power jabs and right hooks. Since her return from getting healthy, and her drop to 115, she's 6-1 and has one of the highest finishing rates in the division. So if she's that tough, and that talented, why am I angry that Marina Rodriguez is fighting her? As always: It's that I'm really stupidly hung up on the UFC's bad matchmaking and completely pointless rankings. Amanda Lemos got in the top fifteen after being nobody ranked, then took a controversial split decision win over Angela Hill, who was ranked below her, and wound up in the top ten. While ranked #10, she got absolutely and completely trucked by the returning Jéssica Andrade, at the time unranked, and fell only one position. Three months later the now #11 Amanda Lemos fought the #10 Michelle Waterson-Gomez, who herself had only one victory in almost four years--which was, funnily enough, also a controversial split decision win over Angela Hill--and, after defeating her, somehow wound up at #7. And it's stupid to care. And I know it's stupid to care. But the UFC has actually, genuinely cited their own rankings in legal proceedings when it benefitted them, so I am, I remind myself, less stupid than the UFC. The rankings inform the matchmaking, and the matchmaking is driven by what the UFC actually wants. If you're Miesha Tate or Mackenzie Dern, you can lose a bunch, fail to beat top contenders, retire for fourteen years to go fight in the Amory Wars, whatever the gently caress; when you come back you'll be one and a half fights away from a title shot. If you're Marina Rodriguez you fight every single contender on the way up and, having beaten everyone in your path, earn the privilege of fighting someone ranked half the division below you who's on a one-fight win streak. But that's where we are. Does Marina Rodriguez get yet another victory, or does the UFC succeed in its exceedingly silly quest to derail its only natural contender? Marina Rodriguez by decision. There's a pattern with Amanda Lemos: Opponents who aggressively engage her pay for it, opponents who force her to chase them while they counter her give her fits. Marina Rodriguez is arguably the best hit-and-run fighter in the division. She's quick off her back foot, she knows how to actually use lateral movement, she has an exceptional jab and she's going to stick it in Amanda's face every time she tries to get into the clinch. Lemos needs to use her chin and her strength to bully her way into the clinch and force this fight to the ground. Over twenty-five minutes on the feet, she's getting stymied. CO-MAIN EVENT: BUT WINDOWS OPEN AND CLOSE, THAT'S JUST HOW IT GOES WELTERWEIGHT: Neil Magny (26-9, #13) vs Daniel Rodriguez (17-2, #14) You know, you kids are probably too young to remember, but Neil Magny was an icon in the far-away times of 2016. The fanbase was rabid for him. And by god, the memes. You could paste clipart devil horns on a 320x240 picture of his face and get at least four hundred Diggs. Everyone was completely certain Neil Magny was going to be The Guy one day. It was, in fairness, an eminently reasonable assumption. Coming off The Ultimate Fighter 16, the unfathomably cursed season that gave us gifts like Mike Ricci, Colton "I was in the army, this is easy" Smith, Shane Carwin's untimely retirement and the first canonical televised appearances of Sam Alvey just two years before he became the blood curse that binds us all, Neil Magny was even in defeat a deeply interesting prospect: A 6'3" welterweight with an 80" wingspan who, at just 25, had a ton of room to grow. Octagon jitters troubled his UFC rookie year, as he went just 1-2 after the reality show ended, but then the calendar turned to 2014 and Neil Magny took the world by loving storm. Long before Kevin Holland and Khamzat Chimaev became hyperactive pandemic superstars, Neil Magny was setting strength of schedule records. Between the beginning of 2014 and the end of 2017, Neil Magny went 12-3 in the UFC. 1,236 strikes were landed during his path of rage. His long jabs, his punching combinations, controlling clinch-wrestling and his absurd, neverending gas tank all seemingly made him a threat to anyone in the division. And then Demian Maia wrestled him and choked him out in two rounds. Well, okay, it's Demian Maia, of course he did, that's still fine! Look, Magny just beat up Kelvin Gastelum and killed Hector Lombard, he's fine! Oh, wait, Lorenz Larkin just knocked him out in four minutes. I mean, that's not great, but c'mon, Lorenz Larkin is a great striker, and hey, Neil Magny's still great, look, he just dismantled a former welterweight champion in Johny Hendricks, he's still in the mix, he's--wait, what do you mean he just got ragdolled and choked out by a 5'8" lightweight? Neil Magny's reputation used to rest on how many prospects he turned away. Alex Garcia, Kiichi Kunimoto, Hyun Gyu Lim, Hector Lombard, even the Carlos Condit Comeback Caravan officially ended on Magny's fists. He was a measuring stick for the division. But as good as he was, he couldn't beat the best. And when the UFC realizes you can't become a top guy--and you're not a wild-brawling fan favorite--you become, bit by bit, a utility player, a guy the UFC uses to test other guys. To put it in the most disrespectful internet parlance: You become a gatekeeper. And nothing more directly consigned Neil Magny to gatekeeper status than his last fight, where he was once again used as a measuring stick for a hot prospect in Shavkat Rakhmonov, who promptly dominated him in every aspect of the fight and choked him out in the second round. When you can't beat anyone ranked above you (or at least anyone the UFC is willing to match you against, because Neil Magny COULD turn Jorge Masvidal and Colby Covington into sock puppets but he ain't never getting that chance), you have no choice but to defend yourself from the people below you. Daniel Rodriguez is moving on up. "D-Rod," hailing from my second-least favorite style of nickname, has had a surprisingly understated rise to the top given how much promotional hype is typically given to big, tattooed punchmen who would rather die than shoot a takedown. A stout-rear end 6'1" striker who's competed from 155 to 185 pounds (but is understandably going larger as he ages through his mid-thirties), Rodriguez was a bit of a road warrior on his way to the UFC, working his way up through the Spar Star amateur circuit, detouring through Bellator and Combate Americas before finally getting on the UFC's radar thanks to the Contender Series. Even though he won, he had to take one more fight before they actually signed him, and did so with one last successful facepunching at an event so nice I've referenced it twice in two successive Daniel Rodriguez fights, my favorite regional MMA card, Smash Global's SMASH Global 9: Black Tie Fight Night: Smash for the Troops. D-Rod did not take long to make an impression. He choked the poo poo out of Tim Means in his UFC debut, punched the crap out of Gabe Green in his second fight and ragdolled Dwight Grant in his third. His striking style, a distressingly unusual mixture of calm, composed jabs and feints with occasional killing-rage flurries and maulings, proved disarming and dangerous for otherwise seasoned opponents who seemed to have no idea what to do with someone capable of switching rhythms, which is possibly a damning statement for mixed martial arts as a whole, but hey: It's cool to see now. Even his one UFC loss was an exceptionally close fight with the equally tough Nicolas Dalby, and half the media scores thought he won. The real patch on his career, as happens so unfortunately often, has been timing. Rodriguez got out to a great start, but the Dalby decision killed his momentum. He snapped off another three-fight win streak that saw him batter Mike Perry and punch Kevin Lee all the way out of the UFC, but at the most visible apex of his success, he had to take an entire year off to rehab hand injuries. His return this past September was slated to be both his most high-profile fight and a surefire fight-of-the-year candidate, seeing him face off at a 180-pound catchweight against the equally explosive and much more visible Kevin Holland. Unfortunately, that was on the hell-damned So the UFC needs to try again, and as always Neil Magny is here, ready to weigh the heart of a prospect against the feather of Maat. Where does Daniel Rodriguez reach on the measuring stick? Honestly: I don't think it's a great fight for Magny. As he's aged and the division has caught up with him Magny's difficulty handling pressure from aggressive strikers has become more pronounced, with Geoff Neal, Max Griffin and most famously Santiago Ponzinibbio demonstrating how to eloquently crack his jaw. Here's the thing: All of those men, while powerful strikers, are also even less aggressive and persistent than Daniel Rodriguez. After nine fights under the UFC's auspices, Daniel has an average of 7.75 significant strikes landed per minute. To put that in perspective, Max Holloway, one of the best pressure fighters in the entire sport, a man who outlands opponents by hundreds of punches, has an average of 7.24. Neil Magny's successes come from out-pressuring and out-lasting his opponents. Fighting people who can out-pressure him has historically worked out very poorly, especially when they've got punching power to spare. Rodriguez is more than capable of avoiding his wrestling attacks and putting punches straight through his guard. It's been nine years since Neil Magny tasted back-to-back losses, but the bell tolls for us all. Daniel Rodriguez by TKO. MAIN CARD: DISGUISED AS PATIENCE TIME GETS WASTED  FLYWEIGHT:Tagir Ulanbekov (13-2) vs Nate Maness (14-2)Hey, it's another Dagestani fighter. Tagir Ulanbekov is a WRESTLER AND COMBAT SAMBO PRACTITIONER who hails from MAKHACHKALA, DAGESTAN and has SPENT HIS ENTIRE CAREER TRAINING WITH KHABIB NURMAGOMEDOV. While he is a CAPABLE striker, he is best known for his CLINCH TAKEDOWNS and his CHOKE-FOCUSED GRAPPLING. Tagir Ulanbekov is NOT related to KHABIB NURMAGOMEDOV, but he was trained and managed by KHABIB'S FATHER, ABDULMANAP and followed Khabib to THE AMERICAN KICKBOXING ACADEMY. Ulanbekov won TWO regional championships in HIS NATIVE RUSSIA in federations such as FIGHT NIGHTS GLOBAL and GORILLA FIGHTS. When he is not fighting, Tagir Ulanbekov enjoys many hobbies, such as WALKING PLACES, eating FOOD and BEFRIENDING WARLORDS. He is fighting Nate Maness. Nate Maness PROBABLY SHOULD HAVE LOST HIS UFC DEBUT, as judges who MAY OR MAY NOT HAVE BEEN WATCHING THE FIGHT scored two rounds for him while ignoring that HE WAS GETTING THE poo poo BEAT OUT OF HIM, but in the interests of fairness, he also GOT KICKED IN THE DICK THREE TIMES so throwing him a bone seems reasonable. He unfortunately has had HISTORICAL DIFFICULTIES WITH STRONG WRESTLERS, which makes the UFC setting up this fight seem as though they are TRYING TO GET HIM TO LOSE, which becomes even more suspicious when you remember that his previous fight was A DOMINANT, WRESTLING-CENTRIC LOSS to TAGIR'S TRAINING PARTNER and KHABIB'S COUSIN, UMAR NURMAGOMEDOV. Tagir isn't quite as good or as stylistically flexible as Umar, so this should be a more interesting fight. Maness leaves himself open for far too many takedowns, but he's got some sneaky, vicious counterpunching under his sleeve and it lets him get away with it more often than not. That said, he's already been victimized by DAGESTANI WRESTLING once, and not only does Tagir also have that, he trains with someone who won a 30-25 against Maness. This should be competitive, but not enough. Tagir Ulanbekov by decision. Chase Sherman. Chase goddamn Sherman. No matter what I do in life, I am forever haunted by the constant presence of Chase loving Sherman. We got rid of Chase Sherman twice already. He joined the UFC back in 2016 as the rare heavyweight brawler who seemed to know what combinations were, but two years later he was 2-5 and had gotten knocked out three times, so it was back to Island Fights. But the lure of warm bodies is strong, so the UFC brought him back in 2020 for a big, sexy second run, whereupon he won one fight and then immediately got shut down three times in a row and released again. But then the UFC desperately needed someone willing to take a last-minute replacement fight against the undefeated Alexander Romanov, and Chase Sherman, by god, is always ready. Sure, he got ragdolled and had his arm ripped off in two minutes, but he was BACK, baby. And then he beat Jared Vanderaa, ensuring that we're stuck with him for at least three more fights to come. The jury is still out, meanwhile, on Josh Parisian. He actually won Contender Series appearances twice, once back in 2018 which earned him the joy of a quick knockout loss on The Ultimate Fighter 28 and more recently in 2020 where he in one three and a half minute fight threw more spinning back kicks than he did jabs. He's 2-2 in the UFC, but neither is a great advertisement for his virtues as a fighter: One was a split decision over Roque Martinez that 86% of the media scored against him and the other, his last fight, was a TKO win over legendarily unsuccessful Alan Baudot, and it was a TKO in the sense that Parisian had him in back mount and was very slowly allowing gravity to carry his hand into the side of Baudot's head and the referee felt too embarrassed to let the fight continue, and after that eight-minute exertion Parisian immediately rolled to his back and looked like he wanted to die. It feels silly to describe these men to you in terms of their fighting records. It feels silly to scientifically break down a lot of heavyweight fights. I rag on the heavyweight division on an almost weekly basis, and to be clear, there's a very good reason--it's bad--but aside from the world's obsession with large men doing large man things, the heavyweight division isn't bereft of value. The zero-sum game of fighting at heavyweight is in its own way an example of purity in mixed martial arts technique. When leaning into a punch or allowing someone to take your back can be an instantaneous fight-ender just because they're so loving big and strong that a single mistake puts you in an intractable position, every single maneuver matters that much more. There's a reason the Cro-Cop high kick and the Ngannou rip-your-goddamn-head-off haymaker become part of the mythological core of the sport. But most heavyweights aren't that. Heavyweight is still the division most likely to siphon athletes off to more profitable, less dangerous and somehow even less exploitative fields, and the division most likely to produce technically unsound brawlers, and for every Stipe Miocic or Pedro Rizzo you have a dozen Josh Parisians. Chase Sherman and Josh Parisian are a combined 6-13 in the UFC. That's not great. The six men they defeated, collectively, have a UFC record of 3-23 (1). And that, my friends, is the true core of heavyweight: All of the guys who, for all of their heart and all of their will, can barely scrape together a win outside of the regional scene. Chase Sherman by TKO, because whatever crap I say about him, he knows what a jab is and he can fight for eight minutes without looking like he wants to die, and whether I like it or not, he is what heavyweight truly looks like. FEATHERWEIGHT: Darrick Minner (26-13) vs Shayilan Nuerdanbieke (37-10)Both of these names are very fun to type for entirely different reasons, and both of these men should make for a very fun fight together for entirely different reasons. I reference wrestleboxers on a nearly weekly basis and have used the phrase five times in this write-up alone, but Darrick Minner is the rarest of grapple-brawlers: The oddly aggressive submission specialist. He wants to take you down, but he doesn't want to hold position or land ground and pound, he wants to cycle through innovative ways to choke you, and he's good enough at it to go 15 minutes against Ryan Hall without getting tapped out. Unfortunately, he still lost, and that plus his battering at the hands of Darren Elkins means Minner is staring down the dreaded third loss in a row. Shayilan Nuerdanbieke comes from the strongest of martial backgrounds--professional wrestling--but elected to pursue real fighting instead when it was pointed out to him that the last 5'8" WWE superstar got nicknamed Shorty G. Nuerdanbieke, who thanks to real fighting has the much classier "Wolverine," is a standout from China's Wu Lin Feng federation. The majority of regional talents from the WLF W.A.R.S. cards seemingly fell into one of two buckets, 'kickboxer with some Sanda throws' or 'wrestler who can box,' and as a Greco-Roman wrestling champion, Nuerdanbieke is cleanly in the latter category. He's very strong and he's got a solid jab, but he has difficulty translating that strength into actual knockout power, which is why his victories tend to come down to how effectively he can mix up his punches with his dump takedowns. And that's a problem for Shayilan here. His offense is at its most effective when he can force people to engage with him on the feet so as to avoid dealing with him on the ground. Darrick Minner, once again, willingly and even gleefully engaged in a fifteen-minute grappling war with Ryan Hall, a guy who hits Imanari rolls and inverted heel hooks more or less at will. Shayilan's wrestling attacks are very punch-from-the-guard centric and Minner will make him work every second of the fight if he doesn't want to deal with getting choked. Darrick Minner by decision. LIGHTWEIGHT: Grant Dawson (18-1-1) vs Mark Madsen (12-0) This is a weird fight between two fights with weird loving histories. Grant "KGD" Dawson is the very model of a modern major wrestleboxer, right down to the degree from Nebraska and the Rick Story haircut. He's been under the UFC's corporate umbrella since just the sixth week of the half-decade mental breakdown that has been Dana White's Contender Series and he hasn't actually lost a fight since. His competition's been stiff, too: Mike Trizano, Jared Gordon, Leonardo Santos, Dawson's carved his way up the division. And yet he's kind of still here, toiling in the undercroft, and a part of that is how often his fights come down to unexpected last-second events. He was about to lose that decision to Leo Santos before he knocked him out with one second left in the fight. He went to a draw with Ricky Glenn because the referee didn't realize he had been choked out until the fight was already over. And now he's fighting a guy whose every fight could be the twilight of his career. Mark Madsen is nicknamed "The Olympian," because he went to the Olympics and won a silver medal and that means you dedicated your entire life to winning a thing that carries a cash prize of $15,000, so by god, you'd BETTER keep the name. Like so many Olympic athletes turned mixed martial artists, Madsen is a wrestler-rear end wrestler, and like so many Olympic wrestlers entering the sport, he started fighting later in life than most. So now he's on a four-fight win streak in the UFC, but he's also a 38 year-old lightweight. What's weirder still, the UFC seems to be to some extent aware of and trying to cover for this: There are exactly three lightweights in the UFC older than Madsen (it'll be four if Joe Lauzon ever comes back), and in his last two fights he's fought two of them. What's the absolute weirdest part yet: While he soundly outfought one, Vinc Pichel, he somehow, in the year 2021, went to a split decision with Clay Guida, a man who has been fighting since dinosaurs roamed the Earth--and it was a split decision Clay Guida probably should have won, because Madsen's victory hinged on the judges inexplicably scoring a round for him in which he got outstruck and dropped to his knees by, just so we're clear, Clay Guida. So you've got an old wrestleboxer and a young wrestleboxer, except the old guy is more wrestle and the young guy is more box and they're undefeated but both narrowly escaped fights they probably should've lost. Whose wrestleboxing reigns supreme? Grant Dawson by decision. Madsen is a throwback of the truest kind: Clinching on the fence, lots of hockey uppercuts, and his standup is big right hands and prayers. But Dawson's bigger, stronger and a very good wrestler in his own right, and he presents much more of a standup challenge than Madsen's had to fend off before. The mad science experiment to create a Danish Randy Couture will have to return to the lab. PRELIMS: TUNE IN AND WE CAN GET THE LAST CALL WOMEN'S FLYWEIGHT: Miranda Maverick (10-4) vs Shanna Young (8-4) I use the (probably too insulting) phrase "housecleaning fight" to describe matches between people who are on the cusp of taking their third consecutive loss. This is something much rarer and in some ways almost as damning: An "okay, what now" fight. Both of these women came into their last bout on a two-fight losing streak, both faced other, equally embattled fighters, both won by stoppage in the second round, and both saw their less fortunate opponents get fired. Now, having just barely saved their contracts, you have two fighters who are desperate to not go right the gently caress back on the bubble. Miranda Maverick by submission. Shanna Young's success comes from making space and forcing wild exchanges into them and Miranda Maverick's success comes from denying her opponents even an inch of space and suffocating them with clinch strikes and throws. Shanna's style plays right into hers. BANTAMWEIGHT: Mario Bautista (10-2) vs Benito Lopez (10-1)In theory, this is a great fight, but Benito Lopez is only theoretically still a fighter. Mario Bautista is one of the UFC's most underrated bantamweights, an absolutely ferocious all-around fighter who's just as comfortable slamming jumping knees into people as cutting through their guard and choking them out, he just also happens to have had the unfortunate luck of drawing Cory Sandhagen for his UFC debut and running into the power hand of Trevin Jones after battering him for five and a half minutes. Benito Lopez looked solid if not spectacular the last time we saw him, but, uh, the last time we saw him was also almost three and a half years ago. He's been MIA and rehabbing various injuries, but we don't know what they were or how severe they were, we don't know what his return to training has been like, and honestly, when you've been gone that long, everything about your fighting becomes something of a question mark again. Mario Bautista is not an easy comeback draw. It's fully feasible Benito comes back with a new lease on life and skills that blow his opponents out of the water, but it's just as likely he's rusty, and boy, this is a bad fight to potentially be rusty in. Mario Bautista by TKO. WOMEN'S STRAWWEIGHT: Jinh Yu Frey (11-7) vs Polyana Viana (12-5) Poor Jinh Yu Frey. There are many arguments for the UFC adopting an atomweight division, and Frey's is yet another on the pile of the unheard. At 105 pounds she was a title challenger in Rizin and a champion in Invicta FC, but weight difficulties and a call from the UFC sent her up to 115, and that small change was enough to propel her all the way down the ladder. Before the shift, her mixture of aggressive and defensive striking and her abrupt switches to wrestling made her 9-4 and a top five fighter; after making it to the UFC she's 2-3. Except everyone she's beaten is bigger than her and everyone she's lost to is smaller, so gently caress my theories. Polyana Viana is a much more traditional grappling specialist who armbarred and choked her way to a Jungle Fight championship before, much like Amanda Lemos above, getting the gently caress out because it was impossible to make a living. Her UFC career has been a bit of a rollercoaster, with a successful debut followed by a three-fight losing streak and her recent comeback having just been dashed by Tabatha "Baby Shark" Ricci. There are interesting angles to both sides of this. Polyana Viana is not a great striker, she relies on her grappling, but she's traditionally not great at getting fights to the floor and Frey is very good at defending shots. But Frey's biggest problem as a fighter is output: She's often so measured about her offense that judges perceive it as inactivity, leading to situations like her last fight, where she should easily have won a 29-28 only for judges to see 45 seconds of ground control as more worthwhile than her power jabs. If Frey outstrikes Viana but still gives up a takedown here and there, historically, that can be enough. That said: Still pulling for Jinh Yu Frey by decision. BANTAMWEIGHT: Liudvik Sholinian (9-2-1) vs Johnny Muñoz Jr. (11-2) Here, we have one of the weirder things that happens regularly in mixed martial arts: Specialists who don't really want to be specialists. Both of these guys have strong grappling credentials: Sholinian is a championship wrestler out of Ukraine with multiple international titles and Muñoz is a lifelong BJJ expert, primarily thanks to his parents, who've owned and operated their own BJJ gym since he was a child and owe their grappling lineage to the legendary Joe Moreira. And then you watch them fight, and Sholinian throws tons of leg kicks and only rarely shoots a double and Muñoz crab-walks behind a tight guard pumping jabs and only shoots a takedown when he gets hurt. Which is often! "Kid Kvenbo"--it was his dad's nickname, apparently--is an incredibly dangerous grappler and his offensive boxing is actually very tight and impressive, but boy, he leads with his head and gets punched in it a lot, and finally paid for it in his last fight when he dove headfirst into a Tony Gravely uppercut that made him relive every one of his past lives. We've only seen Sholinian take one UFC fight outside the oppressive confines of the Ultimate Fighter house, and it was a woefully outmatched bout against Jack Shore where nothing he did really worked. That being said, I'm going out on a bit of a betting-odds limb and picking the upset here. Liudvik Sholinian by decision. Sholinian demonstrated just how hard he was to take down even against a very strong wrestler like Shore, and the shaky nature of Muñoz's standup defense means he could easily spend the fight getting potshotted out of jab attempts and failing to get the fight to the ground. FLYWEIGHT: Carlos Candelario (8-2) vs Jake Hadley (8-1) Hey, look, it's Jake Hadley again! The last time we saw Jake "White Kong" Hadley he was making his controversial UFC debut after an appearance on the Contender Series where he missed weight, mocked his opponent AND dared to wrestle his way to a decision, but Dana White looked at the British guy with the racist-if-you-squint nickname who kept flipping off the camera and said, No, this is the man I want. He gave him a stiff test in the very good Allan Nascimento, who outgrappled, outstruck AND outwrestled him, thus removing most of his reasons for being. I'm assuming he thinks Hadley's learned his lesson, because Carlos "The Cannon" Candelario is probably on his way out of the UFC. Candelario lost a very close split decision on the Contender Series where he got outwrestled and outgrappled, and was picked up anyway to fight Japanese prospect Tatsuro Taira, where he got even outwrestleder and outgrapplered and, as the cherry on top, missed weight. In other words: Hadley got slapped on the wrist with a tough match for messing up his Contender Series debut and now it's time to push the guy Dana wants to market. Jake Hadley by TKO. WOMEN'S BANTAMWEIGHT: Tamires Vidal (6-1) vs Ramona Pascual (6-4) In these pieces I find myself semi-frequently apologizing and getting neurotic about the feeling that I am too mean about fighters, and I find that feeling magnifies when I discuss women's MMA because the average competitive ceiling is still so young and, quite frankly, low. X fighter has only beaten people with no wins, Y fighter is bad at takedowns, etc. Doing my research for this fight provided a distressingly good example of exactly why this complex exists in my head. Pretend, for a moment, that you are Tamires "Tratora" Vidal. You're a grappler by trade; you've got some kickboxing experience, but it's the kind of kickboxing that gets taught to you through side instruction at your jiu-jitsu school, which doesn't even have its own website. Aside from getting choked out by Karol Rosa early in your career, which was a loving stupid match to make because you were 1-0 and she was 9-3, what the gently caress, you're a solid 4-1 prospect thanks almost entirely to those grappling chops. In a reflection of your efforts, you're contracted to fight in the main event of Samurai Fight House 2 for its Women's Bantamweight Championship. This is a great opportunity, you say: Samurai Fight House is new, but they've got connections to UFC talent scouts who are openly looking for female fighters, and besides, it's a championship belt, and isn't that the dream? You come out to fight. The event, while legal and licensed, is a glorified smoker. It doesn't just take place inside another fighting school, it takes place in a fence with padded borders to hold it in place around a surface of cheap red-rubber jigsaw-connecting exercise mats. As you walk through the gym someone plays "Eye of the Tiger" on their iPhone; you look up, and cannot help noticing the referee is taller than the cage itself, and look down, and cannot help noticing the numerous uncleaned bloodstains blending into the puzzle mats, bordering worn-out holes in the connecting pieces through which you can see concrete. There's no audience around you, just two guys recording the fight on their phones, a very tired judge with a clipboard, and a timekeeper who's prepared to blare an airhorn in your ear the moment the round ends despite being at most five feet away from you in a largely empty room. You spend the entire fight on your back, squirming around in the dried blood, sweat and flaking rubber, rolling repeatedly for kneebars while the champion, Ailin Perez, punches you in the face. At one point she's admonished for throwing illegal 12-6 elbows to your ribs, to which she nods her understanding; thirty seconds later, she is winding up and repeatedly rabbit-punching you in the brainstem. Tough as you are, you scream a little. She loses a point and the fight is restarted on the feet, and you try to take advantage of the opportunity by clinching her against the fence, which bends concerningly every time you touch it. Unable to gain an advantage or throw you, Ailin winds up and knees you as hard as she can in the groin, and when you turn away wincing and holding your crotch, she follows you and lands two more before the referee can separate you. You collapse, yelling in pain one more time, but after a chance to recover you continue to fight, because, after all, you're a loving fighter, and you can do this. This is the dream. But you can't. You spend two more rounds getting controlled, reversed, and thrown to the floor, trying and failing to roll away from the knuckles and elbows piling hematomas up on your face. You try one last time, in the third round, to press the fight into the clinch and get Ailin to the ground where you might have some hope of finding a submission, but once again she reverses you, and once again, you're on all fours. And then she winds up and repeatedly, illegally, knees you in the head as hard as she can. You collapse onto the mat and roll to an awkward seated position: Every part of you hurts and your opponent is screaming and crying with the emotional catharsis of victory, not yet aware that she cheated yet again and is about to be disqualified. You aren't even included in the post-fight announcement, it's unclear if you're the champion, it's not even clear if there was a belt in the first place. As you sit on the mat collecting yourself you average out your contracted fight purse with the fourteen weeks you spent preparing for it and wonder if you made minimum wage. After all of that, four months later, you're fighting again, because what else can you do? You hear Ailin Perez, whom you technically beat--but, you remind yourself, yes, but not really--got picked up by the UFC before you. She calls out the champion, pronounces herself the next big thing, gets a trip to Paris and gets choked out in two rounds. A month and change beforehand, you heel-hooked a kickboxer on an LFA card in front of a couple hundred people. She kicked you in the crotch 90 seconds into the fight, too. You wish people would stop doing that, but you also poked her in the eye by mistake; it happens. But this was in one of the UFC's feeder leagues, and finally, after half a decade of struggle, your coach tells you the UFC called him. The UFC wants you. The UFC wants you to be the curtain-jerking fight in their empty Apex arena. The UFC wants you to face Ramona Pascual, a career featherweight who's bigger and stronger than you. The UFC wants to pay you a big, lofty pre-taxes-and-fees total of $10,000. And you jump on it without a second thought, and you scream a little inside from excitement. Because this is the dream, and you've finally made it. And no matter how much I objectively evaluate these fighters and their prospects, there is no way to watch someone go through all of that, predict further misery for them, and not feel like poo poo. Ramona Pascual by decision. Card begins in 45 minutes, but with the last-minute fight scratching dead air is likely.
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Nov 5, 2022 20:16
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Amazing write-up, makes these fight nights more fun
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Nov 5, 2022 21:08
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Chromatics posted:Amazing write-up, makes these fight nights more fun  Thank you kindly.Walkouts for the first fight finally happening.
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Nov 5, 2022 21:18
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nasty knee
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Nov 5, 2022 21:25
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Vidal to CarlCX: "heard u talkin poo poo"
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Nov 5, 2022 21:27
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Trillhouse posted:Vidal to CarlCX: "heard u talkin poo poo" If every fighter I thought would lose murdered their opponent with flying knees instead I would be very, very happy.
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Nov 5, 2022 21:30
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funny finish
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Nov 5, 2022 21:54
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I enjoy all finishes involving just elbowing someone in the skull repeatedly.
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Nov 5, 2022 21:55
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that was a full-on starching, holy moly
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Nov 5, 2022 22:44
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Nice combo
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Nov 5, 2022 22:45
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Well that was quick
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Nov 5, 2022 22:45
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bautista just made me a fan. complete domination. those body shots were nasty.
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Nov 5, 2022 23:14
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Man that just mostly made me feel sad for Lopez, he looks like a fighter we last saw at 34 and now he's 38 or something, except in reality he's 10 years younger than that.
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Nov 5, 2022 23:15
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She cut off her hair to make weight!?! 
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Nov 5, 2022 23:35
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miranda maverick isn't a real name
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Nov 5, 2022 23:39
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Jerusalem posted:She cut off her hair to make weight!?! Some of it, kinda ended up like an undercut I think, here's a bad angle video (I haven't seen others) of the weigh in itself https://twitter.com/PhotoAmy33/status/1588609795841748992
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Nov 5, 2022 23:39
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I'd say she was like Samson and lost her strength as a result, but the OP makes it sound like both of these fighters are basically circling the drain and hoping they can use the other for a few more precious seconds of staying under contract.
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Nov 5, 2022 23:53
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young fuckin sucks
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Nov 5, 2022 23:53
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this has gone on too long already but the ref is hunkering down hands on knees and observing this poo poo like somethings gonna change
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Nov 5, 2022 23:55
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Jerusalem posted:I'd say she was like Samson and lost her strength as a result, but the OP makes it sound like both of these fighters are basically circling the drain and hoping they can use the other for a few more precious seconds of staying under contract. Maverick's only 25 years old and only lost decisions, choked out Sabina Mazo in her last fight, I don't think she was in serious risk of being cut, but weirder cuts have happened.
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Nov 5, 2022 23:57
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theres giving someone every reasonable chance and then theres giving people other people's chances, people not even in attendance, some dude in michigan is losing a hand of poker because of that
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Nov 5, 2022 23:58
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Well hey, I wasn't impressed by the fight but she actually used the post-fight interview to call somebody out, thank her team and get in a nod to a sponsor. That's a low bar but a lot of fighters can't meet it!
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Nov 6, 2022 00:00
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lmao I didn't even know this could happen but somehow Tapology is currently listing the fight as both fighters having lost by decision Edit: ok they fixed it before I even hit submit on this
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Nov 6, 2022 00:03
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CarlCX posted:Grant "KGD" Dawson .... went to a draw with Ricky Glenn because the referee didn't realize he had been choked out until the fight was already over. Wait, what the gently caress?  Brut posted:lmao I didn't even know this could happen but somehow Tapology is currently listing the fight as both fighters having lost by decision Ahahaha, thank you for catching it!
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Nov 6, 2022 00:09
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Sorry Dawson, it's nothing personal but I have to cheer for Madsen now because some dipshits in the crowd started a USA chant. I don't make the rules.
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Nov 6, 2022 00:22
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Jerusalem posted:Wait, what the gently caress? The best part is it's the same thing Ricky Simon had a controversial win over Merab Dvalishvili for, but it counted one time but not the other because  Hell of a job by Dawson.
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Nov 6, 2022 00:28
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Sorry Madsen!
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Nov 6, 2022 00:30
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drat, Dawson doing a good callout here! He wants Tony Ferguson!
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Nov 6, 2022 00:33
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CarlCX posted:I just wish they happened because they actually chose to put them on and promote them as opposed to deciding they just don't give enough of a gently caress about a card to bother and letting women have the scraps. You don't get an advertising blitz, you don't get promotional appearances, you don't get a UFC Embedded on the loving Youtube channel, but hey: You get to share a main card with Chase Sherman. Update: Neither main eventer got press OR a main card with Chase Sherman, but Rose Namajunas is getting an official UFC documentary, so
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Nov 6, 2022 00:35
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That Maness said that he wasn't worried because he fought (and lost!) to Nurmagomedov so he knew what to expect. I guess what he knew to expect was getting his rear end beat!
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Nov 6, 2022 00:47
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"He don't speak English much but he knows how to ask for his money!" 
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Nov 6, 2022 00:51
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Ayy Dahna
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Nov 6, 2022 00:51
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Man, there are a lot of busted limbs in the last six weeks of fight sports.
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Nov 6, 2022 01:08
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Dana's slap league makes more sense after this cavalcade of knee injuries. Just let them bang!
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Nov 6, 2022 01:11
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i dont know what got a bigger laugh out of me - the kick breaking Darrick's foot being no-sold by Shayilan like watching a dude kicking a fire hydrant, or the ref stoppage coming sometime between "four sacks weighted with rocks dumped over the edge of a boat at midnight" and "a shrieking swimmer makes a horrible beachside discovery"
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Nov 6, 2022 01:17
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I'm here for Magny.
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Nov 6, 2022 01:22
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CarlCX posted:Smash Global's SMASH Global 9: Black Tie Fight Night: Smash for the Troops. A great part of CarlCX's excellent OPs, beyond the high level of detailed informative retrospectives of fighters and the often biting humor, is when they make up shows like the above which obviously can't possibly actually be real shows that aired in any sane world.
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Nov 6, 2022 01:23
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DoombatINC posted:i dont know what got a bigger laugh out of me - the kick breaking Darrick's foot being no-sold by Shayilan like watching a dude kicking a fire hydrant, or the ref stoppage coming sometime between "four sacks weighted with rocks dumped over the edge of a boat at midnight" and "a shrieking swimmer makes a horrible beachside discovery" Goddamn
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Nov 6, 2022 01:24
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Jerusalem posted:A great part of CarlCX's excellent OPs, beyond the high level of detailed informative retrospectives of fighters and the often biting humor, is when they make up shows like the above which obviously can't possibly actually be real shows that aired in any sane world. Three out of the four winners that night were next in either the Contender Series or the UFC, and the only one who wasn't quit the sport to do bareknuckle boxing, so the UFC talent scouted the gently caress out of the troop smashing
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Nov 6, 2022 01:38
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Neil loving Magny.
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Nov 6, 2022 01:43
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