CarlCX posted:

CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 92: PERFUNCTORY PUNCHINGS

SATURDAY, MARCH 2 FROM THE BLINKING BLACK OF THE UFC APEX
EARLY START TIME WARNING | PRELIMS 10 AM PST / 1 PM EST | MAIN CARD 1 PM / 4 PM

There's a lot about this card that's only ever going to be known in terms of scuttlebutt, so we're going to have to talk about what, allegedly, happened here.

Allegedly, this card was intended to be the UFC's big debut in Saudi Arabia. It took all over a month post-closing of the WWE/UFC merger into TKO for the UFC to get in on the 'doing cards for the house of Saud for a shitload of money' game the WWE has been up to for years.

Allegedly, Saudi Arabia is very picky about their needs for these big-money cards, because there is no point in paying to do PR by way of sportswashing if that PR ain't poo poo. Allegedly, Saudi Arabia's demands for their first WWE card were so wild that they wanted star wrestlers on it who had in reality been dead for almost twenty years.

Allegedly, the Saudis took one look at the card the UFC planned to put on, balked at how lousy it was, and told them to get the gently caress out because they weren't paying for bullshit. Dana White denies this, of course, because the UFC doesn't have weak lineups, it's just, you know, a couple fights didn't pan out and they didn't tell the KSA about one killer fight they had planned and also why would you listen to those lying MMA reporters anyway.

The UFC's still going to Saudi Arabia. It's going to be a Fight Night on June 22, and at that point we'll know exactly how alleged all of this was, based on what goes on that card.

Because this one, as of this writing six days ahead of the card on Sunday the 25th, only has nine fights, and one of them is an Eryk Anders fight, and the main event is Jairzinho Rozenstruik vs a guy who just made his UFC debut in December, and that stinks to all hell.

Allegedly.


_{IS this the card? who can say.}

MAIN EVENT: CUTTING THE ROAD IN HALF
HEAVYWEIGHT: Jairzinho Rozenstruik (13-5, #12) vs Shamil Gaziev (12-0, NR)

Remember that long, faraway era of three weeks ago, when I brushed aside my Flock of Seagulls haircut and tapped out a missive on my Royal Classic about how narrowly we avoided the UFC trying to get Joe Pyfer from the Contender Series to the top fifteen in the space of two fights?

We're here! We're doing the thing! Boy, that didn't take long at all.

But, admittedly, it's a lot harder to care because it's Heavyweight. Heavyweight has always been a division you have to approach with either a sense of humor or a solid case of cirrhosis if you want to survive, and at this current point in the history of the abusive father of mixed martial arts it's goddamn near impossible to address the division AS a division without laughing like Sam Neill at the end of In the Mouth of Madness.

The UFC's heavyweight champion, Jon Jones, is 1-0 as a Heavyweight, has only fought that one fight in the last four years, and is on the shelf. When he returns, he will be facing Stipe Miocic, who has not had a professional fight in three years, has not won a fight since August of 2020, and has not won a fight against someone other than the now-retired Daniel Cormier since January of 2018.

For this reason, the UFC has an interim Heavyweight champion, Tom Aspinall. Said interim championship was created and rewarded for a match made on two weeks' notice. It will almost certainly be defended before the undisputed championship is.

The actual #1 Heavyweight on the planet, Francis Ngannou, was stripped and let go from the UFC because he wanted fighters to make more money. He proceeded to walk into boxing, knock Tyson Fury on his rear end, and make himself a multi-millionaire overnight.

And now he's going to fight Renan Ferreira, the guy who fake-tapped against Fabricio Werdum, because he beat Ryan Bader on a pay-per-view nobody watched.

See? That's what I mean. It's Heavyweight! I know I'm the guy who gets constantly mad about the divisional fuckery and the obvious favoritism involved in something as vaunted as the number fifteen position in a promotional ranking made for marketing purposes by journalists who aren't even real, but even I cannot find it in me to care, because it's loving Heavyweight. The UFC is the biggest mixed martial arts organization on the planet and even they only have like thirty Heavyweight fighters under contract and at least five of them are just Mortal Kombat palette-swaps of Josh Parisian.

Losing to prospects is also more or less Jairzinho Rozenstruik's entire career arc, at this point. It's hard to remember, but four years ago Rozenstruik looked like he might actually be kind of a big deal--the guy who smashed a somehow still-relevant Andrei Arlovski, the guy who put a permanent split in Alistair Overeem's face, the guy who ended the diaper-fetishist reign of the long-forgotten Júnior Albini--and his mixture of actual kickboxing skill, decent distance management and turn-on-a-dime knockout power made him an actual, legitimate threat to the belt. He was undefeated, he was devastating, he had honest to god hype.

Then they had him fight Francis Ngannou and he got squashed flat in twenty seconds by a guy doing the Bart Simpson windmill.

And that was it! That was the end of Top Heavyweight Contender Jairzinho Rozenstruik, just like that. "Bigi Boy" spent the first seven years of his MMA career going undefeated and knocking out all but one of his opponents, and it's been almost four years since that Ngannou fight and he has yet to manage a single set of back-to-back victories. It is, in fact, his still being good enough to stay in the mix that keeps getting him in so much goddamn trouble. Jairzinho is still a powerful striker with murderous power and technique enough to guide his fists to a man's chin given half a chance, and that has kept him permanently above the Augusto Sakais and Chris Daukausi of the world, but that also means there's nothing keeping him from being thrust into the fold against actual contenders, where he is, inevitably and repeatedly, crushed.

All the UFC can do is keep booking him into prospect matches and wait for someone to finally knock him out of the top fifteen. In the age of the Contender Series, there will always be at least one large, dubiously qualified man to try.

This year, that large man is Shamil Gaziev. Gaziev is one in the similarly neverending army of Dagestani supersoldiers, but because of his size he is left at odds with himself. He cannot just be a wrestler, because Heavyweight can only support three wrestlers at a time and Curtis Blaydes, Serghei Spivac and Alexandr Romanov already called those slots. Subsequently, begrudgingly, Gaziev must double-spec for the traditional art of fistic man-bludgeoning. And, on paper, he's very good at it! He's an undefeated 12-0 and only one of those wins wasn't a finish. That's impressive!

Right? That's impressive? Well, here's the thing.

• Greg Velasco, the man Gaziev beat on the Contender Series, is a career can-crusher with 70" reach, which, for those keeping track, is just slightly below the average reach of a UFC Featherweight
  
• Darko Stošić, the man Gaziev beat to get on the Contender Series, is a UFC veteran! at Light Heavyweight, where he went 1 and 3
  
• Kirill Kornilov, the best win on Gaziev's record, was not only his only non-finish but was an ultra-tight split decision

Because, once again: It's Heavyweight.

But there was nothing fake about the beating he put on Martin Buday back in December. I thought Buday's clinch control would tire Gaziev out, and Gaziev didn't give it the chance to; he walked Buday down, outworked him in the grappling, and ultimately butchered Buday in just six minutes with the rare standing TKO. And Buday was 4-0 in the UFC! That's impressive!

Right? That's impressive? Well, the combined UFC record of the four men he beat was 9-18, so, I mean. No?

Or maybe yes! Because, to bring it around again: It's loving Heavyweight. When half of the world's supply of Heavyweights are Light Heavyweights or even Middleweights in denial and half of the remainder are doomed to get cut after going 0-3 and suffering a devastating knockout loss to a 22 year-old Contender Series winner named something like Marty "Bone Fingers" Ribeiro, having any kind of winning streak at all is probably good.

Hell, it's more than Jairzinho Rozenstruik has managed in almost half a decade.

I like Jairzinho. I like his striking. But almost everyone who's been able to take him down has been able to beat him, and every man in the UFC who's tried to take him down in a fight has, inevitably, succeeded. He's a dyed-in-the-wool kickboxer and he's fighting a man who just outclinched a jiu-jitsu champion. If Rozenstruik can keep Gaziev off him, if he can force Gaziev to chase him around the cage, if he can intercept his charges with punches, he's got a chance. Hell, when he can do that, he has a chance against everyone on the planet.

But SHAMIL GAZIEV BY TKO thanks to good ol' ground and pound is way, way more likely.

CO-MAIN EVENT: AT LEAST IT'S NOT ERYK ANDERS
LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHT: Vitor Petrino (10-0) vs Tyson Pedro (10-4)

Boy, some things feel kind of pointless, don't they?

Vitor Petrino is one of the UFC's big hopes for the Light Heavyweight division. He joined the Contender Series after an undefeated run as a crusher of the intentionally outmatched (his third professional fight was against a guy who was 1-17! He's 2-24 now!), but his actual physical talents carried him through into the world of genuine competition. He knocked out Rodolfo Bellato on the Contender Series in 2022--actually the second time they'd fought, which is some real bad luck for Bellato--and spent the last twelve months running up a 3-0 win streak in the UFC. He met THE PLEASURE MAN Anton Turkalj, who gave him the toughest fight of his career because the sport is hilarious, he choked out Marcin Prachnio in the third round after dominating him the whole way through, and the last time we saw him, he demolished Modestas Bukauskas with a left hook.

Tyson Pedro's story is a little more mixed. Pedro joined the UFC as a 4-0 rookie during their early expansion into Australia, and the best year of his career was actually that rookie year in 2016-2017. He choked out Khalil Rountree Jr.! He knocked out Paul Craig! Those wins aged real, real well. Unfortunately, nothing else in his career has. He went 1-3 in his next four fights, including becoming, canonically, the last person to ever be knocked out by Shogun Rua, and then he went on hiatus for three and a half years. His 2022 comeback was triumphant! And all it took was the UFC booking him against their least successful fighters. His winning streak came to an end, unfortunately, thanks to the devastating striking techniques of one...uh...Modestas Bukauskas.

I feel like I've had to say "MMA math is only applicable when two fighters fought the same fighter at nearly the same time but that's incredibly rare" an awful lot, recently. That's not actually supposed to happen that often! Your roster is supposed to have enough biodiversity going for it that people who orbited around the same fighter in opposite directions don't end up colliding!

But here we are. In February of last year, Tyson Pedro fought Modestas Bukauskas, struggled to grapple him, struggled to catch him, and ultimately lost a decision to him. Nine months later in November Vitor Petrino fought Modestas Bukauskas, ragdolled him, controlled him for most of the first round and knocked him out cold in the second.

Does that mean Vitor Petrino will win? I mean, it's never that simple. Tyson's tall and rangy, he could keep him at range and hurt him with counters if he stays up on his feet. You should never count out Tyson Pedro! It's mixed martial arts! Anything can happen! Foregone conclusions are lies and you should never count anyone out!

Anyway, VITOR PETRINO BY TKO.

MAIN CARD: PEOPLE YOU'VE HEARD OF
FLYWEIGHT: Alex Perez (24-7, #7) vs Muhammad Mokaev (10-0 (1), #8)

Yeah, no. This fight ain't happening. No way.

It's not Muhammad Mokaev's fault. He's been a steady performer for the UFC: Two to three fights a year, always on weight, always winning. He's inescapably one of their big future title prospects, but this being the Flyweight division, rather than hype jobs and easy matchups, it just means he's had a ton of incredibly fun fights with tough loving opponents. Flying knees for Cody Durden! Sweeping armbars for Malcolm Gordon! Jafel Filho almost beat him and, despite having one leg hyperextended, Mokaev came back from the brink of defeat to choke Filho out twenty-eight seconds before he would have lost a decision. Mokaev punched his ticket into the top ten by steamrolling former title contender Tim Elliott just this past October, outgrappling him for nearly the entire fight before hitting an arm triangle with two minutes to spare. He is a very real talent and a very real threat to the top.

Alex Perez is a talent, but not a threat. This is because Alex Perez is not actually, demonstrably, real. Alex Perez is more known for cancelling fights than holding them, at this point. The last time I wrote about Alex Perez was this past March, when he was slated against Manel Kape, and this was my extremely professional fight analysis:

CarlCX posted:

The gods allowed one Alex Perez fight to happen. They will not brook another. Manel Kape will fall through a crack in the sidewalk that leads to a hidden subterranean society of mole people who need him to be their savior. Perez will get into the shower the morning before the fight and undergo ultra-rapid carcinization and evolve into humanity's final form, the crab, and lawyers will spend the next decade arguing about the ability of crabs to legally consent to cagefights. Sealife activists will abduct him in the middle of his horizontal cagewalk and the UFC will go under from the ensuing lawsuit.

This fight cannot happen. Mixed martial arts itself would crumble.

The fight was cancelled during the prelims when Alex Perez said he suffered some undisclosed type of seizure backstage.

Let me be crystal clear, here: No fighter should fight when it's medically inadvisable. No fighter should come out and fight if they can't do it. I am in no way saying Alex Perez is at fault for his bodily issues. I am saying Alex Perez has fought once out of ten attempts at fight booking in the last 40 months. His success:failure ratio is 1:9. That is the point at which the universe is sending you a message.

I hope Alex Perez makes it to the cage. I hope his cagewalk is not interrupted by an alien abduction. I hope security does not mistakenly lead him to a mineshaft that takes him down to the den of the Morlocks where he is forced to spend the next three years fighting in a civil war across time itself.

But if he does, MUHAMMAD MOKAEV BY SUBMISSION anyway.

BANTAMWEIGHT: Umar Nurmagomedov (16-0, #13) vs Bekzat Almakhan (17-1, NR)

Every goddamn fight on this card is carrying some level of "What the gently caress is this?" but this is pushing it, man.

Umar Nurmagomedov is a genuine title prospect. He's an undefeated killer who's finished almost everyone he's faced in the UFC, he's got the grappling chops that run in the entire Nurmagomedov family, he's never lost a fight in his life, and the last time we saw him he took on a hugely dangerous knockout puncher in Raoni Barcelos and flatlined him in one round. Which was great! And then the UFC decided to book him to leapfrog the entire Bantamweight division, proceed straight to Go, and fight Cory Sandhagen, the #3 Bantamweight in the world--soon to be #2, when Aljamain Sterling goes up to 145 pounds. This was received with no small amount of skepticism and disdain as to the favoritism involved, and when the fight got scratched anyway after Umar had to pull out, everyone wondered which ranked fighter the UFC would match him up with instead, and if it would be a more equitable matchup.

So, uh, he's not! He's fighting Bekzat Almakhan. You might be thinking Bekzat Almakhan is one of those endless legions of fighters who come into the UFC without people noticing thanks to its ever-cramped schedule; he's not. You might be thinking Bekzat Almakhan is a Contender Series winner the company is showing favoritism to by booking directly into a high-profile fight, but no, he's not that either. Maybe you're looking at his name and his record, giving the UFC credit, and assuming he's an international champion out of his native Kazakhstan, and it's close--he's definitely Kazakhstan's best Bantamweight--but nope, not a single international belt to his name. He's just a guy. He was recently fighting on a mat made out of a bunch of rugs put on top of each other, and in case you're thinking that's me trying to make some kind of funny joke about the state of international MMA, I assure you:

It's not.

None of this means Bekzat Almakhan is bad. He seems quite sound and like a perfectly sensible talent for the UFC to sign, honestly. But nothing underscores how pointless rankings are becoming like the #13 guy the UFC was just about to jetpack all the way to the top of the heap instead getting a fight with a guy who's never fought in the company before, who is, now, up for a top fifteen ranking. The entire thing is becoming meaningless and it makes me crazy. UMAR NURMAGOMEDOV BY SUBMISSION.

FLYWEIGHT: Matt Schnell (16-7 (1), #9) vs Steve Erceg (11-1, #12)

This is cool, though. Matt Schnell is a very good Flyweight who's been having a very difficult time. He spent four months repeatedly having to reschedule fights with Tyson Nam only to scrape a barely-there split decision, he got beat by Rogério Bontorin only for the fight to be voided thanks to Bontorin failing a drug test, he had four separate fights with Alex Perez cancelled for various reasons, and after missing an entire year of his career over it he came back to get choked out by Brandon Royval and knocked out by Matheus Nicolau, between which he managed to tap Sumudaerji. But even that latest fight is almost a year and a half old because, once again, he's been unable to make it to the drat cage. He pulled out of a fight with David Dvořák in June and even this fight is a rescheduling of their original booking from last November.

Steve Erceg doesn't mind, though. Steve Erceg owes his UFC success entirely to Schnell's troubles. Erceg was a little-known standout of the Australian regional scene when the UFC tapped him as a late replacement for Schnell in that aforementioned David Dvořák fight, and despite being a huge underdog, Erceg overcame the odds, outworked Dvořák, and earned a ranking in his very first fight with the company. Schnell cancelling on Erceg himself led to Erceg fighting last-minute replacement Alessandro Costa, who'd garnered some actual hype after giving top contender Amir Albazi a tough battle and knocking out Jimmy Flick--which put him in a great position to lend credence to Erceg as a contender after Erceg beat him up on the ground and against the fence.

STEVE ERCEG BY DECISION. Erceg's scrappiness and grappling game make him a tough ask for Schnell as it is; with how Schnell's been dealing with injuries and inconsistency, I only see it getting worse.

PRELIMS: OH, GOD drat IT
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Eryk Anders (15-8 (1)) vs Jamie Pickett (13-10)

No, come on. Come on. Why would you do this to me? Why would you do this to anybody? I try in general not to fall into the trap of being one of those wildly gesticulating internet critics who just shits all over everything but by god there are standards and we live in a society.

Eryk Anders is a hole in space and time. Eryk Anders is the void into which we all fall when we are forgotten by everyone who ever knew us. Eryk Anders is the last dying memory you have of what your father's face looked like. It has been almost eight years of Eryk Anders and after waiting most of an entire decade the only thing that has materialized around him is the horrifying awareness of all the loving time we've lost. He's not good, he's not bad, he's not a big knockout striker, he's not a big wrestling threat, he loses too much to be ranked, he wins too much to get cut, and his entire career is a neverending clinch on your soul.

And now he's fighting Jamie Pickett. Jamie Pickett! Jamie "The Night Wolf" Pickett, owner of a four-fight losing streak, is fighting. The UFC released Augusto Sakai, Vince Morales and Kanako Murata, but by god, Jamie Pickett beat Joseph "Ugly Man" Holmes two years ago, and what would our roster be without him? He throws superkicks in real life, he pushes into clinches at weird angles, he's recorded one stoppage in almost five years and he's just three fights away from a perfectly clean, 50/50 record. Some people are gatekeepers for title contention or gatekeepers for the top fifteen; Jamie Pickett is a gatekeeper for simply belonging in the UFC.

Belonging in the UFC is basically all Eryk Anders does. It's the only defining feature of his career, the one and only handhold on a smooth wall of glass. ERYK ANDERS BY DECISION and pray even a lick of it finds purchase in your slowly slipping memory.


LIGHTWEIGHT: L’udovit Klein (20-4-1) vs AJ Cunningham (11-3)

I don't really know what to do with L’udovit Klein, and the UFC doesn't either. Klein spent his first UFC year as a faltering Featherweight prospect and was on the verge of getting cut before making the wise decision to move up to 155 pounds and abandon the great Satan that is cutting weight. The good news: He's undefeated in his new division! He's gone four fights without losing! He's a genuine prospect! The bad news: He absolutely would have lost a decision to Jai Herbert if Herbert hadn't lost a point for repeatedly attempting to destroy his balls. For lack of a place to put him or strong feelings about marketing him the UFC's had him fighting an ongoing rotation of prospects, and that wasn't going to change here--he was booked against the perennially-one-fight-away-from-a-ranking Joel Alvarez--but now, on short notice, he's fighting AJ "The Savage" Cunningham. Traditionally, this is where I discuss whatever Contender Series winner they've tapped, and how they have a decent on-paper record but it's padded by subpar competition. This is the rare exception: AJ Cunningham has a decent on-paper record padded by subpar competition and he got the poo poo kicked out of him on the Contender Series. He fought Steven Nguyen, he showed more or less no defense and opted for catching punches with his face, he got folded in half by a right hand and saved by the bell, and proceeded to catch such a sustained beating in the second round that the referee had to save him from himself.

Does this mean AJ Cunningham is a bad fighter? Definitely not. Does this mean AJ Cunningham has no hope of making the UFC? Absolutely not! Is AJ Cunningham's best hope of getting into the UFC winning a fight against the 8-12 Justice "The Gavel" Lamparez and then going straight into a fight with one of Lightweight's trickiest strikers with three days to prepare? Probably not. L’UDOVIT KLEIN BY TKO.


BANTAMWEIGHT: Aiemann Zahabi (10-2) vs Javid Basharat (14-0 (1))

Sometimes I really look forward to a fight because it's going to be really fun. Sometimes I really look forward to a fight because it's going to be a very interesting match for its division. This is an extremely interesting fight, and there's a very good chance it's going to be pretty low-action, and I'm looking the gently caress forward to that. Aiemann Zahabi, after a shaky start and two separate near-two-year layoffs, has established himself as a genuine prospect for the Bantamweight division. He's very good at managing his range, he's very good at getting opponents to bite on his feints, and he's very, very good at not caring if he fights so strategically that it pisses off an entire audience so long as he wins, and I, personally, appreciate that. And yet, his last fight also demonstrated he's tightened his counterstriking enough to flatten the never-knocked-out Aoriqileng, so there's always hope for the highlight-reel makers. Javid Basharat has been one half of the hyper-prospect Basharat brothers, both undefeated Contender Series prospects taking their divisions by storm, but after rattling off a three-fight winning streak he's become the embattled brother, as his last fight with Victor Henry ended in a No Contest when he kicked "La Mangosta" right in the jimmy. (Underrated MMA comedy moment of 2023: The ringside doctor trying to tell a Victor Henry who was holding his broken groin and moaning that he didn't actually get hit in the groin and he's fine.) Basharat, too, is an ultra-patient fighter who uses his skillset to control the fight at multiple angles, and is in absolutely no hurry to try to end a drat thing.

This could be incredibly tentative, and that's okay. This could have an exchange rate of twenty feints to every strike thrown, and that's okay, too. I lean JAVID BASHARAT BY DECISION, but he's a massive, -500 betting favorite, and that seems real generous.

MIDDLEWEIGHT: Christian Leroy Duncan (9-1) vs Claudio Ribeiro (11-4)

This is a battle of men trying to dig themselves out of hype trenches. Christian Leroy Duncan was a Cage Warriors champion and a big, hyped prospect coming into the UFC; he proceeded to win his debut fight when Duško Todorović's leg abruptly imploded in mid-step, and then he lost his undefeated streak after being outwrestled by Armen Petrosyan, a kickboxer with zero completed takedowns in any of his other fights. He came back by knocking out Denis Tiuliulin last November, which he is hoping will get him back in the world's good graces. Claudio Ribeiro was a big-swinging knockout machine coming off the Contender Series when he made his 2023 UFC debut as a kind of vengeful throwback to an earlier time that throws punches all the way from the hip and swings his arms like he has rocks tied to his wrists. He proceeded to get completely destroyed by both Abdul Razak Alhassan and Roman Kopylov, who were both cleaner, faster strikers. But between them he got a win over a man I cannot believe I am referencing for a second time in this writeup, Joseph "Ugly Man" Holmes, whom I doubt I will ever have to bring up again.

This is difficult for me, because, frankly, I don't have a lot of faith in either of these guys. Duncan has trouble with pressure, Ribeiro has trouble with technique, both men can be dangerous for the other. But Christian throws straighter punches and Ribeiro likes his lunchbox fists, and I know what side of the angle war I'm on. CHRISTIAN LEROY DUNCAN BY TKO.

BANTAMWEIGHT: Vinicius Oliveira (19-3) vs Bernardo Sopaj (11-2)

Vinicius Oliveira is nicknamed "Lok Dog" and it mostly makes me want to go watch Don't Be A Menace again. Which is a shame, because he's actually a pretty interesting prospect. He hits exceptionally hard for a Bantamweight, he's surprisingly good at making combinations flow together, and anyone who can chain a haymaker into another haymaker into a roundhouse kick to the face without losing their balance is worth a goddamn look. If there's a downside to his style, it's the toll it takes on his stamina. His last loss to the equally promising Ali Taleb came after repeatedly wobbling him for two rounds, flagging from the effort of beating his rear end, and slowing down just enough to get knocked out on a counter he had been slipping up to that point. Bernardo Sopaj, who adopted the nickname "The Lion King" after his father was murdered by wildebeest, was scheduled to defend the Allstars Fight Night Bantamweight Championship he holds in his native Sweden next weekend, but when the UFC calls and asks if you'd rather fight in front of your countrymen or fly across the world to do battle in the Apex on a week's notice for $12k/12k, by god, you'd better know where your priorities are.

Sopaj seems fine. He's well put-together, he's real good at springing into flying knees when he sees an opening for them, and his defense is actually fairly sound. He's also a 5'6" fighter who likes to work from range fighting a longer, taller fighter who slings headkicks like jabs. VINICIUS OLIVEIRA BY TKO.

LIGHTWEIGHT: Abdul-Kareem Al-Selwady (15-3) vs Loik Radzhabov (17-5-1)

The Tajik Tank is in trouble with the UFC. Loik Radzhabov came into the company as a last-minute replacement to keep undefeated Contender Series prospect Esteban Ribovics on the card last March, and not only did Loik spoil the party by ending Ribovics' streak, he did it through the forbidden art, Wrestling. Three months later Loik committed his second cardinal sin against the company: He missed weight by a whopping 1.3 pounds. The rear end in a top hat. He proceeded to get knocked out by Mateusz Rębecki anyway. These sins are presumably why he's now facing Abdul-Kareem Al-Selwady, the latest in a quickly-growing history of fighters trading in Fury FC championship belts for Contender Series matchups. He's been fighting a lot of iffy competition but he did just fine against a legitimate challenge in England's George Hardwick on the contract show, his top game is pretty solid, his ground and pound is dangerous, and there's a part of me that wonders if they booked him for this card hoping it would appeal to Saudi Arabia in its original configuration, and that feels racist, and I hate the UFC for making me think about it.

LOIK RADZHABOV BY DECISION.

CarlCX posted:

I think a lot of ref complaints get a bit overblown, but Chris Tognoni's stoppages are kind of rear end on a regular basis.

Brut posted:

Oh what the gently caress this card is early, my 4pm saturday thing got pushed early to 1:30 so I didn't even bother to check the overlap, apparently the card started at the same time? hahahah, gently caress.

What's been good so far?

Aye Doc posted:

i don't have sound on, what was Oliveira staring over at about 30-40 seconds before he killed the man?

CarlCX posted:

Klein/Cunningham was a fun but short beating, Zahabi/Basharat was Actually Good, and don't worry, you didn't miss Eryk Anders.

CarlCX posted:

One day we will have to explain to our children why we allowed Eryk Anders to happen.

COPE 27 posted:

Great fight but please someone teach both of them defense

Brut posted:

Here's something fun for you while we wait, who's record is this:

(He also fought a few times in 2023 but I'm deliberately not including that)

CarlCX posted:

is it cheating if I answer these

CarlCX posted:

CarlCX posted:

i'm glad the #13 bantamweight in the world can, in fact, outgrapple a guy whose primary experience comes from a subsport of MMA that fights on top of rugs and orders mandatory standups after 30 seconds on the ground

Brut posted:

I think those rugs are there so that it is less slippery when it rains.