- CarlCX
- Dec 14, 2003
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It's the last UFC of the year, everyone. Get some nachos and watch some violence.
CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 42: LAST ONE OUT, TURN OFF THE LIGHTS
PRELIMS 1:00 PM PST/4:00 PM EST VIA ESPN+ | MAIN CARD 4 PM PST/7 PM EST VIA ESPN+
We made it. It's over. After one of the weirdest goddamn years in UFC history, after all of the last-minute main-event scratches, after the multiple championship vacations, after the sport spent the entire year ingratiating itself to some of the worst people on the planet and the CEO launched his own loving slapfighting league, we are, at the absolute least, done with 2022. Dissemble your woes and sink into the sweet nothings of the year's final fight night, because it's actually pretty okay, and much like the year as a whole: We could have done worse.
it's just not christmas without bruce leeroy
MAIN EVENT: ...AND THE HORSE YOU RODE IN ON
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Jared Cannonier (15-6, #3) vs Sean Strickland (25-4, #7)
It's somehow deeply freeing that we're ending 2022 with a main event that's more or less meaningless. We don't have to stick to format, here. We don't even have to talk about fighting. Wha'd you think of the new Taylor Swift album? It's good, right? It's good!
I mean, I'm told it's good by people who are cooler than me who listened to it. I missed it. In fact, I'm not sure I listened to a single new album this year. I think sometime around the outbreak of the pandemic I barricaded myself into a hole shaped like the Nine Inch Nails discography and fashioned protective armor made of decades-old Now That's What I Call Music CDs. The last song in my Youtube search history is MxPx's "I'm Ok, You're Ok" and internet metrics tell me I listened to White Town's "Your Woman" forty-eight times in the last month.
This opportunity for self-reflection has made me realize just how much of my brain subsists on combat sports instead of any other, better form of culture. I am not happy about this, and by god, I'm going to take it out on Jared Cannonier and Sean Strickland.
And for once, it makes more sense to talk about the two of them together than to go over each separately, because they both had more or less the same year. Cannonier and Strickland both entered 2022 as formerly embattled, largely-overlooked prospects trying to fight the first real contendership bouts of their careers, both scored the biggest victories of their respective careers and catapulted themselves into the spotlight, and once given their respective shots at the big show, both choked so badly that it's hard to imagine either of them threatening the top of the heap ever again.
Jared Cannonier's whole UFC reputation comes from being an inconsistent yet deeply terrifying human bazooka. He could lift Jack Hermansson into orbit with an uppercut, shatter Anderson Silva's leg with a single kick, and also get knocked out by Dominick Reyes and Shawn "Worse Than Matt Mitrione" Jordan back when he was still a heavyweight. He entered the year having just scored a decision victory over Kelvin Gastelum, which was actually helpful because after so many stoppages people had begun to wonder if he had the gas to go five rounds, and a second-round stoppage of Derek Brunson punched Cannonier's ticket to a championship showdown with Israel Adesanya.
And he hosed it. He froze, unable to solve the Israel Adesanya puzzle of "I'm going to stand several feet away from you and kick you periodically," and aside from a couple brief, fleeting moments of success where he forced Adesanya into the cage, he was very slowly, uneventfully outworked. The crowd spent the entire fight booing both men, but Adesanya walked away with the title and Cannonier walked away with a lifetime of questions about just how he failed to pull the trigger when it mattered most.
Sean Strickland carried a five-fight winning streak into 2022, having made a name for himself as an angry punching machine who would march people down and pound them into submission! Except in hindsight he only actually had one stoppage victory at middleweight and, boy, the UFC really suckered all of us into caring about him, because his fights were deeply uninteresting slogs and his only particularly impressive performances came against people like Uriah Hall, which means that, at best, Sean Strickland was a less interesting, less effective Paulo Costa. But his split decision over Jack Hermansson was enough to get him one fight away from the belt; unfortunately, that fight was against Alex "Poatan" Pereira.
This was, to be clear, the UFC trying to give Pereira a tee-ball, having booked him against the one and only guy in the entire middleweight top ten they thought they could trust not to shoot a takedown on a lifelong kickboxer. I actually picked Strickland in that fight, arguing that while Pereira was obviously a much, much, MUCH better striker, Strickland had enough sense and ability to 1-2 Pereira into the fence and waste him away in the clinch for fifteen minutes. That is not what happened. This is what happened:
...and professional idiocy emitter Sean Strickland, who'd just barely squeaked by Jack Hermansson and was enough of a strategist to fight Alex Pereira, championship kickboxer, by standing in front of him with his hands at his hips as though his brain itself was silently begging from behind his vacant, glassy eyes to be set free from the torment of being stuck in Sean Strickland's body.
As a general rule I try to ride the line of being open about the politics of fighters without overly focusing on them, out of some combined sense of a) not wanting to turn these breakdowns into my sociocultural soapbox, b) not wanting to split too much of my focus off stories that get us to each and every fight, and c) the latent awareness that the philosophical spectrum of combat sports is a dark, gaping maw of horrors and if I begin deep-diving on it I will never, ever surface.
But it's the last main event of the year, and I'm very, very tired, and I am fully willing to say that I have enjoyed watching Sean Strickland and Jared Cannonier fail miserably in their attempt to grasp history, because man, they're both just deeply unfortunate human beings.
Jared Cannonier was ahead of the curve on using his social status to boost conspiracy theories about liberal governmental control, the Democratic pedophile circuit and everything QAnon ever did. He had big thoughts about the George Floyd murder being a hoax, antifa being anti-American terrorists and Barack Obama being part of the Freemason conspiracy. He initially gained some traction with the perennially underserved Jewish fight fans for celebrating his victories by holding up a Tallit and thanking the God of Abraham, and then it turned out he hung out with hardcore hoteps and specifically praised the race-relation thoughts of a guy who described the entire existence of Judaism as a worldwide conspiracy committed by the Jewish elite to control humanity. That's about the point at which his management took away his social media accounts. You will notice his online presence is now just a barely-used instagram that only comes up for canned fight promos and sponsorship shoutouts. The world's probably better that way.
But don't sleep on Sean Strickland, because let me tell you, he doesn't suck any loving less. He's yet another in the long line of fighters who tried to overcompensate for their own inherent stylistic forgettability by acting like a massive rear end in a top hat, and luckily for him, he IS a massive rear end in a top hat, so it worked out gangbusters. He thinks every man who isn't a fighter is gay but he loves joking about how he could theoretically rape men who aren't fighters, he's a virulent transphobe and homophobe, and despite having every bit the 'you can't criticize fighters if you aren't a fighter because you don't know what you're talking about' stance he has big, outspoken thoughts about how Palestine isn't real and Ukraine needs to surrender to Russia. He's a bigot, an rear end in a top hat, a walking billboard for the desperate need for a mixed martial arts healthcare plan that includes mandatory therapy, and a human being so utterly lacking in any sort of literacy or sense that he thought American History X was a cool story about badass Nazis.
And most of the actual discussion about him in MMA fanbases is just about how much of it is an act, and I have to tell you, it's one of our dumbest, most pointless communal discussions. In the early 2000s people wondered if Tito Ortiz was putting it on or if he was really that big of an rear end in a top hat (as his political career shows: even bigger, actually), at the turn of the decade everyone was wowed by Chael Sonnen's crypto-racism (it turns out there are a whole lot of racist 1970s wrestling promos MMA fans haven't heard), during the big Irish boom the world wondered how much of Conor McGregor's constant bullshit was schtick (we surveyed Italian DJs with inexplicably busted faces and they're pretty sure he means it) and Colby Covington's entire career was built on the back of a questionably authentic Trump Train tribute act (even Jon Jones thought he was an rear end in a top hat).
And "sure, but how much is real and how much is smart self-marketing" is always brought up, and people don't seem to get that the vitriol has gotten steadily worse with each new theoretical bigot because it's all real. This isn't a movie, there's no magic moment where J.K. Simmons snaps his fingers and turns back from an abusive teacher into a beloved actor. The sport is the sport, and it makes its best money from right-wing caricatures because the sport sees them as inherently aspirational figures. If it didn't, we wouldn't be constantly discussing the theoretical marketing genius of adopting open, avowed bigotry.
There is no secret line separating the real shitheads from the fake shitheads. Whether you're choosing to be a shithead or came into the sport naturally gifted makes no difference to the sum impact of your voice or the UFC's gleeful attempts to market your hatred, and the collective willingness to embrace the gray zone of presumed kayfabe is a big part of how we got from "Frank Mir has been suspended and forced to apologize for saying he wants to break Brock Lesnar's neck" to "Sean Strickland just gave his fourth interview about how murdering someone in the cage would give him a boner and no one even noticed."
These things actually used to matter a little. Now Paddy Pimblett says something stupid and racist before and after every fight and it becomes part of his advertising highlight reel.
That's what this fight is. It's two guys who will never be world champions fighting to determine if being a boringly obvious toxic jerk or an openly crazy militant conspiracist is worse for the sport. In a better world--not even a good one, because in a good world neither of these men would be on a loving television screen, just a marginally better one--we'd get a double-knockout and everyone would go home arm in arm singing "Fairytale of New York" and Matt Serra would wish us all happy holidays.
But this is The Bad Place, and I'm erring on the side of Sean Strickland being secretly but understandably scared of people who hit like trucks. Jared Cannonier by TKO.
CO-MAIN EVENT: THE REAL LIGHTWEIGHT PROSPECTS
LIGHTWEIGHT: Arman Tsarukyan (18-3, #9) vs Damir Ismagulov (24-1, #12)
Remember all of the massive hype last week about how the future of the lightweight division orbits around the combat capacity, personal aesthetics and race relations sensibilities of the British 1970s? This is the stuff that will actually matter. It's just buried on the co-main event of a TV card no one will watch because neither competitor makes Dana White feel alive again.
And it's unfortunate, because after this fight, either of these guys could very easily be fighting for a championship with just one good win.
Hell, Arman Tsaruykan should arguably already be there. Tsarukyan--which for once is considerably easier to consistently type correctly than his nickname, Ahalkalakets--entered the UFC with a whole mess of hype back in mid-2019. He was a champion in both Russia and China, he was a remarkably well-rounded fighter with an incredible gas tank, and he'd rifled off a twelve-fight winning streak, having only lost in just the second fight of his career, three months after he turned pro, to a man he'd choke out in three minutes just one year later. Journalists had Tsarukyan pegged as a talent to watch, and the UFC knew he had some credibility going into his debut, as they shot him straight into the co-main event.
But it wasn't for his benefit. It was so he could fight a little-known guy named Islam Makhachev. Tsarukyan tried as hard as he could. There have been 18 takedowns attempted against Islam Makhachev during his time in the UFC: Only two have succeeded, and one of them was Arman Tsarukyan's. And that's worth being proud of!
Unfortunately, 12 of those 18 attempts were Tsarukyan's, so he went 1 for 12. Admittedly: A little less great.
But Arman blazed his way through the division from there, and just three years later he was on a five-fight winning streak and getting his first UFC main event against fellow highly-touted international prospect Mateusz Gamrot. It's been unfortunately forgotten thanks to the plethora of insane fights 2022 gave us, but Tsarukyan/Gamrot was one of the best bouts of the year, a masterpiece of both high-level technique, absurd conditioning and outright heart. But it was close, and Gamrot got the nod, and when you reach that top ten prospect vs prospect position, nothing is harder than the tumble you take when you lose and how goddamn hard it is to get your foot back in the door.
Because you don't get a gentler fight next. You don't get Jared Gordon or Justin Leavitt. You get Damir loving Ismagulov.
If Arman Tsarukyan was seen by the pretentiously smart journalists as a future prospect, Damir Ismagulov was, and is, seen as a nearly-certain future contender. He's a sound, powerful technical striker, he's an exceptional grappler, he's exceptionally tough and he hasn't lost a fight in almost eight goddamn years. He reigned as the unstoppable lightweight champion of Russia's M-1 until he more or less got bored and signed with the UFC. His fortunes didn't change one bit: After four years he was 4-0 and openly agitating for a fight in the top fifteen.
And they looked at their 23-1 unbeaten-in-the-UFC propsect and gave him...a ridiculously tough matchup against the unranked Guram Kutateladze.
Here's the thing: Damir Ismagulov is an absolutely incredible fighter who could be a champion tomorrow if they gave him a shot. They know this. They just really don't want to. He doesn't speak much English, he doesn't post offensive things on the internet, he doesn't have a mod haircut, and he commits the unforgivable sin of being a tactical fighter. He's not a high-volume striker or a high-amplitude wrestler and the last time he tapped someone out was 2016. He's the UFC's worst nightmare: A very talented guy who could very realistically beat the people they've put years into marketing without even having the decency to assault anyone backstage on his way out.
But he (barely) beat Kutateladze. So now they're stuck with him. And now these two exceptionally talented fighters will try to kick one another out of the fringe top ten in the hopes that the numbers by their names force the UFC to stop trying to book Poirier/McGregor 8 long enough for one of them to get a shot at the loving belt.
This is going to be a great fight. But it might not be a great fight to watch.
Arman Tsarukyan is a cardio machine, and that's his best weapon here. Damir Ismagulov is a very tough out, and banking on stopping him with striking power or muscling him into a submission would be a mistake, but assailing him with the thousand-cuts technique wouldn't. Not only is chipping away at him going to take away his own technical advantage, but it's going to play into Ismagulov's biggest problem: Judges. Damir likes to take his time and pick his shots, and that's gotten him in trouble in three-round fights before, because judges see his lack of output and immediately pay more attention to whatever the other guy is doing. Arman Tsarukyan just showed the ability to maintain a high-energy style for five rounds; in a three-round fight, if Ismagulov isn't trying to take him off his pace, Tsarukyan could simply drown him in judge-pleasing volume wrestling.
And yet: Damir Ismagulov by decision. Even as I make the argument for Tsarukyan having the better hand going into this fight, I keep seeing Ismagulov's implacability being a problem for him. If Tsarukyan CAN'T take him down, if he CAN'T control the standup, he's going to get picked apart during his repeated entries, and after Damir's past performances I cannot help thinking he'll manage it.
MAIN CARD: DON'T GIVE YOUR KIDS A DOBER FOR CHRISTMAS UNLESS THEY'RE ACTUALLY GOING TO TAKE CARE OF IT
 FLYWEIGHT: Amir Albazi (15-1, #8) vs Alessandro Costa (12-2, NR)
Amir Albazi has had a deeply unfortunate time in the UFC, and boy, you really shouldn't be able to say that about a 3-0 guy in the top ten, but every single fight of his UFC career has been mired in scheduling bullshit.
His debut was against Malcolm Gordon, but he had to take it on ultra-short notice. He was booked for a top fifteen fight with Raulian Paiva, but Paiva pulled out, so they sent him to the unranked Zhalgas Zhumagulov instead, but Zhumagulov couldn't get his visa straight, so Albazi had to sit on ice for three months. Victory got a matchup against the momentarily hot Ode' Osbourne--but then Albazi got injured and sat out an entire year. But it's okay, because he gets the top ten ranked Tim Elliott when he gets back! ...but then Elliott pulled out, so Albazi had to fight the once again unranked Francisco Figueiredo. But that's okay, because baby, it all paid off: Amir Albazi gets a showdown on the last card of the year against former title challenger and #5 ranked Alex Perez! poo poo, Perez is injured. Wait, it got even better, now it's Brandon Royval, the #4 ranked guy, so it's practically a title contendership match! Everything's coming up Alba--
Oh. Royval's out. And there's like two weeks to fill the gap.
So now, having spent two years attaining his position, Amir Albazi gets to risk it all against a dangerous Contender Series alumnus making his UFC debut.
Life is crushingly unfair. Alessandro "Nono" Costa was the standing flyweight champion of Brazil's Lux Fight League up until he traded in his belt for a shot at the Contender Series, but when Dana discovered that he was a) a flyweight and b) a fighter with the temerity to go to a decision, he decided even though Costa won, he hadn't won enough and sent him home. So Costa went right back to Lux and won his belt back with a 12-second knockout, and suddenly, mysteriously, the UFC was interested again.
Costa is an interesting fighter and, as strange as this will sound, he's particularly odd because he's ultra-orthodox. Where most fighters and especially most flyweights are fighting with broad, varied gameplans incorporating a ton of movement and a plethora of techniques, Costa is extremely conservative. He CAN wrestle, he CAN grapple, he CAN throw solid leg kicks, but his comfort zone is standing at boxing range with his guard up high, moving as little as possible in the hopes of throwing counterpunches. Which is hilarious, because it wasn't always like that. Dude has twice as many wins by submission as with his hands. Dude has a professional mixed martial arts victory by flying armbar. But over the last couple years, he's changed his style to be much more boxing-oriented.
And it got him a 12-second knockout and a shot at the UFC, so as far as he's concerned, it's probably working out just fine.
On paper, Amir Albazi should win this. He's a fantastically well-rounded fighter with some really creative methods of chaining techniques together, he's remarkably tough to prepare for, and with a guy coming up on short notice and a puncher's chance, it's really hard not to pick Amir Albazi by decision. But Costa hits real hard, and Albazi was preparing for two different fighters before him, and this is the kind of thing the capricious combat sports gods love to do, and by god, I have this rankling hunch Costa will find Albazi's chin and gently caress up his whole life. I'm choosing my head over my soul, but my soul remains wary.
FEATHERWEIGHT: Alex Caceres (19-13 (1), #15) vs Julian Erosa (28-9, NR)
We're entering our thirteenth straight year of Bruce Leeroy, and unlike almost everyone you can say that about, he's doing a lot better these days. When Alex Caceres made his promotional debut he was a barely-developed 21 year-old who the UFC threw into a locked house with a bunch of roided-up guys with a bunch of booze, because psychologically devastating its contestants was the secret sauce that made The Ultimate Fighter memorable. He was a quick, scrappy grappler who was very good at backpacking people and forcing them into bad positions, and if you could stop him from doing that, well, you were probably going to win, because he didn't have a lot else going on.
But he grew! He never exactly became a broad threat--after fourteen years and 32 fights he still hasn't really stopped anyone on strikes outside of an injury stoppage for a busted eye half a decade ago--but he learned to stick and move, he learned to shoot jabs straight through someone's guard, he learned to chain conventional wrestling into his unconventional clinch attacks, and ultimately became a more dangerous fighter because of it.
But he's never been quite good enough, or accomplished enough, to make it to the upper echelon of his division. He is, disrespectful a term as it can be, a gatekeeper. And he is here to once again keep the loving gate.
Julian Erosa is the living embodiment of the hot and cold fighter. On one hand, he's 5-1 in a UFC tenure that's included facing extremely tough guys like Charles Jourdain and Nate Landwehr and just blowing them out of the goddamn water. On the other, this is his second tenure; the first saw him get immediately and unequivocally beaten three times in a row and fired in short order. Even now, his hot streak was interrupted by a ninety-second knockout loss to Seung Woo Choi, a struggling fighter who followed up said victory by immediately getting choked out--by Alex Caceres.
For most of his career, that was the Julian Erosa problem: Amazing offense, wild, inventive attacks, but no consistency or composure. He put so much energy into his weapons that he had none left for defense or pacing. But his two 2022 appearances have seen him looking better--more controlled, more willing to pick spots for winging high kicks and flying knees than simply spamming.
Which is funny, because this is a fight where getting spammy might help.
Bruce Leeroy is very, very difficult to knock out. Sodiq Yusuff is one of the hardest punchers in the division, and he couldn't sit Caceres down; barring some perfect headkicks, Erosa's going to have a very tough time doing better. But his ability to force grappling scrambles and force people off their rhythm with the abrupt ferocity of his offense are the two necessary ingredients for defusing the Alex Caceres gameplan. If you keep him off of you and you hit him enough to overcome his low-damage style, you'll win.
Erosa shouldn't have trouble with either. Unless he fucks it up again. Julian Erosa by decision.
LIGHTWEIGHT: Drew Dober (25-11 (1)) vs Bobby Green (29-13-1)
It is time for the battle of the angry journeymen. Drew Dober is, in a lot of ways, a throwback to the golden age of the UFC. Everyone remembers the welterweight division for GSP and Matt Hughes and Nick Diaz, but the real lifeblood of the division, the sinew that tied its bones together, was an endless legion of angry, square-jawed wrestle-boxers whose gameplans followed a simple, three-step program: 1) Punch you in the goddamn mouth, 2) Shoot a double, 3) GOTO 1.
And the crazy thing is, he fights like that because he is that. He's from that age. Drew Dober's first amateur fight happened in 2006. When Drew Dober first began competing in mixed martial arts the UFC's lightweight champion was None, because Drew Dober predates the reactivation of the lightweight division. He's an evolutionary fluke; a fork of a long-lost species of mixed martial artist who spent the last decade and a half perfecting the old ways rather than adjusting to the new. So he hits really, really loving hard, and he wrestles really, really well. And if you can do either of those things better than he can, he's in serious trouble.
I don't think I can summarize Bobby Green any better than I did at the start of this year:
Bobby Green is entering his fourteenth year of mixed martial arts, and I have been ride or die on him for about nine of those. Green is one of the greatest rarities in the sport: A genuinely talented defensive fighter. He parries, slips and counters better than almost anyone, and it shows, as in 40+ fights and three separate decades of competition he's only been stopped on strikes once, and that was against Dustin goddamn Poirier. Bobby Green's true, crippling weakness is, and has always been, judges. His counterfighting style is so inexplicably poisonous to MMA judging that decisions that should have been clear go against him with shocking regularity. This past August he had a prelim headliner against Rafael Fiziev featuring a third round where he outstruck Fiziev and nearly knocked him out twice, and one of those judges STILL scored the round against him.
And I can't help thinking this fight will mark the return of his luck with judging. Bobby Green getting knocked out by Drew Dober is very unlikely: He's too quick for Dober's big, booming outside hooks, he's too slick for the incredibly dangerous work Dober does on the inside when he forces opponents into brawls, and he's too good at counter-wrestling for the power doubles to blast him to the floor.
But it is very likely that Dober's forward aggression and constant assault, mixed with Green's high-defense, low-output style, will lead to yet another fight where Bobby Green lands 3/4 of the significant strikes in every round and still loses a unanimous decision.
Drew Dober by decision. Make me wrong, King.
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Cody Brundage (8-2) vs Michał Oleksiejczuk (17-5 (1))
Oh, look, it's Violence. It's the kind of violence best suited to two fighters who have a subset of useful skills that they tend to overlook in favor of desperately seeking bonus money.
Cody Brundage is a wrestler. He wrestled for the NCAA and he made nationals twice. He was good enough at wrestling that before he became a fighter he, in fact, taught wrestling. He's a wrestler. He wrestles. And yet, not a single one of his UFC fights has ended thanks to wrestling. He was seduced by the clarion call of striking, which is funny, because the last two times he tried it he nearly had his head taken clean off. Just one fight back he was getting thrashed to a near-certain stoppage by Dalcha Lungiambula, and won because Dalcha maddeningly shot for a takedown in mid-combination and was immediately choked out for his troubles. On Brundage's official UFC Q&A, he lists his favorite striking technique as "The one that lands." It's a difficult path that he has chosen.
Michał Oleksiejczuk is our collective champion. It does not matter that he spent most of his UFC career trading wins and losses at light-heavyweight, it does not matter that he got outwrestled by Jimmy Crute. It does not matter that he has a well-rounded game with a particularly tricky grappling assault he constantly foregoes in favor of winging kicks to the body and swinging haymakers, or that just one fight prior we saw him get ground into the fence and controlled by a stronger, superior wrestler and that portends bad things against Cody Brundage.
All that matters is on August 6, 2022, at the otherwise ill-fated Santos vs Hill, Michał Oleksiejczuk became a hero on Earth by vanquishing the eldritch horror that was Sam Alvey's UFC career. Our pastoral mountain village was haunted for years by the Smiling Horror, and it was by Michał's hand that it was finally punched out and returned to its cursed sarcophagus and sunk back beneath the old river, destined to one day rise and plague a new generation of woebegone farmers.
Michał Oleksiejczuk by TKO because the power of the demon's soul is still within him.
PRELIMS: ON A JOURNEY TO NOWHERE
WOMEN'S STRAWWEIGHT: Cheyenne Vlismas (7-2) vs Cory McKenna (7-2)
Hey, look, it's The One Women's Fight. What a fitting way to end the UFC's year. I went back just now to do some Wikipedia math: Presuming this card winds up going on as scheduled, and not counting off-brand events like the Contender Series or Road to UFC or TUF, the UFC will wind up successfully staging 512 fights this year, and 96 of them will have been women's fights, or just about 19%. Only 29 of them made it off the prelims. Only 6 made it to a main event.
But by god, we got a Paddy Pimblett co-main event.
Cheyenne Vlismas wants to hit you a goddamn lot. She's never submitted anyone, she shoots for takedowns maybe once a year, and her last two UFC appearances involved a) beating the poo poo out of Mallory Martin while easily evading takedowns and b) headkicking Gloria de Paula out of consciousness in one minute. But this is her first appearance this year, and if you're wondering where she's been for all of 2022, or if you're wondering 'wait, I faintly remember a Cheyenne Buys in the UFC, who's this,' congratulations, you are asking the same question. Thanks to a real messy, real social-media-heavy divorce involving accusations of infidelity and claims of a sham immigration marriage that all really, really should have happened anywhere but loving Instagram, Vlismas has been taking personal time for most of the year.
Cory McKenna took 2021 off instead, and she's made her 2022 very busy. Owner of the damningly niche title 'the best female fighter from Wales,' McKenna is a solid talent with an almost irritatingly persistent, wrestling-heavy attack, but she likes to wait on good opportunities to hunt for submissions rather than proactively making them happen by inflicting damage and controlling positions. This is also why she's 1-1 for the year: She managed to sucker Miranda Granger into hanging onto a guillotine for too long and getting Von Flue Choked for her trouble, but she dropped a split decision to the laconically effective Elise Reed before that.
Cheyenne Vlismas by decision. Vlismas has solid takedown defense, much sharper striking, much more volume, and almost half a foot of reach, here. If McKenna can't force her into the cage and ragdoll her, she's in for a long night.
WELTERWEIGHT: Jake Matthews (18-5) vs Matt Semelsberger (10-4)
My god, what is it going to take to get a motherfucker on a main card. The main event of Teixeira vs. Procházka was so wild that it wiped the memory of everything that happened before it, which is a shame, because most of that card was incredible and one of its biggest surprises was the picture-perfect performance Jake Matthews put on against the insanely dangerous Andre Fialho. After a career of being known more as a grappler than a striker, and more than a year's layoff between fights, Matthews met the ultra-dangerous boxer and just ran a loving clinic on him, dodging 2/3 of his strikes, landing more than half of his own, and knocking Fialho dead in just two rounds.
Matt Semelsberger, by contrast, is coming off a momentum-crushing loss. After spending most of a year building a reputation as a big, bruising wrestle-boxer with incredibly dangerous counters, Semelsberger failed where so many prospects have: The isle of the cruel gatekeeper. Alex Morono outworked and outhurt him, and those are the most devastating types of losses. It's one thing to lose to someone exhibiting skills you don't; it's another to get beat by someone doing what you're doing, only better. Before Matthews' last fight, this would've been looked at as the same story again--two grapplers who are willing to scrap, one bigger and stronger than the other--but after his striking in his last fight, boy, things have changed.
Consequently: Jake Matthews by TKO. It's very possible Matthews' striking looked so good because Andre Fialho is a bit too aggressive for his own good and his defense is both lax and predictable, but the thing is, Semelsberger is only moreso. There isn't a ton of variety in his attacks: He wants to walk you down, hurt you, and threaten the takedown if he can. He gets hurt even in fights he's winning, and it's very probable Matthews takes his head off.
BANTAMWEIGHT: Said Nurmagomedov (16-2, #15) vs Saidyokub Kakhramonov (10-2, NR)
In a lot of ways this is a mirror match, and I'm banking on that giving us a really cool fight with two evenly-matched fighters, rather than the equally plausible festival of patience where no one does anything. Both Said and Saidyokub are strong wrestlers and grapplers, and both use their wrestling to enable some real fun, creative striking, typically involving a lot of debatably unnecessary yet distinctly appreciated spinning attacks. Nurmagomedov arguably has the tighter, more dangerous hands, but Kakhramonov arguably has the faster movement and ground control.
Either guy could easily make it to title contention and it's going to be incredibly interesting to see who better adjusts to whom. My money's on Saidyokub Kakhramonov by decision, but this is as much of a coinflip as you're getting on this card.
LIGHTWEIGHT: Maheshate (9-1) vs Rafa García (14-3)
Having made his debut as Hayishaer Maheshate, it looks like we're down to a mononym, now. The UFC teed up a perfect opponent for Maheshate's debut this past June and he did not disappoint them: Having displayed his heavy hands and lightning-bolt cross counters on the Contender Series, the UFC sent the too-aggressive Steve Garcia to his death and Maheshate obliged by blowing him up with a right hand in seventy seconds. They're taking the kid gloves off a little, here--but not too much. Rafa García is a tougher opponent, much more well-rounded and much less immediately prone to disaster--he has, in fact, never been stopped in his career--but a) He's a sprinter who fights a very aggressive, energy-heavy style, and b) Maheshate is almost half a loving foot bigger than him.
I like Rafa a lot. But this is a bad fight for him, and getting countered by a hard counterpuncher who could be fighting two divisions up from you is a hard, hard sell. Maheshate by TKO.
WELTERWEIGHT: Bryan Battle (8-1) vs Rinat Fakhretdinov (20-2)
I have no goddamn idea what to do with Bryan Battle anymore, and the good news is the UFC clearly doesn't either. Battle won The Ultimate Fighter 29 after choking out late-replacement finalist Gilbert Urbina, which should theoretically get him some press, but the UFC instead had him wait half a year to fight original finalist Tresean Gore, who was heavily favored to win the whole thing. Battle outworked him and won a clear decision against him. This should, in theory, get him a good fight! It didn't. It got him a match with Takashi Sato in the death slots of the prelims of the doomed Thiago Santos vs Jamahal Hill card this past summer. So Battle made the most of it by facing down Sato, a man who's been in there with top contenders and champions without ever being hurt, and knocking him the gently caress out with a shock headkick in just one minute. So now he's a TUF winner, and then maybe the only TUF winner in history to defend his TUF championship, AND he owns a violent, highlight-reel, first-round knockout over a guy who was on a main card going the distance with Gunnar goddamn Nelson one fight prior. So NOW it's time for a good fight and a good slot, right?
No! God drat it, we have been doing this an entire year, now, how on Earth have you not gotten that I ask these questions solely to hurt myself with frustrating answers! Bryan Battle's reward for fighting his rear end off is the same exact prelim spot he had last time, only now, he's fighting a Russian wrestling champion with a 20-2 record AND a successful UFC debut who hasn't lost a professional fight since 20goddamn14. Fakhretdinov beat the hell out of Andreas Michailidis in his first UFC bout, and one fight before that he dropped UFC veteran Eric Spicely with one punch in about a minute, and boy, that just seems like a deeply sadistic bout for Bryan Battle, whose whole gameplan involves exhausting people with his pace and his wrestling.
Rinat Fakhretdinov by decision. If Battle actually does turn this around and beat Fakhretdinov at his own game, and he's on the prelims against yet another prospect in his next fight, my entire writeup for it will be the word "gently caress" in monotype repeated 400 times.
FLYWEIGHT: David Dvořák (20-4, #9) vs Manel Kape (17-6, #12)
This is a top ten goddamn flyweight contest with two absurdly talented fighters, one of whom is coming off an extremely close fight with a the #5 guy in the world and the other of whom is coming off two consecutive highlight-reel knockouts, one of them a picture-perfect flying knee and the other a TKO by way of a twenty-one punch combination, and they're in the loving second-from-the-bottom preliminary death slot? What does a motherfucker have to do to get some promotional assistance, here? Does Manel Kape have to literally decapitate someone to get a hype video?
Because there loving isn't one! If you look for "Kape" on the UFC's youtube channel, you get two results: A lone clip of his flying knee and an episode of their terrible Matt Serra/Jim Norton podcast where he's the opening act for Maycee Barber! And god help you if you try to look for David Dvořák, with or without the graphemes, because despite having fought in the UFC for almost three goddamn years, there isn't even a single youtube video for him. AND THOSE ARE FREE.
God bless the UFC's flyweights, because Judge Dana Frollo would burn each and every one of them at the stake if it meant getting closer to understanding his own love for Sean O'Malley.
Manel Kape by TKO.
BANTAMWEIGHT: Sergey Morozov (18-5) vs Journey Newson (10-3 (1))
Journey Newson very narrowly avoided disaster this year. Like so many before him, he was picked up not as an intentional talent scouting but as a last-minute injury replacement, and like so many replacements, he has been given decidedly tough competition. He did win one of those disfavorable fights--but then the pee police found marijuana in his organs so they sent him to Fight Didn't Count jail. He was 0-2 (1) heading into the treaded pink slip fight with Contender Series baby Fernie Garcia this past May, but he pulled an upset and outworked Garcia to a decision victory, saving his contract in the process. Which is why they're booking him against Sergey Morozov, an exceptional wrestler and powerful striker who went toe to toe with Umar Nurmagomedov and 10-8ed Douglas Silva de Andrade.
It's sink or swim for Newson and the UFC's quietly nudging him towards the shark tank. Sergey Morozov by decision.
Prelims begin in roughly half an hour.
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Dec 17, 2022 21:34
