- CarlCX
- Dec 14, 2003
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The card got shuffled, Harris/Parisian got canceled and Maddalena/Hafez is now the co-main, and while ordinarily I would update the graphics and the writeup, I'm going to be real: This is a Holly Holm card and I refuse on grounds that caring would be a sin.
CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 66: A BRIEF LIST OF UNFORTUNATE THINGS
SATURDAY, JULY 15 FROM THE HOLE IN THE WORLD THAT IS THE UFC APEX
PRELIMS 4 PM PDT / 7 PM EDT | MAIN CARD 7 PM PDT / 10 PM EDT VIA ESPN+
There's an ongoing argument about what constitutes a terrible UFC card. Some hold that any card without a championship fight is bad, some need a minimum of a contendership bout, some are happy with prospects. Some consider it a factor of the proportion of ranked fighters to unranked fighters in competition on a given night.
There's truth to all of them, but I think one of the abstract concepts that runs through all of them is momentum. If the fans give a poo poo about people on the card, it'll float even if half of those people are years away from the top fifteen. Momentum's a tough thing to measure, but a real simple, real reductive way of making that measurement is asking a very simple question: How many fighters on this card are on a winning streak in the UFC?
In this case, the answer is eight. Eight out of the twenty-eight fighters booked for this card as of this writing are coming off of a win in the UFC. Two of those winning streaks are one fight long. The other 79% of this card's competitors are fighting to either avoid or pull out of a losing streak.
Some cards struggle with inertia. Some are just inert.
still not sure i believe in this card order
MAIN EVENT: EXPLORING HELL WITHOUT A FLASHLIGHT
WOMEN'S BANTAMWEIGHT: Holly Holm (15-6, #3) vs Mayra Bueno Silva (10-2-1, #10)
What is there to say about nothing?
Three and a half months ago Holly Holm fought Yana Santos, and I wrote an artistic piece summarizing the experience of watching a Holly Holm fight as akin to watching your life ebb away, purposeless and lonely, and the existential horror of dying without meaning.
I try not to talk about myself too often in these things--fighting takes up enough written bandwidth--but aside from being a scream into the void about years of watching Holly Holm, that essay was a bit of art therapy about the abrupt and then-recent death of a loved one. As much as I did not relish another Holly Holm fight, I appreciated her presence at that moment in time as an outlet for helping me deal with it.
And then Holly Holm spent her post-fight interview making veiled references to anti-trans groomer propaganda and Qanon child trafficking conspiracy theories. So now those two things are connected in the neurons in my brain forever.
So we're not wasting another artistically-inclined sentence on Holly loving Holm. We're describing things exactly as they are. Which is to say: Women's Bantamweight is incredibly, thoroughly hosed and this fight is our first step into a brave new world of divisional horror.
Amanda Nunes retired last month, bringing the greatest women's MMA career in history to a close and, with it, the official end of the UFC having any kind of hold on the rudder at the 135-pound women's weight division. The matchmaking has been iffy, the UFC has failed to capitalize on their contenders and instead chased things like Miesha Tate comeback tours, and now we're in a post-Nunes world and the most likely matches to fill the vacant throne, as of yet, are:
- Julianna Peña, whom Amanda Nunes wadded up and threw in a dumpster, vs Erin Blanchfield, who has never competed at the weight class
- Raquel Pennington, the woman with the longest winning streak in the division, vs Ketlen Vieira, the woman she already beat in January
- The winner of this fight vs whomever of Peña, Blanchfield or Pennington bids first and lowest
It's not great. This fight isn't going to help.
Holly Holm's last victory over a potential contender was three years ago. In the time since she dropped a deeply forgettable split decision to Ketlen Vieira, who is now ranked #4, and defeated Yana Santos, who was ranked #6. Because of the way math works, this means Holm is #3.
Mayra Bueno Silva is on a three-fight win streak at 135 pounds. Those three wins were against the unranked 1-5 Yanan Wu, who was fired one fight later, the unranked 3-3 Stephanie Egger, who took her next fight at featherweight, and the #12-ranked Lina Länsberg, who was on a three-fight losing streak and retired immediately after their bout. This, too, makes Silva #10.
These two women combined have one top ten victory in their last 34 months and seven fights. Whoever wins will be the #3 fighter in the division and, in all likelihood, next in line for a shot at the championship of the world.
The rankings are more of a suggestion than a rule, but boy, the moment you get to Women's Bantamweight they cease to have even the slightest sense of meaning, because Women's Bantamweight has never been a division. Despite being the weight classes that essentially launched women's mixed martial arts in America, women's MMA at 135 and above has always a single-attraction spectacle. In EliteXC it was Gina Carano and the 140-pound weight class that didn't exist, in Strikeforce it was Cris Cyborg at 145 pounds fighting dramatically underqualified women, and then it was the salad days of Ronda Rousey making millions of dollars for the UFC by simply existing. They didn't have to work.
And then Amanda Nunes destroyed her, and then she destroyed everyone, and the UFC had six whole years to build new, interesting challengers for Nunes to fight and to take over when she was gone. And--they didn't. They just didn't! It's wild. Contenders fought contenders and ate each other alive, women on long winning streaks went unadvertised in favor of older names like Holm and Tate, even right up to Nunes' very last fight she was getting Julianna Peña rematches and, when those fell through, a lower-ranked, less successful contender, because the UFC saw more money in it.
Which was, of course, wrong! Nunes completely ruined her and it made no difference whatsoever. And now there's no champion and no contenders and your next divisional queen is going to be one of the largely unadvertised people she ruined or a fighter who's never won a title at 125 or fought at 135 getting a belt in her very first appearance, most of the top ten have no momentum and are currently coming off of losses so there's no one ready to be elevated, and the end of the top fifteen is rounded out by fighters who compete at different weight classes, one of which is, in all likelihood, about to cease to exist.
I love mixed martial arts. I love women's mixed martial arts. But Amanda Nunes was the thread holding everything together at 135 pounds and up in the UFC, and with her gone, there's nothing left but a potter's field.
But the UFC's gotta elect a groundskeeper. So: Holly Holm and Mayra Bueno Silva. What's going to happen?
Let's just get it out of the way: HOLLY HOLM BY DECISION. Mayra's at her best on the ground, but Holm is a better wrestler; she's got power in her punches and kicks, but Holm is a better striker; she succeeds thanks to her physicality, but Holm is a bigger fighter. Mayra came into the UFC at 125 pounds and Holly arguably should have been the UFC's first 145-pound women's champion. Holm's ability to defend and avoid conflict defines her entire goddamn career. Unless Mayra can pin her against the cage or get her on her back, it's going to be a long loving night and it'll end with someone pulling the microphone away from Holly Holm while she talks about adrenochrome.
CO-MAIN EVENT: BRINGING PLASTIC CUPS TO A POTLUCK
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Albert Duraev (16-4) vs Jun Yong Park (16-5)
I know I say this a lot, but yes: This is the co-main event. Our last six co-mains included a Flyweight championship fight, a top ten bout at Lightweight, a top ten bout at Women's Flyweight and a Lightweight title eliminator. This week, you get Albert Duraev and Jun Yong Park.
And I like both of these guys! I've said as much in a number of writeups! But gently caress me, man. Albert Duraev is coming off getting his eye punched shut by Joaquin "No Longer Appearing At This Weight Class" Buckley and just barely winning a split decision over Chidi Njokuani and Jun Yong Park is on a three-fight winning streak, but those wins were a dodgy split over the void at the center of all things, Eryk Anders, and a pair of submissions, one over the 1-3 Joseph Holmes and the other the 1-2 Dennis Tiuliulin.
Here's the thing about MMA matchmaking: It's loving weird and difficult. It's very, very easy (and very, very fun!) to play armchair management, but quality matchmaking is an abstract thing. You have to please three masters: The promotion, which wants the most commercially-friendly fights you can give them, the fans, who want the fighters they care about and nothing else, and the sport, which wants divisional structure so it can stay legible. When matchmaking is at its best and all of those goals are accomplished at once it helps enable the sport's best runs, with divisionally-proven champions, strong stables of contenders, and an identifiable ladder for prospects to climb.
When it isn't, you get this. I enjoy Albert Duraev: He's a tough, angry wrestler with solid hooks and scary elbows. I enjoy Jun Yong Park: He's an incredibly persistent clinch grappler who drags opponents through hell. But I'm not sure what this match is supposed to do for either of them or, indeed, anybody. It's not a fan-friendly style matchup: They're both largely wrestlers who want to wrestle, and neither is particularly popular. It's not a commercially pertinent matchup: They're just regular guys and neither has any particular momentum. It's not a divisionally pertinent fight: Neither guy is near a ranking and beating one another does nothing to move them closer.
It's just a fight. It is what it is. Pick your similarly-sized, similarly-positioned wrestler of choice based on your personal predilections. I'm going with ALBERT DURAEV BY TKO because Park's emphasis on clinch takedowns and chokes seems less inclined to work on a strong, sound guy like Duraev, but honestly, flip a coin.
MAIN CARD: GETTING FOXTAILS STUCK IN YOUR FEET
WELTERWEIGHT: Jack Della Maddalena (14-2, #14) vs Bassil Hafez (8-3-1)
Or is this the co-main event? I don't know! This fight just got added to the card yesterday, and I am here on Tuesday, hurriedly shoehorning it in despite the UFC not having put it on its own website or officially announced its placement. Maybe it's the new co-main event. Maybe it's a prelim! ESPN says it's buried in the middle of the prelims, but I think that's probably wrong, because it would be aggressively silly. I'm banking on the likelihood that Azaitar/Prado or Dumont/Chandler are getting bumped to the prelims in favor of this fight. If you're reading this on fight night and they actually put Jack Della loving Maddalena in the prelims, I apologize for my hubris.
I love watching Jack Della Maddalena fight. In a sport where the average fighter still struggles to throw a bread-and-butter one-two boxing combination correctly, Maddalena is a great striker with sublime control over the placement, rhythm and power in his hands. The Contender Series was essentially built to find fighters like him and get them into the UFC for a fraction of their real worth, and by god, it worked at least once. Maddalena's 4-0 in the UFC and each victory has been a more impressive stoppage than the last, culminating in his entering the welterweight rankings this past February after atomizing the much taller, much rangier Randy Brown in two minutes. Which is, as always, where things got silly in the way only mixed martial arts can. Maddalena was supposed to fight the #9-ranked Sean Brady at last week's pay-per-view, but ten days before the fight Brady was hospitalized over an infection in his elbow. The UFC looked at its bench of fighters, came up empty, and chose to replace Brady with "The Muscle Hamster" Josiah Harrell, a 7-0 lightweight from the regional circuit fighting up a weight class on a week's notice against one of the most dangerous men in the sport. And then that fight got scratched--because Harrell got the first MRI of his career during the UFC's medicals and discovered he had a brain condition called Moyamoya disease that needed life-saving surgery.
At that point, you could just cut your losses and rebook Maddalena against a ranked opponent in the near future. That is not what the UFC did. The UFC rebooked him for this weekend's card, midway through the week, against yet another regional replacement. On the plus side: It's a welterweight this time! Bassil Hafez is the 170-pound champion of Fury FC, the Fight Pass feeder league I regularly get angry at for booking ridiculous record-padding cards designed solely to get good numbers next to a fighter's name so they look pretty when the spotlight comes for them. By those standards, Haffez is one of the better people Fury has. He's a black belt in jiu-jitsu, he's durable enough that he has yet to be stopped in his career, and he's got the kind of sneaky, painful left kick to the body I wish more fighters took advantage of. That being said: We've already got a pretty solid idea of where he stacks up. Three years ago there was another Fury FC welterweight champion, Anthony "Aquaman" Ivy, who made it to the UFC. He was promptly crushed by Christian Aguilera and ground into paste by Bryan Barberena and released, having demonstrated with unfortunate clarity that he just wasn't up to the UFC's level. Bassil Hafez fought Anthony Ivy last year: He dropped him repeatedly, couldn't put him away, and then got repeatedly hurt and struggled with him to a split decision victory.
Look: It's MMA. Anything can happen. Bassil Hafez isn't a bum--none of these people are bums--and he's got more than enough power to shock the world. But he also gets clipped a lot, and he also leads with his head a bunch, and he's fighting one of the sport's best strikers with less than a week to prepare. I'm sure Maddalena didn't want to waste the trip or the camp, and I kinda wish it wasn't this way, but what can you do. JACK DELLA MADDALENA BY TKO.
HEAVYWEIGHT: Walt Harris (13-10) vs Josh Parisian (15-6)
Boy, this one's tough. Walt Harris was a well-regarded 6-1 prospect when he joined the UFC back in 2013. Ten years later, he's barely hanging on to a winning record and he hasn't won a fight in four years. His power, his clinch assaults and his knees got him into the top fifteen after a number of unfortunate losses, but right as he seemed to be putting it together in 2019 his career got derailed in one of the most tragic scenes in MMA history with the murder of his daughter. I would feel bad bringing it up at all--it's an atomic bomb of a tragedy way too important for something like cagefighting--but it's unfortunately relevant, because the UFC extremely uncomfortably used it as their main marketing push for his return fight against Alistair Overeem. Harris was knocked out and that wound up being a trend: Alexander Volkov and Marcin Tybura both stopped him in his subsequent fights, and since that last loss on June 5, 2021, we haven't seen the man. I don't know if he's been taking time to finally grieve, or if he's been letting his body recovery from the stoppages, or if he was just figuring out what he wanted to do. But I do know he just turned 40 last year, and coming back to competition is very, very hard.
Which is why he's fighting Josh Parisian. Parisian has established himself as the you-must-be-this-tall-to-ride line for the UFC's Heavyweight division: He's 2-3, and those two victories were over Roque Martinez and Alan Baudot, both of whom fell to 0-3 with the company (with one additional No Contest, in Baudot's case) and both of whom were immediately released following the fight. In that same timeframe, he's managed to get outfought by a 4-3 Parker Porter, a 3-3 Don'Tale Mayes, and a debuting Jamal Pogues in one of the least eventful heavyweight bouts of the year, as Parisian landed a dozen strikes per round and Pogues did even less, but also managed to wrestle him thoroughly enough to win anyway, much to Parisian's chagrin. This is, after all, heavyweight, and there's a gentlemen's agreement to grade on a stand-and-bang curve. Parisian's tough--he's only been stopped once in the UFC, and that was less about concussive damage than mercy from a referee who knew Parisian was done and would never escape the crucifix--but he's also a warm body whose only stoppage in the last three years came from stopping Alan Baudot, after which he was so exhausted at three minutes of the second round that he collapsed. It's not a great look.
And yet, I am still worried. On a skill basis, there's no world in which Walt Harris should not handily win this fight. He's bigger, he's stronger, he hits much harder and he's a better wrestler. He should be able to roll Parisian however he wants. But he's also 40 and coming off the worst run of his career and a two-year layoff, and Parisian is very durable. Am I still picking WALT HARRIS BY TKO? Yes. Am I severely worried Walt Harris is going to beat the piss out of Parisian for one round, get tired and get picked apart for the next two rounds by a heavyweight he would've trounced back in 2018? You bet.
WOMEN'S FEATHERWEIGHT: Norma Dumont (9-2, #13 at Women's Bantamweight) vs Chelsea Chandler (5-1, #15 at Women's Bantamweight)
This fight might actually be historically relevant. This is the last Women's Featherweight bout the UFC currently has on its schedule, and unless management changes its mind about its future plans, that means this is, in all likelihood, the last Women's Featherweight bout the UFC will promote. Norma Dumont is--was?--the closest thing 145 had to a contender, but her whole UFC career is just one big case study in how the company never really knew what it was doing with the division. The UFC had Dumont trying (and failing, miserably) to cut down to 135, then fighting the 145-pound title contender one fight later, then welcoming back Aspen Ladd after a two-year layoff, then fighting Ultimate Fighter winner Macy Chiasson, then battling Danyelle Wolf, a 1-0 fighter who has yet to return and may no longer have a weight class she could even return to. Dumont was one of the most solid if unspectacular fighters in a division that had nothing for her to do, and given that she struggles to even make 145 pounds, if featherweight is going the way of the dodo, this is, in all likelihood, the last time we'll see her in the UFC.
Which leaves Chelsea Chandler as the last woman to get on the boat. This is, in fact, Chandler's first bout at this weight in the UFC--she was a featherweight back in Invicta, but she was scheduled to make her UFC debut last year down at 135. But late replacements make fools of us all, and Chandler wound up punching out Julija Stoliarenko in the first round at 140, and at that point, why not go up to 145? Chandler was, in fact, supposed to fight the aforementioned and now 1-1 Danyelle Wolf earlier this year, but Wolf pulled out and the UFC didn't have a single goddamn featherweight to put in her place, nor were they inclined to hire any more. Some divisions get last-minute regional replacements: Women's Featherweight is not one of them. So Chandler puttered around for a quarter of a year, and now, we are here, at the end of all things, where the #1 contender for a belt that no longer demonstrably exists can fight someone who's never technically competed in the division and yet both of them are ranked at a lower weight class neither has ever successfully made in the UFC. Chelsea Chandler has never competed at any recognized UFC weight class, but by god, she's the #15 at bantamweight, the weight class this fight is not at.
I'll be honest: I'm glad to see it end. I would much prefer the UFC actually investing in Women's Featherweight, but that ship sailed a long, long time ago, and you can't even say the division has been on life support because there's no body connected to the ventilator. Women's Featherweight is a Pepper's Ghost show, an illusion built around a couple of stars. The UFC promoted the weight class for six and a half years and never once published rankings that weren't just pictures of Cris Cyborg or Amanda Nunes next to a blank space where other names were supposed to be. NORMA DUMONT BY DECISION, one last time, and then let's all fold ourselves into that blank space together and embrace the end of a division that was never truly meant to be.
 LIGHTWEIGHT: Ottman Azaitar (13-1) vs Francisco Prado (11-1)
On a night of weird backstories, Ottman Azaitar remains one of the most fun. Ottman was one of the most promising international prospects in the business, an undefeated fighter out of Morocco with two first-round knockouts in the UFC, the most recent of which was the destruction of the then-highly-rated Khama Worthy. Azaitar was one fight away from being ranked and looked all to hell like a future contender. And then he got released from the UFC for helping one of his teammates scale the wall of the fighter hotel to sneak supplies in through a balcony window in the middle of COVID lockdowns. The company ultimately brought him back within a month, but it would be two years before Ottman set foot in a cage to reclaim his spot as the sport's premier undefeated lightweight contender. He was, promptly, knocked completely loving unconscious by Matt Frevola in two and a half minutes. Ottman Azaitar spent a decade building his reputation, and then he lost once, and now it's been almost three years since his last victory and most of the world only knows him as the idiot who had Spiderman smuggle stuff into his hotel room.
Francisco Prado is one of the star products of the most productive Brazilian feeder leagues of the 2020s, my beloved people at Samurai Fight House, the only company brave enough to ask the hard questions like 'can our young, 11-0 champion beat a 1-6 guy?' Prado was already on the UFC's radar as Samurai's best undefeated lightweight, but his likely fate in the Contender Series with the rest of his samurai kin was put off in favor of a last-minute replacement contract to fill in against Jamie Mullarkey this past February. And--this may surprise you--the regional fill-in fighting one of the UFC's veteran lightweights on short notice did not, in fact, win. Mullarkey outstruck Prado almost three to one, took him down repeatedly, and shut him out of the fight while Prado threw progressively angrier wheel kicks. He had a good shot here and there, and he proved he is obviously dangerous in a close, tight brawl, but he looked lost against Mullarkey's ground game and overwhelmed by his boxing, and ultimately, he couldn't put together enough offense to win a round.
Azaitar is a much better match for Prado than Mullarkey was. Ottman punches for power rather than volume--he wants his opponents out of there as fast as possible----and that's a remarkably difficult pace to keep up, particularly against someone who just got beat up for three rounds without stopping. Azaitar could spark him in a round and go home, but Prado's age, durability and size advantage make me think this could be the beginning of the end for the Ottman Azaitar experiment in the UFC. FRANCISCO PRADO BY TKO.
LIGHTWEIGHT: Terrance McKinney (13-5) vs Nazim Sadykhov (8-1)
Terrance McKinney has fallen, and my faith has been shaken. McKinney has been one of my favorite lightweight prospects for the last two years--when you knock out Matt Frevola in seven seconds, you get my attention--but in hindsight, McKinney also busting his knee overexuberantly celebrating should have warned me to park my car sideways. McKinney's deep emotional commitment to violence has both made him a star and repeatedly thrust that star into the abyss, as his aggression has tended to get him hosed up on the regular. At first it was nearly finishing Drew Dober before his overenthusiasm got him winded and dropped, but this past January McKinney managed to get himself handled and flying kneed to death by Ismael Bonfim. He landed a few punches, but it was the first fight in which he was simply outclassed. And now the hot prospect is trying to avoid falling to a 50/50, 3-3 UFC record.
Nazim Sadykhov is not inclined to make that process any easier. Sadykhov is the star pupil out of LAW MMA, the Ray Longo/Chris Weidman camp born out of the ashes of Matt Serra's kingdom, and after crushing cans down on--hey, how about that, Fury FC, sure is crazy how these record-padding organizations keep sending people to the UFC--he won on the Contender Series last year and made a successful UFC debut this past February. On one hand: It's a win in the UFC, and that's great. On the other: It was against Evan Elder, the last-minute late replacement fighter who came directly from fighting 9-16 guys on the regional circuit and is now 0-2 at the big show, except, uh, Elder was outgrappling and outstriking Sadykhov and was four minutes away from winning on every scorecard before Sadykhov kneed his eyebrow open in the third round and won an almost instantaneous doctor's stoppage.
Which is in no way shameful. Doctor stoppages are perfectly legit. Getting hosed up by Evan Elder for two rounds is slightly more concerning. TERRANCE MCKINNEY BY TKO, based on just how many strikes Sadykhov was taking to the face in that fight, but if he can make it out of the first round McKinney's slowing down will be a big problem for him.
PRELIMS: HAVING TO COUNT TO REMEMBER HOW OLD YOU ARE
FEATHERWEIGHT: Tucker Lutz (12-3) vs Melsik Baghdasaryan (7-2)
And lo, the prelims that might get a bunch of people fired have begun. Tucker "Top Gun" Lutz is a wrestleboxer who fought through the jesus CHRIST am I really going to say 'regional record-padding scene' yet again? This is every goddamn fight. Every second Contender Series winner came through some form of organization that had them fight some poor motherfucker with a record like 3-14 and it got them on the tee-vee so it worked out in the end, so it's impossible to say if it's good or bad that the underpinning bones of the sport are knockdown men in professional butcher shops and nothing is real. The records are stupid, the fights are nothing, and the level of professionalism once you get up to the big leagues is so much greater that Tucker Lutz had to win on the Contender Series twice because Dana White was unimpressed with his insistence on wrestling. He made it in on his second attempt, but he's now not only 1-2 in the UFC, he's only managed one fight in the last eighteen months, and it got him choked out in two rounds. Melsik Baghdasaryan fought on the same Contender Series episode as Lutz, and he ALSO won a decision, and he was ALSO initially denied a contract, and then a full year of inactivity later he was suddenly in the UFC, and while I cannot say with assurance that this mattered, I'd say the eleven cancelled fights on that card probably had something to do with it. Baghdsaryan won--twice!--and then, once again, missed more than a year with injuries, and this time he came back and got run over by Joshua Culibao.
MELSIK BAGHDASARYAN BY DECISION. He's more mobile, he's more versatile, and as long as he avoids the takedowns he should be fine.
WOMEN'S STRAWWEIGHT: Viktoriya Dudakova (6-0) vs Istela Nunes (6-4)
It's aggressively obvious sacrificial pyre time. Viktoriya Dudakova is young, undefeated, and a Contender Series winner from last August after wrestling through a seeming knee injury to narrowly defeat Maria Silva. Sure, the wrestling is normally frowned upon, but the UFC actually wants women in the strawweight division and Dudakova is one of the more accomplished prospects out there in the weight class--as far as 24 year-olds go, anyway. Having spent most of the last year rehabbing her busted wheel, she's ready for primetime. The UFC is not subtle about wanting her to win, which is why she's drawn Istela Nunes, who is 0-3 in the company, has cancelled as many fights as she's participated in during her four years with the company, and who dropped two of those three losses because of--wait for it--a precipitous wrestling and grappling disadvantage. That's so weird! It's just crazy how these things happen to line up this way, sometimes.
VIKTORIYA DUDAKOVA BY SUBMISSION. This fight exists for a reason. Nunes isn't a can, she's tough and talented, but the UFC has very intentionally given her disfavorable matchups, and this is no different.
FEATHERWEIGHT: Austin Lingo (9-2) vs Melquizael Costa (19-6)
Austin Lingo has been having a pretty bad time. He was the undefeated pride of the Legacy Fighting Alliance before he was called up to the UFC in 2020, where he immediately lost his record. And a year of his career. He regained his momentum with two victories--and then, thanks to injuries, missed ANOTHER entire year and a half of his athletic prime. When he finally resurfaced in 2023 all he got was run the gently caress over by Nate Landwehr. His hard-charging style is still there, and it won him the first round, but the constant layoffs haven't helped him stop banging his head on his ceiling in the division. Melquizael Costa is running on the opposite track. The vitiligo-laden warrior was a last-minute regional replacement against Thiago Moisés this past January, and his hard-luck story and incredibly internet-relatable tale of finding the will and bravery to take up mixed martial arts after seeing fellow vitiligo sufferer Scott Jorgensen in digital form on UFC Undisputed 3 (I miss you, THQ) won him a surprising amount of fan support for someone so unknown.
Unfortunately, he was also visibly out of his depth and got grappled and choked out in two rounds. I picked Costa for the upset as a pure expression of heart, and it did not pan out. And I refuse to learn my lesson. MELQUIZAEL COSTA BY DECISION. I'd say something like "Lingo has a tendency to lose his rhythm' that doesn't actually mean anything fundamentally useful but stylistically I'm pretty sure he's a bad matchup for Costa. I would just prefer it if Costa won.
LIGHTWEIGHT: Evan Elder (7-2) vs Genaro Valdéz (10-2)
Man, there are a lot of mirror matches tonight. Once again, we've got two fighters who were undefeated before they set foot in the UFC, once again, they were mostly disposing of lower-caliber competition that did not adequately prepare them for the big show, and once again, they are both 0-2 under the corporate banner and facing down the possibility of a deadly third consecutive loss. I feel like I'm writing a loving AI preview of this event. This is the equivalent of attempting to describe the taste of cardboard. Which is disrespectful! Evan Elder works his rear end off and he hasn't really looked BAD in his UFC fights, he just hasn't won, and Genaro Valdéz went toe-to-toe with Matt Frevola and had one of the better one-round rock-em-sock-em fights of the year. Most people get dropped by Frevola once and lose consciousness; Genaro ate four knockdowns in a single round. But he, too, lost.
EVAN ELDER BY DECISION. Genaro hits a lot loving harder than Elder does, but he also plods and swings wide and takes an awful lot of shots to the head. I don't think Elder will put him down, but he'll outpoint him.
FLYWEIGHT: Tyson Nam (21-13-1) vs Azat Maksum (16-0)
Tyson Nam looked like he was getting somewhere right up until he wasn't. Long celebrated as one of the rarest of birds--a terrifying knockout puncher in the flyweight division, where heavy hands are few and farbetween--Nam seemed to be doing the unthinkable and turning back the clock, hitting his stride in his late thirties, taking fighters like Sergio Pettis, Kai Kara-France and Matt Schnell the distance, and absolutely loving obliterating everyone below that high bar. After he punched Ode' Osbourne out in mid-air last August people were ready to catapult him straight to the top ten. Unfortunately, his ten (ten) years without a stoppage loss came to an end this past March when Bruno Silva dropped him with a front kick to the face and choked him out. A solid decade of being terrifying ended on a Brazilian man's toes. And now he's been dropped all the way back down to the welcome wagon. Azat Maksum has an awful lot of hype from the 'smart' internet fans I follow in an attempt to seem more informed than I actually am. He the best fighter out of Kazakhstan, which is actually high praise given the shocking level of competition found in a country that relatively small, and his style is balanced and dangerous as hell--lots of powerful overhands, lots of jumping on quick, tight chokes, and a deceptively fast straight right alongside a decent technical wrestling game.
It's a test for Maksum. The UFC wants to see if he can compete with a spoiler. I'm erring on the side of caution. AZAT MAKSUM BY DECISION.
LIGHTWEIGHT: Alex Munoz (6-2) vs Carl Deaton III (17-6)
This is like pulling loving teeth, except the teeth represent my writing and having to write the same thing over and over. Alex Munoz: A fighter who was undefeated, joined the UFC, and is now 0-2 in the majors! He's even been MIA for almost two and a half years, just like a half-dozen other writeups today! Carl Deaton III is a regional fighter who spent his career battling nobodies in tiny rooms and losing to the better fighters he faced up until the UFC yanked him out of the ether as a last-minute injury replacement! He lost and now they're stuck with him! These words feel like they're tattooed onto the insides of my god damned eyelids. There's nothing else here on this card. It's just losing streaks, fighters who've barely shown up over the past three years, and late replacements fighting out their contractually obligated matches, and the longer the Contender Series goes on, and the longer the UFC promoted fight cards almost every single week, the more common this will be. We're not to 100% Contender Series cards yet, but by god, we will be very, very soon. It'll happen. And we won't even notice.
ALEX MUNOZ BY DECISION. Carls aren't allowed to be happy tonight.
WOMEN'S BANTAMWEIGHT: Ashlee Evans-Smith (6-5) vs Ailin Perez (7-2)
this is yet another fight with someone on a losing streak who hasn't shown up for three years and a regional padded-record person who does not seem to belong here
Ashlee Evans-Smith hasn't fought since losing to Norma Dumont all the way back in November of 2020, and a steroid flag from USADA last year after a random out-of-competition test kept her away even longer. Ashlee's last UFC victory was all the way back in April of 2018. Before that, it was September of 2016. Ashlee Evans-Smith is 1 for her last 5, and counting that far back requires traversing more than six years of time and space. Ailin Perez was a somewhat-hyped pickup with a not-really-but-sort-of undefeated record last year--she had one loss on her record for repeatedly fouling and illegally kneeing Tamires Vidal during a Samurai Fight House match that was held in a gym on some filthy puzzle mats and the least convincing fight fencing I've seen outside of a bar--and after giving a bunch of interviews about how she was the next big thing at 145 pounds and she was going to be the woman who dethroned Amanda Nunes, Perez promptly got rolled by Stephanie Egger, who choked her out in two rounds. Perez is back down to Women's Bantamweight now. It's a smart move.
AILIN PEREZ BY DECISION. Ashlee Evans-Smith was already only barely holding onto her UFC contract back in fuckin' 2017. She hasn't fought in three years and I don't know how to even begin describing the level of rust she has to shake off here. Her main talent was always being unbelievably tough, but that's a real unfortunate skill to have when the wolves are at the door.
Prelims begin in half an hour.
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Jul 15, 2023 23:28
