- CarlCX
- Dec 14, 2003
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CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 62: PROSPECT NIGHT
SATURDAY, JUNE 17 FROM THE MINIMUM WAGE PRISON THAT IS THE UFC APEX
PRELIMS 4 PM PST/7 PM EST | MAIN CARD 7 PM PST/10 PM EST
This is both a terrible and an extremely interesting card and I'm not sure where exactly I fall on the topic.
In terms of particular relevancy, there, uh, isn't much. This card has twenty-eight fighters on it and only three are ranked; one of them shouldn't be in the fight they're in, and the main event is a bout for championship pole position between two men no one wants to see fight for the championship again.
But once you get past those glaring issues and accept the UFC's clear decision to not give a gently caress about this card having star power, it's...actually a pretty promising prospect showcase. There are an awful lot of interesting talents in interesting matchups and far fewer squash matchups and blatant marketing attempts than we usually get.
So I don't hate it. Maybe things can actually be fun, for once.
it's like a time bomb and it takes ten fights into the card before it hits me
MAIN EVENT: RESUMING THE REIGN
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Marvin Vettori (19-5-1, #3) vs Jared Cannonier (16-6, #4)
It is a little unfortunate that the main event is a fight that feels like it cannot possibly matter.
I typically try to spread around my exhaustion with the generally toxic points of view espoused by most fighters, but I'm going to get it out of the way ahead of time. I've talked about both of these guys being weird nutcases with just some of the worst possible sociopolitical opinions on multiple occasions and nothing has changed save Marvin Vettori becoming even more emphatic about Andrew Tate being a genius and satanists trying to turn your children gay. There's no need to rant further about it because there's nothing else to say.
Except for the fact that, in an era of both mixed martial arts and social media that craves credible right-wing blowhards more than ever, Marvin Vettori going full-bore Biden-is-the-devil-and-the-rapist-is-a-hero has made absolutely no one care about him one iota more. And that's as much of a referendum on the living black hole that is Marvin Vettori as it is a referendum on just how drawn out the UFC's middleweight division has become.
Your top five middleweight contenders in the UFC are, in order: Robert Whittaker, Marvin Vettori, Jared Cannonier, Paulo Costa and Dricus Du Plessis. Whittaker has already lost two fights to Israel Adesanya, and he's fighting Du Plessis in a title eliminator next month. Paulo Costa was absolutely humiliated by Adesanya in their fight and would have to move mountains to get another try.
But it doesn't get better if you go further down the list. Your bottom five consists of Sean Strickland, Derek Brunson, Roman Dolidze, Jack Hermansson and Kelvin Gastelum. Strickland got destroyed by the previous champion and is so far away from contendership that he's about to fight an unranked guy, Brunson is closing in on 40 and right on the precipice of retirement, Dolidze just dropped a decision to Vettori, Hermansson just got wrecked by Dolidze and Gastelum lost to most of the top ten and is about to drop to welterweight.
So we're left with Vettori and Cannonier. Except Vettori already lost to Adesanya twice, the second of which was an incredibly one-sided affair. And Cannonier also lost to Adesanya in a fight so uneventful a lot of people somehow forgot it already happened. And both men got the crap kicked out of them by Robert Whittaker. So they can't beat the champion, and they can't beat the number one contender, and there's no one underneath them waiting to be rocketed into contention.
Which leaves them with nothing to do but fight each other and hope against hope that they get a shot at a championship they've already repeatedly failed to grasp.
And it's a fight that, even in theory, is surprisingly difficult to care about.
Marvin Vettori has a reputation as a hard-charging punch-monster who never stops savaging people, but his last two performances were pretty unimpressive, his last great fight was his 205-pound comedy of errors against Paulo Costa, his last actual finish came against the now-fired Karl Roberson three years ago, and you have to go all the way back to his 2016 debut to get another one. The last time Vettori even particularly hurt an opponent was Jack Hermansson back in December of 2020. This is, in part, because his better opponents learned that using arcane strategies like 'moving' helped remove his pressure.
Jared Cannonier has a reputation as an unbelievably powerful knockout artist who can turn someone's lights out with a single punch, but his last two performances were pretty unimpressive, his last great fight was his 2019 destruction of--hey, look at that, Jack Hermansson again!--and aside from knocking out the about-to-retire Derek Brunson, he hasn't really hurt an opponent since that aforementioned Hermansson fight. This is, in part, because his better opponents learned that using arcane strategies like 'moving' helped escape his power.
Is my insistence on typing this as repetitiously as possible making the point? This fight is about treading water. Divisionally, stylistically, reputationally. These are two of the best middleweights on the planet, and neither has done something memorably impressive in long enough that their less impressive performances are coming to define them, and neither has realistic championship aspirations unless something significant changes.
Could something significant change? I'm cautiously optimistic. A big part of what has defused Cannonier's power is smarter, technically sound opponents using angles, feints and movement to keep him from planting and throwing. Marvin Vettori is many things, but 'smart' has never been one of them, and his last fight saw him eating Roman Dolidze haymakers every round as a consequence of his high-pressure approach. Jared Cannonier haymakers are much stiffer meals.
At least, that seems more likely than either Marvin Vettori executing a careful defensive gameplan. If he spends the fight coming forward as he is so often wont to do and Jared Cannonier still cannot pull the trigger, I don't know why any of us are still here. JARED CANNONIER BY TKO.
CO-MAIN EVENT: THE NEW NORMAL
 LIGHTWEIGHT: Arman Tsarukyan (19-3, #8) vs Joaquim Silva (12-3, NR)
This fight is going to be really fun, but it's truly baffling that it's happening.
Arman Tsarukyan is one of the best lightweight fighters in the world. He showed up in the UFC back in 2019, immediately established himself as a standout prospect, and has since demonstrated great striking, great wrestling and an intensely tight grappling game. He had to fight into the top ten the long way and he was taking three fights a year to do it, but he got there and he did it against some of the stiffest competition on the planet. He's 6-2 in the UFC and those two losses came against current best in the world Islam Makhachev and current #7-ranked Mateusz Gamrot, and that was a coinflip decision that could easily have gone Arman's way.
Joaquim Silva got into the UFC through The Ultimate Fighter Brazil 4 back in 2015--the season where both winners lost their first two fights and got cut immediately--where he was eliminated two rounds in. But the UFC signed him anyway, where he has managed, on average, one fight per year. He's a respectable 5-3 in the company, but only one of those victories happened in the last four and a half years. In actual recent memory he got knocked out by Nasrat Haqparast in 2019, sparked in thirty seconds by Ricky Glenn in 2021, and in his last fight he managed to put Jesse Ronson out with a really neat flying knee. Which is cool! But Jesse Ronson got cut immediately after that fight and now holds a lifetime record of 0-5 (1) with the UFC.
Which makes this fight pretty irritating! Lightweight has always been one of the UFC's best, toughest divisions, a shark tank where coming up through the ranks is akin to climbing a Mortal Kombat ladder full of dudes with metal arms and firebreathing skull faces, and we spent the last three years watching Arman Tsarukyan go through a murderer's row of a half-dozen talented fighters with a combined record of loving 100-16 just to get to the outer reaches of the top ten.
He will now defend that position against a guy with one win in almost half a decade and said win was over one of the statistically least successful fighters in the history of the Ultimate Fighting Championship.
Is Joaquim Silva a bad fighter? Of course not! He's a BJJ black belt who dropped a dude with a flying knee, he punched out Jared Gordon, he's got a ton of talent. Is this a bad fight? Yes, unmistakably! It's severely weird to have a guy get within a fight or two of title contention and then put his spot up for grabs against a guy who is, essentially, a rando. You can't even cite the Paddy Pimblett effect, it's not like there's a rampaging Joaquim Silva fanbase out there frothing at the mouth for him. It's not even a last-minute injury replacement situation, this is the fight they wanted.
And it's a dangerous fight! Silva's tough as hell, he's never been submitted, he's difficult to wrestle and grapple, and given the opportunity he hits like a truck. There are significant risks. I am still, obviously, picking ARMAN TSARUKYAN BY TKO, most likely after still getting Silva down and punching him just a whole bunch. But this is a deeply weird matchup and I cannot say I am a fan.
MAIN CARD: WHAT'S A MOTTA WITH YOU
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Christian Leroy Duncan (8-0) vs Armen Petrosyan (7-2)
Hey, the annoying stuff's out of the way! Awesome. Let's get to prospects.
As the undefeated middleweight champion of the UK's Cage Warriors, Christian Leroy Duncan carried no small amount of fan intrigue coming into his UFC debut against Duško Todorović this past March. That intrigue, unfortunately, did not get a chance to develop into answers: There was a brief exchange of leg kicks and a few jabs, and then, two minutes into the fight, Duško pivoted out of a clinch and his knee popped out. Not, by any means, the fault of "CLD," but it does somewhat dampen the spirits. He looked decent for the few seconds of fighting we got to enjoy.
Armen "Superman" Petrosyan had a tremulous debut year. The kickboxing expert Contender Seriesed his way into the UFC in 2022, but his many murderous strikes met with mainly moderate success in the big leagues. He made his debut with an extremely close split decision against Gregory "Robocop" Rodrigues, he was offered up as a sacrifice to the grappling expert Caio Borralho, and he managed a dominant if forgetful victory over AJ Dobson. This is, admittedly, not what the UFC wants from a Contender Series baby they saw as a beautiful headkicking machine.
Honestly: Tough call. Petrosyan is an extremely sound technical striker with considerable grappling deficiencies; Duncan is much more of a striker than a grappler, but he'll shoot when he needs to. He also has about eight inches of reach, which is a big loving problem for Petrosyan's rangefinding. I'm leaning towards CHRISTIAN LEE DUNCAN BY DECISION as he finally gets the coming-out party the UFC wanted.
FEATHERWEIGHT: Pat Sabatini (17-4) vs Lucas Almeida (14-1)
Poor Pat Sabatini had all the makings of a rising star at featherweight--powerful wrestling, great cardio, the gumption to dive on heel hooks while half-conscious and rescue himself from certain doom--and four straight wins had him poised for a shot at the top ranks and true notoriety. And then Damon Jackson ran through him in one minute, and just to put a point on it, Jackson was promptly destroyed by Dan Ige. Suddenly, with just one loss, Sabatini is all the way at the back of the line again.
Which is why he has to deal with Lucas Almeida. Almeida was the lightweight champion of Jungle Fight and a one-time Contender Series loser when he was tapped for a UFC contract in mid-2022. He scored an upset victory over The Ultimate Fighter 27 (jesus christ) champion Mike Trizano, and then promptly fell into the perilous abyss of Bad loving Luck. He was going to fight Zubaira Tukhugov: Tukhugov hosed up his weight cut and was hospitalized. He was going to fight Andre Fili: Fili injured his eye. He was going to fight Hakeem Dawodu a week ago, but Dawodu had to pull out.
Thus, Pat Sabatini is fighting a guy at the bottom of the ladder, because he has to prove himself all over again, and Lucas Almeida is fighting a guy who could make his name, because he's gotten boned out of so many matchups that, honestly, you have to give the guy a break. PAT SABATINI BY DECISION. You got what you wanted, buddy. I don't know that it's going to work out for you.
LIGHTWEIGHT: Nikolas Motta (13-4) vs Manuel Torres (13-2)
"Iron" Nikolas Motta won on the Contender Series and waited through a full two years of injuries and COVID delays before he finally made his UFC debut, where he was promptly and unceremoniously knocked the gently caress out by Jim Miller, a sentence that is getting perplexingly less rare every day. He banked a win afterward over Cameron VanCamp, who was not long for the company and got released almost immediately thereafter. I wasn't sure what to make of Motta's UFC prospects before his debut against Miller, and a year and a half later, I'm still pretty undecided. Knocking out a guy with half a foot of height on you is pretty neat, though.
Manuel "El Loco" Torres has had a little bit of an odd ride from the regionals to the big show. In mid-2021 he was choking out a 10-11 guy at a fight night in Tijuana; at the end of 2021 he was earning a UFC contract after getting away with an unpunished eye gouge (in fairness, his victim was named "White Assassin"); by mid-2022 he was leaving Frank Camacho 1 for his last 6 by vicious knockout. His face-forward, hard-punching style is paying some fairly obvious dividends; the UFC putting the knockout artist in front of the guy who's taken 3/4 of his losses by knockout and got lit up by Jim Miller back when that was deeply unexpected seems like a bit of an intentional conclusion.
Let's let them have one. MANUEL TORRES BY KNOCKOUT.
WELTERWEIGHT: Muslim Salikhov (19-3) vs Nicolas Dalby (21-4-1 (2))
It takes a reasonable amount of confidence to go by "The King of Kung Fu," but when you've got twelve knockout wins and a half-dozen of them are by some variety of Spinning poo poo, you get to get away with it. The Sanda master turned MMA champion is trying to get back on track in the UFC after his five-fight winning streak was snapped by Li Jingliang last summer. He had a bit of a return to form thanks to his thrashing of the constantly unconscious Andre Fialho just before American Thanksgiving, but Salikhov turned 39 this month, so if he's going to make a run, in all likelihood, he's going to have to continue to make this one count.
And if there's one thing Nicolas Dalby hates, it's counting. Do not try to count around Nicolas Dalby. He will punish you for your numerical heresies and demand of you a wordly accord, during which he will, in all likelihood, punch you a bunch. "Why do you hate numbers," someone asks him, and after they return from the hospital he pens them a letter in beautiful cursive, a letter about life, and living, and the difficulty of keeping count of your wins and losses when you've got two fights that technically didn't happen and a draw dragging down your record. And his victim, from their full body cast, will say, "This is written in Danish and I am from Oklahoma."
MUSLIM SALIKHOV BY DECISION. And don't tell them to use Google Translate. It loses all the context.
PRELIMS: THEY HID ALL THE FLYWEIGHTS DOWN HERE
BANTAMWEIGHT: Raoni Barcelos (17-4) vs Miles Johns (13-2)
Raoni Barcelos is an excellent fighter who is trying desperately to hold onto his job. At the start of 2021 Raoni was 16-1, had a five-fight win streak in the UFC, and was widely considered a top prospect: Today, he's 1 for his last 3. The UFC shoved Raoni up to the next echelon of competition, and he promptly got drowned by people like Timur Valiev and Victor Henry--but the company also knew exactly what it was doing this past January when it slotted him against Umar Nurmagomedov, one of the scariest bantamweights on the planet. Having gotten him repeatedly crushed, it's time to throttle down a bit: Miles "Chapo" Johns, while by no means a bad or unsuccessful fighter, is a representative of that previous tier of competition. He's 4-2 in the UFC, but he hasn't been able to string more than two consecutive wins together thanks to folks like John "Sexi Mexi" Castañeda and Mario "Why Am I About To Fight Cody Garbrandt" Bautista.
I have been, unquestionably, in the tank for Raoni Barcelos. I continue to live in this tank. It is pleasant and humid and my owners regularly feed me grubs. RAONI BARCELOS BY DECISION.
FLYWEIGHT: Jimmy Flick (16-6) vs Alessandro Costa (12-3)
Jimmy Flick has had a very weird time in the UFC. He won on the Contender Series back in 2020, made his debut just three months later and scored a submission-of-the-year contender flying triangle choke over the very tough Cody Durden, and, having lived in glory, immediately retired. The pay wasn't great, there's no retirement plan and he was anxious over ruining his body for nothing. But two years, a divorce and a mid-life crisis brought him out of retirement this past January, as he was ready to strike for glory again! He was promptly knocked out in one round. Alessandro Costa skated into the UFC on the back of his time as the flyweight champion of Mexico's record-padding Lux Fight League, with the added benefit of Amir Albazi needing a replacement fighter for his replacement fighter and there just not being many flyweights who'll take a top ten fight on two weeks' notice. Costa made a good accounting for himself in the opening round, but Albazi adjusted, took over and ultimately pounded Costa out in the third.
Fighters coming out of retirement always gives me hives. It feels like it fails far more than it succeeds, and in a case like Flick's where his return from retirement got him almost immediately punched out, it's hard not to worry about a guy like Costa finishing the job. ALESSANDRO COSTA BY TKO.
BANTAMWEIGHT: Kyung Ko Kang (18-9 (1)) vs Cristian Quiñonez (18-3)
Kyung Ho Kang passed ten goddamn years in the UFC this March. That's an aggressively silly number. Dominick Cruz hadn't even been stripped of the inaugural bantamweight title when "Mr. Perfect" made his debut. Except three and a half years of that was lost to South Korea's mandatory military service, and two years were lost to COVID, so in actuality, Kyung Ho Kang is Link from Encino Man and he just gets periodically thawed out when the world needs someone to wrestle Rani Yahya. Cristian "Problema" Quiñonez is a comparatively new Contender Series winner who made his UFC debut last September with the UFC's favorite Contender Series combo meal: A fight with a veteran who hasn't won in years and who is almost certainly about to get fired. Cristian did his job, knocked out Khalid Taha and sent him to his inevitable release from the company, and the slide rule has moved to the next integer set.
CRISTIAN QUIÑONEZ BY DECISION. Kang's extremely difficult to finish and his transitions between jabbing and smothering are going to be difficult to overcome, but Cristian's got the power to back him off and we just saw Kang struggle with a similar threat in Danaa Batgerel.
FLYWEIGHT: Carlos Hernandez (8-2) vs Denys Bondar (16-4)
I'm hoping this is the cool-rear end grappling match it could be rather than the tepid kickboxing match it might be. Carlos Hernandez hopped into the UFC last year and scraped the scrapiest of split decisions from Victor Altamirano before getting choked out by a superior grappler in Allan Nascimento, and Denys Bondar is, uh. Oh, god. In the middle of typing this sentence I started having an existential crisis about what I'm doing. This is a prospect showcase to me, someone who breathes enough UFC to recognize this people, but to any sane human being this is what Bellator prelims look like, isn't it? It's just a dozen people you've never heard of with inherently interchangeable names you won't recognize the next time you see them and none of it will actually matter because we've trained ourselves to ignore wins and losses and focus on marketing pushes and we know none of these motherfuckers are going to get one.
CARLOS HERNANDEZ BY DECISION, but we've all lost something.
FLYWEIGHT: Felipe Bunes (13-6) vs Zhalgas Zhumagulov (14-8)
Felipe Bunes is the latest to embark on the grand tradition of trading your regional championship in for a bus ticket to the big show; he won the Legacy Fighting Alliance's flyweight championship in January and then immediately hosed off to the UFC. Which is, in fact, what every single undisputed LFA flyweight champion in history has done. Feeder leagues: They exist and they're good. He's got a solid all-around game and he trains with the Pitbull brothers, but he's had trouble breaking through the upper ranks--he got bounced out of three straight top fights over in Russia and his first shot at LFA contendership saw him choked out by our old buddy Jussier Formiga, who should probably be back in the UFC. Zhalgas Zhumagulov is something of a modern tragedy: He's 1-5 in the UFC, but, in our favorite recurring refrain, three of those fights really, really should have been victories, and judges disagreed on wholly inexplicable grounds. After a November fight with Charles Johnson saw Zhalgas outland, outwrestle and outgrapple him in all three rounds only to lose a split decision anyway, Zhalgas ragequit mixed martial arts and announced his retirement on instagram. But his contract wasn't finished and he had some time to regroup, and by god, he's going to give it another try.
So, here's the thing: Is Zhalgas Zhumagulov a better fighter than Felipe Bunes? I definitely think so. Is Zhalgas Zhumagulov definitionally good enough to stop Felipe Bunes? I have doubts. Is Zhalgas Zhumagulov going to get hosed by the judges for his unfriendly style if it goes to a decision? Statistically speaking, I mean, yeah, probably! I'm still picking ZHALGAS ZHUMAGULOV BY DECISION because I want to live in a just world, but, y'know: We don't.
WOMEN'S FLYWEIGHT: Tereza Bledá (6-1) vs Gabriella Fernandes (8-2)
I was fully behind Tereza "Ronda" Bledá, the Czech grappling monster, in her UFC debut this past November. I thought her takedowns were powerful and her grappling was dangerous as hell. and it was! For the first round. and then it turned out her opponent Natália Silva is in fact For Real, and she proceeded to thrash her for a round and a half before executing Tereza with a spinning kick to the face. A few months later, LFA's Women's Flyweight Champion Gabriella Fernandes made a similar striker vs grappler debut against Jasmine Jasudavicius, and theirs was a mirror of the first match: Fernandes battered Jasudavicius in the first round with her array of jabs and kicks, only to get dragged to the mat and beat up for the rest of the bout.
The optics of putting a striker who had trouble with a grappler against another grappler are a little odd, but I am not done being in the tank for the third or fourth fighter to be named after Ronda Rousey, apparently. TEREZA BLEDÁ BY SUBMISSION.
BANTAMWEIGHT: Ronnie Lawrence (8-2) vs Daniel Argueta (9-1)
This sentence will mean absolutely nothing to any sane person reading this: I like Ronnie Lawrence because he makes me remember liking Mitsuhiro Ishida back when emo music was still vibrant and fresh and cargo pants weren't funny. Lawrence's sheer dedication to endless wrestling is impressive in an age of contracts contingent on a certain percentage of mandatory stand-and-bang action. Weight cutting issues left him missing fights, and the incredibly unjustly released Saidyokub Kakhramonov stopped his winning streak in his tracks, but wrestling, unlike cargo pants and The Juliana Theory, never goes out of style. "The Determined" Dan Argueta, too, is a wrestler. He won the LFA bantamweight title on the strength of his ground and pound and his constant threats of armbars and his refusal to admit that the advent of folkrock was just as secretly misogynist as the college rock it supplanted, but it's worked out for him and we can't stay young forever.
RONNIE LAWRENCE BY DECISION. In a wrestler vs wrestler bout I think Lawrence has both the better wrestling and the more reckless hands, and I saw Dashboard Confessional at a festival once and found them more emotionally ingratiating but still had more fun at the N.E.R.D. show next door.
LIGHT-HEAVYWEIGHT: Modestas Bukauskas (14-5) vs Zac Pauga (6-1)
Am I betraying my convictions about this card being a fun prospect showcase by constantly veering off into random asides about weird bullshit, or is this just a commentary on how my actual fight analysis outside of main events is surface-level at best and my vague awareness that I'm more about the stories of the fighters that brought them to the moment of competition than their individual skillsets falters under the weight of cards with so little story propping them up? Modestas Bukauskas wasn't even supposed to still be here. He was a warm body for the UFC's inexplicably-beloved Tyson Pedro to drop at their big Australian supershow this past February, and then he had the temerity to win, and now he's curtain-jerking the televised prelims of a card the UFC doesn't care if you watch against Zac Pauga, the runner-up of the 30th god damned season of The Ultimate Fighter, who responded to his success by instantaneously leaving the heavyweight division, dropping to 205, and struggling mightily to defeat a middleweight.
MODESTAS BUKAUSKAS BY DECISION. I will never be Jack Slack and I think I'm happier that way.
Prelims begin in about half an hour.
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Jun 16, 2023 22:46
