- CarlCX
- Dec 14, 2003
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We are back in London. This card has 15 loving fights on it and somehow none of them fell through, which is wild. This includes 9 goddamn prelims in a regular prelim slot, so either we're getting a lot of finishes, we're getting no dead air, or the broadcast is going to get very, very funny.
CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 67: A REFERENCE TO BRITISH POP
SATURDAY, JULY 22 FROM THE O2 ARENA IN LONDON, ENGLAND
PRELIMS 9 AM PDT / 12 PM EDT | MAIN CARD 12 PM PDT / 3 PM EDT VIA ESPN+
Ever since Conor McGregor retired from being a part-time mixed martial artist in favor of becoming a full-time criminal, the UFC has been chasing that United Kingdom dragon in a desperate attempt to reincarnate their money printer. And after a bunch of failed attempts, over the last two years they suddenly managed to get what they wanted.
A new British invasion! Multiple cards in London! Tom Aspinall, taking the heavyweight division by storm! Molly McCann, climbing the Women's Flyweight ranks! Arnold Allen, one step away from a title shot! Paddy Pimblett, the world's favorite inexplicable sensation, cruising up the lightweight ladder! The UK was taking over, and Dana White was counting his money, and everything was great.
And then Tom Aspinall's leg exploded. And then Erin Blanchfield tore Molly McCann's arm off. And then Max Holloway beat the stuffing out of Arnold Allen. And then Paddy Pimblett won the worst judging decision of 2022 and decided to take all of 2023 off.
It is July. We are in the dead middle belly of Summer. And the march of the British must resume, because the world is never allowed to know peace.
i just wanted something different.
MAIN EVENT: TWO LEGS GOOD, DOUBLE LEGS BAD
HEAVYWEIGHT: Tom Aspinall (12-3, #5) vs Marcin Tybura (24-7, #10)
It's very rare for the heavyweight division to get a genuinely good prospect. There are plenty of heavy punchers, plenty of knockout artists, plenty of power-wrestlers, but the truly exciting folks, the ones who can do it all, the ones you watch fight and instinctually murmur holy poo poo they're going to be a champion one day about--you get one of those every five years or so, if you're lucky. The division of talent and the zero-sum knockout game that is 265 pounds weeds out many.
In 2022, Tom Aspinall was that rare prospect. At a particularly bleak time for the division--Francis Ngannou being pushed out by the UFC, Ciryl Gane falling from contendership, Stipe Miocic missing in action, Derrick Lewis on the cusp of retirement--Aspinall was a big, promising beacon. He was a huge 6'5", he was an accomplished striker, wrestler and grappler, and he was the rare heavyweight talent who seemed capable of putting it all together. By the summer he was 5-0 in the UFC, he'd stopped every one of his opponents, and he'd just become the first man to submit Alexander Volkov in twelve years.
And, most importantly, he was British, meaning the UFC would give him every single thing they possibly loving could.
One year almost to the day before this week's card, at the same arena as this week's card, Aspinall was given the biggest test of his career: Curtis "Razor" Blaydes, the seemingly eternal #1 contender. At the time, I summarized it thusly:
And as much as I enjoy it when the UFC's best-laid plans go to waste, I think this will work out exactly the way they want it to. Curtis Blaydes is a terrifying fighter, and he has paths to victory here--anyone who wrestles and hits as hard as he does is more than capable of beating anyone on the planet--but while I do think he can ultimately get Aspinall down if he wants him there, Aspinall's showed a quick, tricky sweeping game off his back and the ability to get right back up. Aspinall's speed and accuracy are solid standup advantages against Blaydes' power punching, and his clinch strikes in particular make prolonged grappling on the fence inadvisable.
The x-factor here is time. Tom Aspinall is very, very good, but he's also never had a professional fight reach a ninth minute. He's amazing at being the hammer; he's untested as the nail. If Blaydes can get him down, hold him there and wear on him, it's fully feasible by the third round Aspinall will be a dead fish and Blaydes will be able to do whatever he wants.
But I'm not convinced it'll get there. Tom Aspinall by TKO. But it'd be nice to be wrong, because nothing is more fun than an entire arena of quiet, angry drunk people.
It was a fascinating test. We never got to finish it. Thirteen seconds into the fight, Tom Aspinall threw a leg kick; two seconds later, he was on the ground screaming and the fight was over, his meniscus and MCL having been torn apart. Fifteen seconds, and a two-year run to the top was gone, replaced by an excruciatingly long year of surgery, rehab and rebuilding.
And over that same year, Marcin Tybura has been rebuilding, too. "Tybur" entered the international spotlight as the champion of Russia's M-1 Global, but he is not and has never been the big, hot new thing at Heavyweight; he's seven years and almost twenty fights deep into his UFC career. Half of his opponents aren't even with the company anymore. He lost his debut, he picked up a few wins, and then most of the MMA world wrote him off for good after a disastrous few years in which he not only went 1 for 5, but got knocked out three times in four fights. More than a comeback, most expected his imminent release.
But the UFC, defying expectations, kept Tybura on. And Tybura, defying expectations, promptly went on the best run of his career.
Over a blistering 15 months, Tybura racked up a five-fight winning streak. He ground Sergei Spivac to dust, he outgrappled Maxim Grishin, he punched all of Ben Rothwell's blood out of his face, he earned the love of the internet by destroying Greg Hardy, and he overcame a near-knockout loss to pound Walt Harris out in one round. Less than a year and a half ago Marcin Tybura was seemingly done in the UFC; five fights later, he was ranked in the top ten. Finally, he had the momentum he craved--finally, he had the attention he deserved.
And then Alexander Volkov punched him up for three rounds, made him go 0 for 16 on takedown attempts, and ejected him from contendership. And between recovery, rescheduling and illness, it was the last time Tybura would be seen for nearly a year.
Marcin returned last summer, and he's 2-0 since coming back, but if we're being honest, he occupies no part of the greater MMA consciousness. He fought Alexandr Romanov, who was ranked two spots below him, and should by all rights have left with a draw but was gifted a decision instead, and he followed that by fighting Blagoy Ivanov, who was ranked five spots below him, and won one of the least eventful decisions of the year. Neither fight gave him momentum from either a divisional or performance standpoint, neither fight earned him a mote of grace with the fans.
And, clearly, neither fight earned him a lick of consideration from the UFC, because the degree to which they're setting him up to lose here is incredible.
If the UFC wanted, they could have thrown Aspinall in with a top contender. He's still got a bunch of fan goodwill, he's still ranked #5. If they wanted to test his ability to beat the top guys in the division, that would still have been wholly feasible. They didn't. They slotted him in against Marcin Tybura, who spent his last two fights struggling with fighters who are barely clinging to UFC employment.
Because the UFC doesn't want to see if Tom Aspinall can hang with the top guys. They want Tom Aspinall to get a win with the minimal amount of risk he won't.
And as far as this fight goes, the biggest question mark isn't skill, but recovery. It's always scary when fighters come back from big injuries and big layoffs. Will Aspinall be able to perform like he used to? Even if his leg is perfectly healthy, will he be scared to use it? Will he be tentative?
Because a tentative Tom Aspinall could get ground into the dirt by Marcin Tybura. He does not care about destiny or the audience or Dana White's drug budget: He will grate Aspinall into the fence for five goddamn rounds and smile.
But I'm choosing to believe Aspinall's going to be fully functional, and that means TOM ASPINALL BY TKO.
CO-MAIN EVENT: I CAN'T LEAVE WITHOUT MY BUDDY SUPERFLY
WOMEN'S FLYWEIGHT: Molly McCann (13-5) vs Julija Stoliarenko (10-7-1)
And then, on the topic of going back to what worked before, you have Molly McCann.
Molly McCann's meteoric rise during the Big British Marketing Year made it easy to forget that she was on the verge of getting cut before it started. "Meatball" had just dropped two fights in a row, one to future title challenger Taila Santos and the other to the soon-to-be-fired Lara Fritzen, and even her next fight, a win against Ji Yeon Kim, had been a very close, narrow thing. Her position was shaky.
So the UFC started giving her more favorable matchups. As I put it the last time we were at the O2 for a Tom Aspinall fight card:
Which is probably why the UFC has seen fit to have her fight Hannah Goldy, who conveniently was dominated last year by Diana Belbiţă, whom McCann thrashed. Goldy is, in fact, 1-2 in the UFC, her one win coming against the recently fired, 4-5 Emily Whitmire. Oh, and also, she lost to Diana one weight class down from here. Oh, and the loss was because she couldn't deal with Diana's pressure striking or her combinations and got repeatedly lit up in the pocket up against the cage.
Wait, that's how she lost her other fight, too? Getting picked apart by a superior, higher-pressure striker just outside of her range?
Wow. How crazy. You'd almost think they set that up on purpose.
Molly did her job and crushed Goldy in a single round. She was on a three-fight winning streak, she was getting one of the UFC's biggest marketing pushes--everything was going her way.
And then, in one of the most inexplicable choices I've ever seen, the UFC decided to have her fight stone-cold killer Erin Blanchfield. In New York.
In the middle of the prelims.
I still don't get it, and neither did Molly. Blanchfield tore her arm apart in the first round and that was that. The UFC sacrificed her to one of their best fighters in front of a handful of people with no fanfare. And now, realizing they broke their toy, they want to glue it back together.
And that's where Julija Stoliarenko comes in. Stoliarenko is an absolute badass--a multi-time champion in jiu-jitsu, a former bantamweight champion for Invicta, and even a champion in the beautifully unhinged Lethwei, better known as Burmese boxing, a form of bareknuckle kickboxing where headbutting is not only allowed but encouraged. Stoliarenko has won fights across multiple disciplines and in multiple countries.
In the UFC, she's 1-5.
Here's the thing about Julija's previous MMA success: The combined records of the ten women she's defeated total 24-14, and 17 of those victories--and seven of those losses--come from just two of them. Almost all of her victories have come against rookies. Her only UFC win was a forty-two second armbar over the 11-9 Jessica Rose-Clark. Everything else has seen her get overwhelmed.
Because her entire MMA gameplan centers around getting people on the ground and armbarring them as fast as is humanly possible. If she can do that, she's golden! Otherwise, she's fully and completely boned.
The UFC broke Molly McCann's streak, and now they've gone back to the well and given her a one-dimensional fighter who's 1 for her last 5 to beat. If Molly lets Julija take her down, well, there's only one thing Julija does. But Molly's counter-wrestling is solid enough, and Julija's striking defense is lkoose enough, that I think the UFC gets exactly what it wants out of this one. MOLLY MCCANN BY TKO.
MAIN CARD: GET IN MY MODERATELY SMALLER GUARD
FEATHERWEIGHT: Nathaniel Wood (19-5) vs Andre Fili (22-9 (1))
Nathaniel Wood is nicknamed "The Prospect" and that seems like a terrible choice. Ideally, you want to not be a prospect forever. Ideally, you should nickname yourself Nathaniel "The UFC Featherweight Champion of the World" Wood and then Bruce Buffer has to announce you that way no matter what happens, and possession is 9/10 of the law. Wood had a fantastic 2022, scoring back-to-back victories over Charles Rosa and the almost-but-not-quite-there Charles Jourdain, and then 2023 started and kicked him right in the jimmy. A rare Brit vs Brit showdown with Lerone Murphy on the Edwards/Usman 3 card this past March got scratched when, a month before the fight, Wood managed to slice his leg open in fight camp. A bunch of stitches and a too-long recovery later, Wood is back to try to reclaim his momentum.
Andre Fili, on the other hand, is just desperately trying to maintain any momentum at all. Fili is one of the UFC's undersung road warriors, a 20-fight veteran who's been kicking around just three months shy of a decade, but his last three years with the company have been loving rough. Since July of 2020 he's been wrestled to death by Bryce Mitchell, got a No Contest instead of what looked like an easy win after unintentionally gouging Daniel Pineda's eye, got flattened by Joanderson Brito in just forty-one seconds, and only barely squeaked by Bill Algeo by split decision this past September. And then, as if paying some sort of karmic price for the Pineda fight, Fili had to bow out of a fight this February when he abruptly started losing vision in his right eye.
Which is concerning! Especially when no actual reason was ever given for it--just 'something's wrong, I'm getting surgery, it's fine.' Generally speaking, if your eye stops working, you should probably stop participating in the sport where people punch you in it. And it's a shame, because my instinct here is ANDRE FILI BY DECISION. The thing is, Wood is a bantamweight. He's 5'6" with 69" reach. He's giving up half a foot of size in this fight. But he can't make the weight anymore, so he's moving up by force. And Fili's both a solid counter-wrestler and pretty adept at using his kicks and jabs to maintain his range. But boy, things like his eye not working give me real concerns about his capacity. I hope it's actually fine.
 MIDDLEWEIGHT: Paul Craig (16-6-1, #9 at Light-Heavyweight) vs André Muniz (23-5, #14)
You know me, I'm in the tank for fights that could have some good grappling, and this could have some real, real good loving grappling.
Paul "Bearjew" Craig is trying to get his groove back. Craig, and I mean this with as much respect as possible for what will inevitably be a backhanded compliment, has long been a weird sort of meme at Light-Heavyweight. His striking is slow, his wrestling isn't great, he gets clipped in almost every fight--and he still has wins over a bunch of people including the last world champion and the current #1 contender because his guard is so goddamn deadly and people just cannot keep themselves from the sweet temptation of diving into it and getting choked out or armbarred or, sometimes, both at once. But after seven years Craig was still only 8-6 in the division, and Johnny Walker scrambling his brain in a single round told him it was time to try something new. So Craig is dropping to 185 for the first time in his career in the hopes that it'll give him a bit of an edge.
And the UFC is giving that edge a real, real stiff test. André "Sergipano" Muniz was, up until this past February, one of the company's scariest new grapplers. Two wins on the Contender Series (how DARE you grapple and not get a finish) led to a five-fight winning streak in the UFC, and three of those victories were by fast, terrifying armbars, with the most notable being the one that broke the arm of Ronaldo "Jacaré" Souza, one of the greatest grapplers in mixed martial arts history--the one and only submission loss in a 36-fight, hall-of-fame worthy career. Which made it even funnier when Muniz actually got into the rankings by beating but failing to submit Uriah fuckin' Hall. But all of that momentum was lost at the hands of Brendan Allen, who not only beat him but submitted him--the first submission loss in Muniz's career. It was frustrating and humbling, and now, Muniz wants revenge.
This is a potentially very interesting fight. Both men have deadly grappling games, both men have been caught flat-footed when said grappling games did not work, and both men can strike, but it's really not their strongest suit. It's wholly possible this becomes a kickboxing match, which would probably favor Muniz--Craig may be bigger and stronger, but his punches have always been a bit loose, better for brawling than the technical approach. But I'm really hoping this one goes to the ground and we get to see whose jiu-jitsu reigns supreme. But we also haven't seen Craig make this cut, and we have no idea how he's going to look. But--gently caress it, why not--PAUL CRAIG BY SUBMISSION. I like it when funny things happen and I want them to happen more often.
LIGHTWEIGHT: Jai Herbert (12-4-1) vs Fares Ziam (13-4)
Of all the people the UFC brought over for their new wave of British superstars, Jai Herbert has easily the biggest gap between how scary he is as a fighter and how well that fear translates into success. "The Black Country Banger," which remains one of my least favorite nicknames to type, came into the UFC in 2020 as the 9-1 155-pound Cage Warriors champion, and over the following three years he's gone 2-3-1 with the UFC--and that includes getting knocked out by a featherweight and a 42 year-old lightweight. Herbert has terrifying range and power, particularly by the standards of the lightweight division, but he just can't consistently put it together against the UFC's calibre of competition.
And Fares Ziam represents a big set of problems for him. Ziam--who you'd think I'd like better, as "Smile Killer" seems up my alley in terms of esoteric nicknames, but nope, it does absolutely nothing for me--is having a similarly difficult go of it in the UFC. His 3-2 with the company doesn't look a great deal better, particularly as one of those victorious nods was a real close majority decision, but there's a pattern at work. Ziam's strength is his stand-up. He, too, is a 6'1" range striker, and he, too, is very good at it--but he struggles with anyone who can successfully wrestle him to the ground and force him into prolonged grappling exchanges.
Jai Herbert is not going to try to wrestle Fares Ziam. If anything, Ziam does have a double-leg in his back pocket he likes to occasionally try out, and he might give it a shot here. But this should largely be a standup war, which should be interesting. Herbert is historically the harder hitter, but he also likes to overengage and that's where he gets in trouble; Ziam favors sticking and moving, and won't want to get into the pocket unless he has to. My inkling is FARES ZIAM BY DECISION, but it could really go either way.
FEATHERWEIGHT: Lerone Murphy (12-0-1) vs Joshua Culibao (11-1-1)
Lerone Murphy is the most undefeated fighter to really, really not be undefeated at all. Virtually all media scores had Murphy getting beaten by Zubaira Tukhugov in Murphy's UFC debut, but the judges called it a draw. Murphy, fighting at a steady average of one bout per year, was dealt a difficult hand in his last fight, as Nathaniel Wood's aforementioned injury left Murphy facing upstart Gabriel Santos in the latter's UFC debut--and once again, the media scored the fight almost unanimously for Santos, and once again, the judges sided with Murphy and handed him a split decision. Murphy's talents are visible, he's fast, he's multifaceted and he's got a great, quick, sniping right hand, but boy, he's gotten lucky.
Joshua Culibao has also had a pretty difficult time with judging during his UFC tenure. Three years ago he went to a split draw against Charles Jourdain that, numerically, would have been a victory for him had one judge not inexplicably scored a round in which he was consistently fighting back a 10-8. One year ago he found himself stuck with a split decision victory over Seung Woo Choi--after one judge saw a round where Culibao dropped Choi and outstruck him two to one and decided to give it, somehow, to Choi. Ordinarily I comfort myself by saying 'well, there's something about their style the judges don't like,' but Culibao's style is fine--he just gets the crap luck of judges seemingly not caring that he's dropping people on their asses.
JOSHUA CULIBAO BY DECISION. After Murphy's last performance, I just don't have a great deal of faith in him against someone who moves as fast and can hit as quickly as Culibao. Of course, if Culibao actually GETS the decision is anyone's fuckin' guess.
PRELIMS: WHY IS THERE A loving WOMEN'S BANTAMWEIGHT CONTENDERSHIP MATCH DOWN HERE
BANTAMWEIGHT: Davey Grant (13-6) vs Daniel Marcos (14-0)
Davey Grant is a decade into his UFC tenure, and in some ways, it feels like he's just getting started. Grant's unsuccessful run at The Ultimate Fighter 18 led to a three-year layoff to heal up two busted legs, and then his 2016 comeback ended in a two-year layoff over a staph infection in his arms, and then COVID kept him out of action an entire year atop that. It's only since reaching 2020, and his mid-thirties, that Davey Grant has finally begun fighting consistently. And...he's pretty good! He's reinvented himself as a hard-punching boxer to complement his previous ground skills, and the rounding out of his style has led to a real close split with Adrian Yanez, a knockout of Louis Smolka, and his retiring of the legendary Raphael Assunção after hurting him and choking him out. Daniel Marcos is a less-known quantity: He beat a relative rookie on the Contender Series in Brandon "Let's Go" Lewis and knocked out the 18-4 Saimon Oliveira in his UFC debut this past January, but Lewis was visibly out of his depth and Oliveira was a big, sweeping brawler who whiffed on 3/4 of his strikes and got crushed for it. We've seen enough of Marcos to know he's fast and vicious and he hits real hard, but we haven't seen him really tested.
And Davey Grant is a solid test. Marcos likes to back up his broad striking style with his ground game, but as Raphael Assunção can attest, that's a dangerous, dangerous thing to do against Grant. I think Marcos' insistence on fighting behind his kicks will get him in trouble with Grant's hands, and I think his tendency to push into scrambles will cost him his undefeated record. DAVEY GRANT BY SUBMISSION.
WELTERWEIGHT: Danny Roberts (18-7) vs Johnny Parsons (8-3)
I could tell you about these fighters--Danny Roberts, the Jack Della Maddalena victim who should probably be 1 for his last 6 but clings to two victories instead thanks to bad judging, Jonny Parsons, the Contender Series victor who somehow got a contract off a deeply controversial split decision, disappeared for almost two years, and is only now ready to roll--but I cannot help dealing more in the abstracts than the realities, where this fight is concerned. Danny Roberts is nicknamed "Hot Chocolate" thanks to his past working life or, possibly, his love of being warm, comforting and emotionally soothing. Johnny Parsons is nicknamed "The Sluggernaut" because he has a personal, biting hatred for words, for concepts, and most importantly, for me. Do you want to believe in a world where Hot Chocolate is good, or are you a Sluggernaut nihilist?
This is not a fight. It's a moral struggle. Choose wisely. DANNY ROBERTS BY DECISION.
LIGHTWEIGHT: Marc Diakiese (16-6) vs Joel Alvarez (19-3)
Seven years ago Marc Diakiese fooled the UFC into thinking he was a kickboxer, and he's been humiliating fighters ever since by exposing who is and is not susceptible to British Wrestling, which is, as we know, the most shameful wrestling style there is. Against anyone who can't wrestle--looking at you, Lando Vannata--he does just fine. Against, say, Michael Johnson last December, he goes 0 for 6 and looks silly trying. Now, on one hand, Joel Alvarez is almost half a foot taller than Diakiese, has some real powerful kicks, and is very, very good at submitting people from the bottom. On the other hand, Joel Alvarez has to be good at submitting people from the bottom, because he is the incredibly rare UFC fighter with a 0% takedown defense average. Every fighter who has attempted a takedown on him in the UFC has succeeded, and they've succeeded every time they've tried it.
That does not give me a great deal of confidence in this pick, but I'm making it anyway: JOEL ALVAREZ BY DECISION. Diakiese likes to get too loose with his wrestling sometimes, he's not going to want to stand for long against someone with as big of a range and power advantage as Alvarez, and loose takedown attempts get necks snatched.
HEAVYWEIGHT: Mick Parkin (6-0) vs Jamal Pogues (10-3)
Oh, yeah, baby, it is REGIONAL HEAVYWEIGHT TIME. If you think I've complained a lot about record padding before, buddy, let me tell you about England. Up until his appearance on the Contender Series last year, the combined record of Mick Parkin's five professional opponents was 18-46. "But Carl, surely the Contender Series gave him a real test," I hear you cry. You fool. You beautiful, tragic rube. His opponent was a 5-0 guy who gave up his back by throwing back to back spinning elbows. And up until that moment, he was crushing Parkin. Jamal Pogues, by contrast, is just a wrestler-rear end wrestler. He wants to take you down. That is his entire gameplan. We just watched him take Josh Parisian down five times, which would be more impressive if it hadn't taken him eleven attempts. He doesn't really want to strike, he doesn't want to engage at length, he wants to shoot.
Look: It's heavyweight and neither of these guys seems all that great. Mick Parkin likes his grappling, but I don't know that he's ready to get wrestled for fifteen minutes. JAMAL POGUES BY DECISION, but it's heavyweight, so who knows.
WELTERWEIGHT: Makhmud Muradov (25-8) vs Bryan Barberena (18-10)
Three fights ago, Bryan Barberena was knocking out Robbie Lawler on pay-per-view. Two fights ago, Bryan Barberena was co-main eventing a fight night against Rafael dos Anjos. One fight ago, Bryan Barberena did the UFC a big favor by jumping in on short notice against Gunnar Nelson to save a main card fight. And then he lost--making it two losses in a row--so now he's been busted all the way back down to buried in mid-prelims against a hard-charging knockout-artist prospect the UFC just doesn't really know what to do with, because by god, you don't ever do the UFC favors. They will have Gunnar Nelson take your arm away and then when you call them in the morning they'll act like they don't know you and ask you to fight some guy from Uzbekistan who shows up once a year to punch people for funsies.
MAKHMUD MURADOV BY DECISION. You only think they forgave you for ruining Sage Northcutt, Bryan. They never did. They'll never forget.
WOMEN'S BANTAMWEIGHT: Ketlen Vieira (13-3, #4) vs Pannie Kianzad (16-6, #6)
No, come on. Come the gently caress on. I’m not even going to post come-on-dana-come-on.jpg because this isn’t even a joke anymore, it’s just loving stupid.
Amanda Nunes retired. There is no champion in this division. It is a wide open world and it needs to get oxygen into every contender anyone could possibly care about. This is a top five fight at Women's Bantamweight, fought between one woman who almost beat the #1 contender in her last fight and one woman who has only lost to said #1 contender in the last four years. Up until last week, Ketlen Vieira was the only person to beat Holly Holm since Nunes herself. This fight has actual, honest to god title contendership ramifications.
It is four fights into the prelims. It is less important than Mick Parkin. It is only barely more important than Yanal Ashmouz. The co-main event on this card is two unranked Women's Flyweights, one of whom is a half-step away from getting released, and Ketlen Vieira vs Pannie Kianzad, a fight to determine who is one contendership bout away from a world championship, is buried so far down the card that its primary audience is mole people.
And it's not even a bad fight! Ketlen's a smart, movement-heavy counterstriker and Kianzad is a clinch-centric pressure grappler, their styles were built to create a deeply intriguing clash. But heaven for-loving-fend women who could be fighting for your title get equal billing with Jai Herbert or Jonny Parsons.
I'll never not be mad and I'll never not be exhausted. KETLEN VIEIRA BY DECISION.
LIGHTWEIGHT: Chris Duncan (10-1) vs Yanal Ashmouz (7-0)
I don't know how long this fight will last, but it should be a lot of fun while it's happening. Chris Duncan finally made his UFC debut this past March after needing a second try at the Contender Series, but his hard-brawling, hard-wrestling, get-in-your-face style managed to get him a real tight split decision against Omar Morales--although it required abandoning the standup in the third round and just shooting takedowns until the bell rang, which is perfectly valid. Yanal Ashmouz made his debut not just on the same card, but just one fight down on the prelims, and he was the intended victim for hyped British prospect Sam Patterson, and he overcame a deficit of half a foot in size and 10" in reach and knocked Patterson silly in seventy-five seconds. In a sample size of one, he seemingly hits like a truck and has very, very good timing on his counters.
Which makes it hard not to be in the tank for him. It was a hell of a knockout, and comparatively, he seems a lot scarier than Duncan. But it's awful easy to get overexcited about knockouts. But--getting overexcited about knockouts is half the fun of this silly, silly sport. YANAL ASHMOUZ BY TKO.
WOMEN'S STRAWWEIGHT: Shauna Bannon (5-0) vs Bruna Brasil (8-3-1)
I'd like to go back to something I wrote for Bruna Brasil's UFC debut this past April.
Denise Gomes: I am sorry you are in the make-them-look-good position now, but that's what the UFC sees in you. Gomes had one fight where she got repeatedly hurt by a superior kickboxer and dumped to the floor with Muay Thai clinch trips, and the UFC is following that up by booking her against another superior kickboxer with her own set of clinch trip highlights, except Brasil has a better record than Loma and she's also a lot loving bigger. If there's a point of worry for Brasil in this fight, it's her hands--her kicks are very, very good, but she gets loose with her punches and that leaves openings for fighters like Gomes who will blitz through openings. Still: BRUNA BRASIL BY TKO.
But Shauna hasn't had a real stiff test yet. Bruna will be by far the best striker she's faced, but, uh, Bruna also looked real, real bad in her debut. How much of that was jitters, how much was underestimating Gomes, I don't know. On paper, Bruna should be a big problem for Bannon; the elbows and the leg kicks should give her a lot of trouble. In reality? SHAUNA BANNON BY DECISION. I just need to see something from Bruna to believe in her.
FLYWEIGHT: Jafel Filho (14-3) vs Daniel Barez (16-5)
Oh, hey, Jafel. Nice to see you again.
Yes.
Man, remember a few months ago when you made a short-notice debut against one of the most hyped prospects in the sport in Muhammad Mokaev and almost snapped his leg in half?
Yes, I do.
Remember how you were like thirty seconds away from winning a split decision and getting a huge upset victory and becoming a ranked flyweight when he choked you out?
Yes. Yes, I remember that. Thank you.
Did you hear that Mokaev is about to fight Tim Elliott for a top ten spot and could be getting fast-tracked to a title shot?
I did hear that. I'm very happy for him.
Do you have any thoughts about how you almost beat him and now you're fighting a debuting guy with one week of notice on the curtain-jerking slot of the prelims?
Yes.
JAFEL FILHO BY SUBMISSION.
Fights begin at the top of the hour, so ~25 minutes.
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Jul 22, 2023 16:36
