- CarlCX
- Dec 14, 2003
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The dread time has come. Prelims begin in one hour.
CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 49: THE DEFINITION OF INSANITY
SATURDAY, MARCH 4TH FROM THE T-MOBILE ARENA IN PARADISE, NEVADA
EARLY PRELIMS 2:30 PM PST/5:30 PM EST VIA ESPN+ | PRELIMS 5:00 PM PST/8:00 PM EST VIA ESPN+ | MAIN CARD 7:00 PM PST/10:00 PM EST VIA PAY-PER-VIEW
The UFC heavyweight championship is the oldest extant major championship in mixed martial arts. The lineage of numerous mixed martial arts organizations run through it, from Strikeforce to Pride to Pancrase and even the ancient days of the Lumax Cup. For all of the numerous travails of the heavyweight division, it has existed as the sport's most enduring standard; a living link not just to the origins of the sport, but the offshoots it created around the world.
At the start of this year the UFC dumped it in the trash because Francis Ngannou wanted healthcare and a boxing match.
The UFC has spent weeks pointedly, emphatically referring to Jones and Gane as being for the undisputed heavyweight championship of the world. It is an attempt to proactively rewrite history. This is the most disputed heavyweight championship belt in mixed martial arts history. In 2008 a group of businessmen, sports agents and Russian managers welded some diamonds to a dinner plate, called it the World Alliance of Mixed Martial Arts championship, wrapped it around Fedor and called it the new top heavyweight title in the sport.
That was still better than this.
We're entering a new era of the sport, whether we like it or not. Come with me on this trip through Hell.
your featured prelim is the unintentionally suggestive cody garbrandt sadness hour
MAIN EVENT: SOMEHOW, PALPATINE RETURNED
HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP: Jon Jones (26-1 (1), NR) vs Ciryl Gane (11-1, #1)
Let us be unequivocal: This fight is large and momentous, and it also loving sucks. We live in a world of nuance where both things can be true.
Jon Jones is one of the most important fighters of all time. He's the best light-heavyweight in history by miles and the arguments for including him in the pound-for-pound greatest lists, while often irritating, aren't without merit. He's been talking about moving up to the heavyweight division for an entire decade, and even back in 2013, the idea piqued interest. Ciryl Gane is one of the best heavyweight strikers in the history of mixed martial arts. He walked into the UFC as a 3-0 rookie and was fighting for the world championship two years later. He's only lost once across two combat sports and a decade of competition, and in a game as zero-sum as heavyweight, that's an achievement.
Jon Jones is also a light-heavyweight. You cannot actually call him a heavyweight fighter until the bell actually rings to begin this fight, because he has never set foot in the weight class. His heavyweight record isn't even 0-0, it's just a piece of broken database code that reads NULL. Ciryl Gane is a fantastic heavyweight, even as the scab who participated in the most thoroughly ludicrous interim championship fight in company history, and he has every claim to a championship opportunity. He also got trucked by the actual, legitimate world champion a year ago.
This is a fight to crown a heavyweight champion in a division that already has a heavyweight champion. Instead of that champion, who will now wind up boxing in Britain or joining the Professional Fighters League or some other thorough injustice, this fight is between the man he handily defeated and a man who's never touched the weight class--or any other weight class, as he hasn't fought at all for three loving years--and one of them, one way or another, will be in the rankings next week as the greatest heavyweight on the planet.
And it's exhausting.
And if there's a single adjective to sum up the totality of the Jon Jones experience, "exhausting" might be the best.
There's a growing movement in MMA's social circles--mostly among his fans and ardent defenders of the UFC--that holds it's unfair to talk about Jon Jones for his many, many personal failings, as doing so gets in the way of what really matters: His contributions to the sport. Whatever happens in the rest of his life is irrelevant to the annals of combat sports, and all we should see fit to comment on, it is said, are his innumerable victories. Some, including Jones himself, would even like several of those sins stricken from the public record altogether. They're not relevant, and it's unfair to bring them up.
Motherfucker, I didn't bring them up, Jon Jones did. If he didn't want people dovetailing discussion of his personal crises into his professional record, maybe he shouldn't have kept getting stripped of world championships because he couldn't stop doing bad poo poo all of the time. You can't talk about his record without talking about his record because they're the same loving record. If you count interim championships, there have been 19 titles stripped from their champions in the history of the UFC. Jon Jones is three of them. 16% of all title strippings in the 30-year history of the company are Jon Jones-shaped, and that doesn't even include his dumping his title belt in the trash three years ago.
But there have also been reams of things written about the man. If you're reading this, statistically, you don't need me to tell you about his cocaine bust or his car crashes. You don't need me to tell you about his multiple positive drug tests, or the process of watching very serious drug testers explain that Jon Jones might continue to test positive for small amounts of steroids for the rest of his career and that was actually perfectly normal and fine. You almost certainly don't need me to tell you about his being one of the biggest assholes and hypocrites in the sport, a proud snitch covering up his own habits, a man who once paused in the middle of answering an interview question about his love for his family to hit on a waitress, a man who assaulted a hostess, assaulted his wife, got two DUIs and got away with all of it.
It's fine. We don't need to talk about it. His fans want to just talk about his record: We can just talk about his record.
But that, too, is less flattering than it might seem.
Let's be clear: Jon Jones is one of the baddest motherfuckers on the planet. However I may be about to demean his victories, his having gone virtually undefeated for eleven years is one of the most incredible accomplishments in the sport. Here's the thing with being that good for that long, though: Most of those incredible accomplishments are almost a decade old. Defeating eight world champions in 900 days? That's an insane thing to do. Practically unheard of. But it happened between 2010 and 2012. The last truly impressive performance Jon Jones had was knocking out Daniel Cormier in 2017, and thanks to his lust for turinabol, that fight technically didn't even happen.
So what were the last five fights of his career that did, in fact, happen?
- A tentative decision victory over Ovince Saint Preux, who earned his title shot by beating Rafael Cavalcante, who went 1-4 in the UFC, was fired after the OSP fight and retired one bout later; OSP has since gone 7-10 and has been finished in six of those losses.
- A knockout over Alexander Gustafsson, the only legally recognized finish Jones has recoded in the last ten years; Gustafsson has gone on to lose his next three fights, which have included two separate retirements.
- A decision victory over career middleweight Anthony Smith that included drilling him in the head with an illegal knee; Smith has since gone 4-3, hasn't beaten a top ten opponent in four years, and has since been knocked out twice.
- A close split decision victory over career middleweight Thiago Santos, who somehow tore his ACL, PCL, MCL and meniscus during the fight and yet Jon Jones still barely beat him; Santos would go on to lost four of his next five fights and get released in 2022.
- A decision victory over Dominick Reyes that was, regardless of what the UFC says, a terrible decision that 3/4 of the media scored for Reyes; Reyes, who took Jon Jones to his absolute limit, has since gone 0-3 and been violently knocked out each time.
And that's the problem with judging Jon Jones based solely on his record: His recent record isn't very good. He's one of the best fighters in history, but he hasn't looked like that Jon Jones since 2017, and that fight is as far away from his most recent fight as his most recent fight is from today.
But if that's the present of Jon Jones, what does Ciryl Gane look like now that he's finally lost?
It's difficult to recalibrate after seeing Ciryl Gane get ragdolled by Francis Ngannou. Which is patently unfair. Gane isn't just 11-1, he's outstruck every opponent he's had in the UFC--including, hilariously enough, Francis Ngannou. Despite being a striker who ostensibly should have a striker's vulnerabilities, no one outside of Francis Ngannou has ever taken him down. In his run up to title contention Gane destroyed a former UFC champion in Junior dos Santos, dominated a championship kickboxer in Jairzinho Rozenstruik, outworked a great pressure fighter in Alexander Volkov and handed Derrick Lewis the most one-sided beating of his life.
Even in the wake of his championship defeat, Gane has looked good. He did outstrike Francis Ngannou while they were on their feet, he did threaten him with a heel hook in the final round of their fight, and he did rebound from his loss by beating just seventeen shades of poo poo out of Tai Tuivasa in September of last year. Even when Tai's super-powered brawling cracked Gane and dropped him to the canvas, Gane was back on his feet in seconds, recovered, composed, and nearly dropping Tai with body shots before finishing him in the next round after battering him liberally in the face.
That's the difference with Gane. I used the phrase "technical striker" to describe him, but in the history of heavyweight mixed martial arts, "technical striker" has been a deeply abused phrase. It's been used to compliment fighters who happened to be able to throw basic boxing combinations, or consistently land leg kicks, or, sometimes, even just periodically throw a jab. Ciryl Gane is, definitionally, an actual technical striker. He works behind strikes at every angle, he strings punches and kicks together seamlessly, he times out the rhythm of his opponents and breaks them down with jabs, he often wins striking battles by footwork alone. He's only been hurt on the feet once in his entire UFC tenure, it took one of the hardest punchers in the division to do it, and Gane's defensive instincts are honed well enough that he was back in control of the striking exchanges immediately.
In theory, that's a problem for Jon Jones. The greatest struggles he's had in his career came from long, rangy strikers who could cut through his massive 84" reach and force him to shell up. And every one of those strikers was less skilled--and considerably smaller--than Ciryl Gane. Jones has never had to contend with this level of expertise, nor an opponent who's just, plainly, as loving huge as he is.
But Gane hasn't had to contend with a wrestler like Jon. We're only one fight removed from watching Gane struggle with the wrestling of Francis Ngannou, which, while surprising, was inherently raw and more based on power and timing than technique. Jon Jones does not have this problem. Jon Jones takes down championship wrestlers. If you're Ciryl Gane, and arguably your most valuable weapons are your kicks, you're suddenly very aware of the fact that one caught kick could easily lead to a takedown that costs you a round, if not the entire fight.
Of course, that, too, presupposes that Jon Jones still looks like Jon Jones. Not only has Jon Jones not looked great in a long while, not only has Jon Jones not had a fight in three years, but we've never seen Jon Jones at heavyweight, and the condition he shows up in will deeply inform his success. Did he intelligently, gradually pack on muscle to improve his power and explosiveness? Or is he carrying extra weight that's just going to slow him down and make him gas out faster?
After a three-year layoff that sees the Jon Jones of 2023 entering his mid-thirties, will he still look good at all?
And that's the most irritating part of every Jon Jones fight. I can say all of these things; all of these things are correct; it's totally possible they'll be completely irrelevant. A Jon Jones fan will listen to them and reply "yeah, but he's Jon Jones," and irritatingly, they might have a god damned point. As much as his reach and cardio and horrifying knee-kicks, adaptability is one of the greatest weapons in his arsenal. Even in the Dominick Reyes fight that I believe he lost, Jones picked up his game and won the championship rounds.
Unless he packed on a bunch of muscle and finds after three rounds he can't breathe anymore.
CIRYL GANE BY TKO. Look, it's a Jon Jones fight. Anything can happen, up to and including the fight never actually starting because Jones shot up a Vegas nightclub after the weigh-ins. If Jones can consistently catch Gane's kicks, or get inside and force him to fight at length in the clinch, Gane's in trouble. But Gane's control of range, Jones' historical trouble with anyone who can outbox him and the reality of having to fight a heavyweight who hits as hard as a heavyweight can for the first time make me desperately, desperately hope that finally, once and for all, we get to see Jon Jones eat poo poo. Jon Jones hasn't learned from a single mistake in his life and I'm hoping he'll continue that practice here.
Please don't gently caress it up, Ciryl.
CO-MAIN EVENT: THE LAURYN HILL ALBUM THAT NEVER CAME OUT
WOMEN'S FLYWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP: Valentina Shevchenko (23-3, Champion) vs Alexa Grasso (15-3, #6)
And then, on the topic of the mixed martial arts fanbase and its centering of What Have You Done For Me Lately as a core belief, we have Valentina Shevchenko.
Valentina's last fight was a title defense against Taila Santos in June. Let me take you back to a younger, more innocent Carl:
It would be deeply disrespectful to say Taila Santos cannot win this fight. She's a very capable fighter with notable skills. Her trips and throws out of the clinch are solid. Her top game may not always produce finishes, but her control is very difficult to break. Joanne Wood's chin can attest to the power she carries when she connects cleanly, and in twenty bouts, no one's managed to stop her. She's tough as nails.
She was also getting lit up by Joanne Wood until she landed that bomb. She was also getting repeatedly scrambled and threatened by Gillian Robertson to the point that her offense dwindled to nothing and she nearly got submitted. It may still be disrespectful to say Taila Santos is getting this fight because women's flyweight is a graveyard full of corpses Valentina Shevchenko lovingly planted, but it doesn't make it not true. Valentina Shevchenko by decision. There are a whole bunch of ways she can win this fight and none of them would be a surprise.
To once again quote Past Carl:
Where names like Anderson Silva and Matt Hughes get free-associated with immaculate striking or wrestling, Valentina Shevchenko is cursed by being known not so much for her skills as for the massive loving chasm between her skills and those of her competitors.
And she almost lost her last fight. When you've been dominating the opposition for years, almost losing has an effect on your popular perception you have to measure in the Richter scale. After years of effortlessly transitioning between hammering people on the feet and mauling them on the ground, entire thinkpieces were written and rewritten about Valentina Shevchenko's chances against the growing legion of power grapplers in her division like Santos, or Erin Blanchfield, or even the returning Tatiana Suarez.
So the UFC decided to make all of them irrelevant and have her face boxing specialist Alexa Grasso.
In some ways, it's kind of a baffling choice. Manon Fiorot won an openly-advertised title eliminator and is ranked #1, Taila Santos very nearly beat the champion and is ranked #2, Jéssica Andrade had just completed a successful return and was ranked #3. Alexa Grasso has actually lost a place in the rankings since this fight was announced: Erin Blanchfield's victory over Andrade propelled her to #3, dropped Andrade to #4 and kicked Katlyn Chookagian into #5.
Alexa Grasso is getting a title shot from her demoted position as #6. Alexa Grasso has, in fact, never fought anyone in the top five. It's one of those fun tricks you can do when your rankings are not, strictly speaking, real. Last March, Grasso was #9 and fighting the #7 ranked Joanne Wood; after defeating her, Grasso was #5.
And if it were anyone other than Alexa Grasso, that'd all be weird. With her, it makes a surprising amount of sense. To dig back into Past Carl:
I complain on a weekly basis about how poorly the UFC gets visibility on its fighters. I will almost assuredly do it later on this very card. Alexa Grasso is an extremely notable exception. In nine UFC fights across just under six years, despite never reaching a championship match, Alexa Grasso has only been on the undercard once, which you cannot say about nearly any other woman at either of her UFC divisions. Even current champion Carla Esparza was back on the undercard a few fights before her title victory. Grasso's opponent tonight, Viviane Araújo, was booked on one of the most cursed UFC cards of all time, Overeem vs Sakai, which saw so many injury and COVID pullouts that it wound up being a single, seven-fight televised special with no undercard and Araújo was still booked on just the second fight of the night. Alexa Grasso once missed weight AND won a tepid split decision, two things the UFC loathes above all else, and she was still co-main eventing the next card.
If the UFC promoted everyone as well as they promoted her the sport could be very, very different.
But, hey: They did it right this time, and while it took a few more years than they anticipated, we're here. Alexa Grasso has a shot at the most dominant champion in women's mixed martial arts.
And she's a +500 underdog.
And that's probably fair.
Alexa Grasso is a very good fighter. She might have the best pure boxing technique in women's mixed martial arts and the last several years have seen marked improvements in her leg kicks, her clinch control and her defensive grappling. But those skills are all thoroughly aided by her ability to keep opponents stuck on the end of her fists.
Valentina Shevchenko is, still, one of the most multifaceted strikers the division has ever seen. Grasso may have better hands, but she doesn't have better shins, elbows or knees, nor the ability to mix them up. Moreover, while her takedown defense may be improved, it's still not great: Maycee Barber and Viviane Araújo both got her to the floor and spent multiple minutes controlling her.
Can Grasso make this fight competitive? Absolutely. The more she sticks and moves with the jab, the more she dictates the distance and forces Shevchenko to engage in a prolonged boxing match rather than finding her rhythm with kicks, let alone landing clinch trips, the better she will do. Will she manage it for five rounds? Probably not. VALENTINA SHEVCHENKO BY DECISION.
MAIN CARD: THE ONRUSHING FUTURE
 WELTERWEIGHT: Geoff Neal (15-4, #7) vs Shavkat Rakhmonov (16-0, #10)
This is the poo poo I'm here for. Get the gently caress out of here with your historically important heavyweight championship fights, I'm here for welterweight contendership.
Geoff Neal was the fourth person ever offered a contract through the Contender Series, and he was one of the show's biggest success stories, an almost immediate welterweight standout with a five-fight UFC streak that included four devastating stoppages and an extremely well-aging decision over Belal Muhammad. Unfortunately, like so many prospects, he was dashed on the jagged cliffside that is Stephen "Wonderboy" Thompson, getting completely shut out on the scorecards by Thompson's striking expertise and outworked by Neil Magny immediately thereafter. There were some fears that Neal would slip into the gatekeeper vortex, but a close decision over Santiago Ponzinibbio put him back on the upswing and becoming the first man to ever knock out global violence king Vicente Luque propelled him to the highest ranking of his life. Suddenly, Geoff Neal is within reach of a title shot.
But he's gotta defend his spot against Shavkat Rakhmonov, and boy, that's a big loving ask. I know I've quoted my past writeups a whole bunch today, but I'm gonna do it again, because a point about Shavkat Rakhmonov needs emphasizing.
He's never been taken down, he's excellent at both maintaining range and stringing together combinations, he's dropped his last two opponents with spinning wheel kicks to the goddamn head between effective wrestling and grappling exchanges. Shavkat Rakhmonov has dropped all three of his UFC opponents en route to finishing them and he's done it by landing a grand total of 47 significant strikes in three fights. That translates to just about one knockdown per every dozen significant strikes landed. I cannot begin to tell you how batshit of a statistic that is.
Rakhmonov's a -500 favorite, and that, too, is a measure of expectation. We haven't seen him struggle in a fight--NO one has seen him struggle in a fight--because he simply hasn't. He hasn't just won every fight in his professional career, he's never even made it to a third round. It's already difficult to imagine him in trouble, and it's particularly difficult to imagine that trouble coming from Geoff Neal, a man who struggled heavily with the same Neil Magny Shavkat balled up and chucked into a dumpster.
Neal's by no means defenseless here. As most of the division can attest, he's got dangerous hands and reasonable counter-wrestling. But unless he surprises Shavkat by swarming him early or he lures Shavkat into prolonged boxing exchanges, this fight seems destined to end on the ground. SHAVKAT RAKHMONOV BY SUBMISSION.
LIGHTWEIGHT: Mateusz Gamrot (21-2 (1), #7) vs Jalin Turner (13-5, #10)
This fight was a late addition to the card, but boy, it's an interesting one.
Mateusz Gamrot was poised to be one of the next big things up until a few months ago. A champion in his native Poland, an inexhaustible grappler, a man who had torn off Jeremy Stephens' arm in sixty seconds, faced defeat only once in a split decision against the masterful Guram Kutateladze, run up a four-fight win streak and joined the top ten of the lightweight shark tank after winning one of 2022's best fights against Arman Tsarukyan, Gamrot was ending 2022 with an incredible amount of momentum. And then he met the constantly underrated Beneil Dariush and got humbled, missing 15 out of 19 takedown attempts, managing an average of just 30 seconds of control for the four he landed, and getting outstruck almost two to one in the process. There was no split-decision asterisk: Gamrot had truly failed the biggest test of his career.
Jalin Turner is his path back to the top. Turner, a giant 6'3" lightweight with a reach advantage over almost everyone in the division, was supposed to have a big, silly striking battle with fellow tall brawler Dan Hooker, but a hand injury forced him out and Gamrot was the only ranked lightweight willing to risk the fight on two weeks' notice. Make no mistake: It's a big loving risk. Jalin Turner is a killing machine. He has yet to win a fight by decision, because every time he wins he does it by either knocking an opponent loopy with punches and kicks from a mile away or wrapping them up and choking them out. He hits hard, he's great at intercepting opponents on their way in, and only three of those eighteen opponents have managed to survive past the second round against him.
Here's the thing, though: All three of them beat him. Every time Turner's been taken into deep waters, he's drowned. His style kind of depends on it. He throws so much into his strikes that it's hard to have anything left if they don't get the job done. And against a living energizer bunny like Gamrot, that's a big problem. This is a Turner's top-ten test, and it's going to be remarkably hard to pass. MATEUSZ GAMROT BY DECISION.
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Bo Nickal (3-0) vs Jamie Pickett (13-8)
Remember how I waxed rhapsodic about Alexa Grasso and good, decent promotion? This is the opposite. This is the thing we're getting a lot more often nowadays. Bo Nickal had official MMA management and agented representation before he even started training, thanks to his being one of the most decorated amateur wrestlers of the last decade, a three-time NCAA champion, three-time Big Ten champion, one-time national champion and one-time world champion. When he finally left wrestling behind to focus on MMA his record was 120-3, and he'd beaten the only two people to make him lose.
His road to the UFC is a sign of exactly how silly their promotional game has become. He was invited to the Contender Series in August of last year, won his fight by submission in one minute without taking a single punch, and was denied a contract anyway because, as Dana White said, he was too inexperienced--despite Dana White having invited him to compete on the show where you win contracts. He was, instead, booked to show up on the Contender Series again six weeks later, where he once again won by submission in a single minute, and magically, one month and one fight later, Dana no longer objected to his joining the UFC.
Jamie Pickett was hand-picked as his opponent for a pay-per-view debut back in December, but Nickal had to pull out with an injury. Rather than replace him or rebook Pickett, they simply told him to wait three more months. This is, of course, because Pickett is here to lose. "The Night Wolf" is a 2-4 UFC fighter who actually needed three attempts at the Contender Series to get a contract, and he has been pointedly, and repeatedly, outwrestled by much, much less accomplished wrestlers. The UFC kept him this long specifically so he could get wrestled into nothingness by Bo Nickal, who they absolutely see as a future star.
But at the same time--I can't really complain about the matchmaking, can I? Bo Nickal may be a super-wrestler, but he's also 3-0. It's not like he spent a lot of time honing his craft on the amateur circuit, either; his entire amateur career was two fights in six weeks. Most 3-0 fighters are taking on rookies in smoky barrooms. This fight may be a softball for Bo, but it's also, still, a 3-0 rookie with less than a year of mixed martial arts experience taking on a twenty-one fight veteran who's been in combat sports since 2008.
It's a squash match, but if you're carrying out squash matches at this point in your career, you're still pretty loving impressive. BO NICKAL BY SUBMISSION.
PRELIMS: PICKING UP THE PIECES
BANTAMWEIGHT: Cody Garbrandt (12-5) vs Trevin Jones (13-9 (1))
How low the mighty. In 2016, Cody Garbrandt was the most exciting fighter on the planet. He was an undefeated 10-0, he had ridiculous power in his hands for a bantamweight, and he'd just ended the eight undefeated years of bantamweight GOAT Dominick Cruz's run by not just beating him but humiliating him, dropping him repeatedly and very literally dancing in front of him, wresting away his bantamweight world championship in the process. If you weren't watching at the time, it is impossible to overstate how shocking and exciting Garbrandt's rise was. And it's matched only by the sheer velocity of his fall from grace. Garbrandt has dropped five of his last six fights, and four of those losses were violent, definitive knockouts. He even tried to take refuge by dropping to flyweight, only to eat the fastest knockout loss of his career.
He was intended to fight Julio Arce here, but an injury and a replacement means he's now facing the embattled "5 Star" Trevin Jones. Trevin was a late-injury replacement signing for the UFC, and he shocked them by knocking top prospect Timur Valiev the gently caress out--a huge win that was immediately taken away because he dared to smoke marijuana. He scored another knockout in his next fight, but it's all been downhill from there: Three straight losses, none of which were particularly competitive. Jones has powerful striking, solid wrestling and a hell of a chin, but he's been unable to put those skills back together in quite some time, and after so many losses in a row, it's tough to get your mind back into the fight game--especially when you're fighting on a month's notice.
But he's also fighting Cody Garbrandt, who's got a 5" reach disadvantage, a string of brutal knockout losses, and a tendency to never, ever keep his chin covered. If Garbrandt lands, he can knock out anyone in the division and probably the next two above him. But TREVIN JONES BY KNOCKOUT is just too easy to see happening again.
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Derek Brunson (23-8, #5) vs Dricus du Plessis (18-2, #10)
Derek Brunson was so goddamn close, man. 2022 saw the third time eternal contender Derek Brunson got ejected from the title picture. In 2016 his five-fight streak was ended by Robert Whittaker, his 2018 comeback ended thanks to Jacare Souza, and after putting together another five victories he was felled, once again, by the vicious elbows of Jared Cannonier. Brunson's one of the best middleweights in the sport's history--no, really, come back, I mean it, he's been in the top ten for basically an entire decade and his only losses in that time came from champions or #1 contenders, that poo poo's not easy. His long punches and power wrestling are deceptively good and have made fools of many a man, and everyone who's underestimated him has paid dearly.
But Dricus du Plessis is a puzzling fighter. It's hard to say this without feeling like I am insulting the man, so I want to be clear that the following is a compliment: He is remarkably adept at looking terrible and somehow still completely winning fights. He'll spam leg kicks and get repeatedly countered, he'll blitz wildly forward and get torn up on entry, and even while winning striking exchanges he eats fists upside the head. The two times we've seen him reach the third round of a fight, he's looked exhausted. And he wins anyway, and I cannot overstate how impressive that is. He's so determined in his approach to fighting that his appearance of weakness becomes itself a strength, allowing him to draw opponents in only to overwhelm them and drown them in offense.
This fight is remarkably difficult to predict. Brunson has the wrestling offense to shut du Plessis down, but du Plessis has proved remarkably difficult to keep down, and unlike du Plessis, when Brunson gets tired, he's cooked, and at 39 his gas tank isn't getting any better. I still think we'll see DEREK BRUNSON BY DECISION, but that's dependent on his ability to manhandle du Plessis while staying away from his blitzes. If he can't keep du Plessis either down or away from him, it's going to get ugly.
WOMEN'S FLYWEIGHT: Viviane Araújo (11-4, #8) vs Amanda Ribas (11-3, #15)
And here, we have the battle of the contenders that never were. Viviane Araújo has some solid all-around talents, but her bread and butter is positional control grappling. She has, in fact, managed only one finish in the UFC, a shock big-right-hand knockout of Talita Bernardo in her debut back in 2019. Everything else has been variations on fighting to a decision. But she's also made it through the UFC without ever getting stopped herself, and arguably, she beat neverending top contender Katlyn Chookagian only to get boned out of a decision because we now live in a judging hellworld where landing a few right hands outweighs holding mount and threatening submissions for half the round. But Viviane's last fight against Alexa Grasso was the first time in her UFC tenure that she's been shut out, going 2 for 10 on her takedowns and getting outboxed all night.
So the company is giving her a fight to determine the best fighter who maybe beat Katlyn Chookagian only to not get the decision. Here's the thing: Amanda Ribas is a strawweight. She's 5'3", she's lightly built, her gameplan revolves around outworking and outspeeding her opponents, and the UFC has been slightly mad at her ever since she foiled their plans by ending Mackenzie Dern's undefeated streak. Her knockout loss to Marina Rodriguez was an unfortunate way to lose the hope of title contendership, but boy, when she took that flyweight fight with Chookagian I was deeply hoping it would be temporary, but no, she's staying at 125 pounds, I guess, where she's the second-smallest woman in the division and every single fight puts her at a stark disadvantage.
That said: AMANDA RIBAS BY DECISION. We just saw Viviane get controlled by a faster, sharper boxer, and Ribas is every bit both of those things all over again. Ribas should be able to outwork her for fifteen minutes.
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Julian Marquez (9-3) vs Marc-André Barriault (14-6 (1))
At UFC 258 back in 2021, Julian Marquez scored a really neat anaconda choke, used his post-fight interview to ask Miley Cyrus out on a date, and when Miley Cyrus, who is famously down for bad ideas, gave him the slightest bit of attention, he immediately fumbled the bag by telling her to get his name (temporarily) tattooed on her body. For the crime of being a huge idiot "The Cuban Missile Crisis" was cursed by the violence gods to miss the next full year of his career thanks to health issues, and when he finally came back last June, he was immediately punched out by Gregory Rodrigues.
Marc-André Barriault is, like, barely hanging on, but that's how it's always been. He lost his first three UFC fights, he lost his first win thanks to a positive drug test for ostarine, he managed to string two victories together and then he got flattened in sixteen seconds by Chidi Njokuani. It's been back and forth since: He choked out Jordan Wright, he got choked out by Anthony Hernandez. Does his back-and-forth record mean he'll win this fight? Are his abrupt chokes better than Julian's abrupt chokes? Does this fight mean the birth of a new contender?
Or is this just the middle of middleweight, a swirling void into which talent is thrown when the UFC has nothing else to do with them, so they can roll around and try stuff they saw in the gym a couple times and maybe scrape an extra win together so the UFC knows who to feed to Leonard Kickman, the next big Contender Series middleweight winner who says something racist enough that Dana thinks he can make money?
You decide. JULIAN MARQUEZ BY SUBMISSION.
EARLY PRELIMS: FILING YOUR FORMS IN DUPLICATE
WELTERWEIGHT: Ian Garry (10-0) vs Song Kenan (18-6)
It's rubber-meets-the-road time for the UFC's big Conor McGregor cloning experiment. Ian "The Future" Garry, the only McGregor successor so blatant as to just straight up quote his post-fight promos in place of his own, has been getting a drip-feed of favorable matches for the last year and a half as the UFC has tried to build him up to relevant competition. Song Kenan is, somehow, both. He's Garry's first UFC opponent with a winning record under its banner, he's a tough, powerful striker with hands heavy enough to match Garry's knockout power, and he's got enough of a jab to disrupt the 'I'm just going to walk you down and kill you' gameplan Garry tends to favor. He also got knocked the gently caress out two years ago and hasn't competed since.
Song could win. He's dangerous. But the UFC is banking on both the likelihood that Song will engage Garry in the kind of fight he's best at and the likelihood that after two years of nothingness Song will be just rusty enough to get dusted. And they're probably right. IAN GARRY BY TKO.
BANTAMWEIGHT: Cameron Saaiman (7-0) vs Mana Martinez (10-3)
I had Cameron Saaiman picked to easily win his UFC debut back in December; he wound up in the toughest fight of his life and scraped a last-minute standing TKO together to save himself from what was probably going to be a draw. Was that stage fright, or are there just levels to this game and Steven "Obi Won Shinobi The Pillow" Koslow is higher level than anyone thought? I hope we never have to find out, because every time I type his nickname it takes two minutes off of my life. But Saaiman proved he could gut out a hard, scrappy brawl, which is probably why the UFC was eager to toss him in with Mana Martinez, whose 2-1 success with the company has come entirely from split decisions thanks to equally memorably scrappy brawling. The solemn hope is they'll get three rounds of wild facepunching.
I'm not convinced. Mana was a little warier in his last fight--which is good, that's a sign of maturing and bodes well for his future--and I'm choosing to arbitrarily believe Saaiman's going to look less nervous, half because he got his debut out of the way and half because he's not fighting a power wrestler anymore. CAMERON SAAIMAN BY DECISION.
WOMEN'S STRAWWEIGHT: Jessica Penne (14-6) vs Tabatha Ricci (7-1)
I feel like we're nearing the end of the Jessica Penne story. Just six fights ago she was fighting for the strawweight championship and lasting three (one-sided) rounds with the best in the world: In the time since she is 2-4, and that encompassed a four-year layoff followed by two fights followed by another year of injuries. Her fight last July was her first in almost twelve months, and against a last-minute replacement in Emily Ducote, a smaller fighter who would go on to get outworked by a 50/50 Angela Hill, Penne got beaten so badly she limped out of the cage on one functional leg with one functional eye. She's incredibly tough, she's got a ton of heart, but she also turned 40 this year. The good news for her is Tabatha Ricci is a much less fearsome striker; the bad news is she's one of the best grapplers in the division. One fight ago Ricci was walking through the offense of Polyana Viana, herself a power puncher and by no means a bad grappler, and taking her and controlling her at will. Ricci's grappling also makes her good at stifling offense by spamming kicks, as she has no fear of them getting her taken down.
It's been almost a decade since Jessica Penne was submitted, but TABATHA RICCI BY SUBMISSION seems likely.
BANTAMWEIGHT: Farid Basharat (9-0) vs Da'Mon Blackshear (12-4-1)
We're entering a bold new era of brothers in the UFC, and Farid Basharat is the latest beneficiary but also a demonstration of its biggest problem: He and his brother Javid are basically the same fighter. They both got their contracts through the Contender Series, they're both very smart, quick strikers who like to circle away, peck with jabs and leg kicks to break their opponents down and close to either uncork straights or dive on single-legs, and they're both undefeated career bantamweights fighting in the UFC's bantamweight division. So I am, admittedly, not sure what the endgame is here. It's not like one of them is better suited for a different weight class, they're separated by less than an inch of height, so is the master plan that they beat every bantamweight in the world other than each other, cut the world championship in half and reign as co-champions like Laycool did in the WWE? Either way, he's probably going to beat Da'Mon Blackshear, who made his UFC debut last year as a heralded prospect and regional champion which still only got him the chance to jump on a card as a late injury replacement, put in a good two rounds against Youssef Zalal, and then got beaten so badly in the final round that he got stuck with a draw.
I don't necessarily hold that against him--Zalal's tough and coming in late is always hard--but Blackshear's aggression and quick, jumping attacks, which served him well on the regional scene, were already problematic against a grappler like Zalal. Against a counterstriker like Farid, it graduates to outright liability. FARID BASHARAT BY DECISION.
LIGHTWEIGHT: Loik Radzhabov (16-4-1) vs Esteban Ribovics (11-0)
I gotta tell you, this fight ticks all my boxes. Is Esteban Ribovics yet another Contender Series winner who clearly has all-around skills and chose to ignore them in favor of charging across the cage to throw hands while not protecting himself whatsoever? You bet. Did he get picked up by the UFC's talent scouts because he fought for Samurai Fight House, the record padding factory that put his 9-0 record against a guy who was 6-5? You're god drat right he did. Is his opponent Loik Radzhabov a credible fighter who despite multiple accomplishments only got booked on the card thanks to the need for a last-minute injury replacement? gently caress yes he is. Did Loik almost win the Professional Fighters League Lightweight Championship in 2021, only to get outfought until he gassed out thanks to Anthony Pettis destroyer Raush Manfio, leading to Loik going to the Khabib-inflated Eagle FC just a few months before it died? One hundred percent.
Is the UFC hoping their fun brawler beats the Tajikistani wrestler? Absolutely. Am I going to pick that way? You'll have to loving kill me first. LOIK RADZHABOV BY DECISION.
I hate that we're here, but god dammit, we're here.
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Mar 4, 2023 22:30
