- Brut
- Aug 21, 2007
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Prelims starting right now
CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 76: TREADING WATER IN A SHARK TANK
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 23 FROM THE GAPING CHASM OF THE UFC APEX
PRELIMS 1 PM PDT / 4 PM EDT | MAIN CARD 4 PM / 7 PM VIA ESPN+
Boy, that last month sure was wild, huh? Five crazy events, four separate countries, three title fights, two new champions, one legendary retirement--what a fun, globetrotting adventure through the highest echelons of mixed martial arts! Did you have fun? Good!
Because we have only have three fight cards in the next four weeks, all of them are airing from the UFC Apex's empty arena, and one of them doesn't even have two ranked fighters in the main event.
Just look at that poster up above. Look at the amount of effort they put into it. This is the real UFC. This is what we're really about. Welcome back to cards the marketing team isn't given a budget for. Welcome back to the real poo poo.
but it does mean you get a few ranked fights, at least
MAIN EVENT: THE CONTENDER PARADOX
 LIGHTWEIGHT: Rafael Fiziev (12-2, #6) vs Mateusz Gamrot (22-2 (1), #7)
The UFC's lightweight division is simultaneously one of the premiere weight classes in all of mixed martial arts and one of its biggest ongoing traffic jams.
Lightweight is, and has always been, one of the best hotbeds of talent in the world. This is in no way untrue now. There isn't a single fighter in the top fifteen who's a step below world-class. Championship grapplers, star wrestlers and world-class kickboxers litter its ranks. They're all amazing. They're all killers. And not a single one of them can actually break through to title contention, because a combination of skill, timing and marketing means no one can break the iron loving grip four men have on the entire division: Islam Makhachev, Charles Oliveira, Justin Gaethje, Dustin Poirier.
It has been five years--all the way back to Khabib Nurmagomedov vs Conor McGregor in October of 2018--since a 155-pound title match did not involve one of those four men. For Makhachev, of course, that's natural--he's the goddamn champ and he won the belt less than a year ago--but the rest have kept this tight triangle of power that freezes everyone else out of contention. Only one man has managed to break into those ranks--and it was Alexander Volkanovski, and he did it by bypassing the division entirely and getting a shot based on his prowess at 145 pounds. And he, too, is extremely likely to get the next shot at the belt, meaning he, too, has become a part of this block.
That block is built on top of every contender in this division, and both of these men have fallen victim to it. Rafael Fiziev is a great fighter who overcame a loss in his UFC debut and tore his way through the division en route to a potential contendership fight with Justin Gaethje this past March, but despite the momentum of six straight wins, he couldn't get past the block. He came incredibly close--Justin Gaethje, a man with an 84% finishing rate, just barely scraped out a majority decision against Fiziev--but not close enough. That win propelled Justin Gaethje into a successful rematch with Dustin Poirier, and now Justin is the man waiting for his turn back atop the triangle.
Mateusz Gamrot is no different. He, too, lost his UFC debut, he, too, rifled off four gradually more impressive wins, and he, too, was being talked about as a possible next entry into the pantheon of title contendership. But his chance at the top came against the man most recently crushed by the pyramidal roadblock: Beneil Dariush, who despite an insane, seven-fight win streak over three undefeated years could not get the UFC to book him into a title eliminator. Instead, they gave him Gamrot. Dariush made an example of Mateusz, outwrestling him and at one point even dropping him just to make clear that the triangle's time was over, and he, Beneil Dariush, was the true, uncrowned #1 contender to the lightweight title.
Until this past June, when Charles Oliveira flattened him in one round and secured his own rematch with Islam Makhachev. When it comes next month, it will mean Charles Oliveira has been in four of the last five fights for the lightweight title.
Not Beneil Dariush. Not Mateusz Gamrot. And definitely not Rafael Fiziev. And it's precisely because of that massive stranglehold on the top of the division that the justifications for new contenders begin to grow thin. Doubts creep in; records get picked apart. Sure, Rafael Fiziev had a six-fight winning streak, but who was the most impressive victory within it? Renato Moicano, an unranked former featherweight? Brad Riddell, who was starting a three-fight skid that led to a hiatus from the sport? Rafael dos Anjos, a legend nearing 40 who won't even make 155 pounds anymore?
And what of Mateusz Gamrot? Two of his best victories came over Scott Holtzman and Jeremy Stephens, who would retire from MMA or leave the UFC within a year. He beat Diego Ferreira, but Ferreira, too, was on a three-fight skid and wound up spending a year and a half away from the sport recovering from injuries afterwards. The biggest feather in Gamrot's cap is unquestionably his decision over Arman Tsarukyan--but it's a decision the majority of media scorecards disagreed with. Since his shellacking at Dariush's hands, he managed to barely survive and get a split decision against Jalin Turner, but where does that really leave him?
If Charles Oliveira has the next title shot, and after that it's either Justin Gaethje, Alexander Volkanovski, or one followed by the other, how many times will the bottom five have to beat each other before one of them gets a title shot--and will the inevitable contender come about because of their victories, or because the triangle of death finally ages out of the sport and retires?
And what's going to happen here, in this actual, literal fight, instead of whatever abstract divisional crap I'm talking about instead of these two men who are going to hit each other for money?
Truthfully, I think it's a bad matchup for Rafael Fiziev. Gamrot is plainly no match for him in a striking battle, but while Fiziev ultimately beat Rafael dos Anjos, RDA gave him seven kinds of hell having to fight out from under his constant clinching pressure. Mateusz is not only a better wrestler than RDA, he's got an even better gas tank and he's far better at chaining his takedowns together. He'll work through four takedown attempts just to land one, and statistically speaking, he will get it. Fiziev's takedown defense is very good, but it hasn't stopped him from still, inevitably, getting dragged down by his high-level opponents.
This is the most focused, highest-level grappler he'll have faced in his career. If he can keep Gamrot off of him and punish him with leg kicks and left hooks, well, we've seen Jalin Turner nearly shut Gamrot's lights off--but Turner was a whole lot bigger, stronger and rangier than Fiziev. In a prolonged battle, I cannot help seeing Gamrot's wrestling eventually grinding Fiziev away. MATEUSZ GAMROT BY DECISION.
CO-MAIN EVENT: PICKING YOURSELF UP AFTER FALLING OFF A LADDER
FEATHERWEIGHT: Bryce Mitchell (15-1, #10) vs Dan Ige (17-6, #12)
We have two very different redemption stories here, and only one of them involves a man who put a spinning power drill through his own testicles by mistake.
Come on down, Bryce Mitchell! Aside from that aforementioned drill mishap and a fight on The Ultimate Fighter, which doesn't count on your official record because legally considering them exhibitions keeps the UFC from having to publicly disclose their results before the seasons air on television because our sport is fake as poo poo, Bryce Mitchell spent the last eight years riding the most popular hype train you can get in the sport: The hype of the undefeated. Mitchell combined a great gas tank, a solid chin, and the kind of outright stubbornness that leads to both a persistent desire to walk people down with your fists and be a real, real big fan of Flat Earth conspiracy theories. In mixed martial arts, that's all you need.
At least, it is right up until you meet the guy who kills you. Mitchell's years of contendership momentum came to a screeching halt this past December when he ran into the brick wall that is Ilia Topuria. To his credit, Bryce put up a good fight for the first half of the first round, but the moment Topuria started putting hands on him, the fight was over. He was hurt, wobbled and bleeding in short order, and in the second Topuria simply big brothered him and choked him out. Just like that, Mitchell's undefeated streak, his contendership hopes, and his hype train were gone.
Dan Ige already went through that process a few years back. Ige was one of the original Contender Series winners, and after a stumble in his debut against the forever-underrated Julio Arce, Ige rifled off a six-fight win streak. It got a bit shaky near the end--he really, really should have lost that split decision to Edson Barboza--but he had the victories, he had the ranking, and he had the shine of a brand new contender. And then he spent the next two years going 1 for 5. There weren't any lucky decisions waiting for him in the top ten. Calvin Kattar, Chan Sung Jung, Josh Emmett, Movsar Evloev--every one of them a potential contender, every one of them a stop sign. By the dawn of 2023 Ige was seen as a divisional afterthought, and the UFC began matching him up with new prospects they wanted to see succeed.
And Dan Ige beat the crap out of them. He knocked the streaking Damon Jackson out cold in two rounds on the UFC's first card of the year, and this past June saw him face Nate "The Train" Landwehr, a prospect who'd established himself as a brand-new fan favorite thanks as much to his overwhelming toughness as his profoundly weird charisma, and Ige staggered and even dropped him repeatedly. He wanted to make clear that he was no one's stepping stone, and he'd crush every prospect they threw at him until he got his own chance to truly cement himself back into the top ten.
This is that chance. And, much like the main event, I don't see it going his way at all. We're barely a year removed from watching Movsar Evloev put an absolute wrestling clinic on Ige. There are exactly three fighters in the featherweight top 15 I can see having that level of wrestling dominance against him: Bryce Mitchell is the third. It's possible Topuria cracked his chin and his confidence, we won't know until we see him get back in the cage, but as long as he doesn't stubbornly insist on a stand-up war with a much better boxer, Mitchell should be able to drag Ige down and control him. BRYCE MITCHELL BY DECISION.
MAIN CARD: BRYAN BATTLE ON A MAIN CARD, BY GOD
WOMEN'S STRAWWEIGHT: Marina Rodriguez (16-3-2, #9) vs Michelle Waterson-Gomez (18-11, #13)
If you find yourself having an odd sense of deja vu, no, it's not you. This is a rematch of a fight that happened just barely two years ago, back when it was an actual main event. It wasn't controversial; it wasn't even close.
And it is pretty unequivocally happening again solely because they want to make hay on Marina Rodriguez. At the end of 2022 she was the clearest title contender for the aftermath of Namajunas/Esparza 2, because, well, here's me getting angry about the UFC loving everything up:
Of course, Marina promptly got TKOed by Amanda Lemos--with one of those oddly quicker-than-usual standing TKO stops that seem to happen a lot more often when women are fighting for some strange reason we definitely shouldn't do any social introspection about--and her momentum ended on the spot. A dominant grappling loss to Virna Jandiroba this past May gave Marina the first back-to-back losses of her career, and dropped her all the way down the ladder to the periphery of the top ten.
You might think this is an opportunity for a newly-rising Michelle Waterson-Gomez, laden with momentum and lifted by victory, to avenge her loss. And, uh--actually, no. Michelle has in fact lost twice since the first fight with Marina. Amanda Lemos actually earned her shot at Marina by choking Waterson-Gomez out a year and change after their fight. After another near-year off, Michelle came back to face Luana Pinheiro this past April, and she lost that fight by an all-too-familiar split decision a lot of folks think was a robbery. For once, I am not one of them, but it could easily have coinflipped the other way.
But it didn't. Marina's just fallen far enough after her two losses that the UFC wants to either rehab her by letting her beat Waterson-Gomez again, as she's still one of the division's more popular fighters, or get Michelle the kind of victory that could leave her one good marketing fight away from a title shot in a division that stopped making sense awhile ago anyway.
MARINA RODRIGUEZ BY DECISION. The thing is, that fight really wasn't that long ago, and neither fighter's methods, strengths or weaknesses have particularly changed. Marina's still a bigger, better, rangier boxer, and unlike Virna Jandiroba, Michelle doesn't have the power or physicality in her wrestling to force Marina to the canvas. Second verse, same as the first.
WELTERWEIGHT: Bryan Battle (9-2) vs AJ Fletcher (10-2)
I've been mad about Bryan Battle being stuck on the prelims for so long, and now that he's off of them the shock has rendered me speechless. Bryan Battle was the UFC's seemingly forgotten winner of 2021's The Ultimate Fighter 29 (jesus christ), and despite proving himself to be a profoundly weird fighter who could drop people with headkicks and check hooks, the UFC decided the best use of their knockout artist TUF champion was getting buried on the earliest side of the prelims of TV cards and offered up as a short-notice sacrificial lamb against 21-2 monsters like Rinat Fakhretdinov. Because if you can't beat a Russian middleweight champion on a week's notice, why bother even pretending it's worth it to invest in you? It's only after dropping Gabe Green in 14 seconds this past May that Battle is now, finally, getting off the god damned prelims again.
His main-card dance partner is AJ "The Ghost" Fletcher, a Contender Series winner who hopped into the UFC with his fancy new contract in 2022 and got immediately, repeatedly outworked. Fletcher's a power-wrestler who tends to live and die by his physicality. He's got a great blast-double of a takedown, he's more than willing to toss it out repeatedly if it will mean wrestling his opponent to the floor, and he, uh, tends to do it hard enough that he gets visibly tired midway through the second frame. His fights with Matt Semelsberger and Ange Loosa both saw his output wane in the back half of the fight, which ultimately cost him decisions. It wasn't until his fight with Themba Gorimbo this past February that Fletcher finally notched a UFC victory, but it was a bit on the scrappy side--he was actually getting outwrestled by Gorimbo until an elbow in the clinch discombobulated Themba enough to give up the advantage.
Which makes this tricky. Battle, historically, does not have the best takedown defense. Fletcher unquestionably has a wrestling advantage. But Fletcher tends to have a lot of trouble maintaining top control, and Battle is scrambly enough that even while the aforementioned Fakhretdinov was beating him senseless, he was able to repeatedly scramble out of danger and to his feet. Ultimately, I'm siding with BRYAN BATTLE BY SUBMISSION. Fletcher's never been finished, and I think he's too adept at grappling to not get Battle repeatedly to the floor, but he's going to be forced to work constantly for fifteen minutes, and Battle's aggressive submission-hunting will only get more dangerous as Fletcher tires.
FEATHERWEIGHT: Charles Jourdain (14-6-1) vs Ricardo Ramos (16-4)
This, I am looking forward to. Charles Jourdain has long been one of the UFC's most consistently entertaining fighters, the kind of technical brawler who fights with the kind of palpable tension that comes from knowing he is constantly seeking opportunities to completely abandon his well-managed gameplan in favor of swinging leather and jumping on guillotines if he thinks a finish could materialize out of it. He has, unfortunately, not been the most successful at establishing himself as a real threat to the rankings--after four years and ten fights in the UFC he's a perfectly split 5-5, and every fight that could have gotten him rankings-adjacent has seen him summarily rejected. But he did, however, beat the crap out of Kron Gracie a few months ago, and boy, it's hard not to appreciate that.
Ricardo Ramos is one of the more underrated fighters in the featherweight division, but unfortunately, he's played a pretty active role in guiding the fanbase's expectations. The problem with Ramos has never been talent. He's extremely well-rounded, he hits hard, he's a dangerous grappler and he's more than willing to engage in the kind of aggressive gunfights the company tends to enjoy. But he's gotten routed--definitively--by all of his top-ranked competition. He can beat Journey Newson and Bill Algeo, but Said Nurmagomedov, Lerone Murphy and Zubaira Tukhugov are just a bridge too far. Those losses count less against him than his committing the cardinal sin of mixed martial arts, however--he was supposed to fight Austin Lingo this past March, and instead, thanks to complications from an injury in training, he missed weight by eight pounds, one of the biggest misses in UFC history.
Combine his losses, his having fought only once in the last two years and blowing weight by an entire division, and you have a solid recipe for bad will with the fanbase. All of that being said: If Ramos is healthy and on-target, this should be a hell of a fight. Both men are great, technically sound brawlers, although I'd give Jourdain's kicking range an edge of Ramos and his boxing. Ultimately, I think RICARDO RAMOS BY DECISION feels more likely, given the likelihood he pressures Jourdain down behind his power punches, but after the year he's had, Ramos is going to have a lot of ghosts to exorcise, and his looking terrible is by no means off the market.
PRELIMS: THE CHASE SHERMAN-SHAPED HOLE IN MY HEART
BANTAMWEIGHT: Miles Johns (13-2) vs Dam Argueta (9-1 (1))
This being our prelim headliner is a little on the weird side. Miles Johns is taking his first fight in almost a year, which is enough time to forget said fight was an effort against Vince Morales that somehow made the bantamweight division boring and involved less attempted strikes or successful grappling than the average heavyweight fight (1 for 12 on takedown attempts!) and that, too, was a follow-up to a loss. At this point, Johns is 1-2 over the last 25 months and his most memorable accomplishments are getting destroyed by Mario Bautista and scoring a knockout over Anderson dos Santos, which, if we're being REALLY honest, was mostly notable for all the "tee hee Anderson dos Santos" jokes we made on the internet to cover for the fact that we're still pining for fighters from years ago. Dan Argueta isn't in a much better position: He was 1-1 in the UFC heading into his last fight, a wrestler vs wrestler showdown with Ronnie Lawrence, which infamously ended in referee "No Nonsense" Keith Peterson loving up and thinking Lawrence was tapping out to a guillotine choke when he was, in fact, pulling his hand away because Peterson kept loving yanking on it while he was trying to defend himself. The fight was changed to a No Contest before they finished reading out the results, and Dominick Cruz is still slowly alienating all of his friends and family by talking about Keith Peterson while everyone else is just trying to have a nice dinner together.
DAN ARGUETA BY DECISION. I think he's a better, stronger wrestler, and I don't think Johns will have great answers for his top game.
WELTERWEIGHT: Tim Means (32-15-1 (1)) vs Andre Fialho (16-7)
We're an extremely rare position, here. This is a) one of the longest-tenured fights of the night, b) one of the absolute best, most promising fights of the night, and c) very likely a loser-leaves-town match, all at once. Tim Means has been one of the UFC's most consistent fight-of-the-night machines for more than a decade; his combination punching, his vicious clinch elbows and the occasional grappling assaults that, years later, still seem to take opponents completely by surprise have kept him vital, if never anywhere close to being ranked, since Minecraft was new. Andre Fialho's only been kicking around the UFC for a touch over a year and a half, which makes it completely insane that that this is already his seventh fight. On average, every ninety days, you've seen Andre Fialho punch someone in the face. His existence as a stand-and-bang elemental, and his innate willingness to throw himself into fire even when a tactical approach probably would have fared better, made him a midcard staple.
Unfortunately: Both of these guys are on three-fight losing streaks, and five of those six collective losses saw them getting finished. In Fialho's case this could easily be chalked up to living and dying by the fist-shaped sword, but Means is getting ragdolled by bigger, younger guys, and as he nears his 40th birthday this February it becomes progressively harder not to have progressively more uncomfortable conversations about aging out of the sport. Which is funny, because I think TIM MEANS BY SUBMISSION is a surprisingly plausible outcome, here. Means has spent his entire career abusing people with straightforward, no-variation gameplans, and Fialho is as straightforward and aggressive as fighter as it gets. I think Means hurts him and gets a choke in the clinch.
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Jacob Malkoun (7-2) vs Cody Brundage (8-5)
Wrestling. WRES-TUL-ANG. Do you like technical kickboxing and fast-flowing jiu-jitsu and chess matches? gently caress YOU, THIS IS WRESTLING. Jacob Malkoun arguably should've gotten a decision over now-top-ten middleweight Brendan Allen back in mid-2022, but this was right in the deepest, darkest parts of our great international discussion on scouring all memories of wrestling from the mixed martial arts judging criteria, and he was damned for his love of the double-leg and minimal offensive output. Cody Brundage, once cursed by the Contender Series for his wrestling ways being unable to win the day against the weight class-agnostic William Knight, chose to simply embrace oblivion and start losing repeatedly. 60% of his career losses have all come in the last nine months, as he enters this fight down three in a row thanks to either stronger strikers, cannier grapplers, or his own irrepressible need to repeatedly jump loving guillotines on Sedriques Dumas.
On one hand, Brundage is finally back on the positive side of the size game, as Malkoun is a much smaller 5'9" to his 6'0" and won't be able to physically manhandle him the way other opponents have. On the other: I think he's probably better at the actual wrestling, and, well, that's the game. JACOB MALKOUN BY DECISION.
HEAVYWEIGHT: Jake Collier (13-9) vs Mohammed Usman (9-2)
What have we lost, truly? What did we give away in the heavyweight division, that this is where we are today? Mohammed Usman is your The Ultimate Fighter 30 (jesus christ) champion and he's already 2-0 in the UFC and I defy anyone to name either of those fights without surreptitiously googling it first. Jake Collier was here to welcome 11-0 Brazilian prospect prospect "The Clean Monster" Valter Walker to the UFC, and I bet you have absolutely no idea if I'm just loving with you right now. I'm not! Valter Walker is, in fact, Johnny Walker's brother, meaning--you guessed it--this entire match was just an excuse for the UFC to put two younger yet larger brothers of two more notable, successful fighters into a match with each other. Because that's what heavyweight is, now. Here are your prospects: We have so few of them that it doesn't matter how they got here, they're just going until someone knocks enough people out that we decide to give them advertising. The knockout guy can't fight anymore? gently caress it, call Jake Collier.
What I'm saying is this: It's all been downhill since they fired Chase Sherman. Francis Ngannou? Gone. The longest title lineage in the sport? Severed. The contenders? Falling apart. Jon Jones? Running rampant. Did Jake Collier beat Chase Sherman? Easily. Does that mean I wouldn't rather have him here? Not on your goddamn life. MOHAMMED USMAN BY DECISION.
WOMEN'S STRAWWEIGHT: Mizuki Inoue (14-6) vs Hannah Goldy (6-3)
I cannot even pretend to be unbiased, here. Shootboxing is the wonderful, magical world of half-grappling kickboxing, with all sorts of progressively sillier rules about what techniques are and are not allowed, and it is one of the great jewels of combat sports and the weird, silly world they inhabit. Mizuki Inoue was a Shootboxing champion and I cannot ever root against her because doing so would be like removing my own blood to curse at it. She is, however, coming off three years on the couch, which always introduces unpredictability into the mix. And Hannah Goldy will need that unpredictability, because she's a pretty fuckin' big underdog here and that's an entirely fair assessment. Goldy won her way into the UFC through the Contender Series back in 2019, and over the subsequent four years she's managed to go 1-3, with that sole victory coming over the 4-5 Emily Whitmire which, historically speaking, is not doing her any favors. This is in fact Goldy's first attempt to drop back down to 115 after Molly McCann loving flattened her last Summer.
But the odds are against her for a reason. Hannah's always had trouble keeping her style together, she tends to get hosed up by people who can successfully pressure her on the feet or outwork her on the ground, and truthfully, I don't think Mizuki will have much trouble with either. MIZUKI INOUE BY DECISION.
WOMEN'S BANTAMWEIGHT: Montserrat Rendon (5-0) vs Tamires Vidal (7-1)
And we're rounding out the card with one more weird one. Montserrat "Monster" Rendon is a relative rookie who's just now passing her third year as a pro, except she hasn't actually fought at all in the last year. Her last appearance was almost exactly one year ago, in fact: A September 28, 2022 split decision victory over the now 6-5 Invicta veteran Brittney Cloudy. Which most of the media thought Cloudy should have won. One year and one cancelled Invicta fight in March later, and, uh, congratulations, you're in the UFC now, because boy, Women's Bantamweight needs the bodies. Which is also why Tamires Vidal is here. Vidal was hired to fight at Women's Featherweight, the division the UFC would like you to quietly forget ever existed, and after exactly one fight--a really cool flying knee knockout over Ramona Pascual--they told her the fun was over and it was time to cut down to 135. She, too, was supposed to fight this past March, and undisclosed medical issues ultimately scratched her from the UFC's attempt to feed her to Hailey Cowan, but by god, you'd at least better fight at the only weight class we're still willing to give you.
TAMIRES VIDAL BY SUBMISSION. Rendon's bigger, but I don't think she's stronger, and Vidal's shown the same kind of applied pressure Cloudy used to make her life difficult. Add in Rendon's 0-finish record and lack of having really ever staggered or threatened an opponent before and I cannot help but see someone as tough as Vidal walking through her offense.
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Sep 23, 2023 21:06
