- CarlCX
- Dec 14, 2003
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Thirty minutes to prelims beginning.
CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 55: CHASING CARS
SATURDAY, APRIL 22ND FROM THE TREACHEROUS DARKNESS OF THE UFC APEX ARENA
PRELIMS 1 PM PST/4 PM EST VIA ESPN+ | MAIN CARD 4 PM PST/7 PM EST VIA ESPN+
This is the seventh time Curtis Blaydes has main-evented a UFC card. You would think, after seven main events and a 5-2 overall main event record, he would not be stuck pulling empty arena matches, but the sport marches on.
Mixed martial arts cards can be good, interesting, or both. When they're both, the sport is at its best. This card is, respectfully, not very interesting. It was already only barely holding on when it still had its co-main event, but now that it's lost it and has only one truly ranked fight on a 12-fight card, things have gotten a bit more dire. That does not mean the card will not be fun; there are some fights with a high entertainment potential. But boy, it'd be nice if things occasionally mattered.
it's sort of like looking at a mcdonalds value menu
MAIN EVENT: MUSICAL CHAIRS, BUT THE VICTROLA IS BROKEN
 HEAVYWEIGHT: Sergei Pavlovich (17-1, #3) vs Curtis Blaydes (17-3 (1), #4)
This is a big fight. This is an important fight. But we're going to not talk about this fight for a few minutes, because I need you to understand the yawning void of horror this fight represents, and to do that, we have to talk around it.
Just over two years ago, Francis Ngannou won the UFC World Heavyweight Championship. It was the culmination of a truly incredible six-year run that had seen him score some of the most memorable knockouts in the company's history and put two #1 contenders and six world champions in the ground along the way. His rise to the throne was the stuff of legends, and with the belt around his waist, the UFC had their most marketable heavyweight champion since Brock Lesnar almost a decade and a half earlier.
They, of course, immediately got lovely in contract negotiations with him, attempted to kneecap him with an interim championship just four months after his title victory, smeared him constantly, and when push came to shove, they made a public spectacle out of firing him, declaring him a coward, and immediately erasing his legacy, noting in big, bold letters in their marketing copy that the winner of their upcoming Jon Jones vs Ciryl Gane fight, despite consisting of a man who'd never fought at heavyweight and the last man Francis Ngannou defeated, would be the Undisputed World Heavyweight Champion.
Jon Jones, in that way Jon Jones does, made the heavyweight division immediately look stupid, as world championship kickboxer and striking marvel Ciryl Gane was so visibly nervous and stressed that he tripped over his own feet, walked himself into the fence, threw a big sloppy overhand and was submitted almost instantaneously. THE UNDISPUTED CHAMPION, the UFC crowed, LONG MAY HE REIGN. STIPE MIOCIC HASN'T FOUGHT IN MORE THAN TWO YEARS, AND NGANNOU BEAT HIM, TOO, BUT HE'S GOING TO FIGHT JON NEXT AND AFTER JON BEATS HIM WE'LL FINALLY HAVE THE GREATEST HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPION OF ALL TIME.
Jon Jones vs Stipe Miocic is currently scheduled for July. This week, Jon Jones started wondering aloud on his Twitter account about how awesome it would be to beat Stipe and immediately retire.
This is heavyweight. I need you to understand that this is the true face of heavyweight mixed martial arts. The sport wants you to think it's Fedor Emelianenko and Stipe Miocic and well-honed athletes at the highest level of the sport carving legacies through sheer merit and will. But it's not, and it never has been. Heavyweight has always been a tidepool of madness and promotional malfeasance, more Zuluzinho than Nogueira, more Lesnar than Arlovski. The throne is not a prize, it is a curse, and we cannot keep ourselves from grasping for it because we are damned by our very nature.
And our main event is both a truly important match that could easily determine the next champion of the world and the greatest testament to the shambles of this division.
Sergei Pavlovich is the UFC's attempt to get a do-over on Francis Ngannou, only slightly smaller, less likely to ask for a better contract, and Russian. He's a 6'3" wrecking machine who's only lost once in his life, and that was a real tough UFC debut against Alistair Overeem, who even in his dotage remains one of the best heavyweights in the sport. Aside from that it's been nothing but victories, and all but three of those victories were violent, crushing knockouts, and every single one of those knockouts came in the first round. Pavlovich's six UFC fights put together last just about thirteen minutes, and four and a half of those came from the Overeem loss. Everyone else gets punched in the face and falls over dead.
And he might have already been there waiting for the division's precipitous collapse had it not been for two and a half years of his career going down the drain. Between COVID-19, injuries and visa issues Pavlovich missed out on the entirety of 2020 and 2021, and with it, cracks at top contenders like Ciryl Gane and Tom Aspinall, and when Pavlovich finally resurfaced in 2022 he had to start from the bottom again. Which proved to be no problem whatsoever: At the start of the year he was a barely-ranked #15 who hadn't fought in almost 900 days, and by the end of the year he'd destroyed Shamil Abdurakhimov, Derrick Lewis and Tai Tuivasa and was the #3 heavyweight on the planet.
But he wasn't in the title fight.
Curtis "Razor" Blaydes was looked at as a future champion when he joined the UFC as a 5-0 prospect all the way back in 2016. His power, his athleticism and his background as a national JuCo wrestling champion had the kinds of fans who pride themselves on actually watching regional events tapping him as a prospect to watch--a 6'4" monster with 80" reach who could shoot power doubles like a middleweight and elbow anyone's face open given a couple minutes to try. The world was his oyster. Unfortunately, his debut was against this little-known guy named Francis Ngannou, and that became the archetype that has haunted his entire UFC tenure.
Let us be clear: Curtis Blaydes is one of the best heavyweights on the entire planet. He's 12-3 in the UFC, and he's crushed multiple world champions. But his title hopes were nearly infinitesimal as long as Ngannou was around. Two of his three losses involved Ngannou stopping him, and the third, in permanent proof the heavyweight division has a sense of humor, was Ngannou-lite Derrick Lewis launching Blaydes into orbit with a single uppercut. This is, and has always been, the albatross around his neck. Big, powerful brawlers have been his kryptonite. Everyone else, however, has been prey. He makes talented kickboxers look like amateurs and he outgrapples beasts like Aleksei Oleinik and he punches out the Chris Daukauses of the world and in his last fight he even demonstrated advanced telekinesis by making Tom Aspinall's leg spontaneously explode after just fifteen seconds. By the turn of the year he was on a three-fight streak, indisputably in the top five, and unquestionably a top contender.
But he wasn't in the title fight, either.
Just under four weeks from now the UFC will be promoting UFC on ABC 4, their first card on network television in ten months. It's a big spectacle in front of a massive television audience and will be held at the Spectrum Arena in Charlotte, North Carolina, which seats up to twenty thousand people. The card's main event is a showdown between Jairzinho Rozenstruik, the #9-ranked heavyweight who's lost three of his last five fights, one of which was a lopsided decision to Curtis Blaydes, and Jailton Almeida, the #12-ranked Contender Series project who's only fought one ranked opponent at heavyweight, and it was Shamil Abdurakhimov, the same man Sergei Pavlovich crushed in one round.
Almeida and Rozenstruik get one of the UFC's only network television berths for the entire year and a screaming audience of thousands. Sergei Pavlovich and Curtis Blaydes, who are arguably fighting to determine who the UFC's actual best heavyweight really is, are fighting on an internet card at the Apex arena in front of a couple hundred people.
Do you see how this works? Do you grasp the true emptiness of this realm? These men are two of the exceedingly rare heavyweights who can be called Really Good Fighters and they are doing battle in front of nobody to justify a shot at a championship that is given by near-executive fiat that, this summer, is most likely going to get tossed in the garbage for the second time in less than a year, all while big marketing pushes are given to less experienced, less credible, and most importantly, less expensive fighters beneath them. Would you be surprised if Jailton Almeida and Tom Aspinall were fighting for the UFC title by the end of the year, and if so: Why?
It's a fantastic fight between two fantastic fighters, and it pains me to see it because I have so little faith it will pay off for them. But we are all captive passengers on the UFC's boat and they're certainly not showing any signs that they are slowing, so all we can do is watch and hope.
Which is what I'll be doing, because boy, I like Curtis Blaydes a lot more than I like Sergei Pavlovich, but this fight seems tailor-made for Blaydes to lose badly. Big brawlers have been the source of his repeated failures, and Pavlovich is, at worst, the second-most dangerous brawler Blaydes has faced in his career. We have, on the other hand, seen Pavlovich taken down--fairly handily--by Alistair Overeem, and the second he was on his back, he was cooked. Blaydes is a much, much better wrestler than anyone Sergei has had to deal with, and he's only had to deal with one single takedown attempt in the five years since the Overeem fight, and if Blaydes gets in on Pavlovich, he could take him for a ride pretty easily.
But half the problem with Blaydes and brawlers is Blaydes himself. Francis Ngannou dropped Blaydes when he stepped forward unguarded, and Lewis uppercutted his jaw off when Blaydes threw himself headfirst at his hand hunting for a takedown. There's something about zero-sum, no-room-for-error fights that trips him up, and he finds ways to let opponents get the most obvious openings they could want.
And that's a dangerous flaw to have against a guy like Pavlovich who can drop you with a single punch from any position. There are plenty of ways for Blaydes to win this fight. He's the far better wrestler and grappler, he's got heavier, more accurate kicks, and he's got a gas tank, which is the best possible weapon against a blitzer who hasn't seen a second round since 2017. If Blaydes can keep his distance, time his entries and counter the blitzes with takedowns, he could ragdoll Sergei and break his face at his leisure.
But that requires Blaydes not making the single-second mistakes he's been making for years. And as much as I have wanted UFC Champion Curtis Blaydes, I cannot see those mistakes not coming back to haunt him one more time. SERGEI PAVLOVICH BY KO.
CO-MAIN EVENT: WAIT, REALLY?
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Brad Tavares (19-7) vs Bruno Silva (22-8)
Funny story: I'm a day behind this week, and last night I finished up my writing for the main event at two in the morning, thought about continuing, and ultimately decided to leave the co-main event for today in the hopes of getting some sleep. Which turned out to be a wise call, because the co-main event doesn't exist anymore! This afternoon, news broke that the UFC was moving the matchup between Yadong Song and Ricky Simón from tonight's co-main event to the just plain main event for the ill-fated card on April 29th, which was supposed to see Arman Tsarukyan and Renato Moicano fight before Moicano got injured.
Hell of a fight! Not really a great main event in terms of name value, but that fight becoming a five-rounder is worth it. But it does mean that we're a little depleted on name value as far as tonight goes, because, boy, Brad Tavares and Bruno Silva, huh?
It's not that the fight itself is bad. This should be a loving barnburner. Brad Tavares is an underrated fighter in the history of the UFC, but he deserves his roses--he's just entering his fourteenth year in the UFC after losing out on the season of The Ultimate Fighter that gave us Court McGee and Kris McCray, he's gone the distance with Yoel Romero and Israel Adesanya, and just last year he lost a surprisingly close decision to potential title contender Dricus Du Plessis, nearly knocking him out repeatedly in the process. This is the Brad Tavares promise: He's always tougher than you think he is, he always hits harder than you think he does, and he's never not conditioned to fight you for three full rounds.
But that's never gotten him into actual contention, and a big part of that is his dogged insistence on reactivity. Tavares is a deeply successful brawler, but he drags said brawling out in response to fighters attempting to aggressively pursue him. If you're a Du Plessis or an Akhmedov who's going to get in his face and swing haymakers, Brad's going to meet you in the pocket fist-first, and he may still lose, but you will get hurt in the process. It's the Adesanyas and Shahbazyans of the world who keep their own distance and rhythm and force Tavares to walk into fire that give him fits and get him crowned with headkicks.
Fortunately for him, that is not Bruno Silva's game. "Blindado" joined the UFC in 2021 as the middleweight champion of Russia's M-1 and one of the most successful, punch-heavy knockout artists outside the UFC, and upon entering the big show he made good on the investment by immediately scoring three more knockouts in a row. His speed, his ferocity and his brutal power were exactly what the UFC's marketing department wanted out of a middleweight contender. Unfortunately, said department also had Alex Pereira to puff up, and good as Silva was, he was no match for Pereira. Which isn't anything to be ashamed of! There's nothing at all wrong with getting outstruck by a kickboxing world champion.
But then Silva got dropped by Gerald Meerschaert. And that's a little worse. The striking differential between Alex Pereira, one of the sport's best kickboxers, and Gerald Meerschaert, a submission grappler who even on a good day punches like a tired submariner trying to force his fists through a school of jellyfish, is vast. And Bruno Silva fought Alex Pereira for three rounds and came out standing and unbroken, but he got hurt repeatedly by Gerald, and was ultimately dropped facefirst to the canvas after Meerschaert stood in front of him for multiple seconds with one fist cocked only to, shockingly, punch him with it.
The sport is mystifying. For the entirety of my Extremely Serious Internet Writing Career I have always analyzed fights as though fighters will play to their greatest strengths and protect their weaknesses, and I very rarely take into account things like "What if Valentina Shevchenko decides to throw spinning kicks at nothing," or "What if Bruno Silva stares blankly at an angry man approaching him with a sign in one hand that reads 'I Am Going To Punch You In The Chin'?" It's easier to think of these things as occurring in a vacuum. It's easier to analyze who fighters could be rather than analyzing out, given their foibles, who they actually will be on a moment to moment basis.
Which is why I'm almost always wrong. And I probably will be again! BRAD TAVARES BY DECISION. Bruno's got the punching power to put Tavares down, but the style that gets him in position is a high-risk, high-reward one, and Tavares is fast, tough, and more than capable of kicking Bruno's legs out from under him on the outside and hurting him on the inside. The more Bruno brawls, the better Brad will be.
MAIN CARD: NON-APOLOGIES
LIGHTWEIGHT: Bobby Green (29-14-1) vs Jared Gordon (19-6)
For years, Bobby "King" Green was one of my favorite fighters on the planet. Truly good, active defense is unfathomably rare in mixed martial arts, and Green's capacity for slipping and parrying strikes was second to none. Unfortunately, judges hate defense, so he constantly lost decisions he very much should have won. Between 2018 and 2021 Green went 4-3 in the UFC, but it should have been a clean 7-0 sweep, and the lack of appreciation for defensive tactics will always be a stain on the sport. But since 2021, three things have changed: Bobby Green finally started getting outstruck thanks to the advent of fighters like Rafael Fiziev, Bobby Green finally started getting finished again thanks to the wrestling of Islam Makhachev and the power of Drew Dober, and Bobby Green started using his social media to advocate for Andrew Tate. So now he's on a losing streak, and he's constantly considering retirement, and, in by far the most devastating hit to his career possible, I don't like him anymore.
Jared Gordon is currently more popular than he's ever been in his career, and it's because he got completely boned. After a back-and-forth run in the UFC that saw Gordon repeatedly winning enough fights to be relevant but not to be ranked, the company decided the best possible use for him was as a stepping stone for their inexplicable favorite promotional project, Paddy Pimblett. Gordon proceeded to outstrike Pimblett in two out of three rounds, stuff every one of his takedown attempts and repeatedly take Pimblett down and soundly outgrapple him instead. A truly stunning 96% of media outlets scored the exceedingly clear fight for Gordon--and in what would go down as easily the worst decision of 2022, Pimblett didn't just win, he won unanimously. It remains one of the most baffling decisions I have seen, and in a just world, it would have been appealed, reviewed, and thrown out like the garbage it was.
But this is mixed martial arts. So Paddy Pimblett is going to get a nice, big, visible fight when he returns at the end of this year, and Jared Gordon is fighting one of the trickiest players in the game midway through a random television card. It's funny how this happens. Here's the good news for him, though: He's fighting the one and only person judges like even less than they like him.
However: BOBBY GREEN BY DECISION. Jared's got hands, but he doesn't have Drew Dober hands. He relies on speed, counters and the threat posed by his wrestling, but Bobby Green's faster and slicker on the feet and he's real good at using the fence to get out of takedown attempts. Gordon's success here is going to depend on getting Green stuck fighting in the clinch, but he'll have to catch him first.
WOMEN'S STRAWWEIGHT: Iasmin Lucindo (13-5) vs Brogan Walker-Sanchez (7-3)
This is one of those fights that makes me think about the UFC's seemingly spiteful matchmaking and marketing more than the fight itself, but luckily both of these women have exactly one actual UFC fight, so we can cover them at the same time.
We've seen Iasmin Lucindo in the UFC exactly once. She was picked out of the regional scene where she was dutifully clinch-tripping and ground-and-pounding fighters with no experience whatsoever, and the UFC put her in the great Iasmin vs Yazmin war of 2022, where she went to war with Yazmin Jauregui in a great back-and-forth battle that still wound up a clear decision for Yazmin.
Brogan Walker had a pair of fights on the most recent season of The Ultimate Fighter that demonstrated her capacity for distance fighting mixed with occasional Muay Thai clinch attacks and a deep love of winning decisions, but her only actual UFC fight came in the tournament finale, where Juliana "Killer" Miller took her down, controlled her and ultimately pounded her out.
Yazmin Jauregui, for her victory, was given a curtain-jerking prelim spot against an unknown Istela Nunes. Juliana Miller, for her victory, was given a curtain-jerking prelim spot against a Veronica Hardy who hadn't fought in three years. Iasmin and Brogan, the two women they defeated, are now fighting each other midway through the main card of a televised fight night with a big heavyweight main event.
I don't really know what the UFC's intention for fighters is anymore. The single central rule of combat sports is beating someone gets you promoted over them. If the basic concept of winning is no longer sufficient, what are we even doing anymore?
It's silly. But not as silly as my assumption that things matter. BROGAN WALKER-SANCHEZ BY DECISION. Iasmin's ground threats aren't going to be enough.
WELTERWEIGHT: Jeremiah Wells (11-2-1) vs Matt Semelsberger (11-4)
Oh, we've got potential to be in flavor country here. Jeremiah Wells had the misfortune of joining the UFC during the COVID era, which made actually getting fights very difficult, but while it took two and a half years to get his first three fights in the books, he's done a hell of a job, choking out kickboxing prospect Mike "Blood Diamond" Matheta, pounding out the thoroughly underrated Warlley Alves, and becoming the first man in 32 fights and sixteen years to knock Court McGee unconscious--and he did it with one goddamn punch. Carlos Condit, Santiago Ponzinibbio and Robert Whittaker couldn't do it, but Jeremiah Wells did. His awareness of his range and power is nightmarish.
But Matt Semelsberger is right behind him. He's been much busier, as this'll be his eighth UFC fight since mid-2020, and he's already had a couple setbacks, having been outfought by Khaos Williams and Alex Morono--but even in those fights he spent the third round piecing up his tired and somewhat shellshocked opponents, and that's Semelsberger in a nutshell. He's an incredibly tough, aggressive fighter with a murderous right hand and a solid wrestling game to back up his striking, and he's coming off the highest-profile victory of his career, having absolutely demolished a surging Jake Matthews, dropping him once per round (and somehow still losing a round, because Judges) and utterly outclassing him.
It's a big-punching power fight. Semelsberger is the more patient fighter and definitely has better wrestling in his back pocket, and the size advantage to use it, but Wells is the even harder hitter and he's got a much better kicking game, and leg kicks have been a source of continual consternation for Semi. But Wells is also used to his fights ending fairly quickly, and Semelsberger is a guy with so much gas in his tank that after losing two rounds he'll batter his opponents in the third. I'm leaning towards MATT SEMELSBERGER BY DECISION. Wells can put anyone in the ground if he cracks them, but Semelsberger's ability to suffocate him in the clinch and counter his charges should keep him from landing the home run.
PRELIMS: GET YOUR YAHYAS
LIGHTWEIGHT: Ricky Glenn (22-6-2) vs Christos Giagos (19-10)
Ricky Glenn's career is a real weird one. His resume reads like a who's-who of the previous generation of 145-155 pound standouts--Myles Jury, Dennis Bermudez, Evan Dunham, Lance Palmer, Georgi Karakhanyan--but he's been a missing piece of the modern puzzle thanks to injuries, COVID, and bad timing. He was supposed to fight big current names like Drew Dober and Arnold Allen, but his fights kept getting scratched, and now it's mid-2023 and he's only actually made it out to the cage three times in the last half-decade, and they were one win, one loss and one draw, and the last one was a year and a half ago, and each time he demonstrates a great capacity for angry punchmanning and an unfortunate capacity for getting taken down while making angry faces. So he's fighting against the most classical of American styles: Angry wrestleboxing. Christos Giagos is currently fighting to keep his second UFC tenure alive--he was actually in the company all the way back in 2014 only to get released within a year, but after a solid regional run he made his way back and is only now, once again, trying to avert the dreaded three consecutive losses. Giagos has two fighting modes: Slinging 1-2s and cage-clinching single-legs. He will occasionally toss a flying knee in for good measure, but he's at his best when he can effectively pressure people by forcing them to alternate defending takedowns and boxing.
He stands a pretty solid chance at it here, too. Wrestling pressure has been Glenn's continual undoing, Giagos is real solid at it, and Glenn's got years of rust to shake off. CHRISTOS GIAGOS BY DECISION.
BANTAMWEIGHT: Rani Yahya (28-10-1) vs Montel Jackson (12-2)
Christ almighty, Rani Yahya. If you're a veteran fan who's thinking "Wait, like the Rani Yahya who fought in the WEC back in 2010?" the answer is yes. If you're an old-school fan who's thinking "Wait, like the Rani Yahya who fought in K-1 HERO'S back in 2006?" the answer is still yes. If you're a primordial fan who's thinking "Wait, like the Rani Yahya who was winning jiu-jitsu championships back in the 90s?" the answer is still loving yes. Rani Yahya has been grappling people for so long that all but five of his thirty-eight opponents no longer compete in mixed martial arts and several are dead. His striking has never been better than perfunctory and he turned 38 in December, but by god, he's still a grappling threat to anyone in the sport, he's 13-4 in the UFC, and the last time he lost by stoppage was almost fourteen years ago. Montel "Quik" Jackson is a veteran himself at this point, having come into the UFC during the second season of the Contender Series back in 2018--and if you're wondering if Contender Series fighters becoming aging UFC veterans fills me with ennui, you're very astute--and his 6-2 record with the company really isn't anything to sneeze at, particularly given those two losses were to Ricky Simón, who's one of the ten best at the weight class, and Brett Johns, who was let go on a two-fight winning streak because the UFC didn't want to barter with Bellator. Jackson's another in the long line of wrestleboxers, he's got a great jab-to-pump-hook combo he gets almost everyone with at least once, and he's a quick, solid wrestler.
Is he going to win this fight? Almost definitely. Montel Jackson is almost a decade younger, almost half a foot taller, has almost 8" of reach and has a sizable wrestling advantage. Am I going to not pick Rani Yahya? gently caress you. RANI YAHYA BY SUBMISSION. My winning percentage is always low, let it at least be low out of love.
WOMEN'S FEATHERWEIGHT: Karol Rosa (16-4, #9 at Women's Bantamweight) vs Norma Dumont (8-2, #13 at Women's Bantamweight)
It's time for another magical adventure through the least real weight class in the UFC. I want to be clear when I complain about things like this: None of my complaints are with the fighters. Karol Rosa is a bad motherfucker with a solid wrestling game and losses to some of the best female fighters on the planet; Norma Dumont is a bad motherfucker who will make a crowd furious with her for jabbing and jogging, which I adore, and she arguably should be on a five-fight winning streak.
But women's featherweight still doesn't exist, and its nonexistence forces the UFC into really awkward positions--such as ranking Rosa as one of the ten best bantamweights on the planet, despite her best victory being Lina Länsberg, and ranking Dumont as one of the fifteen best bantamweights on the planet, despite Dumont having never actually weighed in at bantamweight in the UFC. Or booking Rosa, who's fought at 135 for her entire career, against the best active women's 145er in the company. Or that Dumont, said 145er, is coming off a victory against Danyelle Wolf, who made it into the UFC with a total record of 1-0.
Or that Amanda Nunes hasn't defended the championship in more than two years, has no plans to, and has been talking about retiring in the near future. Will she defend the title again before she does? Will the title even exist if she retires with it? Will the division?
All of it is a problem, and none of it really matters. NORMA DUMONT BY DECISION. Rosa's a strong wrestler but she's a strong wrestler against people who fight at flyweight and I'm not sure she'll get the grappling going against Dumont's jab.
HEAVYWEIGHT: Mohammed Usman (8-2) vs Junior Tafa (4-0)
It's a brother battle, baby. In one corner you have Mohammed Usman, the larger but younger brother of Kamaru, who won the last season of The Ultimate Fighter after barely scraping by two rookies and knocking out a heavyweight who was actually a light-heavyweight whom we've recently learned can barely beat a middleweight. His knees only kind of work, his offensive output is two connected strikes per minute, and he entered his mid-thirties earlier this month. In the other corner you have Junior Tafa, the larger but younger brother of Justin, who was supposed to make his UFC debut back in February, but the fight was announced, he lost his opponent, he got a replacement and then he pulled out with an injury all in the space of 72 hours. He's a moderately successful heavyweight kickboxer and he's undefeated in mixed martial arts, but his four-fight record consists of a guy who lost to a lightweight, a guy who lost to a welterweight, a chef, and a sumo wrestler.
This is the future of the heavyweight division. Drink it in. On one hand, Mohammed's got the strength and wrestling to take him down, on the other, his shots come in slow motion and Junior has looked capable of defending wrestling, but on the third, robot hand, Junior's wrestling defense has been tested mainly by no one. I'm assuming Usman will shoot a very, very slow takedown, and it's going to work anyway, and that's probably going to be the fight. MOHAMMED USMAN BY TKO.
FEATHERWEIGHT: Francis Marshall (7-0) vs William Gomis (11-2)
On a week that the media is enjoying talking about the act of fighters padding their records by fighting subpar competition on their way up, it's worth noting that the 5-0 record Francis "The Fire" Marshall had when he was tapped for the Contender Series came against competition with a combined record of 38-38, and the man Marshall beat for his UFC contract, Connor Matthews, who was also 5-0, got there through fighters with a combined record of 19-115. (Why, yes, Jay Ellis was involved.) Records are fake, but skills aren't, and Marshall's are present if shaky. He likes to stand, he is oft known to bang, he has a tendency to bounce out of stance a lot but he's been gradually improving it, and he won his UFC debut last December by punching out Marcelo Rojo, which isn't nothing. William "Jaguar" Gomis hopped aboard the UFC as a local talent for their Parisian debut last September, where they were hoping he would engage in a fun striking match with fellow kickboxer Jarno Errens, and Gomis instead called upon Forbidden French Wrestling and proceeded to win so uneventfully that a judge actually pulled out the absurdly rare "Nobody Wins" 10-10 round.
There's some hope here that the wrestling skills will cancel each other out and we'll get a punchathon, but realistically, Marshall is the better wrestler and Gomis is the better striker, and we know how I vote in these circumstances. FRANCIS MARSHALL BY DECISION.
WOMEN'S FLYWEIGHT: Priscila Cachoeira (12-4) vs Karine Silva (15-4)
Priscila Cachoeira's UFC career is deeply bizarre. She missed her UFC debut thanks to visa problems, wound up instead debuting against Valentina Shevchenko and eating the most one-sided beating in company history (seriously, the striking differential was 230 to 3), wound up taking three straight losses and got suspended after testing positive for diuretics, somehow didn't get fired and instead scored back to back knockout victories over Shana Dobson and Gina Mazany, two of the least successful fighters in UFC history, but between those fights she scratched a fight after botching a weight cut, and then in her return match she missed weight, got easily choked out by Gillian Robertson and repeatedly tried to break the hold by gouging Robertson's eyes, somehow STILL didn't get fired, won one of the worst decisions of the year against Ji Yeon Kim, and punched out a visibly ill Ariane Lipski. It's a loving rollercoaster, and I to this day have no idea how she's gotten away with half of the poo poo she has. "Killer" Karine Silva is comparatively new and boring: 2021 Contender Series winner, one of the top-ranked women's bantamweights in Brazil, veteran of the Parana-based KATANA FIGHT organization that brought us fighters like Johnny Walker and Anderson dos Santos, grappling stylist with some good submissions but an iffy gas tank. She guillotined Chinese champion Qihui Yan for her contract (after Yan basically dove headfirst into it) and scored a much more surprising D'Arce choke victory in her UFC debut against Poliana Botelho after dropping her with a shock right hand.
I was skeptical of Karine in her debut, and I'm still skeptical, but boy, I believe in her a lot more than I do Cachoeira. KARINE SILVA BY SUBMISSION.
BANTAMWEIGHT: Batgerel Danaa (12-4) vs Brady Hiestand (6-2)
Batgerel Danaa was one of the many pickups the UFC made during its 2018-2019 raid of the Chinese mixed martial arts scene, and in hindsight, it may have been prophetic that he lost his debut. Danaa's hard-nosed, fists-forward style served him well for a couple years--he scored three consecutive first-round knockouts and made a name for himself as an underestimated bantamweight prospect--but the moment the UFC turned the dial up on his competition he fell apart, knocked out by Chris Gutierrez and picked apart by Kyung Ho Kang. He's facing down a third consecutive loss, and the UFC is attempting to capitalize by feeding him to 2021's The Ultimate Fighter runner-up, Brady "Bam-Bam" Hiestand. Hiestand is a truly incredible example of record padding: When he was picked out for TUF he was 5-1, but his one loss was to the 9-5 Chad Anheliger and his four wins were against opponents with a truly incredible combined record of 0-24, and half of those losses were just one dude. This isn't to say Hiestand is without merit as a fighter: He's got some real frenetic wrestling and will pursue takedowns relentlessly, even if he tires himself out doing it.
Danaa isn't a bad wrestler, and Hiestand has a real tendency to walk into right hands, so I do not feel confident about this, but: BRADY HIESTAND BY DECISION. It's entirely plausible Hiestand gets popped coming in and this fight ends early, but I think Hiestand overwhelming him with wrestling is more likely.
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Apr 21, 2023 13:23
final b league preview of the week 
