- CarlCX
- Dec 14, 2003
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We are here. You could watch this, or, alternatively, you could not. There will be no judgment.
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:
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.
And let's be clear: It doesn't matter. It hasn't mattered for some time. Sean O'Malley leapfrogging the entire top fifteen and getting to sit out for a title shot against a champion being coerced into fighting twice in three months? Why not. Jorge Masvidal getting eighteen title shots? Sure! Marketing fights based on fighters outright assaulting people in real life and facing no consequences whatsoever because society accepts that their unrepentant behavior is a feature of martial training rather than a bug and the company they work for is just making GBS threads itself with glee that anyone would do anything to stand out and get some attention? I mean, the boss is currently trying to get Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg to have a cage fight and those guys carry responsibility for numerous actual deaths around the globe, so what's a criminal brain injury here or there?
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.
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.
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.
That's right, baby: This is third from the top of the card. Multiple top fifteen fights on the card? Tatsuro Taira, one of the best flyweight prospects in the world? Neil By God Magny? We don't need any of that poo poo on television, WE HAVE HEAVYWEIGHTS.
Justin Tafa is a heavyweight kickboxer who ran up a 2-3 UFC record before taking the entirety of 2022 off--by which I mean signing up for two fights throughout the year and pulling out a couple weeks before each--only to make a triumphant comeback this past February by icing Parker Porter in a single minute. Which is impressive! Sure, Porter isn't exactly setting the heavyweight division on fire, but he's a tough dude whose only other UFC knockout loss involved Chris Daukaus smacking him upside the head dozens of times and having to hit him with a jumping knee to actually finish the job. If you can drop Parker Porter with one shot, you're doing something right.
Austen Lane is yet another Contender Series baby who was supposed to make his UFC debut at that same card--and against Tafa's younger brother, Junior Tafa. Lane was the heavyweight champion of Fury FC before the UFC pulled him back in, in the process giving him a chance to avenge his OTHER Contender Series attempt from 2018 where he committed the terrible crime of getting knocked out by Greg Hardy and, in the process, failing to spare us all the multiple-year Greg Hardy project. He's big, he's fast and he throws with just about everything he has, but the bulk of his success comes from cage-wrestling and ground and pound.
That said: He's just a couple fights removed from struggling mightily with the striking threat of Juan Adams, who went 1-3 in the UFC, looked generally pretty bad in the process, and got fired after getting knocked out by--hey, what a small world, Justin Tafa. On paper, Tafa should be able to eat Lane alive on his way in. But y'know what? gently caress it. AUSTEN LANE BY SUBMISSION. Tafa's not too far removed from struggling with the Jared Vanderaas of the world either, and Lane's got the kind of hard, smothering attack that could land Tafa on his back, and I want something fun to happen.
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 losegive him a real fight instead. And he did! Because he beat Pedro. The UFC, showing its appreciation for sport and victory, promptly booked Bukauskas into the curtain-jerking slot of an Apex card. Tyson Pedro? He gets the main card of a pay-per-view.
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.
Prelims in 30.
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Sep 9, 2023 23:03
