- CarlCX
- Dec 14, 2003
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It is time to begin a whole bunch of bantamweight bullshit. Also, Ricardo Ramos missed weight by 10 pounds so the card got scrambled a little.
CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 50: REAPPROACHING NORMALCY
SATURDAY, MARCH 11TH FROM THE THEATER AT VIRGIN HOTELS IN PARADISE, NEVADA
PRELIMS 12:00 PM PST/3:00 PM EST VIA ESPN+ | MAIN CARD 3:00 PM PST/6:00 PM EST VIA ESPN+
Why on Earth did someone shred the poster?
There's a weird sort of neutrality with the Fight Night cards this month. We have the very, very rare three pay-per-views in five events--Jones vs Gane last week, Edwards vs Usman 3 next week, and Pereira vs Adesanya 2 opening up April--and sandwiched between them are a pair of bantamweight-led cards that, in a season of inexplicable matchups and Contender Series pushes and old champions coming back after years on the shelf, are just plain 'put the adjacent contenders against each other' events.
And that's not bad! I'm not complaining. It's just bizarre in context. It's like watching a loved one pause between schizophrenic episodes to have a pleasantly lucid discussion about current events and the latest episode of Star Trek before returning to their monologue about how reruns don't exist because the government secretly reshoots every television show that's more than ten years old with perfect lookalikes so they can add modernized propaganda to it.
So come with me and let's enjoy the times of peace while they last.
i always hate it when i have to change the card graphic for the actual event post
MAIN EVENT: ROUND ONE OF AN UNOFFICIAL TOURNAMENT
BANTAMWEIGHT: Petr Yan (16-4, #2) vs Merab Dvalishvili (15-4, #3)
It's surprisingly difficult to discuss the bantamweight contendership scene without feeling as though I am describing the combat sports equivalent of the wealth inequality problem.
Bantamweight is absolutely spoiled for contenders right now. Petr Yan is a former champion who took the current champion to his limit, Merab Dvalishvili is a crushing pressure fighter on an eight-fight winning streak, Marlon Vera is a fan favorite with huge momentum who just knocked out the greatest bantamweight of all time, Cory Sandhagen is a remarkable talent whose only losses have come against world champions. Even the lower half of the ranks have surging, streaking fighters like Ricky Simón, Umar Nurmagomedov and Chris Gutierrez on their way up.
But they are, of course, not the people getting title shots. TJ Dillashaw, with one win in four years, got a title shot. Henry Cejudo, who retired three years ago, is getting the next title shot. And Sean O'Malley, who went from #13 to #1 in one fight after favorable matchmaking and a terrible decision? You better believe there's a reason every contender except O'Malley is about to fight one another. This fight between the #2 and #3 contenders is just two weeks before Marlon Vera and Cory Sandhagen, the #4 and #5 contenders, fight each other. And I would all but promise you that the winner of each fight will wind up fighting one another later this year in a title eliminator on the same pay-per-view where Sean O'Malley finally gets his shot at whoever's left standing after Sterling vs Cejudo.
It's hard. It's hard to enjoy an amazing division that is absolutely spoiled for talent when its focal point is still the bullshit. But the fights are good, and the fighters are good, and if we want to have any chance of enjoying life amidst the teeming wastes of the present then by god, so must we be.
Having said all of that: There's a pretty good chance this fight winds up not being a lot of fun.
Petr Yan is a great fighter. He's good at everything, from crisp boxing to well-placed kicks to clinch trips, and he remains one of the most dangerous fighters in the entire division. He's also one for his last four. Some of this requires considerable asterisks--he was soundly beating Aljamain Sterling in their first fight before he stupidly got himself disqualified and he absolutely beat Sean O'Malley back in October, regardless of what the judges said--but there was nothing disqualifying about the grappling clinic Sterling ran on him in their rematch. Sterling laid out a blueprint on how to break down Yan's posture, control his footwork and use constant, suffocating grappling pressure to keep him from mounting any offense.
The fight ultimately went to a split decision--another reminder of the ever-worsening crisis we're seeing in judging no longer having any idea what the gently caress to do about grappling that assuredly has nothing to do with Dana White and Scott Coker throwing public tantrums when their preferred fan-friendly strikers get double-legged to death--but that was largely because Sterling was too goddamn tired to maintain the assault during the championship rounds. The first three rounds of constant aggression and an ever-present wrestling threat took Yan's tools away and kept him from mustering offense, and by the time he collected himself, it was already too late.
And now he has to fight Merab Dvalishvili, who has even heavier pressure and even better cardio, and whose primary training partner and source of tactical advice for the fight is, uh, Aljamain Sterling.
There's this tendency in mixed martial arts to underrate wrestlers. It's something of a circular process: Wrestlers get less finishes, fans care less about wrestlers, the promotion puts less push behind wrestlers, no one cares enough to bet on wrestlers, oddsmakers turn wrestlers into betting underdogs. It's a testament to how much faith people have in Merab Dvalishvili's grappling pressure that despite having finished only one man in his ten fights in the UFC he's been a betting favorite in his last eight bouts--even directly following the one and only submission loss of his career. And that's a great case in point, as in the one and only submission loss of his career, Merab was not, in fact, submitted. He won two and a half rounds against Ricky Simón only to get sucked into a guillotine choke in the final thirty seconds of the fight, but despite making it to the bell and responding to the referee and doctors said doctors wanted him to lay down, which was, somehow, ruled by the referee as a sign that he had been choked out, resulting in his being retroactively ruled to have been unconscious.
In fact, in his UFC debut just prior to that, he outstruck Frankie Saenz 104-66, took him down eleven times and spent more than half of the fight controlling him on the floor, but lost a split decision anyway because, once again, judges hate grappling now. There's a reasonable argument to be made that Merab and his wrestling should be 10-0 in the UFC, and that Merab Dvalishvili has not truly lost a fight since 2014, when he was 1-1.
But we do not live in that world. We live in this one, where wrestling doesn't count and athletic commissions don't accept appeals. So Merab had to build his way back up, and after retiring José Aldo last August by agonizingly grinding him into the cage wall for thirteen minutes he earned his undeniable position as a contender.
Which, in some ways, makes this a perfect fight for the unanswered questions about both men. Petr Yan is a tremendous talent with a killer highlight reel, but we just saw him get stifled by a superior grappler. Merab Dvalishvili is an unstoppable force who can and will wrestle for days on end, but his rise to the top came on the heels of fading legends like Aldo and Marlon Moraes, and he needs to show he can beat a top contender of the present.
It's the first fight Merab's had in almost five years where he's a betting underdog. While I am, as always, prepared to be disappointed by my faith in grappling: I disagree. Merab isn't the grappler Aljamain Sterling is--he's more bread and butter, less creative, less flexible--but he's indefatigable. We've seen Merab in trouble thanks to the aforementioned Marlon Moraes, and while half-conscious and stumbling over himself, he still wrestled Moraes to the ground and was breaking his face with elbows seconds later. In that same timeframe we've seen Yan get visibly frustrated by aggressive grappling, and his clinch-trip reversals are going to be very, very hard to work on a wrestler as solid as Merab. If Yan can't hurt him enough to keep him off his goddamn legs, he's getting wrestled all night. MERAB DVALISHVILI BY DECISION.
CO-MAIN EVENT: NO, AMERICA, MOLDOVA AND RUSSIA ARE NOT THE SAME COUNTRY
HEAVYWEIGHT: Alexander Volkov (35-10, #8) vs Alexandr Romanov (16-1, #13)
Hey, you know that one division? The one where everything's bad all the time and the champion just got fired for wanting healthcare and a 205-pound guy who'd been on the shelf for three years just effortlessly dumpstered the #1 fighter in the UFC? Let's go back there. It seems fine.
Alexander Volkov, you Larry Bird-looking motherfucker. "Drago" came into the UFC back in 2016 as a once-champion in Bellator who'd fallen out of favor after being shamefully wrestled by Cheick Kongo, and he had all the makings of a hot new heavyweight contender, including spending 14:30 of a 15-minute fight beating the crap out of Derrick Lewis, before learning the hard way that it does not take very long at all for Derrick Lewis to knock you out. Since then, the professional life of Volkov has been a constant, back and forth slingshot of glorious victory and tragic defeat. Beat up Greg Hardy, get wrestled by Curtis Blaydes. Knock out Alistair Overeem, get outstruck by Ciryl Gane. Defeat Marcin Tybura? Get submitted for the first time in twelve years thanks to Tom Aspinall.
Volkov just can't seem to hold onto momentum, which is ironic, because maintaining a steady pace is his entire fight style. He moves faster than most heavyweights and he throws slightly more volume than most heavyweights, but unlike his peers in the premier facepunching division, he doesn't blitz. Even when he staggers his opponents and closes in to swarm them, it's less of a traditional, wildly swinging wasplike death-swarm and more of a group of politely buzzing bumblebees who just happen to be checking to see if Walt Harris is still conscious. This is a key to his success, and the reason he's only been finished five times in forty-five fights, which is frankly nuts by the standards of heavyweight, but it's also a hindrance, as his lack of adaptability gets him punished.
And that could be problematic, because punishing is Alexandr Romanov's entire gameplan. Like, his only gameplan. "King Kong" does not want to strike with you. He does not want to trade notes on the finer points of kickboxing techniques. He wants to lift you, like so many sacks of meat, and hurl you to the floor where he can take out years of compartmentalized anger on your face and body. There's a maneuver in grappling called the forearm choke. It's as simple as it sounds--you put your forearm on your opponent's throat and press down until they tap out or expire--and it fell out of fashion in the early days of mixed martial arts because, for the most part, you can counter it through the advanced technique known as 'turning your head'. It fell out of fashion after the early days of mixed martial arts because it generally didn't work on people who knew the basics of grappling.
But there are two problems: For one, this is the heavyweight division, and for two, Alexandr Romanov is Large. This submission technique was thought lost to the late 90s alongside grunge music, Lisa Frank and the ability to credibly believe in compassionate conservatism, but Alexandr Romanov has dragged it out of the dark and somehow scored three wins with it in the modern era. And it was this kind of large man berserker energy that led to the UFC signing him as an undefeated 11-0 prospect. And it was going great, and he was an undefeated 16-0, right up until last August. Romanov had already encountered trouble in his fight with Juan Espino, where he visibly gassed and was likely en route to losing a decision until an errant groin strike and some screwy technical judging saved him, but it was unfortunate gatekeeper Marcin Tybura that finally ended his streak when Romanov, unable to finish Tybura in the first round, looked more or less exhausted for the remaining ten minutes and was summarily outboxed.
Which makes the algebra on this fight pretty simple. Romanov is a big, powerful wrestle-brawler, he wants to push you into the fence, dump you and crush you, and if he can't do that within five minutes, he's in trouble. Alexander Volkov is a well-rounded fighter with a generally decent counter-wrestling game (aside from getting trucked a dozen times by Curtis Blaydes, who does that to almost everybody), but he has trouble with people who can sprint through his pace, and Romanov will throw everything he has at you as soon as he possibly can.
If this fight ends in the first round, it's almost certainly because Romanov's physicality won the day and he tossed Volkov on his head and pounded him out. But ALEXANDER VOLKOV BY TKO seems much more likely. Romanov's cardio isn't a new problem, it's been this way for years, and I don't think he's going to be able to pull a first-round mauling out against Volkov the way Tom Aspinall did. I think two rounds in Volkov is picking Romanov apart while he flails at him on the feet and three rounds in Volkov is putting him down.
MAIN CARD: MAD DOGS AND PLEASUREMEN
CATCHWEIGHT, 215 POUNDS: Nikita Krylov (29-9, #6 at 205) vs Ryan Spann (21-7, #9 at 205)
Hey, remember when the UFC swore to you that this was a really big, important main event light-heavyweight fight two weeks ago right up until it was cancelled midway through the card due to a stomach ailment? It's not a main event anymore, it's not even a co-main event, it's not even five rounds, and it's not even actually being contested at light-heavyweight! Welcome to this 215-pound catchweight fight, for some goddamn reason. As always, since the UFC is running a re-run, I will, too. Here's the relevant portion of what I had to say two weeks ago, minus the extraneous ranting about divisional matchmaking:
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.
FEATHERWEIGHT: Ricardo Ramos (16-4) vs Austin Lingo (9-1)
The last time Ricardo Ramos fought, I wrote this:
But I'm here, my friends, to tell you that there is a dark side: The Bad Meta. Neutral flying knees. Ill-advised guillotine jumps. And the greatest, most widespread scourge of all: Random spinning kicks. You know drat well you didn't time or even really aim it, you know it's not going to land, but god drat it, you've been taking your striking classes seriously and you want people to know.
This is a roundabout way of saying this will probably be a fun if kind of sloppy fight from two people with effective if too-wild offense and they're gonna throw a lot of dumb poo poo.
Will it work again this week? Probably! Austin Lingo has been out of action with injuries since last we saw him in mid-2021, but even though his march-forward-through-hell-to-punch-you style won him the night against Luis Saldaña, he took a boatload of damage from the numerous punches and kicks he was quietly accepting as the consequences of his approach. And that included eating three crushing spinning back kicks to the gut. And one fight before that, against Jacob Kilburn, he got dropped by a spinning backfist. This is the problem with the straightforward approach: When you're constantly on a forward trajectory, it gets real easy for your opponents to figure out where you're going to be and exactly how much time they have to majestically pirouette before they boot you in your chest.
I just don't think it's a good fight for Lingo. He's an extremely tough man, he's never been stopped, and his dogged style could easily tire out a wild striker like Ramos, but his porous defense and his critical weakness to spinning poo poo seems likely to get him hurt. RICARDO RAMOS BY TKO.
BANTAMWEIGHT: Said Nurmagomedov (17-2, #14) vs Jonathan Martinez (17-4, NR)
Here, we have the battle of men who had real, real good 2022s. Said Nurmagomedov, as media is obligated to note every single time he fights, is a Nurmagomedov from Dagestan who is a wrestler, but he is not, in fact, part of the Khabib Nurmagomedov wrestling dynasty. That does not make him any less of a bad dude. Injuries and visa issues kept him from being as active as he would've liked to be, and then between an upset loss to Raoni Barcelos and a year-and-a-half-long layoff thanks to the pandemic he lost enough momentum that the world just sort of forgot about him. Which is presumably why he spent all of 2022 kicking everyone's rear end. He choked out Cody Stamann in under a minute, he outfought violence king Douglas Silva de Andrade, and he outwrestled championship grappler Saidyokub Kakhramonov in two rounds. Suddenly, Said Nurmagomedov is 6-1 in the UFC, on a four-fight winning streak, ranked in the top fifteen, and has more momentum than almost anyone else in the bantamweight division.
Except, as it happens, Jonathan "Dragon" Martinez. Martinez joined the UFC back in 2018 as a last-minute injury replacement for Andre Soukhamthath (who will go down in history for the shame of being the man who could have ended the Sean O'Malley Experience before it started only to ultimately lose because he didn't realize he should kick a man hopping on one leg in his one remaining leg) and proceeded to spend the next three years completely lost in the shuffle, another striking-centric fighter trading wins over lower-tier fighters and getting repeatedly bounced by higher-ranked standouts like the now-released Andre Ewell and Davey Grant. Much like Said, it wasn't until a 2021 win and an incredibly busy 2022 that Martinez got himself on the map: He outfought Zviad Lazishvili, outstruck Alejandro Perez, won a tentative but definitive decision over Vince Morales and took advantage of a spotlight co-main event by wrecking fallen superstar Cub Swanson with a leg kick TKO.
So it's a battle of the four-fight streaks. Someone's four shall gain no more. I think Martinez is a bit underrated--particularly by me, who picked Cub to beat him--and his surprising wrestling game is a part of that. But he also got taken down by an injured Cub Swanson, and he's been having periodic trouble with the cut to 135 pounds, and I, generally-speaking, have trouble not seeing Said snagging a choke. SAID NURMAGOMEDOV BY SUBMISSION. Martinez gets a bunch of his offense from his kicks, and those are going to be a very tricky liability for him in this fight, because every kick is an opportunity for Said to catch it and move into the clinch.
BANTAMWEIGHT: Mario Bautista (11-2) vs Guido Cannetti (10-6)
This is Mario Bautista's eighth fight in the UFC. You may feel immediately disinclined to believe me, but it's true. He fought Cory Sandhagen, choked out Brian Kelleher, struck down Miles Johns with a flying knee and absolutely mauled Benito Lopez in his last appearance back in November. And I bet you could not possibly place his face in your head right now. I couldn't, and I've already written about the man twice. This is in some part because, despite a genuinely impressive 5-2 record in the shark tank that is the bantamweight division, he has never been off the prelims. Not once. The UFC decided Vinicius Moreira, Gabriel Silva, Juan Adams, Aalon Cruz, Alan Baudot, Cody Durden and Shanna Young were better investments of their marketing dollars than the bantamweight killing people with flying knees and triangle armbars who's won three performance bonuses. And he still isn't! He's got three wins in a row and he's still on the goddamn prelims because he's less interesting to the UFC than THE PLEASURE MAN.
And he's even got a fun, stupid opponent. I wrote a career obituary for Guido "Ninja" Cannetti one year ago, as he was a 43 year-old with a 2-5 record in the UFC--2-7, if you count The Ultimate Fighter--and not just on a three-fight losing streak, but a three-fight losing streak that started in 2018. To find tape on Guido's only other UFC win you had to go all the way back to 2015's Rousey vs Correia, a card where nearly 75% of its participants are now retired from mixed martial arts. After watching Kris Moutinho walk through hundreds of Sean O'Malley punches, Cannetti seemed like the UFC's attempt to make it up to him with a gimme fight. And then Cannetti dusted him in two minutes. And then he submitted Randy Costa with a floating rear naked choke in one minute. And suddenly, Guido Cannetti is a thing again.
But god forbid they get booked higher than Josh Fremd. MARIO BAUTISTA BY SUBMISSION. I think Cannetti's dedication to orthodox technique is serving him well in his age, but I also don't think there's anything he does better or faster than Bautista does, and unlike Moutinho, Bautista isn't going to stand in front of him and wait to get hit.
LIGHT-HEAVYWEIGHT: Vitor Petrino (7-0) vs Anton Turkalj (8-1)
Hey, look, it's big dumb Contender Series time again. If you've been reading these for any length of time you can almost certainly finish this sentence without my help, but let's sing it together anyway: Vitor Petrino is a big, brawly fighter who likes to throw giant winging hooks from outer space and eschews grappling and wrestling in favor of standing and banging for his pay. Almost his entire career was fought against the regional Brazilian record-padding services that had him fighting dudes with records like 0-6 and 1-17, but he did knock out UFC veteran Gadzhimurad Antigulov, which isn't nothing. Unfortunately, his Contender Series win also saw him getting visibly tired and dropping his hands after all of a round and a half of competition, and his knockout victory came because his opponent--whom he'd already knocked out once in his first professional fight--threw a wildly inaccurate spinning backfist that saw him just turning in a circle in front of Petrino and silently begging to be put out of his misery.
Anton Turkalj is also a Contender Series winner, and also a former sacrificial lamb who was fed to currently-rising Jailton Almeida as a last-minute injury replacement. And we could talk about these things. But the same way I am obligated to remind you about Said Nurmagomedov's actual family background every time he fights, I am obligated to remind you, every time Anton Turkalj fights, that he willingly goes by the moniker The Pleasure Man and willingly posed for this picture:
But he also knows how to grapple at least a little, and Vitor managed to get outgrappled three times in seven minutes on the Contender Series, so gently caress it, why not. ANTON TURKALJ BY SUBMISSION. Wow me, Pleasure Man.
PRELIMS: THERE'S JUST SO MANY BANTAMWEIGHTS
HEAVYWEIGHT: Łukasz Brzeski (8-2-1 (1)) vs Karl Williams (7-1)
Life has not gone according to Łukasz Brzeski's plans. "The Bull" was a big, traditional heavyweight brawler of a main event attraction in his native Poland's Babilon MMA when the UFC came calling back in 2021 with a Contender Series offer. And he won! Until he tested positive for that most common and often mistakenly used of nutritional supplements, clomiphene, the women's fertility drug that doubles as a steroid masking agent. The UFC shrugged and gave him a contract because he's a heavyweight so gently caress it, and after a year's suspension he was finally ready for his big debut against Martin Buday, where he outlanded him in every round, outstruck him 124-66, and lost a split decision anyway. Karl Williams was a light-heavyweight up until last September, and he'd even picked up a win on the Professional Fighters League's Challenger Series, but they're no less bloodthirsty than the UFC is, so his proclivity for slowly wrestling decisions out of people did not get him picked up for the next season. The now-heavyweight Williams was brought onto the Contender Series as an opponent for the more knockout-oriented Jimmy Lawson, but after he, too, fell victim to the long, slow death that is top position wrestling, the UFC apparently made some kind of clerical error and signed Williams despite his love of takedowns.
There are arguments to be made both ways, here. Williams has a surprising amount of speed and drive on his takedowns for a heavyweight, which is probably because he isn't one, but his wrestling IS his defense against striking and it's seen him get his chin checked by speedier opponents, and Brzeski has decent hand speed for a large man. If you go back far enough in Brzeski's career you'll find tape on him getting outwrestled back in Babilon, but that was also almost four years ago. A lot can change in that time. But I still believe in the golden rule of mixed martial arts: Wrestling Ruins Everything Around Me. KARL WILLIAMS BY DECISION.
BANTAMWEIGHT: Raphael Assunção (27-9) vs Davey Grant (12-6)
Raphael Assunção was considering retirement last October. He was just past 40, he was on a four-fight slide, he got knocked out twice in a row, he went from being a possible title contender to a +400 underdog against Victor "La Mangosta" Henry--the implications were just as hard to miss as the likelihood Henry would put Assunção out to pasture. At the time, I had some very detailed technical analysis to offer:
Tough poo poo. I am mad with power and I deny all of you. Raphael Assunção by decision.
What the gently caress was that?
RAPHAEL ASSUNÇÃO BY DECISION.
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Sedriques Dumas (7-0) vs Josh Fremd (9-4)
I know we need to talk about this fight, and we will, in a minute, but I need to get something off my chest first. I've been haunted by Sedriques Dumas since last July, when first I saw the picture used to head his Tapology page.
There was just something about it--the dry black and white, the expression on his face, the people in the background, the centralized perspective--that made the slight, vague oddities of the picture resonate with something in my brain, but try as I might, I couldn't figure out what. I came back to it for this writeup and stared at it for a solid five minutes before it finally clicked.
Sedriques Dumas is the warden of the Overlook Hotel that is our hellish sport. And lest you think it's cruel to compare him to an alcoholic with a domestic abuse problem, it should be noted that:
- He's got multiple arrests for assault, including a domestic violence charge for allegedly punching the mother of his child in the face
- His Contender Series fight was protested by a Florida family alleging he'd beaten the crap out of their daughter at a bar
- He's awaiting trial for a November DUI arrest
- His primary contribution to mixed martial arts thus far was attempting to hold up media that wanted to interview him for $100 per interview, the resistance to which he dubbed "hoe poo poo"
Doesn't seem great! Also doesn't seem great that he's making his UFC debut having fought only two people with winning records. He's a big lanky guy with a kickboxing background, pretty quick hands, and the ability to snatch up power guillotines on unsuspecting necks. This week he's going to be trying to apply them to Josh "You're My Best" Fremd, and if you're annoyed at me for using his last name for dumb nickname jokes yet again let me note his actual nickname is "The Big Yinz" so rest assured I am doing you a loving favor. Fremd is big and tough and a genuine threat as both a puncher and a grappler; he's also 0-2 in the UFC and probably on his way out if he loses again.
And I wish I believed in his capacity to win, here, but he spent his entire fight with Anthony Hernandez repeatedly shoving his neck into guillotine positions and almost getting choked out for it, and then he did it again against Tresean Gore and DID get choked out for it, and boy, I just don't see that changing against a guy who can choke him out at heretofore unseen angles. SEDRIQUES DUMAS BY SUBMISSION.
WOMEN'S FLYWEIGHT: JJ Aldrich (11-5) vs Ariane Lipski (14-8)
Here, we have the battle of prospects that should have been. Hopes were sky-high for both of these women when they signed with the UFC--which always baffled me a little in JJ Aldrich's case, if I'm being entirely honest, not out of any distaste for her whatsoever, but because I just didn't understand the level of expectation placed upon a 3-1 rookie who'd already gotten choked off The Ultimate Fighter. I distinctly remember smart 2016 fans talking about Aldrich as a future champion. And somehow that hype never entirely dissipated, even as she proceeded to never actually get there. Juliana Lima took away her debut, Maycee Barber ended her first winning streak and Erin Blanchfield finished off her second. Aldrich is by no means bad: She's a very good, gritty fighter with not just decent striking and wrestling but the rare ability to effectively chain them together and cardio enough to still be walking women down and diving on their legs three rounds into a fight. But she just hasn't been able to turn the corner and beat the upper echelons of the division.
Ariane Lipski has had an unfortunately more traditional path through the company. The "Queen of Violence" was a highly-regarded pickup for the company back in 2019 as the reigning and twice-defending Women's Flyweight Champion of Poland's Konfrontacja Sztuk Walki (why yes, I will take any excuse to type that, thank you) with knockouts and submissions over international champions and even UFC veterans. And then she actually got here and, like a lot of regional champions, proceeded to flounder in the talent pool. Lipski's 3-5 after four years, and one of those victories came against Mandy Böhm, who's 0-2 and likely fighting to prevent a pink slip this May, and another was double-last-minute injury replacement Isabela de Pádua, who was a strawweight fighting up a weight class on 24 hours' notice who proceeded to test positive for steroids and get kicked out of the company. The optics: They're not great. It's not that Lipski's bad either, she's not, but her striking keeps getting beaten out by better strikers and her grappling gets her lost against better grapplers.
It's probably happening here, too. Lipski's hands are sharper than Aldrich's, but her ability to deal with sustained grappling assaults is a hindrance and Aldrich has made a career out of pushing people down. JJ ALDRICH BY DECISION.
BANTAMWEIGHT: Tony Gravely (23-8) vs Victor Henry (22-6)
And now, various forms of violence. Tony Gravely is one of my favorite living spirits of destruction, a 5'5" wrestleboxer who throws leaping shovel hooks and hipside uppercuts and dump takedowns and will, most of the time, get kind of tired and frustrated if that doesn't work. He is so committed to this gameplan that I secretly root for him to lose fights. It isn't because I don't want him to win--I do--but I also want him to get released in the hopes that ONE Championship picks him up and books the Tony Gravely vs John Lineker all-violence spectacular that will herald the end of all things. Victor Henry hopped into the UFC in 2021 on ten days' notice based on his success in Japan's Rizin and DEEP, upset Raoni Barcelos, and was supposed to have been catapulted into notoriety after the UFC gave him what they thought was the dying ghost of the aforementioned Raphael Assunção to feast on. And then Assunção bullied him for two rounds and took away his hype train, and poor La Mangosta is back at square one, fighting his way back into the rankings from the outside.
But he's got a real good shot here. Tony Gravely is a deathly motherfucker who could knock a brick wall unconscious if he hit it the right way, but he's also a big, charging brute who tires himself out chasing opponents around the cage. Henry's got the wrestling and grappling defense to cope with his takedowns and enough of a kicking game to pick at him until he gets winded and spends a round charging his super meter back up. VICTOR HENRY BY DECISION as long as he doesn't walk into something silly.
FLYWEIGHT: Tyson Nam (21-12-1, #15) vs Bruno Silva (12-5-2 (1), NR)
Gather around, kids, it's time for Carl Complains About Flyweight Booking again! In one corner, we have Tyson Nam! He's the #15 ranked flyweight in the world and despite fighting at 125 pounds has 13 wins by devastating knockout! He's 3 for his last 4, the only loss in that run is a real close split decision to top-ten ranked Matt Schnell, and in his last fight he punched Ode' Osbourne straight out of the goddamn air so hard it made Osbourne do a Dark Souls dodge-roll on his way towards losing consciousness. We haven't seen Bruno "Bulldog" Silva in almost two years, and that was coming off of a very unfortunate start to his UFC tenure that saw him eat three losses in a row (one of which became a No Contest thanks to a failed drug test), but in the present day he's on a two-fight winning streak and both of those wins were violent knockouts that saw him drop his opponents face-first with horrifyingly precise right crosses.
In other words: This is the thing the UFC says it wants! Complaints about the flyweight division's booking are always redirected to conversations about its lack of fan-friendliness, but here we have two hard-punching strikers with knockouts in every one of their UFC victories who even both won Knockout of the Night in their last appearances. It's even a top fifteen fight with ranking implications. And they are...second from the bottom of the prelims. They're actually lower on the card than they were before they got bonuses for their outstanding knockout victories. They're less promotionally important than Austin Lingo, the 40th best featherweight in the company.
And I like Austin Lingo. That's by no means Austin Lingo's fault. Austin Lingo rules. But what the gently caress are we doing here?
TYSON NAM BY TKO.
WELTERWEIGHT: Carlston Harris (17-5) vs Jared Gooden (22-8)
Carlston Harris has had a bad year. His five-fight winning streak came to an end last February thanks to Shavkat Rakhmonov, his grand return this February wound up not happening thanks to Ramiz Brahimaj getting injured, and a week out from this bout his scheduled opponent Abubakar Nurmagomedov got sick and left him once again lost on the island of loneliness. But lo and behold, a hero: Jared "NiteTrain" Gooden, stepping in from the shadows to take the fight just 72 hours before primetime. The last time we saw Gooden was when he got drummed out of the UFC back in 2021 after going 1-3. As it turns out, his career since then has been loving bizarre. He beat former contender Curtis Millender after Millender broke his leg and collapsed on a leg kick, he got knocked cold by the inexplicably released Impa Kasanganay, he beat Doug Usher after Usher somehow broke his own hand punching Gooden in the chest, and he beat Damarques Jackson when Jackson got so tired and hurt that he knocked himself down throwing a haymaker. It's the kind of bizarre poo poo that happens on the regional scene, but hey: It got Gooden back to the mothership.
And I hope he enjoys it, 'cause it's probably not gonna last long. Carlston Harris is a genuinely decent fighter whose only UFC loss thus far was to one of the best competitors on the planet. He's got a loopy but effective jab and a pretty dangerous submission game, and he spent the last month training for a fighter in Abubakar Nurmagomedov who's a stiffer challenge than Jared Gooden, and we can say this scientifically, because two years ago Abubakar Nurmagomedov beat Jared Gooden. CARLSTON HARRIS BY SUBMISSION.
Fights start in half an hour.
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Mar 10, 2023 13:30
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