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Sean Strickland world championship match. This poll is closed. |
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| No. |
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2 | 4.88% |
| gently caress you. |
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22 | 53.66% |
| I'm going to stop watching the UFC. |
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8 | 19.51% |
| I stopped watching the UFC years ago. |
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9 | 21.95% |
| Total: | 41 votes | ||
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Marching Powder posted:actually, no, gently caress it, my opinion is that what weidman did to gastellum was the most impressive thing he did in his career. it was an absurd mismatch in action, but unlike tj / barao, this one weidman just treated kelvin like he was a child. not even in the same stratosphere. of course kelvin did loving crack him a good one lol but still, weidman mauled him in a way i can only describe as humiliating. and honestly i did not think that could happen to someone as proven as kelvin was at that point. I have weird and occasionally conflicting feelings about Gastelum and I think Weidman might be just kind of a terrible matchup for him. Gastelum's big strengths are fluid combination punching and the way his underused but persistent threat as a wrestler forces otherwise good strikers to let their guard down so he can hit them repeatedly. But he's also a fuckin' welterweight in denial. Compared to him Weidman was huge and had something like a 7" reach advantage, and worst, Weidman was as good if not better at wrestling. So suddenly Kelvin not only couldn't rely on the thing that opens his opponents up to his striking, he was actively getting wrestled to death because he just isn't at a wrestling disadvantage often enough to be good at dealing with it. Which really makes me wonder how he'll actually do if he ever makes it back down to welterweight, because, uh, there sure are some good, large wrestlers there.
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Sep 4, 2023 22:59
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ilmucche posted:If I wanted to watch some Weidman progression is Vitor/Rockhold/Romero the string of fights to watch then? I can't believe rockhold, internationally recognised handsome man, thought it would be a good idea to do near knuckle boxing with the anthropomorphic personification of Florida
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Sep 4, 2023 23:01
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CarlCX posted:I have weird and occasionally conflicting feelings about Gastelum and I think Weidman might be just kind of a terrible matchup for him. Gastelum's big strengths are fluid combination punching and the way his underused but persistent threat as a wrestler forces otherwise good strikers to let their guard down so he can hit them repeatedly. absolutely agree, kelvin was a welterweight, but no other middleweight - and he fought a few - made him look like that.
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Sep 4, 2023 23:12
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Just watched it and Weidman is huge compared to Gastelum what the hell
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Sep 5, 2023 00:28
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Gastelum was horrid with his nutrition for a long, long time. Worked with Dolce once and made weight easily and then said something along the lines of dolce was too expensive to have in his fight camps for the info he provided and promptly got fat again. But he's been seen drinking beers and eating burgers in the days leading up to fights in the past.
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Sep 5, 2023 04:56
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BlindSite posted:But he's been seen drinking beers and eating burgers in the days leading up to fights in the past. always knew I'd have what it takes
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Sep 5, 2023 07:30
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Is Topuria vs Holloway the fight to make, and then if Holloway wins convincingly you give him a 4th shot at Volk?
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Sep 5, 2023 17:20
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Marching Powder posted:actually, no, gently caress it, my opinion is that what weidman did to gastellum was the most impressive thing he did in his career. it was an absurd mismatch in action, but unlike tj / barao, this one weidman just treated kelvin like he was a child. not even in the same stratosphere. of course kelvin did loving crack him a good one lol but still, weidman mauled him in a way i can only describe as humiliating. and honestly i did not think that could happen to someone as proven as kelvin was at that point. The other times big brothering like that happened was Stipe/Ngannou 1 and Fitch/Silva.
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Sep 5, 2023 17:35
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Surely one of gsp's dominant fights has to have big brothering energy
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Sep 5, 2023 18:18
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There is a few (most) Khabib fights that go like that except he has absolutely vicious gnp and basically never stops hitting people and of course Cormier/Henderson. That was a wild mismatch.
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Sep 5, 2023 18:51
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 It's pretty bad. Izzy looks the best or least like the actual Izzy. Volk looks weird but i can't explain why. And I honestly wouldn't think that is Shev if i didn't already know. Assuming it's cheaper to make some CG fighters than to pay for a professional photoshoot. Also, the 2 champs aren't even with their belts. It's probably more EA being poo poo and cheap than the UFC but still
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Sep 5, 2023 19:00
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And now the die is cast; time to see if The Curse of the Cover still holds power
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Sep 5, 2023 19:09
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Shevchenko looks pretty recognizable to me. Not a head pose I associate with her. This looks like the reference pic they used for Volk, which tbf is not representative of how he looks to me.  It's all wrong around the eyes. Izzy looks ok except for the titty.
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Sep 5, 2023 19:10
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Is Izzy's neck actually that long?
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Sep 5, 2023 20:45
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Majkol posted:There is a few (most) Khabib fights that go like that except he has absolutely vicious gnp and basically never stops hitting people and of course Cormier/Henderson. That was a wild mismatch. Cormier gets his tooth knocked out from a hendo elbow while hendo was being tossed. Hendo got rassled, but he made DC feel it. Eric Silva v Fitch, though, was something else entirely. The closest Khabib fight was definitely against Trujillo where Khabib wanted to make a point that his grappling was better than Trujillo's. I think big brothering is really just overwhelming smother/wear you out type grappling vs throwing someone on their head more than a dozen times. ilmucche posted:Surely one of gsp's dominant fights has to have big brothering energy GSP never really seemed to do mean grinding things to people so much as he would just safely pick you apart while exposing himself to minimal risk. No one could touch him, but I don't know if it had the same energy.
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Sep 5, 2023 21:42
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Mr. Nice! posted:GSP never really seemed to do mean grinding things to people so much as he would just safely pick you apart while exposing himself to minimal risk. No one could touch him, but I don't know if it had the same energy. I had a brief chat with Dan Hardy when he and Gunnar Nelson visited my gym. Gunnar was in and out of the locker room real quick, so I asked Hardy if he would be co-teaching Gunnar's BJJ class that was up next. He shook his head and said he didn't have much to teach anyone. I--unintentionally insultingly, I now realize...--said, "hey, man, you went 25 minutes with GSP on the ground!" He just shook his head and said something like, "that was GSP giving me a private BJJ lesson." Also, scrolling down the page, I legit thought that was Maycee Barber on the cover for a second. Skjorte fucked around with this message at 22:08 on Sep 5, 2023 |
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Sep 5, 2023 22:00
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Brut posted:Is Topuria vs Holloway the fight to make, and then if Holloway wins convincingly you give him a 4th shot at Volk? Give Topuria the title shot already! Have Holloway do a vanity fight with O'Malley or something.
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Sep 5, 2023 22:20
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The ultimate khabib big brothering was asking Connor to keep up his trash talk while crushing him against the fence and pounding him into a rich meat paste
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Sep 5, 2023 22:23
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Lucasar posted:Give Topuria the title shot already! Yeah it's this. After the last time no one wants to see Max derail a contender or challenge and lose even faster.
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Sep 5, 2023 22:37
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Skjorte posted:said, "hey, man, you went 25 minutes with GSP on the ground!" He just shook his head and said something like, "that was GSP giving me a private BJJ lesson." Amazing
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Sep 5, 2023 22:42
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Lucasar posted:Give Topuria the title shot already! I'm maybe with you on the "or something" for Holloway but I'm sick of champs moving up a weight class with 0 defenses, gently caress that, Merab deserves the 135 title shot.
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Sep 5, 2023 22:42
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Brut posted:Yeah I guess I'm with you that Topuria deserves the shot. Agreed on Merab. I was just trying to think of reasonable match-ups that would get Max paid.
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Sep 5, 2023 23:01
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Skjorte posted:I had a brief chat with Dan Hardy when he and Gunnar Nelson visited my gym. Gunnar was in and out of the locker room real quick, so I asked Hardy if he would be co-teaching Gunnar's BJJ class that was up next. He shook his head and said he didn't have much to teach anyone. I--unintentionally insultingly, I now realize...--said, "hey, man, you went 25 minutes with GSP on the ground!" He just shook his head and said something like, "that was GSP giving me a private BJJ lesson." love these stories of goons vs the fighters we watch all the time
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Sep 6, 2023 03:16
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One of the cooler fighters I had an interaction with was Bendo. We struck up a convo about nfl on twitter and had a conversation for about 2 hours in the DMs just geeking out about mma and nfl.
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Sep 6, 2023 04:41
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met brandon vera in line for hotdogs and bonded briefly over wanting hot dogs.
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Sep 6, 2023 05:14
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Pat Barry was in town promoting Metro PCS or something. I really wanted to meet him since he came up in the sanshou scene with my coach. When I popped in the store, Leonard Garcia was also there! Fresh off his twister loss to TKZ. Like face still marked up recent. The joke that popped into my head was "how's your back doing," but it didn't feel warranted. TKZ earned that win, and Leonard Garcia want responsible for that string of robberies. Anyways, I had Pat Barry sign a pair of my worn out kickboxing gloves, and he said something like, it's nice to have proof that you put the work in.
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Sep 6, 2023 06:27
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wow what a tediously gross prick this Strickland guy is
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Sep 6, 2023 06:45
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https://twitter.com/oocmma/status/1699413780038287785?t= Palette cleanser if you'd like something funny and wholesome
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Sep 6, 2023 15:32
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Speaking of goons vs MMA fighters Jason MacDonald is doing an invite-only clinic near me today but I can't go because of my own work schedule. Yes, it's on a Wednesday afternoon, which makes sense in a context which I'm not going to share.
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Sep 6, 2023 15:59
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My only UFC fighter experience was I played at the same poker table as Mike Swick in Vegas. This was back when he was a frequent fighter. I knew who he was, and during one hand he made a quick all in call and I said "that was quick, just like your nickname" in a friendly joking way, and he asked if I knew who he was, so I said yes. That was about it. I didn't want to ask a bunch of questions and annoy him. The main thing I remember was how big his hands were. I guess fighters do a lot of punching, so I assume it builds up the muscles in their hands much more than a computer toucher like me.
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Sep 6, 2023 16:22
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I saw Frankie Edgar in Atlantic City like 11 years ago or something and I’m pretty sure he was like 4 and a half feet tall. It was actually bizarre seeing how small he was. I had never before seen so close such a small human that I know could have beaten my rear end. He seemed less than half the size of me.
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Sep 6, 2023 17:30
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Super Deuce posted:I saw Frankie Edgar in Atlantic City like 11 years ago or something and I’m pretty sure he was like 4 and a half feet tall. It was actually bizarre seeing how small he was. I had never before seen so close such a small human that I know could have beaten my rear end. He seemed less than half the size of me. Cyborg towers over lil Frankie
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Sep 6, 2023 18:37
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Darren Uyenoyama choked me the gently caress out a bit before he did it to Kid Yamamoto, which made me feel much less bad about it. Also,
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Sep 6, 2023 20:03
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CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 74: STILL NOPE SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 9 FROM THE QUDOS BANK ARENA IN SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA EARLY PRELIMS 3:30 PM PDT / 6:30 PM EDT | PRELIMS 5 PM / 8 PM | MAIN CARD 7 PM / 10 PM VIA PAY-PER-VIEW Yeah. They're doing this again, so we're doing this again.  nah. MAIN EVENT: NOT EVEN AS A JOKE MIDDLEWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP: Israel Adesanya (24-2, Champion) vs Sean Strickland (27-5, #5) Seventy days ago I wrote about the UFC pitting Sean Strickland, a middleweight who was low but present in the top ten, against Abusupiyan Magomedov, an unranked guy with very little hype and a UFC tenure that was 19 seconds long. After a lot of rambling, angry words, I eventually arrived here: CarlCX posted:If criticizing the cards doesn't matter, it means the cards don't matter. If the cards don't matter, the matchmaking doesn't matter, and you're free to put anyone you want to market anywhere you want them to be. It did, in fact, not matter. Abus won the first round, came out for the second already completely, hopelessly exhausted, and didn't make it to a third. One week later, essentially permanent top middleweight contender Robert Whittaker met the quickly up-and-coming Dricus du Plessis, and while du Plessis winning wasn't considered that huge of an upset, du Plessis winning by flattening Whittaker very much was. Israel Adesanya vs Dricus du Plessis for the middleweight championship was a foregone conclusion. As odd as du Plessis's travel up the ladder had been, and as deeply irritating as his I'm-not-racist-you're-the-racist-for-thinking-I'm-racist self-promotion had been, there are exactly two middleweights who've beaten Robert Whittaker in nearly a decade, and both of them would have been in that fight. The UFC wanted the fight just two months later in September, and this was too fast of a turnaround for an injured du Plessis. You would think, ideally, that this wouldn't be a problem: There's an extremely clear #1 contender and one of the UFC's most popular champions for him to fight, wait another couple months, it'll be fine. But the UFC really wanted the fight just two months later in September. They wanted their Australia show. They wanted their champion on it. And by god, if they had to go to the next contender down the list to do it, they would. Which is how Sean Strickland, fresh off an incredible victory over an unranked opponent with nineteen seconds of UFC fight time and one round of gas, got his shot at the UFC Middleweight Championship of the World. Which is a problem for me, because this was my conclusion about Sean Strickland's last fight. CarlCX posted:Maybe Sean Strickland will win another decision. Maybe Abusupiyan Magomedov will drop him in a round. I don't know. I know this is where I always make a prediction, but this time, all I can really tell you with genuine assurance is I DON'T loving CARE WHO WINS THIS BULLSHIT FIGHT. It was comforting. It was accurate! It's a luxury I don't have with this fight. Make no mistake: This loving sucks, and the UFC knows that it sucks. As much as I complain about a Strickland/Magomedov, at the end of the day, it's a Fight Night card. It goes down in the history books with such incredible main events as Anthony Smith vs Devin Clark, Ketlen Vieira vs Miesha Tate and Rashad Evans vs Sean Salmon. Yeah, it's a dumb, lovely fight that angry people on the internet will say sucks, because it does, but it's a random television card and thus the equivalent of eating Jack in the Box for dinner and feeling bad about yourself for an evening before forgetting you were supposed to learn a lesson. This is a pay-per-view card. The UFC wants you to spend at least $80 to watch it. This is a world championship match. This is the belt Anderson Silva held. And the UFC is putting on a main event they didn't even want in the first place because they'd rather give Sean Strickland a shot at a world title than miss out on the pay-per-view buys and ticket sales putting a belt on the line and getting Izzy into the cage will grant them. Which means that you, the audience, are obligated to care. It's the world championship! It matters! The UFC champion is automatically the best fighter in the world because the UFC is the best, this is the holy accord and it shall not be broken. Sure, we fired the heavyweight champion and replaced him with a guy who'd never fought at heavyweight, and sure, the last two light-heavyweight champions had to abdicate the belt over injuries, and sure, the last middleweight champion was a kickboxer with minimal MMA experience who got his shot by beating--hey, Sean Strickland, what a coincidence!--and sure, the next welterweight title challenger has only fought one person in the welterweight top fifteen and lost to him twice, and sure, the lightweight champion's next prospective fights are more rematches with people he already beat, and sure, the featherweight champion just happens to be one of those people, and sure, the bantamweight champion didn't actually earn his title shot by any reasonable stretch of the imagination, and sure, the flyweight championship is still recovering from three straight years of rematches, and sure, the women's featherweight championship is just going to be tossed in a dumpster offscreen without ever being mentioned again because one woman retired, and sure, the women's bantamweight championship is a vacant throne because that same one woman retired and we only had one person we cared about to potentially fill the void, and sure, the women's flyweight championship's top contenders keep being inexplicably buried by completely, utterly disinterested promotion to the extent that most folks don't even know who the current champion is, and sure, the women's strawweight championship has been a giant source of promotional strife for years that somehow keeps skipping its own contenders in favor of money matches that don't actually make money, and sure, we invented a fake championship named the Bad Mother Fucker title that doesn't really exist and also we can't say its name on-air because our broadcast deal is owned by Disney and heaven forfend our rah-rah gently caress-your-feelings gives-speeches-at-the-Republican-National-Convention-about-what-it-means-to-be-a-real-man organization dare to perturb the mouse. But it's the UFC title. So whoever owns it is the best. Eat poo poo and pay for the privilege of watching Sean Strickland fight on pay-per-view while we pretend he's an exciting high-pressure fighter because he beat up a guy who got exhausted after fighting for just slightly less time than it takes to listen to the album cut of "We're In This Together" by Nine Inch Nails and completely ignore every other fight he's ever had, especially the top contender ones where he accomplished nothing and then whined incessantly about the judges being incompetent for deciding against him. Quick, look at this highlight of him concussing one of his amateur training partners! Watch this clip of the podcast interview where he joked about opening sweat shops and told Kevin Holland he could rape him! Aren't you mad and invested now? Don't you want to watch this man get cathartically assaulted for being a bad person and/or victoriously defeat another man and in doing so justify the beliefs you, and the UFC's management, may happen to share? The UFC spent decades building its place in the world of sports and it's been mortgaging that position in bits and pieces ever since Conor McGregor taught them just how much loving money they could make if they chose to simply stop caring about anything. But that was understandable, because it was Conor McGregor. If you're going to completely sell out whatever meaning you had left, at least you're selling it for the biggest ticket in the sport. But every sale since has been cheaper and steadily less meaningful. Jorge Masvidal wasn't worth it. Sean O'Malley wasn't worth it. Colby Covington, when the time inevitably comes, won't be worth it. Sean Strickland is worth drat near nothing. And whichever Contender Series winner with a single UFC fight inevitably gets a title shot two years from now will be worth even less. This fight is bullshit, but unlike the last time around, I cannot say I don't care about who wins this bullshit fight, because the idea of Sean Strickland losing two fights, beating two guys so comically irrelevant that I said one of their names three times in this essay and I bet you've already forgotten what it was, and becoming the world champion because the UFC didn't want to wait another month for a title fight and the #1 guy forgot to duck? That would mean more of these writeups. And I actually prefer it when I can stand this stupid loving sport I love. ISRAEL ADESANYA BY TKO. Let's move on from this loving fight. It turns the guts. CO-MAIN EVENT: BRAWLER REHAB HEAVYWEIGHT: Tai Tuivasa (15-5, #6) vs Alexander Volkov (36-10, #7) During one of my first fight writeups, I spoke the legend of the Tank Abbott Curse. CarlCX posted:Tank Abbott was one of the UFC's first fan favorites. He was a big, pudgy, bearded brawler who had just enough technical skill to know he didn't want to use a single bit of it because his greatest success came from focusing on just punching people in the mouth as hard as he could. His adulation earned him a heavyweight title shot, which he lost badly. In doing so, he placed a curse on the UFC's heavyweight division. No matter how the sport grows, no matter how technical or accomplished the fighters, each heavyweight generation must have a pudgy brawler--each generation must have a Tank Abbott--and the curse cannot be lifted until one of them wins the belt. That was for Derrick Lewis vs Tai Tuivasa--a bout between the two great brawlers of the heavyweight division, men who had condition and had technique and regularly chose to throw both out the window in the name of violence. Tuivasa battered Lewis, took the Tank Abbott Curse from him, and for one brief, shining moment, looked as though he might finally be the chosen one who breaks it and sets us all free. Two rounds into a one-sided butchering at the hands of championship kickboxer Ciryl Gane, Tai bullied his way in and dropped his far more technically proficient opponent with a big, sweeping hook, and came seconds away from scoring a deeply unlikely victory. But, of course, he didn't. The butchering resumed, Tai was dispatched, and the curse lived on. The aftermath hasn't been any friendlier: When we saw him last December he was challenging Sergei Pavlovich, the UFC's new knockout king, to prove he could brawl with the best brawler in the division. Tuivasa hit the canvas in less than thirty seconds and the fight was over in under a minute. Two knockout losses in a row by no means ends Tuivasa's time in the sun--when you're as tough as he is and hit as hard as he does, you're only ever a couple good punches away from being back in the conversation--but it does make the top ten look much less favorable to him. Alexander Volkov is here to reinforce that feeling. Volkov, who's spent most of the last five years hanging around the bottom edge of the top ten, is on the opposite trajectory. His pair of losses--a dominant decision to Ciryl Gane and a first-round submission to Tom Aspinall, with just a tiny beating of Marcin Tybura separating them--shoved him all the way back down the ladder, and Volkov elected to climb his way back up by committing himself to violence in a much less patient manner than his fans had become accustomed to. Volkov is eternally dangerous--but he's never been a sprinter. He hadn't scored a first-round finish since his TKO of career 205-pounder Attila Végh (and fellow former Bellator champion) back in 2016. It was a considerable surprise, coming off a bad stoppage loss and entering his mid-thirties, when Volkov not only rattled off two first-round finishes in a row but did so by beating his opponents at their own strengths. He met kickboxing knockout artist Jairzinho Rozenstruik and punched him out on his feet, and followed it up by facing murderously strong grappler Alexandr Romanov, reversing a takedown and pounding him out from his back. Which makes the optics of this fight real hard to ignore. Volkov's a big favorite, as is inevitable for anyone coming off two stoppage wins vs someone coming off two stoppage losses, but Volkov also isn't an incredibly deft kickboxer nor a ludicrously powerful knockout puncher. Volkov is, however, a guy who's gotten clipped in both of his victories, and getting clipped by Tai Tuivasa is an incredibly dangerous prospect. Can he pick Tai apart, or will Tai catch him against the fence? I think the odds are a little more unforgiving than they should be, but I still ultimately agree with them. ALEXANDER VOLKOV BY TKO. Volkov's always had good distance-management jabs and good push-kicks to the body, both of which have repeatedly given Tai fits. If he lets Tai footwork him into the cage he's going to have to clinch real fast so as not to get quickly and brutally hosed up, but I think he'll manage. MAIN CARD: KAPE CURSES, EYEPOKE REMATCHES AND THE LAST STAND OF THE PLEASURE MAN FLYWEIGHT: Manel Kape (18-6, #10) vs Felipe dos Santos (7-0 (1), NR) Years ago, there was a flyweight fighter named Ian "Uncle Creepy" McCall who was known half for his fighting and half for his moustache. He was unquestionably one of the best flyweights on the planet--he arguably beat Demetrious Johnson in the first 125-pound fight the UFC ever promoted and inarguably was screwed out of the contractually mandated extension round the athletic commission forgot existed--but he was equally unquestionably the most cursed fighter in the sport. Over the course of five years in the UFC Ian McCall put together a 2-3-1 record, but his most galling statistic was an incredible ten cancelled fights. He'd be sick, or he'd get injured, or his opponent would miss weight. McCall, himself, made weight and still got pulled from fights on the day they were to take place three goddamn times. He eventually left the UFC, having not successfully fought in two years, to go try his luck in Japan. In his Rizin debut, he fought Manel Kape. He lost in less than two minutes after he somehow managed to tear his eyebrow open on the ring ropes, which are very, very round. Manel Kape didn't know it, then, but that day, the curse selected him as its new host. Manel Kape is a very, very good fighter. He's incredibly fast, he's fantastically well-rounded, and he carries genuinely unusual knockout power for a division that typically struggles with stoppages. And he's been losing his mind and posting progressively more unhinged things on his Twitter account about masculinity, his heritage and the weakness of everyone but him, because he can't keep a fight for his loving life. He was supposed to debut against Rogério Bontorin; the fight was cancelled when Bontorin broke his ankle. His bout with now-champion Alexandre Pantoja got pushed back a quarter of a year thanks to COVID. In April of 2022, Kape had to pull out of a fight with Sumudaerji three days beforehand; two months later, his rescheduled Bontorin match was scrapped a day ahead of time thanks to a failed weight cut. In this year alone Kape lost out on an April fight with Alex Perez when Perez suddenly had a seizure backstage, a July fight with Deiveson Figueiredo thanks to the former champ failing his medicals, and this fight, this weekend, was supposed to be a contendership-implications bout with former titlist Kai Kara-France, only for Kara-France to suffer a concussion during training. Manel Kape had three separate scheduled bouts with three separate top-ten contenders and every single one fizzled. And now, instead, he's fighting Felipe dos Santos, a 22 year-old Chute Boxe prospect who was expecting to get on the Contender Series, who has never fought anyone with more than six wins in his life, because he, himself, has just barely surpassed six wins in his life. He's almost a throwback in his adherence to the old norms of Chute Boxe, Brazil's most enduring camp of rough-and-tumble mixed martial artists: He keeps a constant high guard, he bounces forward in a traditional Muay Thai stance, he throws lots of round kicks that leave him open to right hands down the pipe, and he'd rather throw a running, flying knee than shoot a double-leg takedown. He's fun. He's young. And he's in over his head. MANEL KAPE BY SUBMISSION. If this fight happens at all. HEAVYWEIGHT: Justin Tafa (6-3 (1)) vs Austen Lane (12-3 (1)) I get to indulge in a rare pleasure: Reposting a prediction. This is a straight-up rebooking of a fight that happened--technically--this past June, only to end with Lane nearly gouging out Tafa's eye in thirty seconds. The UFC is just running it back, so enjoy this rerun from the early days of Summer. CarlCX posted:That's right, baby: This is third from the top of the card. Multiple top fifteen fights on the card? Tatsuro Taira, one of the best flyweight prospects in the world? Neil By God Magny? We don't need any of that poo poo on television, WE HAVE HEAVYWEIGHTS. LIGHT-HEAVYWEIGHT: Tyson Pedro (9-4) vs Anton Turkalj (8-2) Man, being marketable must be nice. Tyson Pedro has long been one of the UFC's favorite acts in Australia, and nothing proves it like his absolutely incredible booking. He was co-main eventing cards despite going 1 for 4 back in 2018, he went on hiatus, he came back four years later and was immediately given two of the least successful, most knockout-prone fighters in UFC history and dispatched of them both with ease, and the UFC tried very, very hard to follow that up by having him fight Mingyang Zhang, a Chinese brawler with a pretty dubious pedigree, and after the fight fell through, rather than booking any of their existing roster, they brought in Cage Warriors champ and UFC washout Modestas Bukauskas in to And he gets Anton "The Pleasure Man" Turkalj, who is 0-2 in the UFC, and whose greatest contribution to the sport remains, and may well always remain, his Tapology profile picture.  Anton Turkalj has been a punching bag for the UFC since day one. They threw him in as a replacement opponent for Jailton Almeida and a warm body for Vitor Petrino, two of their favorite Brazilian Contender Series victors, and Anton obliged by getting completely crushed against Almeida and surviving against Petrino primarily by grabbing the fence a half-dozen times while inexplicably never losing a point. He hasn't won a fight, he hasn't come close to winning a fight, he loses most of his stand-up exchanges, he has a takedown defense rate of 16%, and he's on Tyson Pedro rehab duty because the UFC knows they can trust him to lose. So, of course, I'm picking ANTON TURKALJ BY SUBMISSION. Because I believe in comedy, but I do not believe in Tyson Pedro. PRELIMS: WHEN YOU REALIZE THEY PUT ALL OF THE SOUTH KOREAN FIGHTERS ON A CARD EXCEPT YOU LIGHT-HEAVYWEIGHT: Carlos Ulberg (8-1) vs Da Un Jung (15-4-1) Genuinely, what must that be like? You're Da Un Jung, you're a fighter the UFC kind-of sort-of cared about and was trying to highlight not too long ago, and two weeks ago the UFC promoted a card in Singapore with as many Asian fighters as they could possibly manage to fit into one night just to ensure they got the market they were looking for--but you? You weren't booked there. No, you were booked two weeks later. On the Australian card. Against the guy from New Zealand. Who the UFC has been repeatedly highlighting and giving favorable matchups that grant him chances to score huge, sexy knockouts. How do you mentally adjust to that, as a fighter? Do you get discouraged because the company that was pushing you just a year and a half ago is now serving you up on a silver platter to their new favorite guy? Or do you get mad and try to take it out on your opponent? However you slice it, it can't feel good. This fight probably won't, either. Jung's once-scary standup has looked particularly vulnerable in his last couple of fights, and Ulberg, albeit with soft targets, has looked exceedingly on point. Jung's attempts to turn the fight into an up-close-and-personal brawl are going to run into a lot of trouble with Ulberg's timing. CARLOS ULBERG BY TKO.  FEATHERWEIGHT: Jack Jenkins (12-2) vs Chepe Mariscal (14-6 (1))The Australian hype machine is real, but it carries consequences. Jack Jenkins came up through the Contender Series, but was saved for a promotionally convenient debut out in Perth, where he made good on his reputation for horrifyingly powerful leg kicks and a particularly tough chin by kicking the poo poo out of Don Shainis and his poor, poor calves. After repeatedly dropping him with just his feet, Jenkins seemed to be a very, very live prospect. And he is! But he also got a pretty egregious gift of a split decision in his last fight against Jamall Emmers, where out of the ten media scores recorded for the bout, more of them gave Emmers a 30-27 shut out (5) than gave Jenkins a win at all (0). Chepe "Machine Gun" Mariscal was a much less intentional pickup: He came in as a late injury replacement against Trevor Peek this Summer, a man who became a fan favorite based on his visible allergy to throwing straight punches, and proceeded to batter Peek to a wide, 30-27 decision victory, because as it turns out, straight lines tend to beat wide arcs. You'd think there would be some kind of historical information about this in the history of combat sports. I cannot help feeling this is an iffy style matchup for Jenkins. His big strengths are his leg kicks and his back-pocket wrestling; Chepe's got real solid leg kicks and defense and his grappling both offensive and defensive looked pretty solid against Peek. Jenkins, of course, is not a wild-eyed caveman with lunchboxes attached to clotheslines for arms, but still: CHEPE MARISCAL BY DECISION. LIGHTWEIGHT: Jamie Mullarkey (16-6) vs John Makdessi (18-8)Jamie Mullarkey's fights have been must-see television for most of his UFC career, but boy, that career is in a real rough spot right now. For all of Mullarkey's wrestling offense and aggressive punching and face-first style, after four years, he's 4-4 in the UFC but that, if we're being honest, should be 3-5 courtesy of a split decision over Michael Johnson that really should have gone the other way. Which would make Mullarkey 1 for his last 4, with two of those losses coming by vicious second-round knockouts, with the most recent being a June loss to the debuting Muhammad Naimov, who is strong, tough, and, uh, a featherweight. Generally-speaking, if you're losing more UFC fights than you're winning and you're getting your clock cleaned by fighters from lower weight classes, that's Bad. John Makdessi, by contrast, feels like he's become more of a simple fact of life in the UFC. This will be his twentieth fight with the organization, earned over the course of almost thirteen goddamn years, and in all that time, he's never once threatened to achieve a ranking let alone established himself as a contender. Nor has that ever seemed to particularly bother him. He comes out, he throws technically proficient if undersized kickboxing techniques, he wins about 60% of the time. Which is better than 50%! But still not great. This feels like a rebuilding, home-court-advantage fight for Mullarkey. Makdessi's a much cleaner striker but he's much smaller, and unlike his size-disadvantage bout with Ignacio Bahamondes a couple years back Mullarkey is inevitably going to forego striking in favor of bullying him with wrestling and clinchwork, and that's going to matter. JAMIE MULLARKEY BY DECISION. LIGHTWEIGHT: Nasrat Haqparast (14-5) vs Landon Quiñones (7-1-1) How low the mighty. Two years ago Nasrat Haqparast was staring down the possibility of a top fifteen ranking; now he's 1 for 3 and the UFC is trying to use him to get their new guys over. He was supposed to fight the aforementioned Jamie Mullarkey earlier this year but had to pull out; this was supposed to be Nasrat playing the willing victim to Sam Patterson, the giant 6'3" Contender Series star the UFC had eyed as a big British attraction right up until Yanal Ashmouz nuked him in just barely over a minute during his debut, but this time Patterson was the one bowing out, which means we're getting Landon "The Lone Wolf" Quiñones instead, a Titan FC champion most famous for getting choked out in under a minute on The Ultimate Fighter 31 (jesus christ) earlier this year. Which means we're right back in the position of a newly-signed lightweight trying to drum up hype for himself after getting crushed by a featherweight--which is even better when you realize the only professional loss on Landon's record is, in fact, also to Muhammad loving Naimov. Small world! Quiñones isn't bad, and I think there's a potential future for him in the UFC, but this seems like too much, too fast. Yeah, Haqparast is 1-3, but those two losses were Dan Hooker and Bobby Green, neither of which is anything to be ashamed of. NASRAT HAQPARAST BY DECISION. EARLY PRELIMS: BLOOD DIAMOND'S BUS TICKET WELTERWEIGHT: Blood Diamond (3-2) vs Charlie Radtke (7-3) Do you have, or are you, yourself, one of those members of a friend group who doesn't really do a lot, and doesn't really fit in, but they're so beloved within the group that they get brought along anyway? That's Blood Diamond. A year and a half ago, MMA camp City Kickboxing put the undefeated, 3-0 fighter they called Blood Diamond forth as the next Israel Adesanya--as endorsed by Adesanya himself, who helped train him. He proceeded to get thoroughly outwrestled and submitted by Jeremiah Wells. So they turned the dial down a notch and gave him a less accomplished grappler in Orion Cosce, who would be released from the UFC a year later, but not before he, too, wrestled the poo poo out of Blood Diamond. You would think CKB might want to give him a few more regional fights so as to gain some experience and improve his game, but--well, we're here. So instead they've turned the dial down yet again and found the debuting Charlie "Chuck Buffalo" Radtke, a Cage Fury Fighting Championships titleholder who has mostly fought similarly-experienced men, has yet to score a solid, marquee win, and has been violently knocked out before by a better, slicker puncher. So he's perfect to finally give Blood Diamond the win he and his training camp have wanted for years! CHARLIE RADTKE BY SUBMISSION. FEATHERWEIGHT: Shane Young (13-7) vs Gabriel Miranda (16-6) Shane Young's career is deeply puzzling to me. He's what I can best describe as a part-time fighter, and to be clear, I mean that not as an insult to his skills, as he's actually quite good, but as an objective measurement of his schedule. 14 of his 20 professional fights happened in the first four years of his career, and then he joined the UFC, and it has consequently taken him almost six years to get the following six. This fight is, in fact, the first time since 2017 he will have multiple fights in a single calendar year--but he skipped 2022 entirely, meaning he's still only averaging one per every twelve months. Because of this, his last professional victory was almost four and a half years ago. Gabriel Miranda only debuted in the UFC last September, where he immediately distinguished himself by a) having a very thoroughly groomed moustache, b) being unexpectedly dangerous off of his back, and c) getting the absolute poo poo beaten out of him by Benoît Saint-Denis anyway. Some people gave him flak for gassing out after the first round, but after getting dropped twice in one round and suffering through a horrifying beating and a near-submission, I don't really blame him. But I do favor him here. Young is a solid all-around fighter, but Miranda's considerably more vicious and a much bigger threat on the ground. GABRIEL MIRANDA BY SUBMISSION. WELTERWEIGHT: Kevin Jousset (8-2) vs Kiefer Crosbie (10-3) Sometimes I don't know what to do with the information I receive from fight research. Sometimes I am still a big dumb American who sees that Kevin Jousset just fought a guy named Priscus Fogagnolo and I want to giggle even though "this foreign name is funny to me" is Rob Schneider levels of humor and I should know better. But then I see that the fight that put Kiefer Crosbie on the map, yet another Irish hopeful of out John Kavanagh/Conor McGregor's SBG Ireland, was a mid-2022 bout with Brian Lo-A-Njoe. Which is a name I recognize not because of silly anglophile name humor, but because I've been seeing it for decades! Because Brian Lo-A-Njoe has been fighting since 1998, and is now drat near 50 years old and 6-13-3 and getting concussed by prospects who were watching cartoons when he was fighting in Japan. And I remember that sometimes, in MMA, you laugh at the lowest common denominator stuff because the reality of the sport is incredibly loving depressing. KEVIN JOUSSET BY TKO.
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Sep 6, 2023 20:03
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John Makdessi is still fighting? In the UFC even??????
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Sep 6, 2023 20:20
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kimbo305 posted:Pat Barry was in town promoting Metro PCS or something. I really wanted to meet him since he came up in the sanshou scene with my coach. When I popped in the store, Leonard Garcia was also there! Fresh off his twister loss to TKZ. Like face still marked up recent. The joke that popped into my head was "how's your back doing," but it didn't feel warranted. TKZ earned that win, and Leonard Garcia want responsible for that string of robberies. when first garcia/tkz fight happened, my brother happened to be over. he recently moved back to new england after a stint in texas, so he was pulling for leonard. i, like all right-minded people, was pulling for tkz. when the decision was announced, i got legitimately angry at my brother for saying it was the right decision and retroactively for cheering for garcia. fight watching does stuff to your brain, man since we're also doing fighter stories, the only time i ever talked to a ufc fighter was johnny case because it was a local-boy-makes-good story for the newspaper i was working for at the time. there's no reason to remember him, though. he got cut after a good start (4-0) in the org and then got cut after back to back losses. apparently, he's been in rizin since 2018 and was arrested for domestic battery in 2021 but claimed "self defense," so gently caress that guy
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Sep 6, 2023 20:56
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Eat This Glob posted:when first garcia/tkz fight happened, my brother happened to be over. he recently moved back to new england after a stint in texas, so he was pulling for leonard. i, like all right-minded people, was pulling for tkz. when the decision was announced, i got legitimately angry at my brother for saying it was the right decision and retroactively for cheering for garcia. fight watching does stuff to your brain, man kimbo305 posted:twister loss Many, that was a very satisfying storyline. This is a good summary if you're new to it or want to relive it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuLVLQD1qAw
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Sep 6, 2023 21:15
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I'm sincerely rooting for Blood Diamond because I want him to get three more chances to be wrestled hilariously. I need the legend of Blood Diamond to continue.
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Sep 6, 2023 23:17
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TheKingslayer posted:I'm sincerely rooting for Blood Diamond because I want him to get three more chances to be wrestled hilariously. I need the legend of Blood Diamond to continue. https://twitter.com/ChrisReive/status/1698860497964310850
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Sep 6, 2023 23:20
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Minor nitpick Carl - in your rant about the middleweights you make appointments this fight is bullshit for many reasons but note "this is Anderson Silva's belt". It probably isn't the best comparison given there was so many lovely challengers they put up against Silva - Patrick Cote and Thales Leites. Especially Thales who got a title shot after "winning" a split decision over Nate Marquardt who had two points deductions in the fight.
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Sep 7, 2023 01:27
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