- CarlCX
- Dec 14, 2003
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That was a well aimed kick. Oof.
Also we're 30 minutes out from UFC prelims, so:
CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 71: THE MARKETING APOTHEOSIS
SATURDAY, AUGUST 19 FROM THE TD GARDEN IN BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS
EARLY PRELIMS 3:30 PM PDT / 6:30 PM EDT | PRELIMS 5 / 8 | MAIN CARD 7 / 10 PM VIA PAY-PER-VIEW
Yeah, we're not wasting any loving time with the preview blurb on this one. I have too much to say and it's all going to be in the main event anyway. Welcome to the weekend where Dana White tries to get everything he ever wanted. We're going deep on this one, strap in.
so much to love, so much to fear.
MAIN EVENT: A TALE OF TWO CITIES
BANTAMWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP: Aljamain Sterling (23-3, Champion) vs Sean O'Malley (16-1 (1), #2)
Against my deepest hopes, unfortunately, we are here. I'm going to tell you a pair of stories, but before that, let me preface with something I wrote back in March.
It's surprisingly difficult to discuss the bantamweight contendership scene without feeling as though I am describing the combat sports equivalent of the wealth inequality problem.
Bantamweight is absolutely spoiled for contenders right now. Petr Yan is a former champion who took the current champion to his limit, Merab Dvalishvili is a crushing pressure fighter on an eight-fight winning streak, Marlon Vera is a fan favorite with huge momentum who just knocked out the greatest bantamweight of all time, Cory Sandhagen is a remarkable talent whose only losses have come against world champions. Even the lower half of the ranks have surging, streaking fighters like Ricky Simón, Umar Nurmagomedov and Chris Gutierrez on their way up.
But they are, of course, not the people getting title shots. TJ Dillashaw, with one win in four years, got a title shot. Henry Cejudo, who retired three years ago, is getting the next title shot. And Sean O'Malley, who went from #13 to #1 in one fight after favorable matchmaking and a terrible decision? You better believe there's a reason every contender except O'Malley is about to fight one another. This fight between the #2 and #3 contenders is just two weeks before Marlon Vera and Cory Sandhagen, the #4 and #5 contenders, fight each other. And I would all but promise you that the winner of each fight will wind up fighting one another later this year in a title eliminator on the same pay-per-view where Sean O'Malley finally gets his shot at whoever's left standing after Sterling vs Cejudo.
It's been five months since I wrote that. Petr Yan got utterly dominated by Merab Dvalishvili, and is no longer a contender. Merab Dvalishvili got publicly poo poo on by the UFC for being unwilling to fight his training partner, friend and champion Aljamain Sterling, and is on ice. Marlon Vera was easily outfought by Cory Sandhagen, instantaneously evaporating his momentum. Cory Sandhagen, the recipient of said momentum, was inexplicably booked against the #11 ranked Umar Nurmagomedov--and when he couldn't compete, rather than saving Sandhagen for a contendership bout, they had him fight Rob Font on short notice, in the process depleting both men. Ricky Simón got knocked out by Song Yadong; Song Yadong is now injured. Chris Gutierrez got taken apart by Pedro Munhoz. The unretired-but-unsuccessful Henry Cejudo is injured. Umar Nurmagomedov is injured.
Virtually every contender has fallen through activity and bad booking. With the exception of the perennially is-he-or-is-he-not-retired Dominick Cruz, every person in the bantamweight top ten has fought at least once--some twice--in those last five months.
Every person except Sean O'Malley.
And this is the crux of the story of this fight. I complain about the UFC's matchmaking and marketing on a near-weekly basis, and after a certain volume of complaints, one could be forgiven for thinking it's a normal condition. If they fumble the ball with fighters so often, maybe that's just all they know how to do, and maybe that means it's not worth complaining about.
But that's the trap. They absolutely know how to market fighters. They absolutely know how to set people up for success. The vast majority of the time, they simply do not care. And no fighter exemplifies this like Sean O'Malley.
Let's do some contrasting, here. Both Aljamain Sterling and Sean O'Malley were looked at as potentially valuable prospects when they made their UFC debuts. Sterling's been at it almost twice as long--he's six months away from crossing a decade in the UFC and this is his 19th fight with the company, where O'Malley graduated from the Contender Series in December of 2017 and this will be his 10th--which means we can get a certain level of enlightenment by looking at the paths both men had to take to reach their first crack at the UFC championship.
During Sterling's path to a title shot, along with several unranked fights, he challenged the following top-fifteen ranked fighters:
- Takeya Mizugaki, Johnny Eduardo, Bryan Caraway, Raphael Assunção, Renan Barão, Marlon Moraes, Brett Johns, Cody Stamann, Jimmie Rivera, Cory Sandhagen
And over the course of O'Malley's run to the belt, the ranked fighters he met were:
- Marlon Vera, Pedro Munhoz and Petr Yan
Now, of course, one could say that's unfair. Look at how long Aljamain Sterling has been in the UFC, of course he's fought more people! We need a more equitable comparison. Fortunately, both men took a similar trajectory to their championship bouts, having winning streaks snapped by vicious, first-round knockout losses, after which they bounced back and rode their comebacks to five-fight streaks all the way to the belt. So how do those look, side by side?
Well, in Aljamain Sterling's case, he:
- Dominated and almost knocked out the undefeated, 15-0 Brett Johns
- Submitted the never-finished, 17-1 Cody Stamann
- Punched out the 22-2 Jimmie Rivera's mouthpiece en route to a decision victory
- Outstruck the 18-3 Pedro Munhoz en route to a decision victory
- Choked out the 12-1 Cory Sandhagen, who had never been finished and has yet to be finished again, in ninety seconds
Not too shabby. How about Sean O'Malley? Well, he:
- Knocked out the 22-4 Thomas Almeida at the end of a four-fight losing streak; Almeida was cut immediately afterward
- Got a referee's stoppage over the debuting, 9-4 regional fighter Kris Moutinho; Moutinho would fight once more, lose, and be cut afterward
- Knocked out the 21-3 Raulian Paiva, who had been a career flyweight until one fight prior; Paiva would fight once more, lose, and be cut afterward
- Went to a No Contest with Pedro Munhoz, who was now 20-7 and 1 for his last 5, after O'Malley poked Munhoz in the eye so badly he could no longer see
- Won a split decision over the 16-3 Petr Yan, despite being outstruck, outwrestled and outgrappled, and despite losing the fight on a truly impressive 25 out of 26 media scorecards
Well, that's different. You know what's funny, actually? Despite Sterling's much longer career, a whole bunch of his opponents are still in the UFC. Hell, a whole bunch of his opponents are still ranked. After eight UFC victories, Sean O'Malley has only beaten one person who's still in the company, let alone ranked--and it's Petr Yan--and he didn't beat him.
There's one other metric I want to share, here, and it's by far the shortest, but I think it's also the most enlightening. How many of those five-fight runs to the title were actually aired on a proper UFC broadcast, rather than being buried on the prelims?
Well, for the top-ten-ranked Aljamain Sterling, at the time ten fights into his UFC career:
- Three out of five fights were preliminary bouts
And for Sean O'Malley:
- Zero out of five fights were preliminary bouts
Have I beaten this into the ground yet? Because if I have, I promise you, I haven't done so half as much as the UFC has with Sean O'God Damned Malley.
There's this thing Dana White says constantly: You don't wait for fights in the UFC. It's his least favorite thing in the world. Any fighter with the temerity to say they've earned a title shot and will wait for their rightful matchup gets poo poo on at press conferences, called an unprofessional coward who's afraid of competition, and, most often, publicly and privately pressured until they take a fight with a lower-ranked opponent for less money. Sean O'Malley has one fight in the last 13 months. The entire bantamweight division has folded in on itself in an attempt to have all of its potential contenders consume one another, but Sean O'Malley has sat alone, at peace, waiting for the title shot that was incredibly obviously coming as a result of his incredible, one-fight top-ten-worst-decisions-of-2022 winning streak.
Aljamain Sterling defended his title against Henry Cejudo three months ago. He noted that, it being his second title defense in six months and his third in the last year, he wanted to take a few months off to rehab a bicep injury he's been dealing with for essentially that entire span. Dana White made it clear--in public--that either Sterling was defending his belt against O'Malley in three months, or the UFC would at best give O'Malley an interim title fight without him or at worst strip Sterling outright.
There are two stories in this fight. In one story, Aljamain Sterling, one of the sport's best prospects, had to grind his way through the entire bantamweight top ten over the course of almost ten years to get a shot at the championship, and even then he was consigned to barely-promoted preliminary bouts more often than he was featured, and upon winning the title--through a massive debacle involving Petr Yan losing his title by disqualification for illegally kneeing Sterling, for which the UFC kind-of sort-of blamed Sterling for being unable to continue--he was put on an aggressive schedule of title defenses against the UFC's hand-picked contenders and was publicly discouraged from taking time off to rehabilitate his injuries.
In the other story, Sean O'Malley, one of the very first Contender Series babies, who has been given the benefit of more marketing than anyone in the UFC not named Rousey or McGregor, who has appeared on exactly one preliminary bout in a ten-fight career, who has one ranked victory in his entire life and it required one of the most unanimously-disagreed-with decisions in the history of mixed martial arts, gets a title shot after not fighting for almost a year solely because the UFC didn't want a single thing potentially getting in the way of putting Sean O'Malley in a UFC championship match.
And the thing that makes it all truly, deeply maddening is: None of this was necessary.
None of it. None! The UFC doesn't even have to keep putting promotional pressure on Aljamain Sterling in the hopes of crowning a champion they actually want because Aljamain Sterling is leaving the bantamweight division! He's made it clear he's accomplished everything he wanted to and he can barely make the weight cut anymore, and win or lose, he's moving to 145 pounds after this title fight. After this one fight, he's no longer anyone's problem.
And for all of the things I have said about the UFC's marketing of him: Sean O'Malley? He's good! He's genuinely a very good fighter! He's got great awareness of his range, he's both creative and accurate with his striking and it's a deadly combination, and he's tough as hell. Did he go to a No Contest with Pedro Munhoz? Absolutely, but he won the first round before it ended. Did he lose to Petr Yan? I and most other humans think so, but he was also incredibly competitive with Petr loving Yan.
Aljamain Sterling would have been out of the UFC's hair without them publicly running a marathon on his spine. Sean O'Malley would probably have made it into the top ten without the UFC launching him over their entire roster of ranked fighters on a trampoline made of flyweights and future endeavours. But that isn't what they wanted. They didn't want to wait for the right time, they wanted O'Malley in now. And--not for nothing--O'Malley vs a compromised Sterling definitely doesn't hurt.
So will the house win? Does Dana White get the champion of his dreams when Sean O'Malley sleeps his least favorite titleholder? Does Aljamain Sterling bequeath the bantamweight division to Merab Dvalishvili and ride off into the sunset with the UFC's favorite son in the ground?
We know a few things already. Aljamain Sterling's striking, generally-speaking, falls somewhere on the axis between Unorthodox and Not Great. He's deceptively powerful, but his striking technique, particularly as the fight progresses and he gets tired, can be loose to the point of leaving him wide open to counters--which is real, real good for O'Malley's extremely quick, accurate counterpunching. Sean O'Malley's takedown defense, historically, is also not enormously great. He struggles with suffocating, in-your-face grappling pressure, which is where the mass of Petr Yan's offense came in their fight, and Sterling's greatest strength comes from dragging opponents through clinch trips and standing back takes until they let one through, at which point, on the ground, he has proven capable of dismantling anyone.
O'Malley's best chances in this fight come from making Sterling chase him while he snipes him with jabs and crosses. If he can chip Sterling down, tire him out, and keep him from grappling range while they're both still fresh and dry, he's got a very good chance of stopping Sterling.
And I don't believe for a second he'll do it. ALJAMAIN STERLING BY SUBMISSION. Universe, I am asking you to give us all this one. It's been a real rough year.
CO-MAIN EVENT: HITTING RESET
WOMEN'S STRAWWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP: Weili Zhang (23-3, Champion) vs Amanda Lemos (13-2-1, #5)
Boy, that sure was a lot. I may be overcompensating, because despite Women's Strawweight secretly being one of my favorite weight classes, I find I don't have a ton to say about this fight. I'm glad it's happening, I'm glad Weili's finally defending, but it's hard not to see it as a factor of the very weird position the UFC has nudged the division into.
The company wanted Rose Namajunas vs Weili Zhang 3 for the belt and they couldn't put it together. So Weili got Joanna Jędrzejczyk--who is the all-time great and a legend of the sport, but who was also coming off a 2+ year layoff and retired immediately after Zhang crushed her--and Rose got Carla Esparza, who took home the belt after one of the most inscrutable fights in mixed martial arts history. Six months later, Weili did the inevitable, destroyed Carla, and restored her place on the throne.
But that was almost a year ago. In the ten-plus months since last we saw Weili Zhang, her list of contenders has gotten weird. Carla Esparza went on hiatus to have a baby, which, hey, congratulations, good luck, and please don't raise them on your personal diet of Fox News. Rose Namajunas moved up to the flyweight division. Jéssica Andrade went from an obvious top contender to a three-fight losing streak across two separate divisions. But it's not all bad news, because Xiaonan Yan is riding the best victories of her career, setting up a possible all-China superfight, and Tatiana Suarez came back after almost four years on the shelf and was in the top five within just a few months. There are options!
We are not doing those options. We're doing Amanda Lemos.
I don't mean that to dismiss Amanda Lemos as a fighter. She's exceedingly tough, she's a killer as both a striker and a grappler, she's dropped people with jabs and choked out black belts, she's a danger to anyone in any aspect of mixed martial arts. The only people to ever beat her had to essentially kill her to do it, and she's riding two of the best performances of her entire career into her championship bout. Again: By no means a bad fighter, and by no means out of contention here in this fight.
But less than a year and a half ago Jéssica Andrade squeezed her head off in under a round. And now Jéssica Andrade is nowhere near title contention. One fight before Andrade, Lemos was struggling with Angela Hill--who is nowhere near title contention--and probably should have lost a split decision that she instead won. One fight after Andrade, Lemos choked out Michelle Waterson-Gomez, who is amazing, talented, and 1 for her last 6--and that one victory was also, in fact, a split decision against Angela Hill.
Lemos is getting this fight because she knocked out Marina Rodriguez. Which, to be clear, I do not have a single questionable thing to say about. She walked down one of the most successful, mobile boxers in the division and punched her out on her feet. Rodriguez may not have agreed with the stoppage--I'm ambivalent, personally--but that has no bearing on Lemos smashing her. It's by far the best victory of Amanda's career and it wholly justified her place in the rankings.
But it also means, if we're being honest, that she got the title fight off of one victory. She got the title fight because the UFC couldn't get either of the people they wanted in the spot. She got the title fight and she's a +300 underdog because an awful lot of folks don't even know who she is, let alone have faith in her ability to win.
I'm not one of the former, but regretfully, I am one of the latter. Lemos sees her best successes when she can use her power, her aggression and her hands to walk her opponents down. Weili Zhang does not get walked down. She is the walk-downer. Her striking is tight, compact and vicious, her wrestling is a persistent threat, and she's demonstrated both the power and cardio to stay dangerous throughout a fight.
I like Amanda Lemos. I don't think this is her story. But I hope she gets another crack again someday. WEILI ZHANG BY TKO.
MAIN CARD: LOADING A NEW SALVO
WELTERWEIGHT: Neil Magny (28-10, #11) vs Ian Machado Garry (12-0, #13)
With the O'Malley Ascension the UFC needs to reload the Conor McGregor Revolver, and no one is better suited to load that bullet than Neil Magny. Magny's been kicking around the welterweight rankings for almost an entire decade, and his continuing longevity, relevance and strength of schedule are all downright legendary. Unfortunately, so is his proclivity for getting stomped out of actual contendership. That's how the universe has chosen to balance him. He's a 6'3" welterweight with a solid jab, tight clinch wrestling and cardio enough to throw hundreds of punches in three rounds without breaking a sweat, but he doesn't carry much power, he doesn't have the greatest chin, and he has enough problems with pressure and specialization that he's seemingly philosophically incapable of beating fighters inside the top ten. But now, as he is finally aging into his late thirties, Magny is starting to struggle and grit out split decisions and third-round victories over the borderline fighters of the world.
Which makes him a perfect target for Ian Machado Garry, which is funny, because the UFC wanted Garry to fight Geoff Neal, who arguably would have been a stiffer challenge for Garry's striking. Let me say this preemptively: Garry is a very good fighter. He's also a big 6'3" for the division, he's got exceptional timing behind his punches, and while the UFC gave him a real gentle first couple of fights, knocking out Song Kenan and Daniel Rodriguez is genuinely impressive. The problem with Ian Garry is not Ian Garry. The problem is the UFC calls him "The Future" and runs one-sided hype packages about how great he is and, when he's onscreen, puts up graphics like this just to make absolutely sure you don't miss what they're putting down:
And Garry plays his part. He gets his knockouts, he boosts Ireland, and he's just verbatim quoted Conor McGregor multiple times in post-fight interviews. The thing they're doing is not subtle.
And neither is this fight. I will forever have a Neil Magny-shaped place in my heart, but he's been finally slowing down and having trouble with the new crop of fighters who are good at everything, heavy punchers, and, most importantly, actually his size. Despite the 6" reach advantage on Magny's side he's at a sizable disadvantage on the feet, and he, assuredly, knows that. Magny's going to want to put pressure on Garry in the clinch and Garry's going to want to keep him at bay and smack him with rights every time he comes in. Inevitably, one of them is going to get the job done. IAN GARRY BY TKO.
BANTAMWEIGHT: Da'Mon Blackshear (14-5-1) vs Mario Bautista (12-2)
Boy, I really hate this. If you read this on a weekly basis--which, hey, thanks!--you may be wondering if this is a re-run. It's not. Da'Mon Blackshear just fought last weekend, and he won in the first round by way of one of the rarest submissions in the sport, the Twister, and hey, he only took a handful of strikes from a world-class athlete, so gently caress it, why not take a fill-in fight on four days' notice one week later? It's great! The UFC will love you for it, and everyone will talk about what a badass you are. And all it costs is letting management know that you're more than happy to take no-notice, no-preparation fights for barely any pay, because hey, you're a warrior, and who ever went bust being a good company man for the UFC?
But this sure does suck for Mario Bautista. After a rocky start in the UFC--which tends to happen when your company debut is against Cory goddamn Sandhagen--Bautista is on the best streak of his career, with four straight victories over people like Jay "The Joker" Perrin and 43 year-old Guido Cannetti. But he won the lottery, because the UFC decided he was an acceptable level of risk for a former champ they've been desperately trying to rehabilitate, Cody Garbrandt, giving Bautista the biggest fight of his life! Former world champion! Pay-per-view main card! The chance to strangle one of the most popular bantamweights in the world in front of an audience of tens of thousands of people streaming the show online without paying for it!
Whoops. Sorry, Cody got hurt. Now instead of an extremely popular pocket brawler you're fighting a virtually unknown power grappler. You have 72 hours. Good luck. I'm still going with MARIO BAUTISTA BY DECISION, mostly because I think he's got faster hands and grappling defense enough to keep Blackshear from implementing his gameplan, but honestly, it's a fill-in fight with a guy who just fought last week and a guy who thought he was fighting a kickboxer until today. Chaos will dictate.
BANTAMWEIGHT: Marlon Vera (22-8-1, #6) vs Pedro Munhoz (20-7 (2), #10)
Hey, you know who has more ranked victories than Sean O'Malley? Both of these guys! You know who fought and did not lose to Sean O'Malley? Both of these guys! You know who's curtain-jerking the main card despite this and our theoretical human obligations towards honesty and decency? Both of these guys.
But neither is in a good position for a title shot right now. Marlon "Chito" Vera was on one of the hottest streaks in the company, having knocked out Frankie Edgar, dropped Rob Font thirty or eighty times in a single fight and kicked Dominick Cruz's face off altogether, and the fans were so sufficiently, rabidly behind him that you probably could've jumped him to a title shot and few would have complained. But the UFC booked what should have been a title eliminator between him and Cory Sandhagen, and Sandhagen, as he does, dismantled Vera, outworking him so thoroughly that Vera simply couldn't conjure the kind of vicious offense he's known for. He spent the entire fight getting bullied, was taken down repeatedly, and was ultimately outstruck 187-73. And somehow, he still only lost a split decision, because the judging of our sport is a wild eldritch nightmare from which none can awake.
Over that same period of time Pedro Munhoz had the worst run of his career. He beat Frankie Edgar in 2020 only to lose a tight decision anyway, he thankfully DID get an even more obvious nod over Jimmie Rivera, and then he got the brakes beat off him by José Aldo and Dominick Cruz, both of whom very adamantly proved that as good as Munhoz and his incredibly solid, gritty, orthodox approach is, it's not quite good enough to break into actual contendership. So the UFC tried to feed him to Sean O'Malley, and after one very close round where O'Malley crossed Munoz up with punches and Munhoz kicked the poo poo out of his legs, O'Malley downed him with the classical Greco-Roman eyepoke. So, of course, O'Malley went on to a title eliminator and a vacation awaiting a title shot, and Pedro got to defend his top ten berth against rising star Chris Gutierrez and now he's here to try to heat Marlon Vera back up for the UFC so they can achieve their secret dream of keeping Merab Dvalishvili as far away from their hopeful new champion as possible and book O'Malley/Chito 2 instead.
But boy, I don't see this one being easy for Chito. I'm still picking MARLON VERA BY DECISION, but Munhoz is made of granite. He's never been stopped, he's barely been stumbled, and Vera's settled into a style of landing heavy, sniping shots instead of dictating the pace of the fight, and if he doesn't mix it up more, that could cost him badly here. His size, his kicks and his power should still make the difference, but he can't afford to get hypnotized like he did against Sandhagen.
PRELIMS: PREEMPTIVELY LOOKING AWAY FROM THE SCREEN
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Chris Weidman (15-6) vs Brad Tavares (19-8)
Do you ever read a line and just begin wincing halfway through it?
When I describe Chris Weidman I want to say "just a few short years ago he was one of the best fighters on the planet," but that wasn't just a few short years ago, that was 2015. Chris Weidman has two victories in the last eight years: Kelvin Gastelum, the least consistent good fighter in the sport, and Omari Akhmedov, who also struggled in the UFC--at welterweight. Over that timeframe Chris Weidman has been knocked out three times as often as he's won fights. The last time we saw him was in early 2021, when he swung a single leg kick at Uriah Hall and, in a moment of weirdly appropriate universal cyclicality, shattered his own leg and collapsed screaming. Brad Tavares hasn't been doing quite that badly, but he, too, has been down in the dumps. Which feels disrespectful, because, and I know I have beaten this drum before, I think Brad Tavares is underrated. He's been a successful, borderline-ranked middleweight in the UFC for thirteen goddamn years. Sticking around the UFC at all is an incredibly tough ask; staying relevant, even as a gatekeeper, is exceptional. But he's currently dealing with the worst run of his career: He's 2 for 6 over the last five years. Some of those losses are fully understandable--there's nothing wrong with getting outfought by Israel Adesanya or Dricus du Plessis--but struggling with Omari Akhmedov and getting barnstormed by Bruno Silva in one round is a considerably worse look.
It pains me not to pick Chris Weidman to win this fight. He's bigger, he's stronger, he hits harder, he's a better grappler, he's got every advantage. He's also been knocked out in 75% of his recent fights, and the last time we saw him he snapped his leg in half, and he turned 39 two months ago. Brad Tavares is a tough out for anyone, and the people who tend to beat him, let alone stop him, are very mobile and able to deal with his pace. I just don't think Weidman has either of those things in him anymore. BRAD TAVARES BY TKO.
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Gregory Rodrigues (13-5) vs Dennis Tiuliulin (11-7)
It's amazing how a single bad loss can really kill your momentum. Gregory "Robocop" Rodrigues spent the last two years getting into the UFC and becoming an unexpected fan favorite, a ludicrously tough man who walked his opponents down with power punches and judo throws and was so thoroughly unstoppable that he at one point scored a knockout while a major artery was hanging out of a hole in his head. The must-see television nature of his fights and the toughness of his style earned him a ton of buzz. But I've said in the past that having a reputation for being incredibly tough is one of the worst things you can have as a fighter, and that's half because it means you're taking a ton of damage and half because the moment you DO get stopped, that hype evaporates. Rodrigues met Brunno Ferreira in his UFC debut this past January and got knocked cold in one round, and instantaneously, the conversation moved on. Dennis Tiuliulin, on the other hand, never really built momentum in the first place. He joined the UFC as a short-notice replacement fighter in 2022, he quickly established himself as a pressure fighter who wants nothing more than to walk people into clinch range where he can ruin them with knees, elbows and short uppercuts, and he equally quickly established himself as someone who has significant trouble actually accomplishing that in the UFC. He's 1-2, and that victory is over Jamie Pickett, one of the division's least successful fighters.
He presents an interesting challenge for Rodrigues, in that he fights a similar style and may force Rodrigues to take him down if he wants an advantage, but for one, Rodrigues is more than capable of doing so, and for two, I'm not sure he'll have to because he seems a lot better at power-heavy pressure fighting than Tiuliulin is anyway. GREGORY RODRIGUES BY SUBMISSION.
THE ULTIMATE FIGHTER LIGHTWEIGHT FINAL: Austin Hubbard (15-6) vs Kurt Holobaugh (19-7 (1))
Another season of The Ultimate Fighter has come and gone, and despite the UFC putting a lot of marketing weight behind it, it may have been the least useful season yet. The fight between coaches Michael Chandler and Conor McGregor looks like it's just never going to happen, because Conor can't be arsed to care about drug testing ever again, and the season's gimmick--UFC veterans looking for a second chance vs prospects hoping for a first--wound up being a bust, because the prospects all got washed out of the tournament thanks to a combination of skill levels, bad matchups, and being stuck with Conor McGregor's coaching. So the stars of the show aren't going to fight each other, the hot prospects of the show all got eliminated, and all four of your finalists are people who've already been cut from the UFC, three of them within just the last few years.
The most important show in MMA history, my friends. Austin Hubbard, the first of our lightweight finalists, was a successful, 10-2 Legacy Fighting Alliance champion when the UFC picked him up back in 2019 for his hard-punching, quick-choking ways. He proceeded to go 3-4 and get cut in two years. He was tough, and he very hilariously stopped the rise of Bo Nickal prototype Max Rohskopf in its tracks AND scored a win over ironic nickname champion Dakota "Hairy" Bush, but he had nothing for folks like Joe Solecki or Vinc Pichel who, themselves, are continually bounced out of potential rankings. But he went back to the regionals and scored victories over "The Violent Hippie" Kegan Agnew and former Ultimate Fighter meme celebrity Julian "Let Me Bang, Bro" Lane, who is now 7 for his last 20 across four different combat sports, and hey, if that doesn't get you a shot at the UFC, I don't know what does. Kurt Holobaugh got a contract on the first-ever episode of Dana White's Contender Series, and as an incredible portent of what was to come from that show, his win was overturned shortly afterward when it turned out he'd illegally used IV rehydration to recover from his weight cut. The UFC, when reached for comment, elected to not give a gently caress. Kurt Holobaugh served his suspension, came back, and promptly lost three straight UFC fights and was cut in under a year. The company didn't do him any favors--he fought Raoni Barcelos, Shane Burgos and Thiago Moisés back to back, which is a hell of a murderer's row--but losses are losses and the house is not in the game of keeping people around. But two knockouts on the regional scene against fighters fed a steady diet of soft targets and, baby, you got a TUF competitor on your hands.
I don't mean to poo poo on these fighters, they're talented and tough and they dealt with the idiocy of a TUF tournament schedule, but it's not like Holobaugh and Hubbard getting knocked out of the UFC is a distant memory, nor that they've done a ton to distinguish themselves in the few years since. Hell, almost all of the people they lost to are still on the roster. This entire season feels like it was built in the hopes of just putting Conor McGregor on television and hoping everything would work out, but at the end of the day you had a show no one watched and fighters no one was all that jazzed about the first time. And I like Kurt Holobaugh! But I don't like this show, and I don't like his chances against someone who can counter-grapple the way Hubbard can, and I don't know that either of them would be long for the UFC anyway. AUSTIN HUBBARD BY DECISION.
THE ULTIMATE FIGHTER BANTAMWEIGHT FINAL: Brad Katona (12-2) vs Cody Gibson (19-8)
Our bantamweight final, by contrast, has one of the only fighters I'm actually excited about. It was aggressively silly that Brad Katona got cut from the UFC in the first place. He was 8-0 and only one fight removed from winning The Ultimate Fighter 27 back in 2018, including victories over currently-relevant folks like Kyler Phillips and Bryce Mitchell, when he ran into the living brick wall that is Merab Dvalishvili, the current #1 ranked man in the division, and lost a very close decision to top prospect Hunter Azure, and--that was it. Two losses, both to very good fighters, and the UFC cut their most recent TUF champion barely a year after they crowned him. Which makes more sense when you realize he committed the egregious sin of wrestling too much. Katona spent the last two years crushing people out in Bahrain's BRAVE Combat Federation, and in what assuredly was in no way an admission of fault, the UFC brought him in for this season. Cody Gibson is our odd man out: He washed out of the UFC, but said washout was all the way back in 2015. Half of the people he lost to (hi, Manny Gamburyan!) are retired now, one of them is going-on-forty-year-old-violence-elemental Douglas Silva de Andrade, and the last was a debuting Aljamain Sterling, all the way back in February of 2014, when parachute pants were making a comeback and Pharrell's "Happy" was teaching us all new ways to feel irritated all of the loving time. He's had the most time to go fight out in the regional circuit, and consequently, he's put together an impressive 7-2 record in the eight years since last we saw him in the UFC.
Unfortunately, he's also been able to demonstrate during that run that he still has as much difficulty with aggressive wrestling as he did back in those old UFC days, and, hey: Guess what Brad Katona is so good at that the UFC fired him for doing it too much. BRAD KATONA BY SUBMISSION.
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Gerald Meerschaert (35-16) vs Andre Petroski (9-1)
Oh, Gerald Meerschaert, what will I do when you're gone? Your walking-underwater punching, your unquenchable lust for guillotine chokes, your inexplicable ability to always seem tired yet never actually be gassed--I'm only now realizing you were one of my favorite fighters, all along, and I just did not appreciate you properly. Please forgive me. I know you got shellacked by Joe Pyfer last April, but I believe in you, buddy. I believe in your ability to choke out Andre Petroski. Sure, he's faster and he's actually pretty tough and he's been outwrestling people for the last several years so I admittedly have some particular worries about your ability to work your magic on him when he's probably slightly better than you at most of the things you're probably going to want to do to him, but hey: Bryan Battle choked him out, and that means you can do. Just try not to get punched too much. Or wrestled too much. Also, don't jump the guillotine like you sometimes do. And maybe be careful throwing out the body kick as freely as you like to do because he'll probably catch it.
Okay? Okay! Your ham and turkey sandwich is in the paper sack next to your math textbook and I made a happy face with the mayonnaise but it's on the inside so you'll just have to trust me that it's there. Now go choke that motherfucker out. GERALD MEERSCHAERT BY SUBMISSION.
WOMEN'S FLYWEIGHT: Andrea Lee (13-7, #13) vs Natália Silva (15-5-1, NR)
Andrea Lee's life is loving difficult. In a more equitable world, Andrea Lee would still be a top ten fighter. She got boned out of a split decision back in 2020 against Lauren Murphy, and she got done dirty again in a split decision to frequent recipient of favorable judging Maycee Barber this past March in a fight where Dan Miragliotta looked at rounds where Lee outstruck Barber, wobbled her, took her down, controlled her for half the round and threatened to choke her out, and scored them for Barber, because MMA is a collective hallucination we've all agreed to pretend is real no matter how many times scientists try to reach in and wake us up by making the judges do things so asinine we should assume reality does not exist. And now Maycee Barber is on her way to title contention, and Andrea is defending her spot against one of the UFC's most promising prospects: Natália Silva, a genuinely good fighter on a five-year, nine-fight winning streak that now includes a very impressive 3-0 UFC record since her debut last summer. What's more, she's been doing it by just kicking people in the loving head. She outgrappled the very dangerous Jasmine Jasudavicius, she outlasted hyper-prospect Tereza Bledá and spinkicked her face off in the third round, and just this past May she met Victoria Leonardo, a woman who lasted almost two rounds with striking sensation and top flyweight contender Manon Fiorot, and Silva destroyed her in three minutes.
The UFC knows Silva might actually be for real, and they know Lee is an incredibly tough customer. This is the prospect exit exam. Lee's exceptionally tough to finish: Never been knocked out and only submitted once, and that was back in 2016 when Lee was still barely a rookie. They also know Lee's best offense comes from her wrestling, and Silva's spent her last three fights stuffing almost all of the takedowns thrown at her by some legitimately talented grapplers. They're betting on her being able to stop Lee, and I'm betting they're not just right, but that they're going to get luckier than they think. NATÁLIA SILVA BY TKO.
WOMEN'S FLYWEIGHT: Maryna Moroz (11-4) vs Karine Silva (16-4)
This isn't entirely dissimilar from the previous fight, actually. Maryna Moroz is another of my longtime favorites, a hard-nosed grinder who would generally prefer to wrestle and choke her opponents, but who also, particularly in her last appearance this past November, demonstrated a complete willingness to march straight forward, walk through fire and put as many punches as possible in her opponent's face. Which is great! Except she got outboxed pretty badly and ultimately lost. But she's a constant rankings threat who after ten years and fifteen bouts has yet to be stopped and is rarely even visibly hurt. Which is why the UFC is giving her Karine "Killer" Silva, who, much like Juliana Miller from last week, is nicknamed to throw the authorities off from suspecting her actual murderous past, and most definitely is not nicknamed for having never let a victory reach a decision. She had a number of knockouts back in the Brazilian regional circuit--except most of those fights were against people who were 0-0 or worse, because, y'know, it's the Brazilian regional circuit--but she's become famous for her grappling during her time in the international spotlight. She strangled Chinese can crusher Qihui Yan on the Contender Series, she choked out Poliana Botelho in her UFC debut last year, and she welcomed Invicta champion Ketlen Souza to the UFC just two months ago by tearing her entire goddamn leg apart in under two minutes.
I've been a big Maryna Moroz fan for a long time, and I have a great deal of faith in her grappling, but boy, I don't want to see her use it here. Silva is aggressively dangerous on the ground, and Moroz's top game, however stifling, is not a thing I would take a chance on here. I'm still leaning towards MARYNA MOROZ BY DECISION here in a slight upset, as I think Moroz's composure will let her keep the fight standing where she has the advantage, but if she shoots, or if Silva is able to get her down, this could end very, very quickly.
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Aug 19, 2023 01:01
