- CarlCX
- Dec 14, 2003
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It is the fight night the UFC promoted as a specific attempt to grasp the Mexican fight market and then almost everyone got injured. But you still get a title fight out of it, so hey.
CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 75: PANDERING ON AN EMPTY TANK
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 16 FROM THE T-MOBILE ARENA IN LAS VEGAS, NEVADA
PRELIMS 4 PM PDT / 7 PM EDT | MAIN CARD 7 PM / 10 PM VIA ESPN+
This was supposed to be the UFC's attempt to finally lock down a market they've been pursuing for decades. Nationality-based markets have been a major branding strategy for years--say hi to Conor McGregor, Michael Bisping, Khabib Nurmagomedov, Chan Sung Jung and Zhang Weili, the very talented spearheads in helping the UFC get entirely new countries to give them money--but try as they might, the UFC has struggled repeatedly to lock down the Mexican market. The first season of The Ultimate Fighter: Latin America crowned Yair Rodríguez as the UFC's heir apparent almost a goddamn decade ago.
But then something funny happened: The UFC suddenly almost had two Mexican champions! Yair Rodríguez won the interim featherweight title, which, well, it sort of counts, but Alexa Grasso won the real thing! She choked out Valentina Shevchenko in a giant upset! Their moment came and by god, they would not let it slip. This was the pandering opportunity they've been building for ten years, and the time was right to cash it right the gently caress in.
They made clear: This is NOCHE UFC. The traditional Stemm butt-rock in the commercial bumpers has been replaced by mariachi music. The UFC booked every single fighter on the roster they could possibly directly OR indirectly associate with the market. It was a full-scale assault.
And then Kelvin Gastelum broke his face in training. And then Cynthia Calvillo got sick. And then Iasmin Lucindo got injured. And then Daniel Rodriguez failed a drug test. And then Anthony Hernandez tore his ligaments apart. Hell, Santiago Ponzinibbio isn't even from Mexico, he's Argentine, and they still tried and failed to rebook him.
So now the new co-main event of the Mexican-focused NOCHE UFC is Kevin Holland vs Jack Della Maddalena.
Marketing, you tried so hard.
prelim main event loopy
MAIN EVENT: STRIKING WHILE THE IRON IS HOT BUT NO ONE'S LOOKING AT IT
WOMEN'S FLYWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP: Alexa Grasso (16-3, Champion) vs Valentina Shevchenko (23-4, #1)
I feel like I've spent at least ten hours a month complaining about the disservice the UFC does to its female competitors by constantly undermarketing them, and here we are, with the big breakout Mexican champion the UFC has wanted for so long, and they're having her defend her title on a card that isn't even being broadcast on ESPN (but it is going out on ESPN Deportes, which, y'know, fits the rest of the theme). Which would be deeply unfortunate were it not so deeply, irritatingly normal. In the entire history of the UFC's belts over 155 pounds, there have been exactly two title defenses held on free TV. Once you get to the lower weight classes you get a big crop of them, as they were the most common features during the salad days of network television and UFC on Fox--but after that deal ended, they, too, become almost solely the domain of pay-per-view fees.
Women's Flyweight and Women's Strawweight have not been so lucky. This will be the tenth title fight for the Women's Flyweight division: It is the third offered up as a random non-pay-per-view card. 30% of the division's title fights have been sacrificed to the airwaves. And the last one to main event a card was more than four years ago.
Lack of care doesn't dissolve, it compounds. And now that the UFC finally has what they've always wanted--Alexa Grasso, a project they've worked on for years, holding a title belt, the fighter who finally felled the greatest 125-pound woman in MMA history, Valentina Shevchenko--all they can do is put her on free television. They haven't made people care about the belt, they haven't made people care about Alexa, hell, Valentina had one of the longest title reigns in UFC history and they didn't even succeed in getting people to care about her.
Which sucks. Not just because fighters deserve more from the UFC, and not just because Alexa Grasso and Valentina Shevchenko are both world-class fighters who deserve their laurels from the world, but because the underpinnings of this fight are genuinely fascinating.
Valentina Shevchenko has always struggled with the perception of her dominance. She is--was--unquestionably the best women's fighter at 125 pounds, and having beaten the best women's 115er in Joanna Jędrzejczyk, submitted a 135-pound champ in Julianna Peńa and taken the greatest fighter at both 135 and 145 and arguably the greatest in women's MMA history period, Amanda Nunes, to a coinflip of a decision that could easily have gone the other way, there was a solid argument to be made that Valentina was the best female mixed martial artist on the planet.
But right around the time people began making that observation, they also began observing that Valentina had a tendency to look kind of underwhelming. This is the problem with being a dominant champion: Anything less than dominance begins to look openly bad, and anything openly bad begins to look like a prognostication of your inevitable downfall. Should the greatest women's mixed martial artist be struggling in the pocket with Jennifer Maia? What about almost losing her title after getting outgrappled for two rounds by Taila Santos? And what on Earth is the deal with the spinning back kicks she's constantly throwing but almost never landing? Those seem like disaster waiting to happen.
Very, very few people thought Alexa Grasso would be the source of that disaster. In some markets she was a +600 underdog. But she, clearly, had been doing her homework. She made Shevchenko uncomfortable in the clinch, she forced her into bad positions, and when she finally made a crucial error--that god damned spinning back kick, thrown from nowhere, aimed at nothing--Grasso both figuratively and literally jumped on the opportunity and finished the job Taila Santos began by submitting her within seconds.
The same way the high expectations for Valentina made her foibles more galling, the low expectations for Alexa made her performance even more stunning. She's rarely looked bad in a fight--with the singular exception of getting crushed by Tatiana Suarez, but she does that to everybody--but she's been very conservative and tactical and, for most of the audience, unremarkable. Crisp boxing, but rarely put opponents in danger; solid grappling, but rarely used to gain significant advantages. She simply fought smart, waited for opportunities to capitalize on, and won.
And turning a full circle and leaving your back completely exposed right up against the fence? That's just too good an opportunity to pass up.
Our problem, then, is the rest of the goddamn fight. She won--obviously. But she had been outstruck in every round, outgrappled for most of the fight, had clearly lost the second and third rounds and was a minute away from losing the fourth when Shevchenko made her grave error. Every judge had Shevchenko cruising to another clear decision victory.
And that begs the question you can only answer in a rematch: Did Alexa Grasso win the fight, or did Valentina Shevchenko lose it?
I'm very rarely a fan of instant rematches, but when you have fighters of such significant gravity within a division, the desire to make sure is understandable. Does Matt Serra have Georges Saint-Pierre dead to rights? No, he gets crushed in a rematch. Does Julianna Peńa know the secret to defeating Amanda Nunes? Nope, she drops multiple 10-8 rounds and gets completely destroyed. Did Chris Weidman really beat Anderson Silva at his own game, or did Anderson just make a critical mistake at a terrible time, and in a rematch he'll thrash Weidman and retake what's so obviously his rightful throne?
Well.
I can't help seeing VALENTINA SHEVCHENKO BY DECISION. Grasso had her stumbled in the first round, but she was losing the rest of that fight right up until Shevchenko threw it away. I don't think the internal logic of the fight has changed--if anything, I envision Shevchenko curbing her own bad habits by just making as much of this fight take place in the clinch and on the ground as is humanly possible. I'd love it if Alexa Grasso pulled another knockout or submission out of the ether, and, hell, I'd love it even more if she just comprehensively outboxed Shevchenko, kept her at the end of her jab and countered her for five rounds.
But I'm just not sure we live in that world.
CO-MAIN EVENT: MEXICO BY WAY OF PERTH
 WELTERWEIGHT: Kevin Holland (25-9 (1), #13) vs Jack Della Maddalena (15-2, #14)
I'm glad I got all of my cracks about this fight not fitting the nationalist theme out of the way in the introduction, because it's an awesome loving fight. This is the perfect fight for both men. Their skillsets, their positions in the division, their prospects as challengers to the top ten: A lot of good timing has coalesced for this match, and even if it came together on short notice, it's nice to see the UFC jump on it.
It took three years, but Kevin Holland has put his poo poo back together. After seeing him get repeatedly outwrestled at 185 pounds I had considerable doubts about his 2022 drop to welterweight, what with it being the division of Leon Edwards, Kamaru Usman, Colby Covington, Belal Muhammad and the dozen other people in the top fifteen who are very, very good at tying people up in pretzels. Holland getting thrown around like a potato sack and choked out by Khamzat Chimaev in two minutes didn't help.
But, good news: Khamzat can't make 170, so that'll never happen again! Sure, following that up by getting beaten silly by Stephen Thompson isn't great either, but in fairness, it's Stephen Thompson and he's been doing that to people for years. Knocking out Santiago Ponzinibbio? That's pretty good. Choking out Michael Chiesa, one of the division's more imposing wrestlers? That's real good. Putting to rest at least some of the fear that the welterweight division offers you nothing but an inevitable death by wrestler? That's what makes someone a prospect again.
Jack Della Maddalena has spent his first year and a half in the UFC trying to establish himself as the definitive new welterweight prospect, and boy, he's been doing a bang-up job of it. The UFC's fed him a gradually more difficult diet of victims, and he's been blasting through all of them with some of the cleanest striking in the entire company, dropping people with check hooks, power jabs and body shots alike. By this summer he wasn't just 4-0, he was 4-0 with first-round stoppages in every single fight. His ranking was thoroughly earned. But it was also about to be tested.
He was supposed to fight former top ten fighter Sean Brady; Brady got hurt. He was given the considerably less dangerous, debuting Josiah "Muscle Hamster" Harrell; Harrell's pre-fight medicals revealed a potentially fatal brain condition. With three and a half days to fight time, regional fighter and black belt Bassil Hafez stepped in--and he drat near ended the hype train. Hafez wrestled Maddalena to the ground, repeatedly threatened him with submissions, and put up a far greater fight than anyone expected. Maddalena took over down the home stretch and ultimately won, but it was a close decision and the first true sign of weakness in his UFC career.
Of course, it's a lot easier to be weak when you've had three changes of opponent and barely any time to prepare. Still, it's hard not to see parallels. Maddalena made his name in the UFC as a vicious striker who could knock out anyone, and he was very nearly derailed the same way Derek Brunson, Marvin Vettori and Khamzat Chimaev derailed Kevin Holland.
It's kind of fascinating. It's probably also largely irrelevant to this fight. Kevin Holland is probably not going to come out shooting power doubles on Jack Della Maddalena. If he does, it will be very, very funny, and I will personally enjoy it a great deal, and honestly, with his size advantage, it's really not the worst idea. But Kevin likes to strike, and Jack likes to strike, and this will, almost certainly, be a kickboxing match.
And, honestly: Tough call, man. Jack's technique is a lot cleaner, his hands are crisper and his timing is better. He's also giving up 8" of reach and aiming at a chin that's going to be almost half a foot higher than he's comfortable with. We saw Della fight through a reach disadvantage against Randy Brown, but for one, Brown's reach was still smaller than Holland's, and for two, Holland hits much, much harder.
My gut instinct is to go with Maddalena. In my heart, I see him timing out Holland's wilder swings, catching him overextending, and hurting him the same way Stephen Thompson did. In my head, I see Maddalena getting kicked repeatedly in the legs during his attempts to get into boxing range, gradually slowing down, and eventually getting picked off. I am a foolish man of many emotions, so I'm still picking JACK DELLA MADDALENA BY TKO, but this fight could go either way and it could tip very, very fast.
MAIN CARD: THIS IS WHAT'S LEFT, OKAY
BANTAMWEIGHT: Raul Rosas Jr. (7-1) vs Terrence Mitchell (14-3)
The favored son returns. Raul Rosas Jr. was one of the UFC's new pet projects, an undefeated, 18 year-old wrestler who rode into the UFC on the back of beating the 11-7 Jay "The Joker" Perrin and swore he would destroy Aljamain Sterling and be the new champion before he was even in his twenties. The UFC tried to serve him another softball with the regularly-outgrappled Christian Rodriguez, and Rodriguez instead handed him a beating that got downright uncomfortable to watch, with Rosas going 3 for 16 on his takedown attempts and ending the fight outstruck by 83 to 2. It's not a great look! When your big hyped prospect gets outstruck by a ratio of just about 40:1, that is, generally speaking, bad for your marketing plans.
Which is why Christian Rodriguez is curtain-jerking a main card next month against a hugely touted undefeated prospect and Raul Rosas Jr. is at the top of a main card fighting a guy who got called up from the Alaska regionals a couple months ago to get mauled by said undefeated prospect. To be honest, this fight makes me profoundly loving uncomfortable, because Terrence Mitchell ate a TKO loss in that aforementioned fight after Cameron Saaiman sat on top of him and punched him in the head dozens of times, and that should result in a commission-mandated 30-to-60-day no-contact no-sparring medical suspension, and this fight is--look at that, exactly 70 days after said violent stoppage loss.
So either he was responsible and obeyed the rules and had less than a month to actually spar and train for this fight and everyone is acting good and above-board, or the UFC is pushing a regional fighter on a minimum wage contract into a fight right after he got the crap beaten out of him so they can rehab one of their favorite guys. Completely unrelatedly, hey, remember last month when the UFC got a fight cancelled because the Nevada State Athletic Commission wanted to know why the hell they booked Jesse Butler to compete just 63 days after he got knocked flat by Jim Miller?
That was nice. RAUL ROSAS JR. BY TKO.
LIGHTWEIGHT: Daniel Zellhuber (13-1) vs Christos Giagos (20-10)
Daniel "Golden Boy" Zellhuber is another of those guys the UFC had high hopes for--big, 6'1" lightweight kickboxer, good look, good for marketing, allergic to wrestling--but their plans got sidetracked right out of the gate when he failed his promotional introductory test after getting controlled and outfought by Trey Ogden. In fairness: Tough draw. Ogden's a scrappy, multifaceted guy and Zellhuber, while deeply promising, is young, green, and not yet prepared to be dragged through hell. Which is why they had him rebound by beating the crap out of Lando Vannata, who just wasn't quite able to get his own striking game going against a guy who could jab him from halfway across the cage.
Christos Giagos is a step back in the scrappy direction. This is his second stint in the UFC; his first was all the way back in 2014-2015, where he was dusted in a single round by some unknown rookie named Gilbert Burns, and after a brief journey through the Russian circuit he and his wild takedowns-but-also-flying-knees ways came back to the UFC spotlight in 2018. He's 5-4 since coming back, which isn't a great ratio, but those losses were against guys like Arman Tsarukyan and Charles loving Oliveira, which is a whole lot more forgivable. His upset one-punch knockout of Ricky Glenn in his last fight probably saved his UFC career, but it also put him on the radar for this please-put-our-prospect-over match.
After watching Zellhuber get tripped up by Lando Vannata's takedowns, I'm wary of his prospects against Giagos. Zellhuber's tendency to work from the outside and let opponents come to him plays quite well into the pressure game Giagos likes to play, and ultimately, I think he's going to get outworked for it. CHRISTOS GIAGOS BY DECISION.
FEATHERWEIGHT: Fernando Padilla (15-4) vs Kyle Nelson (14-5-1)
It took years, but Fernando Padilla is finally getting his UFC career off the ground. He got signed all the way back in the summer of 2021 on the strength of his championship win in the Fury Fighting Championships, but thanks to COVID and visa issues he sat on the shelf for two whole years before his UFC debut came together this past April. I underestimated him--both his striking and the impact the layoff would have on him, especially after the UFC gave him the consistently dangerous if inconsistently successful Julian Erosa as his opponent. Padilla dropped Erosa twice in ninety seconds and had him out of the cage before two minutes had elapsed, which is, admittedly, a hell of a way to announce yourself to the world.
Kyle Nelson is a little longer in the tooth. He, too, is tough as nails, and he too, is a difficult fight for everyone he faces, but he's also 2-4-1 in the UFC--and that draw really, aggressively should have been a loss. By any measure Kyle Nelson is a well-rounded fighter with a hell of a chin and a level of tenacity that makes him a live dog in any fight, but as long as you're measuring, you have to add up all the red on his record. He's 2 for his last 7. That's not great. But he's being buffeted by one of those two victories coming just three months ago after upsetting Contender Series signee Blake Bilder, which doubles as, realistically, the best victory of his career.
Kyle Nelson isn't a bad fighter. There's this consistent mindset in the MMA fanbase that reduces fighters to binary always-good or always-bad, but very, very few people make it to the UFC without being very, very good. The whole reason I get mad about the Contender Series is its role in beginning to lower that bar. When I say "Kyle Nelson is 2 for his last 7" it's real easy to interpret that as "Kyle Nelson is a bad fighter," but he's hung on for almost five years for a reason.
But as tough as he is and as well-timed as his toe kicks can be, this is probably not going his way. FERNANDO PADILLA BY TKO.
PRELIMS: FREMDS IN LOW PLACES
WOMEN'S STRAWWEIGHT: Lupita Godinez (10-3) vs Elise Reed (7-3)
This fight is a bit of a clusterfuck. Lupita Godinez, fresh off her victory over Emily Ducote, was supposed to take a lateral step and fight Sam "Sampage" Hughes, but Hughes withdrew--the second time she's been scheduled to fight Godinez and not made it, which Godinez is very unhappy about. Elise Reed, having just defeated Jinh Yu Frey, was supposed to be a last-ditch effort to save Cynthia Calvillo, but Calvillo pulled out, which left Reed dancing with the up-and-coming Iasmin Lucindo, and then Iasmin got re-slotted into another, different fight on this card which was, itself, cancelled after she got hurt. So neither of these women has had time to prepare, both have repeatedly had to adjust to newer opponents with even less direction, and now, having struggled to build winning streaks again, they have to risk them against one another.
I'll say the same thing I always say when Loopy fights: If she uses her chain-wrestling, which is legitimately some of the best in the division, she's going to grind Reed down into nothing and win a wide decision. If she does as she's done in her last three fights, shirks her biggest advantage and tries to engage in fisticuffs at length, she's going to have a really rough loving time. Reed's takedown defense isn't great, but her chin and her ability to walk people down on the feet is. I'm choosing to have faith in LUPITA GODINEZ BY DECISION, but please, for god's sake, remember the joy of the single-leg takedown.
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Roman Kopylov (11-2) vs Josh Fremd (11-4)
This, too, is a clusterfuck fight. Originally, neither of these men was on the card: Chris Curtis, the #14 middleweight, was defending his spot against Anthony "Fluffy" Hernandez. Curtis got hurt and pulled out, and what with the while NOCHE UFC business, Hernandez was kept on the card by way of kickboxing maniac Roman Kopylov, at which point Hernandez tore a ligament in training, and he, too, was out. So now Roman Kopylov, a striking contender on a three-fight winning streak who's beginning to brush the underside of the top fifteen after kicking Claudio Ribiero's head off at the end of July, is facing Josh Fremd. I like Josh Fremd--I like scrappy fighters and I like people who beat Sedriques Dumas--but Fremd is a sort of awkward, loping fighter whose standup is based more on tenacity and brutality than tactics, which is a real unfortunate stylistic choice against someone like Kopylov who does liver surgery with his feet.
Moreover, though, Josh Fremd just fought, like, a month ago. It's already bad enough that Roman Kopylov is fighting again when his last bout was July 29th, but that, at least, was a knockout after five and a half minutes: Josh Fremd fought three full rounds and absorbed several dozen strikes from a professional fighter thirty-five days before this loving fight. And that was after having a lovely weight cut and missing weight by four pounds. This fight is already pretty one-sided on paper; it graduates to feeling outright irresponsible by the numbers. ROMAN KOPYLOV BY TKO.
FLYWEIGHT: Edgar Cháirez (10-5) vs Daniel Lacerda (11-5)
Sometimes, you get a great matchup for your UFC debut and you get to flourish in the spotlight as you dispatch your competition with style and ease. Sometimes, you get served up to a monster. Edgar Cháirez is a good, solid flyweight with quick striking and real aggressive chokeholds, and that ultimately meant nothing, because his debut came against the undefeated Tatsuro Taira, one of the most promising prospects in the entire division. It's a credit to Cháirez that he gave Taira his most consistently competitive fight in the UFC thus far, but that wasn't enough to stop him from dropping a 10-8 round and losing a decision. He did, however, come back from that 10-8, win the third round, and almost choke Taira out, which is even more impressive. Daniel Lacerda, unfortunately, has not impressed. After two years he's 0-4 in the UFC, and not only has he lost every fight, he's been stopped every time. In his last appearance this past March he looked poised to finally end the losing streak, dropping C.J. Vergara with a spinning wheel kick and almost choking him out, but Vergara survived the round and Daniel was dead tired in the second and incapable of making it to a third. He's fast, and he's powerful, and he's athletic, and he just can't seem to control himself well enough to win a fight in the UFC.
I don't anticipate this being different. He's too loose, he's too open, and against a guy like Edgar who jumps on every opportunity presented it will, eventually, cost him. EDGAR CHÁIREZ BY SUBMISSION.
WOMEN'S FLYWEIGHT: Tracy Cortez (10-1, #14) vs Jasmine Jasudavicius (9-2, NR)
I know this is ordinarily where I complain about ranked women's fights being so low on the prelims, but for once, I'm cool with it. This is primarily because we haven't seen Tracy Cortez fight in 16 months, and that is primarily because Tracy Cortez has been struggling with getting her mental health in order. It's very rare for fighters to acknowledge the mental and emotional difficulties of life in mixed martial arts, and when Cortez pulled out of a December fight with Amanda Ribas the UFC simply said it was "a medical issue" and didn't discuss it further. Cortez, herself, was the one who opened up about it on her social media, admitting how hard she'd struggled with depression through her entire fight camp and the breakdown that ultimately forced her to withdraw. Honestly: Good for her. It's not easy to talk about it when no one else is doing it. Jasmine Jasudavicius has been extremely loving active in the interim, this fight in particular marking her third walk to the cage since this past February. Her inexplicably underrated grappling has been serving her well, as opponents keep somehow failing to anticipate her controlling them both against the cage and on the ground, but her last fight against Miranda Maverick displayed her willingness to mix her own strengths up with repeated boots to the head and angry, yelling combination boxing, because, as anyone who's watched Dragonball can tell you, yelling makes you stronger.
I've been beating the "Jasmine Jasudavicius is underrated" drum long enough to feel weird about saying this: TRACY CORTEZ BY DECISION. Cortez is enough of a grappler to be a match for Jasudavicius and fast enough on her feet to avoid the big swings; unless ring rust gets to her, she should be able to comfortably win both aspects of this fight. Should.
LIGHTWEIGHT: Charlie Campbell (7-2) vs Alex Reyes (13-3)
This fight takes us back to clusterfuckville, but boy, even by its regular population standards, this is a weird one. First off, Alex Perez has been signed to the UFC since 2017: This will be his second-ever UFC fight. He came in as a late injury replacement for Thiago Alves, got his face kneed off by Mike Perry in seventy-nine seconds, and up until this weekend, that was his entire UFC career. Seventy-nine seconds in two thousand, one hundred and ninety-one days. Alex Perez's hiatus from the sport is, at this point, 1/3 the length of his entire tenure as a professional fighter. He was supposed to fight Trevor Peek back in February but got hurt; he was supposed to fight Natan Levy here, and this time, Levy got hurt. So after more than half a goddamn decade of waiting, Alex Reyes, a 13-3 fighter who only has 3 career opponents who are still active in the sport, is making his grand return against Charlie "The Cannibal" Campbell, a guy who got on the Contender Series last year, threw all defense to the wind in the name of stinging his opponent with uppercuts and hooks in an attempt to please Shao Kahn in the stands, and, inevitably, ran in with his hands down and his opponent hurt, for which he was, of course, immediately destroyed with a right hand. But his love of brutality put him on Dana's radar, and a year and a win later, here he is, ready for his close-up.
Look, it's a loving coinflip. "How will they look after a year/two years/three years on the shelf" is a phrase I find myself saying surprisingly frequently in these writeups; the last time we saw Alex Reyes was almost six goddamn years ago. The last time we saw Alex Reyes, "Despacito" was new. And that Alex Reyes hadn't seen a fight last longer than a minute since 2015. Your guess is as good as loving mine; I'm going with CHARLIE CAMPBELL BY TKO because, boy, coming back to the UFC just a few weeks before your 37th birthday after six years in the freezer against a guy who likes to throw as hard as possible as fast as possible seems like a real good way to get blitzed.
WOMEN'S STRAWWEIGHT: Josefine Knutsson (6-0) vs Marnic Mann (6-1)
And here, we have our last rescheduling of the card. Josefine Knutsson is in the particularly funny position of being here despite knowing, without a doubt, that the UFC didn't actually want her. She just won on the Contender Series, like, two and a half weeks ago, a wide, 30-27 decision over Invicta veteran Isis Verbeek that left absolutely no doubt who the better fighter was, and Dana White, because she used the dread art of grappling, simply shrugged and sent her home. For a week. Then the UFC suddenly desperately needed warm bodies for the flailing NOCHE UFC, and they wanted someone they were pretty sure would get hosed up by Iasmin Lucindo, and Knutsson was their girl. But then Lucindo dropped out thanks to an injury, and well, hell, now you've got Josefine Knutsson signed when you didn't want her AND the card only has ten fights on it. What do you do? You sign up another Contender Series second-stringer, "The Sawed-Off Savage" Marnic Mann. She was on the great contract mill variety show last September, where she put up an acceptable first-round effort before getting her head kicked off by Bruna Brasil in the second. She took her all-around assaults back to the regional circuit, picked up a win no one really watched or cared about, and would probably have remained under the radar had the UFC not been so desperate to bail out this card that they called in loving everyone they could.
So, on one week's notice, it's Josefine Knutsson vs. Marnic Mann. Which, uh, JOSEFINE KNUTSSON BY DECISION, I guess. I don't know that she's going to be able to stop Knutsson's takedowns or grappling control, and Knutsson actually does have some kickboxing chops that will keep her from simply getting outworked on the feet.
Prelims in thirty. Do you dare miss Marnic Mann?
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Sep 16, 2023 23:30
