- CarlCX
- Dec 14, 2003
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UFC's bad card starts in 30 minutes. It got delayed and the card got shuffled thanks to a couple last-minute cancellations.
CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 48: CONSUMED BY THE AGES
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 25TH FROM THE SUNKEN DEPTHS OF THE UFC APEX IN LAS VEGAS, NEVADA
PRELIMS 1 PM PST/4 PM EST VIA ESPN+ | MAIN CARD 4 PM PST/7 PM EST VIA ESPN+
I want you to really absorb the sheer lack of giving-a-gently caress on that poster. The split first names. The puke-green skin coloration. The misaligned, differently-sized typography. The fact that they got their own ranking numbers wrong. The way they could have just moved the "-ITA", just the tiniest bit, to keep it from getting hosed up by his tattoo, and instead they said, no, this is fine. For this card, this is appropriate.
You know, March is coming up. It's a real good month, March. Lots of stuff in March! Grover Cleveland was born in March! Anniversary of the Exxon-Valdez disaster! Julius Caesar got stabbed twenty-three times and John Hinckley Jr. somehow managed to shoot Ronald Reagan without actually aiming at him!
But far more important than any of those historical events, there are some real good fight cards in March. Three whole Ultimate Fighting Championship championship bouts in a month! What a month, March. What a period of time that is not this, now, when you may or may not be watching a UFC card that is somehow main-evented by Nikita Krylov and Ryan Spann. When Augusto Sakai is somehow booked over a returning Tatiana Suarez.
But we're here, and I will help get you through this difficult period of transition. You and me, we're in this together.
tatiana suarez, i cannot emphasize how much i need you to still be good
MAIN EVENT: WE'RE SPANNING TIME, WE SPANN TIME TOGETHER
LIGHT-HEAVYWEIGHT: Nikita Krylov (29-9, #6) vs Ryan Spann (21-7, #8)
Is it unfair of me to hate this main event? Probably. My favorite gripe about the UFC's matchmaking is its constant refusal to actually build and promote its fighters instead of simply shoving them from the undercard into title contention. This is, at least, the UFC kind of, sort of trying to do things right: Krylov and Spann HAVE both recently made main-card appearances (although they were promptly demoted to the prelims again after winning said appearances, but you can't win 'em all, I guess), they ARE both ranked in the top ten at 205 pounds, and they DO have winning streaks that could push them into contendership. In some ways, it's exactly what I want, right?
So why aren't I happy? Is it the end-of-February depression? Have I succumbed to the internet and lost the ability to feel joy? Has following the UFC beaten the love of combat sports out of me?
No. Well, partially, but mostly, no. I'm just incredibly loving sick of the light-heavyweight division.
What weight class would you guess had the most main events in 2022? Was it welterweight, where the biggest championship upset of the year took place? Was it lightweight, home of the incredible drama of Charles Oliveira and Islam Makhachev? Maybe featherweight, the home of the UFC's most active champion?
No. It was light-heavyweight. Despite being the second-smallest male weight class in the company, the light-heavyweight division commanded the most airtime. Despite being roughly 7% of the total UFC roster, the light-heavyweight division received 17% of its top slots. The division has always been overrepresented in the UFC's matchmaking, and it would be easier to accept that if the division was good.
But it's not. It has been, sometimes, but that era ended a few years ago and things have only gotten almost comically worse since then. The champion vacated the title thanks to a serious injury, only to reveal he isn't going to so much as miss an entire year and the UFC pressured him to give it up. The top contender's leg exploded in mid-fight. Two top contenders fought to a mathematically impossible draw in an attempt to fill the vacant title and the belt was promptly contended for, and won, by a Contender Series winner with only one top ten victory who was previously scheduled to fight another man, ranked higher than him, who was pointedly not offered the championship fight.
We're entering the third month of 2023. Counting this card, the UFC has promoted six events this year. Three of them have been main-evented by a light-heavyweight fight.
This is what the UFC wants. The UFC wants Contender Series-caliber light-heavyweights bludgeoning each other eighteen times a year. The UFC wants tall men fighting for minimum wage.
And, if nothing else, in the center of my haters' heart, I can admit this to myself, to them, and to the world:
These men are, indeed, tall.
Ryan Spann, as a matter of fact, is very tall! 6'5"! Wow! If he were any taller, I'd have to stretch my legs just to type this sentence. And his height is very important, because until recently, it was the primary identifying feature of his career. "Superman" made his first corporate-umbrella appearance on just the third-ever episode of the Contender Series back in 2017, where, unfortunately, he was knocked out in fifteen seconds by Karl Roberson, who would go on to fight most of his UFC career at middleweight. Three bouts in the Legacy Fighting Alliance and one year later he got another shot, and this time he succeeded, choking out Emiliano Sordi, who, uh, was actually also a middleweight. gently caress.
Who cares. Tall! Spann was in the UFC now, and nothing was going to stop him. Except Johnny Walker elbowing him in the head repeatedly. And Anthony Smith flooring him and choking him out. Those, I guess, stopped him, technically. But hey: Everyone loses, and there's no shame losing to those two, and besides, that just made Spann 7-2, which is a hell of a record with competition as stiff as the UFC's.
Except when you look at it. If you look at it, it kinda starts to fall apart. Spann's seven UFC wins, as of now, are:
- Luis Henrique, a 13-9 heavyweight who went 2-4 in the UFC, was on the end of a three-fight losing streak and was fired after Spann beat him
- Antônio Rogério Nogueira, once a legend of the sport, who was in his mid-forties, 6-7 in the UFC, and would retire from the sport altogether one fight later
- Devin Clark, who only one month ago broke his 50:50 record to reach 8-7 in the UFC
- Sam Alvey, an incredible 10-13 with the longest winless streak in UFC history, who somehow, impossibly, went to a split decision with Spann
- Misha Cirkunov, 6-7, who dropped down to middleweight for his next fight and was released three consecutive losses later
- Ion Cuțelaba, 5-8, who is currently 2 for his last 9
- Dominick Reyes, 6-4, who after a meteoric rise has spent the last three years in one of the sport's most depressing free-falls and is currently on a 4-fight losing streak
In four years and nine fights, Ryan Spann has defeated two fighters with winning UFC records, one of whom has only just now scraped that win necessary to break the chain and the other of whom dropped three in a row before getting crushed by Spann and looked so terrible in the process that the UFC publicly put pressure on him to retire.
Does that mean Ryan Spann is a bad fighter? No. Ryan Spann isn't a bad fighter. He just hasn't quite proven how good he is yet. He's got some powerful hands, he's got an aggressive clinch-grappling attack, and his giant loving 81.5" arms mean he can snatch guillotine chokes at very, very unpleasant angles. His straight punches, as Dominick Reyes can attest, are deadly. But sometimes, his footwork fails him, and sometimes, he gets too aggressive for his own good, and sometimes, he swings a hook so recklessly he knocks himself down doing it.
But Nikita Krylov's a different story, right? He's 29-9, he's got ten wins in the UFC, his victories are an impressively versatile mixture of violent knockouts and graceful submissions, and hell, he went to a split decision with former champion Glover Teixeira! He has to be great! If we look at his record, I'm sure it'll be much better!
Here's the thing: This is Krylov's second stint in the UFC. The first time around was all the way back in 2013, half of which was spent at heavyweight. After his contract expired in 2016 he chose to go home instead of re-signing, wanting to work on his skills and return a better, more complete fighter, and when he did return in late 2018, it was purely as a light-heavyweight. Which means Krylov's UFC wins can be broken down into two separate buckets.
In his early-to-mid-2010s, as a young fighter who called himself Al Capone and did press photos in a fedora and a trenchcoat, he scored five wins at light-heavyweight and they were:
- Cody "Donnybrook" Donovan, 1-3 in the UFC, who retired after Krylov punched him out
- Stanislav "Staki" Nedkov, 1-2 (1), who retired after Krylov choked him out
- Marcos Rogério de Lima, 9-6, who is only now finding success in his new home at heavyweight
- Francimar Barroso, 4-4, who was cut from the UFC a few fights later
- Ed Herman, 13-11, runner-up on The Ultimate Fighter in two thousand and loving six, who inexplicably is still here
Not the best list, but not the worst. Since his return as a more mature fighter, now named The Miner, he's done much better, right?
- Ovince Saint Preux, 14-12, who's aged into a shell of his former self and is 3 for his last 10, including the Krylov fight
- Johnny Walker, 6-4, who was an undefeated marvel right up until he got knocked out and met Krylov in the middle of his career's worst slump, which he is only now pulling out of
- Alexander Gustafsson, 10-8, taking his first fight in two years and coming out of retirement for the third time only to get starched in sixty-seven seconds
- Volkan Oezdemir, 6-6, who were it not for an extremely dodgy decision would be 1 for his last 5
That's right, it's--not really a great list either. Much like Spann, it's not that Nikita Krylov is a bad fighter. He's not. His kicks are impressively varied and versatile, he's good at picking the distance he wants to engage from, and when pushed, his grappling is solid and dangerous. But after ten years and almost twenty fights, the best win of his career is either an Ovince Saint Preux in the midst of his retirement slump, an Ultimate Fighter finalist who predates the existence of the lightweight division, or a guy who had already retired multiple times.
And this, mathematically, is why I am so exhausted by the present of the light-heavyweight division. The churn of contenders, the loss of champions, the flight of talent to middleweight and heavyweight, the influx of brawling Contender Series fighters and the UFC's choice to let go of top-ten talents like Ryan Bader, Corey Anderson and Phil Davis have all helped create this deep, terrible vortex where suddenly fighters who've barely beaten anyone with a winning UFC record are in the top ten, a fight or two away from a shot at a championship that's growing steadily less meaningful.
It's a chaotic fight for a chaotic division, and it wouldn't feel quite so slipshod if it weren't, once again, a main event.
But it is, and we're here, and we're just as far in as we'll ever be out. So who wins the battle of the relatively tall men?
Nikita Krylov is fighting a size and reach disadvantage, but historically, he has the much more sound technique. Spann's victories have come from opponents charging into counters, shoving themselves headfirst into chokes or, in the case of Dominick Reyes, forgetting how not to block punches with their face. In thirty-eight fights Krylov has only been finished by strikes once, and that was a decade ago and a full weight class up. He's a very careful striker to the point of often being tentative, but it pays dividends on defense. Ryan Spann has a decided power advantage, and Krylov's occasional tendency to get controlled and choked on the ground means Spann will almost certainly be looking for the guillotines that have brought him most of his success.
But Krylov is just as likely to deny him the chance. Lots of kicks, lots of distance management and the threat of having to deal with Krylov's grappling advantage on the ground are Spann's weaknesses here, and it's hard to gauge just how well he's improved when his last two fights have been with wildly swinging madmen who fell in half a round. If Spann has solidified his jab and learned to use it patiently, he could peck Krylov at range and force him to enter the choking hazard zone.
But I'm not convinced Krylov's composure will fail. NIKITA KRYLOV BY DECISION, and we all think a little bit extra in bed that night about what we're doing with our lives.
CO-MAIN EVENT: LEFT BEHIND
 MIDDLEWEIGHT: André Muniz (23-4, #11) vs Brendan Allen (20-5, NR)
This is a good fight, though. This is The Good Fight on the card. My only real complaint is, debatably, André Muniz kinda deserves better.
And that's not a knock on Brendan Allen. Brendan Allen rules. But André Muniz, at this point in his career, is a perfect 5-0 in the UFC and already one spot away from the top ten. A berth against a Jack Hermansson or Roman Dolidze would have given him a good chance to test his mettle against the top fighters at middleweight. When a fighter's rising up the ranks fast enough to be on the cusp of transitioning from prospect to contender, making them defend their spot against another prospect tends to bite your future matchmaking in the rear end.
But it won't be the first time André has had to deal with it, and it won't be the last. "Sergipano"--it's a nickname for people from the Brazilian state of Sergipe, which André Muniz is not, but one of his training partners thought he was so he started using it and it stuck, and boy, "a training partner said something dumb and now that's my name for the rest of my life" is the real origin story of about 3/4 of all combat sports monikers--hasn't had an easy road up the ranks. Despite being 16-4 and a third-degree black belt with nearly a decade of experience, Muniz still had to earn his contract on the Contender Series, and when he dared to grapple his way to a decision Dana White sent him away and ordered him to try again when he felt more exciting. After snapping off a two-minute submission in his second attempt the following year, André finally got his contract.
There are a lot of ways to establish yourself as a dangerous grappler. Maybe you wrestle well, maybe you snatch a couple submissions here and there. André Muniz faced Ronaldo "Jacaré" Souza, not just one of the best grapplers in the history of mixed martial arts but one of the best grapplers in the history of grappling, a former world champion with a half-dozen world champions under his belt who had never been submitted in a 36-fight career, and Muniz elicited laughter from the MMA world when he said he would outgrapple Souza, and then Muniz broke his loving arm in half in the first round. In the annals of making statements about your grappling talents in mixed martial arts, "armbarred Jacaré" is right up there with "choked out Josh Barnett" and "stepped on Royce Gracie's face" as an all-timer.
And in that sense, I understand why he's fighting Brendan Allen. "All In" has been one of the UFC's busier fighters, racking up an 8-2 record in just two and a half years with the promotion, and that is really, really hard to do. You don't manage that kind of strength of schedule unless you're a) very tough, b) very silly, and c) very versatile. And by god, Allen is all three. He's a solid, multifaceted striker, at home winging kicks to get into range as he is swinging hooks and elbows up close, a decent wrestler with quick takedowns and takedown defense, and a dangerous grappler as liable to jump on a heel hook as a choke. When you have that many weapons in your arsenal, fighting three times a year is much more palatable.
But sometimes, that schedule gets you stuck. Allen's only lost two UFC fights, but both were devastating to his momentum. His first winning streak was broken when Sean Strickland knocked him out--he is, in fact, the last person to date Strickland finished--and his second was snapped by the power striking of Chris Curtis. And when you look at Brendan Allen's record, and see people like Sam Alvey, Karl Roberson and Krzysztof Jotko among his wins, and then see that the two times he fought ranked fighters he got knocked out, an unfortunate narrative starts to form. Suddenly, Brendan Allen isn't a promising young prospect--he's a potential gatekeeper. And no one wants to be a gatekeeper.
And he's not! Not yet. Not officially. There's no shame in getting knocked out by Chris Curtis. (There's maybe a little in getting knocked out by Sean Strickland, but we'll let that go.) Unfortunately, last year, we also saw Allen get outwrestled by Jacob Malkoun. For all of Allen's many talents and weapons, he's much more comfortable being the hammer than the nail, and that overaggression costs him. His two knockout losses came from charging recklessly into punches, and his near-loss to Malkoun came from being too focused on his attacks to keep from getting taken down.
And you don't want André Muniz taking you down. This is, often, a problem with very active fighters: When you're fighting three or four times a year, you're so focused on preparing for your opponents that you don't have time to take stock of your own skills and see what needs to be rebuilt. This fight is only four months after Allen's last fight, and that fight was only four months after the one before it, and so on through the years, like clockwork. Has Allen stayed incredibly busy and thus in shape and sharpened to a fine point? Absolutely. Has Allen been able to fix his defensive gaps? For the health of his limbs, I hope so. But I'm still picking ANDRÉ MUNIZ BY SUBMISSION.
MAIN CARD: GOING HOME AGAIN
HEAVYWEIGHT: Augusto Sakai (15-5-1) vs Don'Tale Mayes (9-4 (1))
Heavyweight, can you not see that I am having a difficult time with this card? Why must you further darken my door with your buffoonery?
Realistically, Augusto Sakai should not be in the UFC anymore. He won his first four UFC fights; he lost his last four UFC fights. It is extremely rare that a fighter survives three losses in a row without being cut from the company, especially when every one of those losses was a knockout, but when you're a heavyweight striker you have privileges, and by god, Augusto Sakai is so thoroughly a heavyweight striker that he's been unable to stop being one even as it has repeatedly killed him. He got punched out by Alistair Overeem, he got punched out by Jairzinho Rozenstruik, he got punched out by Tai Tuivasa, and just for the love of a little bit of variety, he got punched out by Serghei Spivac while horizontal on the ground. Sakai's not a bad heavyweight, he's a solid boxer for the division, but he has been so thoroughly, utterly bounced from relevance that it's wild he's still around.
Don'Tale Mayes is in a trickier spot. He, too, has a technically even record of 2-2 (1) in the UFC, thanks to his last fight getting ruled a No Contest instead of a loss because Hamdy Abdelwahab loves steroids, and neither of his legitimate losses are shameful--Rodrigo Nascimento's a pretty good fighter and Ciryl Gane is arguably the best heavyweight in the UFC now--but his only victories have come against Roque Martinez, one of the UFC's statistically worst heavyweights, and Josh Parisian, whose best UFC victory came against, uh, Roque Martinez--and it was a split decision he arguably should have lost. A lot of this comes down to Mayes feeling like a fighter without a home. He's a big, powerful monster, but he's not really a knockout striker. His two UFC wins have come thanks to his takedowns, but he's not really a wrestler. He's athletic enough that despite being 6'6" he nailed Roque Martinez on the chin with a flying knee, but his technique is just deficient enough that a 6'6" man hitting someone with a flying knee didn't really do anything.
The oddsmakers don't know what to do with this fight either. Despite Mayes being (technically) on a two-fight winning streak, and despite Sakai being on the worst slump of his career and facing near-certain termination, the betting odds are dead even. The best, or least risky, path to success for Mayes goes through wrestling. Sakai is still a solid, powerful striker, and Mayes tends to lose his composure and begin brawling when he gets stung. If Mayes stands with Sakai, there's a very good chance he'll lose. I'm choosing to believe he'll be smarter than that. DON'TALE MAYES BY DECISION.
WOMEN'S FLYWEIGHT: Tatiana Suarez (8-0) vs Montana De La Rosa (12-7-1)
This may not be the best fight of the night, but it is by far the most interesting, and with all of the respect in the world to Montana De La Rosa, who is an extremely tough and capable fighter, the parts everyone is interested in are occurring in the other corner.
All eyes are on Tatiana Suarez tonight. The last time we saw her she'd just choked out Alexa Grasso, the current #1 contender at flyweight, destroyed Carla Esparza, the current #1 contender at strawweight, and scored a decision over the then-streaking Nina Nunes, the current retiree and loving mother. Her standup was threatening, but it was nothing compared to her wrestling, which was the most dangerous weapon in the strawweight division. No one questioned if Tatiana Suarez could be a world champion, only when she'd get the chance.
But that chance was taken away from her. Midway through 2019 she injured her neck so badly they had to cram a needle into her spinal cord and inject cortisone and stem cells into it. After two full years of rehabilitation, her big comeback was booked for the summer of 2021--and then she blew out her knee so badly it needed surgery. Another year and a half disappeared into the rear-view mirror before she was ready to return again, and now the whole world is waiting with bated breath to see if she even makes it to this fight, let alone how she looks once she gets there.
I want to be clear: Montana De La Rosa is not a bad fighter. She's 5-3-1 in the UFC, she hasn't been finished since 2017, she went the distance with fighters like Maycee Barber, Mayra Bueno Silva and Viviane Araujo, she beat the absolute stuffing out of Polish champion Ariane Lipski. She's by no means a pushover, and it would be disrespectful to call her a non-factor in this fight. She is every bit a factor, and her fists are more than willing to make that point for her.
But it is not disrespectful to tell the truth, and the truth is, she is supposed to be a tune-up fight for Tatiana Suarez. The UFC, and Suarez, could easily have put Suarez in a rematch with Carla Esparza, or a grappling contest with Taila Santos, or, quite frankly, a top ten bout with anyone from either weight class. They didn't. They didn't even set her up to return to strawweight. They matched her against a less successful wrestler with one victory in her last four fights at a 125-pound division that will give her a much easier weight cut. And honestly--that's good. It's not actually bad that the UFC is giving a top fighter who's been gone for years a tune-up fight, that's how these things SHOULD go. It only stands out because they do it so infrequently.
No one knows what Tatiana Suarez we'll get when she steps into the cage. She hasn't competed in nearly four years, and in those years she's had her knee reconstructed and her spine repeatedly stabbed. It's entirely likely she looks just as amazing as she did when she was effortlessly crushing world champions; it's entirely likely she comes back rusty and unsteady and gets consumed by a busier wrestler.
Montana De La Rosa shouldn't feel disrespected for the public's perception of her abilities. She should feel disrespected that the UFC is using her as a canary in a coal mine. You must decide for yourself if you believe enough in the mine to think it's still dangerous. I do. TATIANA SUAREZ BY SUBMISSION.
WELTERWEIGHT: Mike Malott (8-1-1) vs Yohan Lainesse (9-1)
Typically, fighters have to excel in other organizations to make it to the UFC. "Proper" Mike Malott, somehow, went the other way. He had one bout with the World Series of Fighting, where Hakeem Dawodu folded him in a round, and one bout with Bellator, where he went to a draw with the 6-8-1 Thomas "I Like The Way You Work It, No" Diagne, and then he took only two fights in the next six years, and somehow, by god, this led to him fighting on the Contender Series. I don't know. I'll never know. He's an exceptionally aggressive fighter, far more likely to jump on hooks and guillotines like all his shirtless Team Alpha Male brethren, and it's worked out fantastically for him save for the one time he got creamed. But he won his UFC debut last year! But it was, in fairness, against Mickey Gall, a man whose UFC career was predicated on the idea that management thought he could maybe lose to CM Punk.
Yohan Lainesse is two fights deep into his UFC tenure and he's still, somehow, a bit of an enigma. He's a tall, rangy 6'1" fighter with 76" reach, and he knows how to use it, having showcased his great talents for jumping, jabbing and probing with kicks en route to landing big straight crosses or shooting power doubles. At least--he is at first. When his opponents don't go away, when he has to fight deeper than the start of a second round, he starts to lose his composure. He had "Gifted" Gabe Green on the ropes during his UFC debut, but got so into putting him away that he gassed out and got finished a minute later. He beat Darian Weeks, but he got tired of range-fighting midway through the fight, began blitzing him, and wound up barely scraping out a split decision because it went so poorly. When Lainesse keeps people on the ends of his kicks and jabs, he's one of the toughest puzzles to crack in the division. The moment his focus falters, so does he.
Which leaves me torn. I believe in Yohan Lainesse. His striking, when he's on his game, is genuinely impressive. Mike Malott is a fearsome opportunist whose career is built on capitalizing on his opponents having lapses in judgment. But Malott has also faltered against tougher opposition. I'm listening to my heart, going out on a limb, and picking YOHAN LAINESSE BY TKO, but I don't feel great about it.
PRELIMS: LIFE AFTER PADDY
LIGHTWEIGHT: Erick Gonzalez (14-7) vs Trevor Peek (7-0 (1))
It wouldn't be a UFC card without a token sacrifice. What's even better, this was actually, originally, TWO token sacrifices--Erick Gonzalez was to be consumed by Darrius "Beast Mode" Flowers, a 2022 Contender Series pickup, and Trevor Peek was going to feast on Alex Reyes, a long-forgotten fighter whose only UFC appearance, and last fight, were a first-round loss to Mike Perry back in 2017. But injuries make fools of us all, and thus, here we are.
Erick "Ghost Pepper" Gonzalez was tapped to make his UFC debut against Jim god damned Miller, one of the longest-serving UFC veterans of all time, and it proved to be far too much, with Miller knocking him cold in two rounds. The UFC, being very sensitive to the needs of budding fighters, followed this up by matching him against human wrecking ball Terrance McKinney, a man who only wins by devastating knockouts or submissions, and, unsurprisingly, Gonzalez got choked out in a little over two minutes. Gonzalez has some promising striking, and even stung Miller and McKinney both before succumbing, but he's so focused on stringing together combinations and finding openings that he fails to defend himself. The Jim Miller knockout wasn't a lightning-quick counter--Gonzalez just sort of threw a slow, loping, front-foot crescent kick that had no chance of landing let alone doing damage, and in the time it took for his leg to come back down Jim Miller found a solid four-year collegiate program, learned all the things about Trigonometry he'd missed, graduated, hugged his family, got back in the octagon, calculated a trajectory and launched a left hand that ragdolled Gonzalez instantaneously. The talent is there, but the defensive consideration isn't, and after two losses, Gonzalez really needs an opponent that won't push his defense.
So he's fighting Trevor Peek, an undefeated fighter with a 100% knockout rate, because of course he is. Peek won his way to the UFC through the Contender Series just like about 30% of the roster and rising, but his bout on Dana White's Ludus Nights showcased the truly dangerous thing about him: After getting badly hurt, rather than folding, he tends to get really, really mad. Multiple times throughout his career Peek has been stung by opponents and every time he's outlasted their barrage, gotten back to his feet, and made them pay for it. He fights mean, but it's an evolved mean, one that will string together four-punch combinations just to force his victim to shell up so he can drop down, scoop up their legs and slam them on their spine. And while his record is just as loose as any regional standout, thanks to Khama Worthy, Peek has already been able to demonstrate that he can fight, and knock out, UFC-calibre competition. Of course, that style--the rough, brawling, hurt-me-so-I-can-hurt-you-back style--plays much better on the regional circuit where fighters have to go back to their day jobs in the morning. Against international competition, eventually, inevitably, Trevor Peek's willingness to take one to give five will get him knocked out.
But not today. TREVOR PEEK BY TKO.
WOMEN'S FLYWEIGHT: Gabriella Fernandes (8-1) vs Jasmine Jasudavicius (7-2)
In writing about Jasmine Jasudavicius during her UFC debut back in January of 2022 I noted how sloppy her striking and grappling looked and picked against her, expecting her to get wrestled to death by Kay Hansen. She surprised me not just by winning, but by displaying a crisp jab, solid clinch control and some tricky sweeps from the bottom. In writing about her followup fight that summer I praised her clear improvements and her smart performance, and picked for her, expecting her to defeat Natália Silva, whose boxing seemed raw and porous. She surprised me not just by losing, but by looking completely lost, getting outstruck 3:1 and whiffing on the vast majority of her strikes and all of her takedown attempts. I can only conclude that, scientifically, I don't know poo poo about Jasmine Jasudavicius.
But I am pretty sure this is a bad matchup for her. The UFC was attempting to give Jasmine a bit of a softball here--she was supposed to fight Cortney Casey, who is very tough and very talented but is also 10-10 and troubled by fighters like Jasmine--but Casey got injured with four weeks to go and the UFC tapped Gabriella Fernandes, the flyweight champion of the Legacy Fighting Alliance, shifting Jasmine's opposition from a career grappler with striking deficiencies to a powerful kickboxer with multiple knockouts. "Gabi" has a lot of tape out there showcasing her capacity for slamming really, really unpleasant body kicks and crosses into unsuspecting opponents, to the extent that one of her knockouts is actually the increasingly rare submission victory by way of "I'm tapping out, please stop hitting me."
Of course, Gabi was a regional fighter fighting regional fighters, and beating up a fighter who's currently 10-11-1 is a little less impressive. How she'll cope with competition outside of the regional league is, as always, a question mark, but her technique looks clean and she's been able to maintain it for a full fifteen minutes, and those are good signs, particularly against an opponent who just struggled with distance striking. The way my picks have gone, this means I SHOULD pick Jasmine, as I am always wrong about her. But I have made it thirty-seven years without learning from my mistakes, and by god, it would be crazy to start now. GABRIELLA FERNANDES BY DECISION.
LIGHTWEIGHT: Jordan Leavitt (10-2) vs Victor Martinez (13-4)
Jordan Leavitt has had a real weird time in the UFC. He retired the inexplicably not retired Matt Wiman in his debut, got immediately grappled to death by Claudio Puelles, knocked Matt Sayles out of the company with the rare inverted triangle choke, won a coinflip decision against Trey Ogden, and was immediately thrown in the Pimblett Pit by the UFC. His has been a constant up-and-down sine wave of a career, and that's thanks in part to his strange skillset: He's a talented grappler but sometimes defensively sloppy, he's a decent striker but confines most of his output to kicks. And he was supposed to have this fight a year ago. Victor "The Brick" Martinez is yet another in the endless parade of Contender Series pickups, but said pickup happened a year and a half ago and injuries kept him from making his scheduled debut against Levitt last April. Martinez is the kind of fighter who--just--look, I'm having a difficult time with the reality of how the Contender Series has reshaped the sport.
When I started writing these last year I would mention the fighting job interview show maybe twice per card. On the rare occasions that a Contender vs Contender match happened I would joke about how we were nearing the all-Contender Series future of the UFC. It, of course, was not really a joke. I knew. Anyone paying attention knew. But good lord, it happened faster than I was hoping it would. The first card I wrote up was Kattar vs Chikadze on January 15, 2022. Of the twenty fighters who fought that night, only five came from the Contender Series.
There are twenty-six fighters on this card. Seventeen of them came from the Contract Farm. There's only one fight on the entire card without a Fight For Your Breakfast signee on it, and that's Suarez vs De La Rosa, and both of them came from The Ultimate Fighter, which was just Dana White's Fight For My Amusement before he simplified the formula. And of the seven fighters who didn't come from one of the UFC's two bespoke talent-churning enterprises, four were picked up as late-notice injury replacements and the UFC has contracts they have to fight out.
Three fighters out of thirty-six joined the UFC based solely because they raised value for themselves as regional standouts. Three. And maybe that would bother me less if, upon looking up footage on Victor Martinez, I didn't see the exact kind of sloppy, all-offense no-defense takedowns-are-for-losers brawling style the Contender Series has made a standard feature I find myself repeating at least a half-dozen times per breakdown.
Homogeneity is the death of anything. Diversity was the soil from which mixed martial arts grew. Our Contender Series future is now present, and I hate it. JORDAN LEAVITT BY SUBMISSION.
FLYWEIGHT: Ode' Osbourne (11-5 (1)) vs Charles Johnson (13-3)
I had real high hopes for Ode' Osbourne after his first two-fight win streak in the UFC, and getting matched up with Tyson Nam, one of the most prolific hot-and-cold performers in the sport, seemed like a great chance for him to show off. Unfortunately, Nam was hot that night and Osbourne was reckless, and after he threw a flying knee at nothing in particular, Nam knocked him cold with a right hand. This has established an unfortunate pattern in Osbourne's career: He's fast and powerful, but just in love enough with his striking that it leads him to make silly mistakes. Charles "InnerG" Johnson, by contrast, is painfully consistent. He wants to hunt and peck with jabs and leg kicks, he wants to get you on the ground, and he wants to break your face open with elbows. And the second the UFC wasn't throwing him to the wolves he did just that, erasing some of Jimmy Flick's facial features in the process.
It's possible I'm just done believing in Ode' Osbourne, but Charles Johnson fought Muhammed Mokaev without getting submitted and Carlos Mota without getting knocked out. The likelihood that Osbourne does either is slim, and the irrepressible constancy of Charles Johnson is going to wear on him. CHARLES JOHNSON BY DECISION.
LIGHTWEIGHT: Joe Solecki (12-3) vs Carl Deaton III (17-5 (1))
Joe Solecki has had a weird last few nights at the office. Back in October of 2021 he lost an incredibly close split decision to Jared Gordon, one fight later he dropped two rounds against Alex da Silva but won a majority decision thanks to a combination of superior grappling and da Silva committing so many infractions in so short a time that he lost a round 10-7, and then Solecki was going to fight Benoit Saint-Denis a week ago, but Saint-Denis broke his ankle eight days before the event, and now, on one week's notice, Solecki is fighting "The Anishinaabe Kid" Carl Deaton III, a regional fighter from the Michigan scene whose gameplan tends to center around rushing a cage clinch, throwing hockey punches and trying to drag people down for a rear naked choke. That's not necessarily a great gameplan when you have one week to prepare for one of the better wrestlers in the division, who also happens to be considerably larger than you, and two of your last three wins were against guys with records like 7-8 and 5-26.
It'd be really cool for Carl Deaton III to come in and shock the world, here. I kind of hope for it. But the world is not kind to Carls. JOE SOLECKI BY SUBMISSION. Sorry, Carl. We'll get 'em next time.
LIGHTWEIGHT: Nurullo Aliev (8-0) vs Rafael Alves (20-11)
Welcome to your new international hype prospect, who already has dozens of clickbait youtube videos calling him The Next Khabib. Nurullo Aliev is an undefeated wrestler and the first UFC fighter to ever come from Tajikistan, and every one of his victories has come through the same gameplan: Push forward, throw hooks to force opponents back into the cage, shoot a single or double depending on what you ate for breakfast that morning, throw ground and pound until something stops you. He's never won by submission, he's never hurt anyone on the feet, he just wants to fuckin' wrestle you until you die. He got the first real TKO of his career this past September on the Contender Series (there was a between-rounds corner stoppage back in 2018) and immediately yelled at Dana to book him for the following week's fight night, and there's nothing Dana loves more than minimum wage fighters asking for double duty. The UFC is either very high or very low on his prospects, because they've given him a tough first night on the job. Rafael "The Turn" Alves, who, of course, also won on the Contender Series back in 2020, is a much tougher fighter than his 1-2 UFC record would indicate--those two losses were to top ten lightweight Damir Ismagulov, who Alves gave absolute fits in the third round, and knockout machine Drew Dober, whom Alves went toe to toe with for two rounds before succumbing to body shots. His standup is crisp and creative, if sometimes a little too lax on random spinning wheel kicks, and his jiu-jitsu is extremely dangerous, and both of those traits are big, flashing hazards for an ultra-aggressive wrestler like Aliev.
Aliev will almost certainly get Alves down. What happens once they get there is the real question of the fight. In his last appearance in Russia before he made the trip to the UFC, Aliev spent a solid two minutes trapped in a triangle choke against Kirill Kryukov, and he's only gotten more aggressive since then. It's going to cost him. RAFAEL ALVES BY SUBMISSION.
BANTAMWEIGHT: Jose Johnson (15-7) vs Garrett Armfield (8-3)
This fight is probably going to be a crime. Jose Johnson, whose "Lobo Solitario" nickname gives me "you can't pluralize The Lone Rangers" vibes, is a loving 6' bantamweight, making him officially the tallest fighter at the weight class, and he is irritatingly capable of using it, both in long, range-finding jabs and quick, long-limbed triangle setups from the bottom. But he gets those setups because he is frequently on the bottom, because his wrestling defense is deeply unfortunate, and that's Garrett Armfield's entire gameplan. Armfield was picked up as a last-minute injury replacement against David Onama, which was sort of insulting because Armfield had already fought and lost to Onama back when they were amateurs, and he was, once again, beaten handily, unable to get his trademark wrestling assault off the ground either figuratively or literally.
I don't think this will go any better for him. Johnson is half a goddamn foot taller than Armfield. Can Armfield take him down? Probably, given a chance. Will he eat punches doing it that may as well be getting dropped from the observation deck of the Empire State Building? Probably, given a chance. Would he much rather have the fight with fellow similarly-sized grappler Christian Rodriguez he was supposed to get last October? Probably, given a chance. JOSE JOHNSON BY TKO.
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Feb 25, 2023 01:29
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