- Digital Jedi
- May 28, 2007
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Fallen Rib
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Fights very soon
CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 63: THE FIREWORKS FACTORY
SATURDAY, JUNE 24 FROM THE VYSTAR VETERANS MEMORIAL ARENA IN JACKSONVILLE, FLORIDA
 EARLY START TIME WARNINGPRELIMS 8:30 AM PST / 11:30 AM EST | MAIN CARD 12 PM PST / 3 PM ESTEARLY START TIME WARNING
This card marks me a hypocrite.
The UFC's last trip to network television was May's Rozenstruik vs Almeida, and I had plenty to say about how cold and underwhelming the card felt. No name value, mostly prospects thrown to the wolves of one million casual viewers, and an incredibly artificial attempt to reinforce some fighters the UFC already clearly wanted to push.
Objectively, this card has all of those issues. I could tell you this card has an extremely high fun potential and a lot of interesting people on it, and both things are true. But I would still give it a pass anyway, because it is Ilia Topuria fight night, god dammit.
I think it's deeply necessary to be wholly in the tank for a fighter here and there. I think combat sports are such an inherently cruel, irrational and often outright arbitrary thing that you need the anchoring influence of an equally irrational force to stay afloat in its terrible seas. The day there isn't at least one fighter that you, as a diehard fan, want to aggressively root for above their peers, it's probably time to take a break.
Unless you write weekly essays. Then you just have to roll with it.
wikipedia needs to update better and i need to stop using all of these websites.
MAIN EVENT: EVALUATING DESTINY
 FEATHERWEIGHT: Josh Emmett (18-3, #5) vs Ilia Topuria (13-0, #9)
This? This is a thing I have been waiting on for years. And it presents one of the few opportunities the UFC has left to get through the smoke and permafrost at the top of the featherweight division.
Men's featherweight has long been one of the best weight classes in the world for both density of talent and must-watch fights, but that talent is also choking it. Reigning champion and pound-for-pound great Alexander Volkanovski so thoroughly dominated the division that it earned him the first crack at newly-minted lightweight champion Islam Makhachev. Champion vs champion fights are both the highest point of mixed martial arts and one of its biggest traps: No matter who wins, two divisions are put in jeopardy for a chance at singular glory, and inevitably, one champion will be devalued.
Except this time. Somehow, this time, the inevitable was evited. Islam Makhachev won, but it was a difficult decision that made Alexander Volkanovski look even better in defeat. Which is great for the stature of both titleholders! And terrible for everyone else under them, because the UFC and the fanbase alike have been clamoring for a rematch to the point that Islam doesn't appear to be fighting again until this Fall--in what, should Volkanovski beat interim champion Yair Rodríguez next month, could well be another champion vs champion rematch.
But the featherweight logjam doesn't end there: Max Holloway, the former champion, is still around, and still one of the best fighters on the planet, and he still has a bad habit of beating the poo poo out of every contender put in front of him. Even aforementioned interim champion Yair got into championship position after losing to Holloway, because after losing three fights to Volkanovski, Max will have to move Heaven and Earth to get another crack at him. The UFC's championship hype trains have to be rerouted around him because he is the penny on the tracks for every goddamn one of them.
And that's how we wind up here, with a match between the #5 guy and the #9 guy that somehow could, still, be a fight for #1 contendership. And it wouldn't even be that weird. Which is extremely weird.
Josh Emmett's road to the championship was as unlikely as it was rocky. For the first few years of his UFC tenure he didn't seem like a championship prospect--a hard-hitting wrestleboxer like the rest of Team Alpha Male who barely squeaked by fighters like Jon Tuck and got knocked out cold by an aging, collapsing Jeremy Stephens who followed that performance by failing to win nine of his next ten fights. By 2019, most of the mixed martial arts world had consigned Emmett to the middle of the pack.
And then he pulled off one of the rarest tricks in combat sports: He got better. He tightened his boxing, he improved his defense, and he worked his way up the rankings with four straight wins over top fifteen competition. His big break finally came in a great fight with Calvin Kattar, which he won--somewhat controversially, but hey, that's every other decision these days, so gently caress it. Josh Emmett was at the top of the ranks, and with the champion occupied and possibly even leaving the division, he got his crack at an interim championship.
He, of course, lost. Terribly. He got the poo poo kicked out of him in a nearly literal sense and was ultimately submitted in just two rounds. Hard rise; hard fall. And now the wolves are back at the door.
When Ilia Topuria made his UFC debut in 2020 he was only 8-0, but like any undefeated Euro-prospect, he had a fair amount of hype from in-the-know fans who were already familiar with his powerful hands and his dangerous wrestling--but it's a lot easier to look dangerous when you're fighting 0-0 rookies seven fights into your career. Topuria would have to perform against considerably tougher competition to justify the hype.
So he took the path of least resistance: Just loving killing everybody. He had one decision in his debut--against the absurdly tough, never-been-finished Youssef Zalal--and proceeded to just brutally, horrifyingly murder everyone else the UFC put in front of him. Damon Jackson, the finishing machine who was just fighting for a top 15 berth? Knocked out in two and a half minutes. Ryan Hall, the nearly-undefeated world jiu-jitsu champion no one wanted to fight? Topuria took him to the floor and put him out in one round. He even went up a weight class on short notice, fought a knockout artist in Jai Herbert who was both incredibly dangerous and half a loving foot taller than him, and knocked him dead on his feet in the second round.
Bryce Mitchell was supposed to be the real test for Topuria--a top ten bantamweight who also just happened to be a fellow undefeated wrestler. Mitchell was supposed to be a match for Topuria in every aspect of the game. Mitchell tapped out in two rounds and left the fight looking like he'd been in a car accident. Ilia Topuria left the fight looking ready for contendership.
Thus: Your UFC on ABC main event. The unlikely contender who ultimately fell short against a guy the world picked out as a contender before he set foot in the UFC. Ilia, as of this writing, is a -335 betting favorite. Is the hype train still justified? Is this a winnable fight for Josh Emmett?
Absolutely. Topuria likes to get way too aggressive, in his last fight he was swinging so hard he practically knocked himself over, and Josh has enough power to make him instantaneously regret it with one well-timed punch. Josh's wrestling probably isn't going to be much of a threat against Ilia, but the use of wrestling to bait responses and open up chances to swing an overhand into his jaw is very, very feasible.
But, I mean. You read everything I said in the intro, right? You know what I'm about to say. ILIA TOPURIA BY TKO. He's a better wrestler, he's an even fiercer striker, and Emmett also has the misfortune of being the extremely rare opponent who's Ilia's size. If Ilia can land giant murder punches through massive reach disadvantages, Emmett's chin is in grave danger.
CO-MAIN EVENT: ENFORCING PROPHECY
WOMEN'S FLYWEIGHT: Amanda Ribas (11-3, #9) vs Maycee Barber (12-2, #11)
There are some fighters who are blessed by the great gods of combat sports that are the judges, and there are some who fall under the cruelty of their gaze.
Amanda Ribas has been a bit of a thorn in the UFC's side for quite some time. She's a very, very good fighter, but her very strategic, very defensive, very fan-unfriendly performances and her plethora of decision victories mark her as the kind of presence the UFC just doesn't want to get behind. So they tried to feed her to their desired fighters instead, and then she beat Mackenzie Dern and took away her undefeated streak, and I'm not sure the UFC ever really forgave her.
Fight Paige VanZant! Fight Michelle Waterson-Gomez! Fight Katlyn Chookagian, god drat you. It doesn't matter that you're 6-2 in the company and one of those losses--say it with me--was an incredibly close decision that could easily have gone the other way, we are going to feed you to someone we want to market or die trying. Nor has this changed. Amanda Ribas just beat the crap out of Viviane Araujo. Is it time to fight someone in the greater top ten? Is it time to climb a newly-destabilized ladder that just got blown wide open after the defeat of its long-dominant champion Valentina Shevchenko?
Of course not! It's time to defend your position against the lower-ranked fighter we really want to push instead.
And boy, the UFC likes them some Maycee "The Future" Barber. I said it about Ian Garry at last month's ABC card and I'll say it again here: If the UFC is so un-subtle as to bill someone by the nickname "The Future," they probably want you to lose to them. Maycee Barber was one of the first women to win a UFC contract off the neverending grift that is Dana White's Contender Series, and she's been a pet project ever since. Lose a decision to Roxanne Modafferi? That's fine, you can fight our other big star Alexa Grasso. Get outpunched by Grasso? No problem! Here's streaking Invicta star Miranda Maverick.
Lose to Miranda Maverick? The judges will save you anyway. Maycee Barber got outstruck and outgrappled by Maverick and still came away with one of the worst decision victories in UFC history. And the UFC knew it, because they pumped the brakes pretty loving hard on Maycee's competition. No more wily veterans or rising prospects: It was time for a 1 for her last 3 Montana De La Rosa and, to follow that, a Jessica Eye who was 1 for her last 6. But hey, after that you've got a young prospect in the rankings on what should be a hot streak with three straight victories, so it's time for a top-tier test, right?
Nope! Andrea Lee, who was marginally better at 2 for her last 6 and coming off a loss. And the result was another split decision that Lee could easily have won.
We end up here one way or another, trying to once again get Maycee Barber into the top ten, an achievement she's definitely good enough to manage on her own without the UFC's more obnoxious attempts to cram her in lengthwise. Is she finally going to snatch a single-digit ranking off Amanda Ribas and her beaten body?
Probably not! AMANDA RIBAS BY DECISION. Maycee's best performances come from smothering people with her forward-pressure striking and its ultimate termination in clinch control; Ribas is a pretty strong clinch grappler, is real good at getting out of the goddamn way of striking traffic, and carries enough power in her jabs to disrupt Barber's typical flow. Ribas's biggest threat here is, in all likelihood, the judges.
MAIN CARD: EMBRACING ENTROPY
HEAVYWEIGHT: Justin Tafa (6-3) vs Austen Lane (12-3)
That's right, baby: This is third from the top of the card. Multiple top fifteen fights on the card? Tatsuro Taira, one of the best flyweight prospects in the world? Neil By God Magny? We don't need any of that poo poo on television, WE HAVE HEAVYWEIGHTS.
Justin Tafa is a heavyweight kickboxer who ran up a 2-3 UFC record before taking the entirety of 2022 off--by which I mean signing up for two fights throughout the year and pulling out a couple weeks before each--only to make a triumphant comeback this past February by icing Parker Porter in a single minute. Which is impressive! Sure, Porter isn't exactly setting the heavyweight division on fire, but he's a tough dude whose only other UFC knockout loss involved Chris Daukaus smacking him upside the head dozens of times and having to hit him with a jumping knee to actually finish the job. If you can drop Parker Porter with one shot, you're doing something right.
Austen Lane is yet another Contender Series baby who was supposed to make his UFC debut at that same card--and against Tafa's younger brother, Junior Tafa. Lane was the heavyweight champion of Fury FC before the UFC pulled him back in, in the process giving him a chance to avenge his OTHER Contender Series attempt from 2018 where he committed the terrible crime of getting knocked out by Greg Hardy and, in the process, failing to spare us all the multiple-year Greg Hardy project. He's big, he's fast and he throws with just about everything he has, but the bulk of his success comes from cage-wrestling and ground and pound.
That said: He's just a couple fights removed from struggling mightily with the striking threat of Juan Adams, who went 1-3 in the UFC, looked generally pretty bad in the process, and got fired after getting knocked out by--hey, what a small world, Justin Tafa. On paper, Tafa should be able to eat Lane alive on his way in. But y'know what? gently caress it. AUSTEN LANE BY SUBMISSION. Tafa's not too far removed from struggling with the Jared Vanderaas of the world either, and Lane's got the kind of hard, smothering attack that could land Tafa on his back, and I want something fun to happen.
FEATHERWEIGHT: David Onama (10-2) vs Gabriel Santos (10-1)
David Onama came into the UFC with a whole lot more hype than most prospects get. His reach, his power, and word of mouth out of his pre-James Krause-scandal training camp Glory MMA had Onama pegged as a future championship contender. A year and a half later Onama is 2-2 in the UFC, one of those wins was a last-minute replacement in the form of Garrett Armfield whom he had, as statistically improbable as it is, already beaten before when they were amateurs, and after getting outfought by Nate Landwehr, Onama has had nothing to do but sit on the shelf for almost a year while opponents repeatedly pulled out of fights.
Gabriel Santos, by contrast, had almost no hype coming into his UFC debut, primarily because said debut was a one-week's-notice injury replacement debut against a British star in the undefeated Lerone Murphy. And that's a shame, because 89% of the media scored the fight overwhelmingly for Santos. His striking, his kicks and his surprising wrestling offense seemed to fairly handily win the first two rounds, but subjectivity leaves us at the whims of authority.
GABRIEL SANTOS BY DECISION. I was more impressed with the performance Santos put on with one week to prepare than I have been by Onama's UFC career to date, and the wrestling capacity he showed makes me doubt Onama's ability to pull off his usual trick of using his back-pocket wrestling to open opportunities for his hands.
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Brendan Allen (21-5, #13) vs Bruno Silva (23-8, NR)
Brendan Allen's on a hell of a run. After a shaky sophomore year in the UFC saw the always-promising Allen kicked out of the range of a ranking by Sean Strickland and Chris Curtis, Allen found a new source of power in the greatest way he could: Slaying the Dread demon of the deep, Sam Alvey, and earning the good will of mixed martial arts fans worldwide for his services in bringing us one step closer to an Alveyless UFC. But Allen's best moment was his most recent: As a sizable underdog against grappling ace André Muniz this past February Allen showcased his own shockingly good jiu-jitsu, outgrappling, sweeping and ultimately choking out the submission ace in three rounds.
Which is just fine with Bruno Silva, because Bruno Silva does not want to grapple with you. Those aforementioned 23 wins of Bruno's are, with just three decision-shaped exceptions, all horribly violent knockouts. He's never submitted anyone because he's never had to. He punches them until they stop moving, or he loses. Unfortunately, he's still righting the ship after a stretch of said losses--one to future champion Alex Pereira, which is nothing to sneeze at, and one a third-round submission loss to Gerald Meerschaert which is, admittedly, slightly less flattering.
And boy, it's hard not to think about Silva getting clubbed and subbed by Meerschaert when you're talking about as dynamic a fighter and grappler as Brendan Allen. Bruno Silva can knock out anyone in the middleweight division if he connects on them, and Allen's proven his ability to get lit up when he's not careful, but unlike the men who beat him, I don't think Silva has the counter-wrestling to stop Allen's assault. BRENDAN ALLEN BY SUBMISSION.
PRELIMS: OF LEY LINES AND HAYSTACKS
WELTERWEIGHT: Neil Magny (27-10, #11) vs Philip Rowe (10-3, NR)
That's right, baby. You lose a fight to the #2 welterweight contender and it's right the gently caress back to the prelims for you, Neil Magny. Who do you think you are, Justin Tafa? Neil Magny, the eleventh best welterweight in the world, the man with the most fight time in UFC welterweight history, is going to be with us for the entirety of martial history, and he's going to spend the rest of his career defending his position in the top fifteen until the rising stars of mixed martial arts dismember him and scatter his forty-two parts so wide that he can no longer keep new blood from the top fifteen. "The Fresh Prince" Philip Rowe is one of the most interesting and most frustrating prospects at welterweight. On one hand: He's a huge, 6'3" power-puncher who's scored every single win in his career by stoppage, and he's not only 3 for 4 in the UFC, but notched knockouts in all three of his victories. On the other: He's a huge, 6'3" power-puncher and he's missed weight in 50% of his UFC cagewalks, because 6'3" power-punchers don't typically fight at welterweight on account of their being 6'3".
"But Carl, Neil Magny is 6'3" too," I hear you say. Neil Magny also looks like cardiovascular conditioning took a human shape. Neil Magny has been fighting since the beginning of the Merethic Era and he has yet to spark a man with one punch and he likely never will, and that is perfectly fine. Philip Rowe has. And as the rare match for Magny's size and reach, and as a much scarier power striker, he's a bad matchup for the demon of the deep. PHILIP ROWE BY TKO.
WELTERWEIGHT: Randy Brown (16-5) vs Wellington Turman (18-6)
Poor Randy "Rudeboy" Brown has been slain on the altar of prospect sacrifice repeatedly throughout his career. In 2017 he was a rising star getting ground down to nothing by a then-unknown Belal Muhammad, in 2020 he capped off two fantastic victories by getting pummeled by Vicente Luque, and after recovering and scoring a genuinely impressive four-fight winning streak he was smashed in two minutes by Jack Della Maddalena this past February. But he's only 32, and he's still a real solid fighter, and he will, once again, get a chance to rebuild, this time against Wellington Turman, who after just shy of four years has finally abandoned the middleweight division in the hopes of bringing a physical advantage with him on his first journey to 170 pounds. (Which is why he is, of course, matched against one of the few welterweights bigger than him. There are six 6'3" welterweights in the UFC, and by god, half of them are here in back to back fights.) Turman's a solid fighter with a genuinely dangerous grappling game, but he's rarely been able to use it in the UFC. He gets bullied, he gets stung, and he goes to a split decision with Sam goddamn Alvey.
I like Wellington, for reasons I have never found myself able to properly enumerate and that may in secret be simply that I think his name is cool, but RANDY BROWN BY DECISION. Turman's not going to have the physical advantage he was hoping for in his welterweight debut, and I don't know that his navigation of reach or wrestling are going to be enough to stop Randy's rhythm.
LIGHTWEIGHT: Mateusz Rębecki (17-1) vs Loik Radzhabov (17-4-1)
I'm significantly into this one. Mateusz Rębecki had a lot of hype coming into his UFC debut this past January--arguably the best mixed martial artist in Poland (with Joanna Jędrzejczyk retired, anyhow), a regional champion who'd turned away international-grade competition for years, and a 5'7" firecracker of a fighter just as likely to sling haymakers as chuck considerable larger men on their rear end. And that hype got a little doused when he had an abrupt switch of opponents to the rather unheralded 6-0 Nick Fiore, who'd been fighting in the event room of a Doubletree Inn two months prior. Mateusz won, but not crushing Fiore--a man who was, in fairness, undefeated--felt like underperforming. So now he's got tighter competition in the form of THE TAJIK TANK, Loik Radzhabov. Loik made his American debut over in the welcoming tournamental arms of the Professional Fighters League, and despite an overall 4-4 record he made it to the 2021 lightweight finals before ultimately falling to Raush Manfio. He made the jump over to the UFC this past March and took a surprisingly difficult decision over Esteban Ribovics that saw Loik fading a bit in the second round.
This is a good-rear end fight. Rębecki's wildman assaults tend to wind him and Radzhabov was still chucking flying knees even when visibly tired in the third round of his debut, so there's a real good chance this is a war. Loik's going to be tougher to wrestle than most of Mateusz's opponents, but I think the pace he sets will ultimately be the deciding factor. MATEUSZ RĘBECKI BY DECISION.
WOMEN'S STRAWWEIGHT: Tabatha Ricci (8-1, #15) vs Gillian Robertson (12-7, NR)
We're having a grappling party and everyone is invited. Both of these women are well-known grappling specialists, to the point that with twenty combined wins they also combine for just two TKO finishes--and both came from ground and pound through their grappling control. Ricci's a childhood judo expert with multiple grappling championships; Gillian Robertson is one of the most accomplished submission artists in women's MMA today. This means, realistically, that this fight has a real good chance at being a pretty tepid kickboxing match where both play The Floor Is Lava. But god dammit, I want to believe. I want to see these two hit the ground and tear it up the way only two experts can. It's been a long time since grappling was as disfavored by mixed martial arts as it is now, and by god, I miss Kazushi Sakuraba vs Carlos Newton.
The betting money is on Ricci, but while I will likely regret this, GILLIAN ROBERTSON BY DECISION. She's somehow still underrated as a grappler even now and she has a considerable size and strength advantage to back it up.
FLYWEIGHT: Zhalgas Zhumagulov (14-8) vs Joshua Yan (7-1)
Zhalgas Zhumagulov was supposed to fight last week, and I wrote this big long thing about how commonly he has been boned out of justice by combat sports, and then a few days before the card started his opponent, Felipe Bunes, got bounced out of the fight over a drug test. Which came just a month after losing two opponents in one week for a bout in May. So now the man who should still be considered one of the world's best flyweights is dealing with two bad split decisions, three fight cancellations, and a new bout against Fury FC Flyweight Champion Joshua Van with seven days to prepare. The UFC: It's a serious sports organization where nothing stupid ever happens. As far as evaluating Van himself, let me potentially shock you, here: He's a flyweight. He's good at everything. He's fast, he's got solid takedown defense and he hits pretty loving fast. He telegraphs his head movement a little, but otherwise he's a pretty interesting prospect.
So anyway, ZHALGAS ZHUMAGULOV BY DECISION. Or maybe not! I don't loving know. Zhumagulov's combat sports career is at this point so cursed by whatever sect of elder gods he clearly pissed off in a past life that I can't begin to give you reliable reads on what'll happen. Maybe he'll win, maybe he'll get outworked, maybe this fight will get cancelled 48 hours ahead of the event and Zhalgas will retire to be an accountant. Maybe they'll both get hit by high-precision meteorites seconds before the bell rings. A regular fight with a reliable decision is at this point the least statistically probable outcome.
LIGHTWEIGHT: Trevor Peek (8-0) vs Chepe Mariscal (13-6 (1))
I should hate Trevor Peek. I really should. He's a singular encapsulation of everything wrong with the Contender Series: A regional fighter who'd only had six fights with an unstoppable addiction to standing and banging being given a bottom-of-the-barrel contract to earn poverty wages as a reward for a style that will inevitably take years off his life while UFC-tier lightweights in other organizations who will never get a contract age out of their primes. But I cannot keep from loving him, because he is so comically committed to that lifestyle that watching him fight is like falling through a hole in mixed martial time and space and waking up in 2006, with Mickey's Malt Liquor logos all over the mat and CONDOMDEPOT.COM printed on Andrei Arlovski's rear end and Trevor Peek is there, back completely straight and head completely out, punching like a man swinging a pair of lunchboxes attached to a clothesline, and yet, somehow, it's working. And we all, at the end of the day, just want to feel young again. Chepe Mariscal's a Legacy Fighting Alliance veteran who's taking this fight with just about a week and a half of prep time after Peek's original opponent, Victor Martinez, realized he had just been knocked out by Jordan Leavitt and was making a huge mistake. Chepe's a similarly brawly stylist who been working as an unpaid talent scout for the UFC for his whole life--in that four of the six people who beat him were all in the UFC almost immediately thereafter, and one of the remainder only wasn't because he had already been cut once--and he should probably bill them.
Because he is not going to get paid enough for this. TREVOR PEEK BY TKO. Peek's style means he could also get knocked out at any time, but Mariscal has this tendency to get knocked out tryingr to engage in brawls with brawlier men, and Peek is the brawliest.
FEATHERWEIGHT: Jamall Emmers (19-6) vs Jack Jenkins (11-2)
Every once in awhile the UFC gets their hands on someone they seem to only use to get other people over, and by god, that's Jamall Emmers, the poor bastard. Emmers was main-eventing down in the LFA when he got called up to the big show, and the UFC immediately booked him against Giga Chikadze, a man they planned to get into main events before he'd even made his debut. Then it was supposed to be the nigh-undefeated Timur Valiev, and the extremely good Chas Skelly, and the returning-to-contention Pat Sabatini, and back in February it was the undefeated hyper-prospect Khusein Askhabov. There are no easy nights in the company for Jamall Emmers. And this is no different: One of the breakout stars of the Australian showcase that was Makhachev/Volkanovski this past February was Jack Jenkins, a striker out of Victoria who landed some of the most horrifyingly painful leg kicks the UFC had ever seen en route to taking out a thoroughly overmatched Don Shainis. The UFC would very much like to see if he can do it again before they begin investing in him.
And he probably will. Emmers is a very solid fighter and he'll have a very solid size advantage here, but that's not going to stop Jenkins from kicking his leg out of his leg. JACK JENKINS BY DECISION.
FLYWEIGHT: Tatsuro Taira (13-0) vs Kleydson Rodrigues (8-2)
Tatsuro Taira is one of my absolute favorite prospects in the sport, a Shooto champion out of Japan with laser-beam straights and an absolutely murderous grappling game from both top and bottom positions, and he's been an absolute star in all three of his UFC performances, and he has yet to fight any higher than the second opening prelim. Is it an attempt to take it slow? Is it antipathy for the flyweight division? Do I need to let go of concepts like card position and marketing before they drive me insane? No, my friend. The damage has already been done. Kleydson Rodrigues is an incredibly fun fighter with an incredibly fun array of kicks and the only loss in his last nine years of competition was a split decision in his UFC debut against CJ Vergara that almost the entire media scored in his favor. He also rules. Both of these men rule. I'm angry one of them will have to lose.
But it'll probably be Kleydson. His frenetic pace is a drain not just on his gas but on his control, and while I do think he won the Vergara fight, that's what made it close enough for him to lose. Tatsuro Taira is all about control, and he's very, very good at it. TATSURO TAIRA BY DECISION.
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Cody Brundage (8-4) vs Sedriques Dumas (7-1)
Two months ago Cody Brundage fought Rodolfo Vieira, one of the best grapplers in the world, and I picked Brundage anyway, because he had the counter-wrestling to keep Vieira off him and the better striking. And it went great, for a round! And then in the second round Brundage decided to jump a guillotine on a six-time world jiu-jitsu champion and got submitted almost instantaneously. And now he's fighting to not get the dreaded three losses in a row that most often leads to a contract termination, and by god, he has only that incredibly silly guillotine attempt to blame. Sedriques Dumas was a Contender Series pickup as notable for his undefeated record, lanky frame, numerous knockouts and ultra-quick long-arm chokes as his multitude of assault, domestic and DUI arrests. The UFC immediately threw him in with persistent loser Josh Fremd in an attempt to give him an easy landing pad and a big finish, and instead Fremd punched him to the floor and choked him out in two rounds because mixed martial arts knows we're all having an extremely difficult time and every once in awhile we need a feelgood moment to keep going.
I'm not convinced this will be another one. Brundage likes to go wild and it's cost him--repeatedly--and Dumas is just as likely to make him pay for it as the multitude of other men who've done it before. SEDRIQUES DUMAS BY SUBMISSION.
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Jun 24, 2023 16:32
