CarlCX posted:

CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 77: THE NADIR OF THE APEX

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 7 FROM THE UNCARING PIT OF THE UFC APEX
PRELIMS 1 PM PDT / 4 PM EDT | MAIN CARD 4 PM / 7 PM VIA ESPN+

Corporate problemsolving is one of society's most underrated sources of comedy.

The UFC has been getting flak for its matchmaking since the end of the pandemic--or, rather, the point at which the world's economic engines collectively decided it was tired of even pretending to care about the pandemic--when they announced they would keep running cards out of the Apex, its bubble-dome home. It was cost-conscious, it was easy to deal with travel, and it made the logistics of fulfilling their exhausting ESPN schedule much simpler.

And that meant cards with little to no value in name or rankings. This card is no different: There are threetwo ranked fighters on the entire card, and they're not even fighting each other. Fans being upset is pretty thoroughly understandable. You could solve this in a lot of ways: Less cards, or more focused matchmaking, or raising pay to incentivize fighters to fight more.

Last week, the UFC announced its prospective solution: Making the rankings a top 20 instead of a top 15, so that more fighters are ranked and, therefore, more ranked fighters are fighting.

I don't miss my days of being in corporate boardrooms. I don't miss the bad solution. But I am incredibly glad I have enough distance now that I get to laugh at them.

To the UFC employees who don't have that option: I feel your pain.


_{kid kvenbo.}

MAIN EVENT: KING FISHING
LIGHTWEIGHT: Grant Dawson (20-1-1, #10) vs Bobby Green (30-14-1, NR)

Three months ago, I summarized the inherent weirdness of Grant Dawson's status in the UFC like this.

CarlCX posted:

If there is a weird aspect to Dawson's career, that's the one. He's a Contender Series baby, he's only got one loss on his record, he's been killing people in the UFC--all but two of his seven wins were stoppages--and he's just #15, and he's only now getting a chance to move up the ladder. At a time when other promotional darlings were playing rankings hopscotch, Grant Dawson, who has not lost a fight since 2016, is divisionally less important than Matt Frevola and Jalin Turner.

Hold onto that a moment, and allow me to be self-indulgent and quote myself again. Two weeks ago, I wrote this regarding the lightweight showdown between Rafael Fiziev and Mateusz Gamrot:

CarlCX posted:

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's one event later, and we're about to have this same conversation again, because we have another lightweight main event and it is, in some ways, even worse.

Grant Dawson is in the best position of his career. He's still a favored Contender Series winner, he's still undefeated in the UFC (albeit including a draw against Ricky Glenn, which we'll come back to later), and now he's finally, officially one of the ten best lightweights in the world. For all of the UFC's trouble booking Dawson, that coronation fight fell right in their laps: Damir Ismagulov, a top-ten lightweight, wanted to retire but had one fight left on his contract, and he had historical trouble against bigger, stronger wrestlers, and, conveniently, the company just happened to have one they'd been trying to figure out how to fit into the picture for years.

One dominant mauling and one rear-naked choke later, Grant Dawson has his #10 and the UFC has their new American wrestleman in the rankings. Sure, it took them years to get him there, but they finally managed. How do you follow up on that momentum? Do you get Dawson in there against someone in the top ten? Do you give him a nearest-neighbor fight against one of the potential contenders beneath him?

Of course not! That would be stupid. You book him against Bobby Green.

I like Bobby Green. I have said this many times and I hope I get to say it many more: Bobby Green has long been one of my favorite fighters to watch. His defensive instincts, his speed, his movement and his pinpoint counterpunches all make him an exceptionally unusual and exceptionally interesting style matchup for anyone in the sport, and that's been true for almost two decades, now. He's fantastic!

He also spent the last year and a half going 1-2 (1). He got the poo poo beat out of him in an incredibly ill-advised last-minute fill-in fight against Islam Makhachev, which, hey, it's Islam Makhachev. And then he got knocked out standing by Drew Dober, which, for a guy known for his striking defense, is less than ideal. And then he rebounded against Jared Gordon, except that rebound took the form of Green human-torpedoing his skull into Gordon's jaw and getting the fight thrown out over the unintentional foul. How DID Green get this fight?

Oh, that's right--he choked out the ghost of Tony Ferguson, marking the sixth straight loss for ol' T-Ferg. That's enough to get you back into top ten contendership, I suppose. Say, what's Tony doing next?

Why, he's fighting Paddy Pimblett in December.

So, just to recap: It took Grant Dawson eight wins to get into the top ten, and now he has to defend his spot against Bobby Green, who's coming off a No Contest against Jared Gordon and a victory over Tony Ferguson, and Tony Ferguson, who has lost six fights in a row, has a big, splashy pay-per-view matchup with Paddy Pimblett, who got that match because he received the worst judges' decision of 2022 in his victory over Jared Gordon, the man Bobby Green also failed to beat.

And Jared Gordon is fighting Mark Madsen on the prelims next month.

This is the reason fans are unhappy. It's not about who does or doesn't have a number next to their name, that's just the way you keep things organized. It's about the matchmaking not loving mattering. Did Jared Gordon's win over Damir Ismagulov really matter? Sure, he was ranked, but he was also retired right up until a lawyer told him the UFC still had him on paper. And now he could turn his number over to Bobby Green, winner of one straight fight, because Green beat the shambling remains of Tony Ferguson, who, on a six-fight losing streak, is now about to be blatantly used by the UFC to prop up their biggest marketing story of the last two years in Paddy Pimblett, who will, without a doubt, be jetpacked over all these poor fuckers if he wins.

And that's not even a controversial statement anymore! Once upon a time it would be the kind of whiny bullshit internet thing you said about the UFC before your scathing hot takes about how Hector Lombard was actually the best middleweight on the planet, but now it's just--normal. They did it with Sean O'Malley. They did it with Sean Strickland. In a couple months they're doing it again with Colby Covington. How many fights do you think Bo Nickal will have before he gets a title shot? If the UFC brought Brock Lesnar back and gave him an immediate shot at Jon Jones and the heavyweight championship, would you even bat an eye anymore?

Islam Makhachev is about to fight a rematch with Charles Oliveira. Justin Gaethje just fought a rematch with Dustin Poirier. If Alexander Volkanovski defeats Ilia Topuria next January (I'm guessing that's when they'll do it, anyway), he will almost certainly get a rematch with Makhachev himself. Gaethje will almost certainly fight whoever's left. Michael Chandler is chasing a match with Conor McGregor. Rafael Fiziev is out indefinitely pending the severity of his knee injury. Half of the top ten is frozen in amber and the other half is spinning its wheels, fighting each other and trading numbers over and over while they wait for someone to get injured, go on a skid, or straight-up retire.

So if you're a fan, unless you're specifically a big Grant Dawson or Bobby Green guy--what are you hoping for, here? If Dawson wins, it does nothing for him. If Green wins, he's a #10 who got knocked stiff by the #14 less than a year ago, meaning more rematches.

Nothing can do anything for anyone's momentum because there's nowhere for that momentum to carry them. It's no longer earned, it's granted by marketing. Because--of course--if you're the kind of loving weirdo who gives a poo poo about divisional momentum, well, you're already watching, so they don't need to appeal to you anyway, and can put their energy into figuring out how to convince people to care about Paddy Pimblett instead.

Loving this stupid loving sport is deeply loving frustrating.

If you're wondering if I'm talking so much about the surroundings of this fight because I don't have much to say about the fight itself, gold star. GRANT DAWSON BY DECISION. Green's a better wrestler than he gets credit for, but he's not good enough to stop Dawson. He likes to footwork himself back into the cage to make space for his slips and counters, and that's exactly where Dawson's going to tie him up and drag him down. Green's defense is solid--the only person to finish him on the ground since 2008 is Islam loving Makhachev--and I don't think Dawson's going to be able to crack it enough to get a stoppage. So it's five rounds of grind. Congratulations.

CO-MAIN EVENT: TECHNICALLY A CO-MAIN EVENT
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Joe Pyfer (11-2) vs Abdul Razak Alhassan (12-5)

This is the co-main event we're going with? Not the fight with the ranked strawweights? Not Drew Dober, who's right there, two fights away? I mean, if you're sure, man, but we just finished talking about the final triumph of marketing, do we really have to put a stamp on it already?

It's not that either of these guys are bad. They're good! But Joe Pyfer just joined the UFC a year ago after his second shot at the Contender Series--he got his arm broke on a slam the first time around in 2020--and he knocked out the 0-4 Alen Amedovski and the 10-9 Gerald Meerschaert, and, uh, that's enough now, I guess. What's even crazier is--by Pyfer's own admission!--this is a smaller showing than the UFC had targeted for him. They wanted Joe Pyfer to fight Nassourdine Imavov, the #11-ranked middleweight in the world. After two fights! We just loving talked about this! Christ.

The only reason Joe Pyfer is not fighting to be in one-or-two-fights-away-from-the-title position is because Pyfer, himself, told the UFC he wasn't ready yet. Which is a hell of a thing, honestly. Having enough self-awareness about yourself as a fighter to say you know you need more time to prepare before you fight the absolute best of the best--and, more importantly, you value yourself enough to know you're not letting the UFC push you into the deep end while you're still on their entry-level pay--is extremely unusual in any era of MMA, let alone the Contender Series Gold Rush present. Joe Pyfer's a hard puncher and a solid wrestler and a potential top talent, but it's okay to take your time getting there.

So the UFC is giving him someone who is, respectfully, nowhere near a ranking. Abdul Razak Alhassan's been kicking around the UFC since 2016, and he's almost been cut twice already. By the end of 2020 he was 4-3, which isn't great, but it's not terrible, and at the UFC's level of competition, nothing to sneeze at. Unfortunately, he was fighting at 170 pounds, he missed weight in two consecutive fights, he lost both of those fights, and in the latter he got knocked cold in thirty seconds. That, generally, is the point at which you accept one of two changes in career direction: A step up to the next weight class, or a quick walk to the door.

Alhassan chose to move to middleweight, counting on his power and his defensive grappling to carry him through. It didn't; he was immediately wrestled to death by Jacob Malkoun. But the UFC gave him one last shot, and he put his foot through Alessio di Chirico's temple in seventeen seconds, and by god, that was enough to keep him. Alhassan's still not out of the woods--he dropped a split decision to Joaquin Buckley in 2022, but came back this past January to knock out the man I called ol' lunchbox hands before Trevor Peek took the nickname from him, Claudio Ribeiro.

It'd be disingenuous to say the UFC isn't setting him up as a fall guy here, though. Pyfer's a huge favorite, both in marketing and in betting, and it's not hard to see why. He's much bigger, he hits even harder, his chin is much more reliable, and he's a talented enough wrestler that Alhassan's pocket judo isn't going to give him the space he needs to avoid Pyfer's punches.

JOE PYFER BY TKO. Maybe next time he'll decide he's ready for Imavov.

MAIN CARD: ALL PUNCHES, ALL THE TIME
WELTERWEIGHT: Alex Morono (23-8) vs Joaquin Buckley (16-6)

There is no fighter more dependable than Alex Morono. For almost eight years, now, Alex Morono has delivered a consistent, persistent level of performance within the UFC: Not a ton of wrestling, not much kicking, just walk the gently caress forward, aim a 1-2 down the pipe, and repeat until someone stops you. Unfortunately, someone very recently and very violently stopped him. Morono was on the cusp of his best win in years last December after outboxing Santiago Ponzinibbio for two and a half rounds, only to get dropped on his face by a right hand midway through the third. But he rebounded against Tim Means, and he did it--try to be surprised--by 1-2ing him until he could choke him. This style has been enough to rack up 12 wins in the biggest mixed martial arts company in the world, because, as Sean Strickland proved, striking expertise is a collective delusion. When the apocalypse comes, and seedy neo-paleolithic businessmen get tired of hunting and gathering and begin charging people nuts and berries to watch other people fight for their amusement, the new welterweight division will have only two constants: Colby Covington will still be getting unearned title shots thanks to his scandalous comments about The Guys From The Other Cave, and Alex Morono will still be throwing 1-2s.

Consistency has been tougher on Joaquin Buckley. After rocketing straight to viral stardom thanks to his Tekken-rear end one-legged screw-kick knockout over Impa Kasanganay back in 2020 Buckley found himself cast in a series of fights put together in the hopes of getting him chances to build a big, media-friendly highlight reel. But you cannot put lightning in a bottle, and the repeated attempts to do so have hurt him as often as helped him. For every Jordan Wright or Antonio Arroyo they've had Buckley violently murder, he's gotten his head kicked off by Alessio Di Chirico, or gotten countered and dropped by Chris Curtis, or simply been strictly outfought by well-rounded guys like Nassourdine Imavov. Some part of this, counterintuitively, is the greater difficulty Buckley's had enforcing his wrestling game against higher-level opponents. His dangerous kicks and counters work in part because he's smartly mixed takedowns into his striking, and once he has his opponents uncertain if they're defending a right hook or a single-leg takedown, they're easier to pick off. When he can't get that half of his gameplan working effectively, he becomes easier to time, and that gets him into trouble against the Imavovs of the world.

I cannot help feeling that's going to make a difference here, too. Buckley's a more varied striker than Morono, he hits harder and he swings a lot more weapons, but he's going to have considerable trouble wrestling Morono down to interrupt his timing and if he can't get Morono out in the first two rounds, he'll be tired by the third. ALEX MORONO BY DECISION, even with the awareness that Buckley could turn his lights out at any time.

LIGHTWEIGHT: Drew Dober (26-12) vs Ricky Glenn (22-7-2)

Drew Dober has been dancing this dance in the UFC for an entire goddamn decade. Win fights, look great, get smashed by a top guy. It was Olivier Aubin-Mercier in 2016, it was Beneil Dariush in 2019, it was Islam Makhachev in 2021, and in 2023, after a fantastic three-fight winning streak that culminated in Dober becoming the only man not named Dustin Poirier to ever stop Bobby Green on his feet, when Dober looked more prepared than ever to finally take his place in the rankings, it was Matt "The Steamrolla" Frevola who punched him down the ladder yet again. Dober's hard-nosed old-school wrestle-boxing style is ageless and beautiful and effective, but it's also predictable, and against better wrestlers like Makhachev or better brawlers like Frevola he's predestined to run into trouble.

Ricky Glenn is trouble, but he's incredibly weird trouble. On his good days Ricky Glenn is one of the best fighters in the world. He's fast, he's got heavy hands, his counter-wrestling is tremendous and he has enough of a gas tank to punish people for an entire fifteen minutes. On his bad days, he gets controlled and outworked by fighters he should, on paper, destroy. I said we'd come back to Ricky Glenn in the main event writeup: He's the one man in the UFC who kept Grant Dawson at bay. He stuffed 8 of Grant's 11 takedowns, he staved off all of his attempts at ground-and-pound, and in the final round he outlanded an exhausted Dawson 66 to 3, nearly finishing the fight twice in the process. It only earned him a draw, but Grant Dawson's a hell of a draw to have on your record. And then, to follow the best performance of his career, Glenn went on the shelf for a year and a half. We didn't see him again until this past April, when he came back looking weird again and Christos Giagos knocked him out in a minute and a half.

So is it Good Ricky or Bad Ricky? Either way, I cannot help thinking Dober's a difficult matchup for him. Glenn succeeds in large part on his strength and endurance, but Dober is a much, much harder puncher, and he only needs one or two chances to take you out. If Ricky Glenn is fully back on his bullshit, he could turn Dober inside out anyway. But, personally? DREW DOBER BY TKO.

FEATHERWEIGHT: Bill Algeo (17-7) vs Alexander Hernandez (14-6)

Bill Algeo had a real weird 2022. After spending his first year in the UFC slipping beneath the radar while somehow getting beaten up by multiple men named Ricardo there was virtually no awareness of, let alone expectations for, Algeo. And then he beat the brakes off Joanderson Brito, a top featherweight prospect and Contender Series winner. And then he met Herbert Burns, the smaller Burns brother, and beat him so badly he scored a TKO (Exhaustion) victory, a result rarely recorded since the end of the old days where you could win by testicular claw, or by the other guy forgetting he couldn't kick you because he wore shoes. After all the struggle, Bill Algeo had the attention he deserved! And then he dropped a decision to Andre Fili and, whoosh, right back down to the ground floor you go. A submission victory over "Downtown" TJ Brown this past April got a modicum of momentum back, but the road ahead is rough.

Particularly when it's paved with people like Alexander Hernandez. "The Great Ape" was considered the next big thing at lightweight when he made his UFC debut by murdering Beneil Dariush and beating down Olivier Aubin-Mercier--but that was all the way back in 2018. Donald Cerrone shut him down with a headkick in January of 2019, and in the almost five years hence, Hernandez has not managed to string two wins together. Over the last year, thanks in no small part to the UFC's periodically funky matchmaking schedule forcing him to not cut weight, he's been hopping back and forth between 145 and 155 pounds--a lightweight submission loss to Renato Moicano here, a featherweight TKO loss to Billy Quarantillo there, a lightweight decision victory over Jim Miller because the universe can't let Jim Miller have nice things, and now, here he is, right back at 145 again.

It doesn't seem like great career planning, and this doesn't seem like a great fight for him, either. Normally Hernandez has a power advantage over his opponents that carries his strategic striking plans to fruition, but Algeo's strong enough to ragdoll people and, to boot, a much bigger fighter. BILL ALGEO BY DECISION unless Hernandez can pin him in the pocket and tee off.

PRELIMS: FEATURING MORE RANKED FIGHTERS THAN THE MAIN CARDNEVER MIND, CHRIS GUTIERREZ GOT PUSHED TO NEXT WEEK
LIGHT-HEAVYWEIGHT: Philipe Lins (17-5) vs Ion Cuțelaba (17-9-1 (1))

It's time to swing and bing. Stand and band. Sprawl and brawl. Wait, gently caress, that one still works. Like so many light-heavyweights, Philipe Lins is a BJJ black belt with a bunch of very impressive skills under his belt, and like so many light-heavyweights, essentially none of them carry any cache in the greater public memory of his career. Jim Varney could do Shakespeare, but the people wanted Ernest. Lins will go forth, and he will punch like only a light-heavyweight can, and if that means every once in awhile Tanner Boser knocks him out so goddamn hard the universe intervenes and sees to it that every fight offered to Lins falls through for two straight years just to give his cerebral fluids time to congeal again, by god, that is how it has to be. Ion Cuțelaba just doesn't really give a gently caress about anything. If a fight goes longer than seven minutes, it typically means Ion Cuțelaba is having a bad time. Typically, when you make some veiled reference to a fighter being a berserker, you're trying to communicate something about their tendency to swing big right hands or their preference for avoiding the ground game. Ion is a berserker in the sense that he will expend himself completely in the first three minutes of a fight if he feels that is appropriate, and he will do it with giant slam takedowns and spinning backfists and gassing himself out breaking someone's face with mounted elbows. Which is why he's still here despite being 6-8-1 in the UFC. But he beat Tanner Boser last April, so in terms of MMAth, he's a lock, right?

PHILIPE LINS BY TKO. Lins is a stiffer, cleaner puncher, and he's demonstrated an ability to use the fence to stay on his feet, and those two things alone, executed successfully, can neutralize half of Ion's offense. If Lins stays off the mat and keeps Ion off of him, he stops him by the third.

WOMEN'S STRAWWEIGHT: Karolina Kowalkiewicz (15-7, #15) vs Diana Belbiţă (15-7, NR)

The return of Karolina Kowalkiewicz was one of the few feelgood stories of the last year in mixed martial arts. KK was an early standout in the strawweight division, and the earliest woman to make then-ascendant Joanna Jędrzejczyk look mortal, but she ultimately lost her title fight and, uh, almost every fight she had for the next half-decade. Some of it was harder competition, some of it was a lack of personal focus, but after a 10-0 start to her career she entered 2022 at 12-7 with most of the world wondering what she was still doing in the UFC. And now she's on a three-fight winning streak, because sports are great. Diana Belbiţă got herself into the theoretical chopping block much faster--relatively speaking, anyway, as she's actually been in the UFC for four years already, but only managed a fight once per year. This will, if she makes it to the cage, be the first two-fight year of her UFC tenure. Which is good, because by god, she needs the momentum. Her first three years saw her go 1-3, which is an awfully bad ratio, and it only gets worse when you realize two of the three women who beat her proceeded to get cut from the UFC afterwards. Diana managed to save her job by beating Maria Oliveira this past June--for which Oliveira got cut instead, having gone 1-3. In fact, the only other person Diana beat, Hannah Goldy, is now, also, 1-4 in the UFC. It's so weird how this keeps happening!

If you're picking up that I think this fight seems one-sided, you're astute. Belbiţă's got a big size advantage, and given a chance she could use it to bully Karolina, but she's also proven herself real vulnerable to good grapplers, and Karolina's awful good at finding positions on people. KAROLINA KOWALKIEWICZ BY SUBMISSION after eventually finding the rear naked choke.

FLYWEIGHT: Nate Maness (14-3) vs Mateus Mendonça (10-1)

Man, one fight can make a world of difference. Midway through last year, Nate Maness was one of the biggest prospects the UFC had at 135 pounds. Sure, he got beaten by Umar Nurmagomedov, but for one, Umar's undefeated and already hand-picked by the UFC as a future title challenger, and for two, while he did not win a single round, he did become the only person to actually make it to a decision against Umar in the UFC, which is worth an awful lot. When Maness announced he was taking his heavy-handed choke-jumping talents down to the flyweight division I wasn't a fan--I am rarely a fan of going down in weight--but having been bounced definitively from contendership, I understood, and was very curious to see how Maness would do at 125 pounds. And then Tagir Ulanbekov, who was himself bounced from contendership in his previous fight, choked Maness out in one round. Suddenly, Nate Maness is on the outs at an entirely new division. Mateus Mendonça, by contrast, is just trying to get a second chance at a first impression. Mateus had what is becoming a progressively more familiar path to the UFC--fight a bunch of iffy-looking fights on the regional filler scene, beat a veteran, get on the Contender Series, kill a man with your bare hands for the pleasure of your lanista--but in his UFC debut this past January he ran into the undefeated Javid Basharat and got trounced so thoroughly that by the end of the fight he was just throwing up hail mary submissions and an entirely indifferent Basharat was shrugging and punching him in the face.

But that makes this fight oddly tricky. I think, on the whole, Nate Maness is a better fighter than Mateus Mendonça. He punches straighter and he's got a better chin and he's got a deeper gas tank. However: His aggressive style leaves openings for people to jump on him, which is exactly how Ulanbekov forced him to the ground, got him on defense, and choked him out. Mateus is so hyper-aggressive as a grappler that he can and will jump on a half-dozen submission attempts if he thinks one will work, and Maness, historically, is willing to hand them over. My heart says Maness, but my head says MATEUS MENDONÇA BY SUBMISSION.

WOMEN'S STRAWWEIGHT: Kanako Murata (12-2) vs Vanessa Demopoulos (9-5)

Every once in awhile the MMA internet gets a new Japanese fighter to root for in the desperate and in no way problematic hope that they can feel like Pride is alive again, and when Kanako Murata started making fight walkouts in the mask Kazushi Sakuraba gave her, she slid immediately into place. When she won Invicta's strawweight championship people were jazzed, when she won her 2020 UFC debut people were excited, and when she fought Virna Jandiroba in 2021 and within two rounds got stopped thanks to a busted face and an entirely broken arm, well, anyone who's gone through the Pride cycle knows how it inevitably ends. Murata's been gone for almost two and a half years, but that's not just because of Jandiroba; while training out in Thailand, Murata managed to eat a knee to the face that tore her upper lip in half, broke her jaw, and cost her four teeth. Growing teeth back takes time. Vanessa Demopoulos has, in fact, fought her entire five-fight UFC career in the time Murata's been out of action. After joining the UFC as a last-minute injury replacement against JJ Aldrich, Demopoulos unexpectedly established herself as one of the strawweight division's more threatening grapplers, a little double-leg takedown tank that aggressively threw out armbars as soon as contact with the ground was made. This was enough to get her three straight wins in the UFC, which threatened a ranking, but she got completely outfought by Karolina Kowalkiewicz this past May, and combined with having missed the strawweight limit for the fight, she's now back to paying her dues at the bottom of the ladder.

This fight is more interesting than it's going to get credit for. Murata was forcing Virna Jandiroba to work her rear end off on the ground, and Jandiroba's one of the scariest grapplers at 115 pounds--it took Jandiroba's striking and strength advantage to really beat Murata. Vanessa's determined and tenacious, but Murata's grappling is going to be a tough nut to crack, and it may behoove her to try to keep the fight standing in the hopes that her speed advantage will wear Murata down. Here's the problem, though: I'm an MMA internet person, so KANAKO MURATA BY DECISION.

BANTAMWEIGHT: Johnny Munoz Jr. (12-3) vs Aoriqileng (24-11)

I've watched Johnny Munoz Jr. fight a half-dozen times, now, and I've watched a bunch of his fights repeatedly during the fight research I do to pretend any of my predictions mean anything, and every time I see him my brain goes through an Oprah-Uma-style comedy routine with itself about his nickname. Kid Kvenbo? Kid Kvenbo. It's not like the nickname is a mystery, he's talked openly about it: Kvenbo is a tribute to his father, and "Kid" is because once you become a man you get comfortable, so as a Kid, he will stay forever hungry. Kid Kvenbo. Typically, when you're about to half your sixth fight in the UFC and people primarily remember your somewhat goofy nickname, that's a bad sign. Aoriqileng, on the other hand, I've just sort of given up on. I got emotionally invested in his potential as a real tough, hard-hitting wrestler, and, hey, you burned me once by getting beat by Cody Durden, I can cope with that level of sadness. But when Aiemann Zahabi knocks you cold in sixty-four seconds? By god, I turned on Drako Rodriguez and I'll turn on you, too. Do you think I won't root for Kid Kvenbo, Aoriqileng? Do you think I won't do it? How far do you think you can push me before I jump off the train?

It's too late. I can't let myself be hurt again. Much like Chael Sonnen and Wanderlei Silva, I just can't let you get close. JOHNNY MUNOZ JR. BY DECISION.

WOMEN'S FLYWEIGHT: Montana de la Rosa (12-8-1) vs JJ Aldrich (12-6)

This fight, on background, feels like an example of just how wild the swings in the rankings can be. Montana de la Rosa is riding a two-fight losing streak, including a loss to Maycee Barber, who's now the #8 Women's Flyweight in the world, and Tatiana Suarez, who could be fighting for the 115-pound championship any second the UFC wants her to. Before that? She beat Ariane Lipski, which will become important momentarily, and she went to a majority draw--one she arguably should have won--against Mayra Bueno Silva, who just choked out Holly Holm to become the #3 fighter at Women's Bantamweight, a whole class up from here. But she's 0-2 in the last year, meaning this could be a pink slip fight for her. JJ Aldrich, a longtime hype train recipient who's just never quite put the pieces together, is coming off a successful win that ended her own 0-2 slide--but that first loss was to Erin Blanchfield, the #2 Women's Flyweight in the UFC, and Ariane Lipski, the woman her opponent knocked out just two years ago.

To put that more plainly: Within their last four fights, these two women have done battle with top contenders at all three women's weight classes in the UFC, and they shared one common opponent who they split a win and loss against, and now, having gone on that odyssey, they're curtain-jerking a preliminary card with the possibility that one--or even both--could have their jobs in jeopardy should they lose.

Fighting: It's loving weird. MONTANA DE LA ROSA BY DECISION.

LobsterMobster posted:

B-League Round-Up
Bellator 300 - Saturday 10PM ET, Showtime

Will this be Bellator’s swan song? Presumably not, since Bellator 301 is right around the corner. But this might be the beginning of the end.

The prelims, as per usual, are overloaded with people you’ve never heard of and will likely never see again. We’ve got a pair of debuting heavyweights going at it, Geoff Neal’s brother is here, and hey, we even have Sara McMann on the card. My recommendation for Bellator prelims is to always wait about an hour or two, then start the stream and play the fights at 1.5 speed, skipping forward any time you see Josh Thomson on screen.

The main card certainly feels like a going out of business situation. There are four fights, and they are all title bouts. Liz “Girl-Rilla” Carmouche defends the Flyweight belt against the inaugural champ, close friend and training partner, Ilima-Lei Macfarlane. This should be a fun fight, but it could also turn into two friends being tentative about hurting each other. Oops!

Ryan Bader defends the heavyweight title against Linton Vassell. This is a rematch nearly six years in the making that nobody asked for, but here we are, I suppose. this fight is off.

In the co-main event, Cris Cyborg returns to the world famous Bellator Circlegon, having spent the last 18 months beating up scrubs in boxing while advocating for a fascist coup of Brazil. She’s taking on Cat Zingano, who is riding a four fight win streak since moving to Bellator.

In the main event, Usman Nurmagomedov takes on Brent Primus in the Lightweight Grand Prix Semifinals, which is also a Lightweight title bout. Usman punched his ticket by submitting Benson Henderson in the first round, while Primus took a decision over Mansour Barnaoui.

Bellator 300’s main card looks decent, but y’know, there’s a strong possibility we get 100 75 minutes of uneventful grappling, tepid kickboxing, and cage clinching.

Brut posted:

Someone post when fighters are actually walking out please

individual865 posted:

https://x.com/JohnMorgan_MMA/status/1710754512481452127?s=20

Trillhouse posted:

its finally happening

CarlCX posted:

Gonna go out on a limb and say the mmadecisions page on that one will not be happy.

Brut posted:

https://twitter.com/CombatPress/status/1710776391766093956

Only tweet I can find not calling it for Murata.

CarlCX posted:

Just absolutely gave that fight away going nuts for knees. Terrible, terrible fight IQ.

You'll be pleased to know Aaron Bronsteter, who is generally wrong about everything, is gloating very hard about the one time the judges were as wrong as he is.

Brut posted:

Woah where's the Bronsteter hate coming from? He's nice

CarlCX posted:

Man, Bronsteter is a very kind dude and I very much enjoy him as a journalist, but I think his fight judging is persistently terrible.

Brut posted:

Oh, maybe. I don't remember paying much attention to his (or anyone else's, really) scoring, "wrong about everything" seemed way more broad so I was confused.

I stepped away for a bit too long and missed the first 4 minutes of this fight, did anything significant happen?

ccubed posted:

Brut posted:

Bellator prelims are going, watch them for free here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qckiYi0HM-g

Brut posted:

Hahahaha I love how even Buckley was confused about the 30-26

Tom Clancy is Dead posted:

Seemed like a fine 30-26 to me? Total domination for the round, had Moreno hurt on several occasions, came close to finishing. That pretty much checks off everything you're looking for other than knockdowns.