- CarlCX
- Dec 14, 2003
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We are here at the biggest event the UFC has held in years and, in all likelihood, will hold for another 6-8 years. It may not be the huge historical epic 100 and 200 were, but boy, it's a great loving card, and for once, every fight that isn't Bo Nickal-shaped is worth watching.
CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 98: MARKING AN AGE
SATURDAY, APRIL 13 FROM THE T-MOBILE ARENA IN LAS VEGAS
EARLY PRELIMS 3 PM PDT / 6 PM EDT | PRELIMS 5 PM / 8 PM | MAIN CARD 7 PM / 10 PM
Well, we made it.
Over the past few months there have been endless arrays of podcasts and thinkpieces regarding UFC 300's card. Is it good? Is it bad? Is it stacked? Is it a disappointment? The answer to all of these, of course, is Yes, but they're all surrounding a problem they're failing to define: This card is legitimately incredible--by the current standards of the UFC. This is easily the best card the UFC has promoted in years. It's just the greater context of its legacy that makes it impossible to miss how those standards have fallen.
In 2009, UFC 100 was a statement card. The sport's big mainstream breakout was still just four years old, giant swaths of sports media had been actively antagonistic towards it to the point of laughing at its fad status and rooting for its inevitable drop into the ashcan of history alongside SlamBall and the XFL, and making the centennial event a blowout was a middle finger to the rest of the world. Jon Jones, who the world was already pretty sure was going to be a huge loving deal, was on the card. Mark Coleman, the first-ever Heavyweight champion, was on the card facing Stephan Bonnar, one half of the Ultimate Fighter finale that got the UFC where it was. Dan Henderson was there. Michael Bisping was there. Georges St-Pierre, who by that point was already ensconced as the greatest Welterweight of all time, was there. Brock Lesnar, the biggest American Heavyweight combat sports star since Mike Tyson, fought Frank Mir in the biggest Heavyweight Championship match the UFC had ever promoted. Hell, it probably still is. 1.6 million people bought the pay-per-view. It was an enormous event.
In 2016, the UFC was an accepted fixture of mainstream sports and UFC 200 was intended to be a showcase for their biggest, best stars--and instead, it became a testament to how the focus on those stars had screwed up their booking. The main event wasn't a championship fight, it was the rematch between Conor McGregor and Nate Diaz, which was, indeed, the biggest fight the UFC could have possibly promoted. But it fell through, because Conor and the UFC couldn't come to terms. So it became the rematch between Daniel Cormier and Jon Jones, their second-biggest fight. But it fell through, because Jon Jones was on steroids. Ultimately the UFC salvaged it by throwing as many of their biggest names as they could at it. Cain Velasquez was back! José Aldo was back from his loss to Conor! Daniel Cormier was still here, and now he was fighting Anderson Silva on about 48 hours' notice, which was hilarous. Brock Lesnar was back after four years in the WWE, and he beat knockout king Mark Hunt! Except the fight was also ultimately ruled a No Contest for steroids and Brock retired again anyway. The main event was supposed to be top female star Miesha Tate running a victory lap, and instead she got choked out by a lesser-known contender named Amanda Nunes. It was a very good card, and 1 million people bought it--but it wasn't quite historic.
In 2024, the UFC is owned by an international media conglomerate and broadcast weekly on ESPN, often out of a warehouse, and UFC 300 is once again supposed to be a showcase for the biggest, best stars they can supply, and that's the problem: It is. Years of self-cannibalization and defiance of weight classes and rampant pull-the-trigger attempts at placing marketing over talent have left them nearly devoid of big attractions, and the few that remain are booked elsewhere. Their newly-hyped super-prospects have fallen short and all they have left in the chamber are Bo Nickal and Kayla Harrison. Even the legacy of mixed martial arts itself is no longer there to lift the card, with the Marks Coleman and Hunt long retired; its only connection to the past is Jim Miller, who is here to become the only person to have fought on 100, 200 and 300 alike, because the only history the UFC still cares about is the kind it made after Forrest Griffin walked the Earth. Jiří Procházka vs Aleksandar Rakić is a good fight. Charles Oliveira vs Arman Tsarukyan is a good fight. Justin Gaethje vs Max Holloway is a good fight. Zhang Weili vs Yan Xiaonan is a good fight. Alex Pereira vs Jamahal Hill is a good fight. But they are, in the end, just Good Fights. Nothing here speaks to history. This event's poster doesn't have a single face on it, just a number and a brand, and we'll probably never know how many people bought it.
Each of these cards represented the best the UFC could do at the time. UFC 100 was the best of a well-tended sport that was voraciously growing. UFC 200 was a successful plan B after the stars they'd invested everything in fell through. UFC 300 was months of "it's gonna be the biggest fights ever" marketing followed by extremely normal matches announced with less than two months to promote them.
And the way the UFC currently operates, that's the best they can do.
But, hey: The fights?
They're good.
it's a real good card.
MAIN EVENT: OF HISTORIC SIGNIFICANCE
 LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP: Alex Pereira (9-2, Champion) vs Jamahal Hill (12-1 (1), #1)
This fight may, in fact, be the perfect fight for defining this era in the UFC.
Let's get this out of the way up front: Alex Pereira is not a bad fighter. Much as I mock Sean Strickland, you do not immolate him in a single round without being pretty good at what you're doing. You do not trade wins with Israel Adesanya or knock out Jiří Procházka if you don't belong in the cage. Alex Pereira is a skilled fighter with, unquestionably, some of the best striking in the sport.
Jamahal Hill, similarly, is not a bad fighter. However hilarious it is to be undefeated except that one time you got your whole poo poo broke by Paul Craig, for one, Paul Craig does that to a lot of people, and for two, beating the hell out of Glover Teixeira is a thing accomplished only by people like Jon Jones, Anthony Johnson and Alexander Gustafsson, and that's great company to be in.
Neither fighter is a joke. This fight is not a joke. But the path that got us here, well: That's much tougher not to laugh at.
It's easy to forget, but Brock Lesnar joining the UFC was scandalous. The company had spent years establishing itself as the serious business organization with the best, most skilled, most experienced mixed martial artists in the world, and suddenly they were gleefully promoting the debut of a professional wrestler who had just one mixed martial arts fight, and it was against the 2-6 guy who earned half his career victories by beating WCW Power Plant graduate Sean O'Haire. And he was fighting a former world champion immediately, and he would go on to fight for said title just one win later. It was preposterous--but he was a massive crossover star with a successful martial background, so it flew. He didn't have credibility as a mixed martial artist, but no one cared, because he had a hook.
Alex Pereira's hook was being The Guy Who Beat Israel Adesanya. He was a prolific and successful kickboxer, but without Adesanya on his record that wouldn't have meant much of anything. It definitely wouldn't have gotten him into the UFC as a 3-1 rookie. And it definitely wouldn't have made him a double champion after just seven fights.
But it's not just the length--it's the mileage. When Randy Couture became a double champion he'd fought nine men who were considered to be at the pinnacle of the sport. B.J. Penn had fought multiple Lightweight and Welterweight world champions. Amanda Nunes had defeated five of the best women's fighters of all goddamn time. Even Conor McGregor's rightfully-maligned double-champion reign went through Max Holloway, Dustin Poirier, Chad Mendes, Eddie Alvarez, and José loving Aldo. They fought the best their divisions had to offer and earned their status.
Alex Pereira is a good fighter. I would say he's even a very good fighter. He also went from completely unranked to fighting the #4 guy in the division to fighting for the title. He didn't fight André Muniz, or Nassourdine Imavov, or Kelvin Gastelum, or Jack Hermansson, or Derek Brunson, or Robert Whittaker. He beat Bruno Silva, then he beat Sean Strickland, and then it was time for the belt. And when he lost that belt? It was onward and upward to 205, where he had one ultra-close fight with Jan Błachowicz, barely scraped a split decision, and proceeded straight to the history books.
And buddy, Jamahal Hill ain't no different. Good fighter! Better head for the sport than he gets credit for! But he got onto the Contender Series as a 5-0 rookie who'd only ever beaten one man with a winning record, and it took three fights before he got matched against someone not coming off a loss. As a matter of fact, this fight--the ninth of Hill's UFC career--marks just the third time he's fought someone coming off a victory. Hill's entire ascension up the ranks and to the title was built off the backs of struggling fighters. Even Hill's championship victory wasn't against the best his division had to offer, just the closest thing available.
November, December and January were awash with theories and rumors about the main event of this card. Khamzat Chimaev was getting rocketed to a title fight! Welterweight or Middleweight? As it turns out, both were on the table! Pereira and Adesanya were going to have a UFC rubber match! Or maybe it's Izzy and Dricus. Or maybe it's Dricus and Leon Edwards! My favorite, for sheer absurdity--and apparently closeness to reality, as both fighters were hyping it before it fell apart--was an honest to god attempt to have Alex Pereira fight Tom Aspinall for the Interim Heavyweight Championship, just to give Pereira the chance to be the UFC's first-ever triple champ.
Sure, it's ridiculous, and sure, it makes a joke out of three separate divisions, but as I said in the preamble: This is what we're doing now. Since its inception in 1997, in more than twenty-six years of existence, the Light Heavyweight title has been vacated exactly five times. Three of those five all happened after 2020; two were in the last sixteen months. Even people who could be stars like Sean O'Malley and Ilia Topuria were eying cross-divisional double-champion fights the second they won their belts.
There is no room for an Anderson Silva or Georges St-Pierre. That's just not what we do here anymore. There's no time to wait for fighters to organically make their way through the ranks or spend years building up cache with a fanbase. This is the era of striking while the irons are lukewarm.
Which would be fine if it were a different show. UFC 301 is in Rio! It's one month from now! You could have had two Brazilian champions defending their titles in Brazil, and then you wouldn't have to have a pay-per-view main evented by Steve loving Erceg! This is a great main event for a regular pay per view!
But this is not a regular pay-per-view. This is the UFC's biggest show of all time, and it is telling you with all authority that this is, in fact, the best it can do.
So the best we can do is guess at who wins. I said Jamahal Hill's head for mixed martial arts is underrated, and that's a lesson I learned the hard way. After watching Jamahal struggle with the takedowns of noted non-grappler Thiago Santos I thought Glover would give him trouble, and that was decidedly wrong. He's good at learning from his mistakes, he's good at fighting from a distance, and he's real good at forcing people to enter his range so he can counter and hurt them.
But he hasn't had to do it against truly even competition. Johnny Walker is the only man Hill's ever fought without a size advantage, and not only is Johnny Walker also a man who will abruptly sprint across the cage, throw spinning attacks in duplicate and injure himself doing the worm, he did, in fact, catch Hill and have him in visible trouble. Alex Pereira is not only just as big and rangy as Hill, he is patient to the point of being outright infuriating to watch. For Hill to get his offense going he's almost certainly going to be the one forced to enter Pereira's range.
If I am Hill's cornerman, I am telling him to ruin Alex's gameplan by simply refusing to engage in it. No dicking about at range, no trading leg kicks and jabs, no big right hands. You've spent the entire run-up to this fight boasting about how much more of a complete fighter you are: Go prove it. Embrace the grind. Shove this man into the fence and clinch the life out of him. Force him out of his comfort zone and make him defend takedowns all night. Use your purported strength advantage to hang on Pereira like an angry woolen shawl and drag him to the floor. gently caress this striking bullshit. If Mark Coleman cannot fight on the card, you must become him.
But for all of his bluster, Hill is a good company man who has yet to even attempt a takedown in his UFC career. I don't expect that to change here, and the more time Hill spends playing Alex's game, the more likely it becomes Alex lands one of those Johnny Walker punches. Eventually: ALEX PEREIRA BY TKO.
CO-MAIN EVENT: ADJACENCY CONFLICTS
WOMEN'S STRAWWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP: Zhang Weili (24-3, Champion) vs Yan Xiaonan (17-3 (1), #1)
I've written a lot of extremely long fight breakdowns, but one of my all-time favorites was from Zhang Weili vs Carla Esparza back in November of 2022, which started, simply:
aaaaahhhhhahaahahahahahaahahahahahaahahahahahaWeili Zhang by TKOahahahahaha.
It was a preposterous achievement in what has been a series of preposterous achievements. Since losing her duology to Rose Namajunas back in 2021, Zhang has fought three times: The first time out she destroyed Joanna Jędrzejczyk and retired her on the spot, the second was her shellacking of Esparza, and the third was one of the most dominant victories the sport has ever seen. All of that makes it awful hard to not begin thinking about fighters in hyperbole. When a champion is so thoroughly trashing her competition, it starts to make a competitive division look worse.
That mentality gets reflected in the odds. Zhang was a -400 favorite against Esparza and a -330 favorite against Lemos. So here we have Yan Xiaonan, the #1 contender in the division: Are her odds better?
Worse! As of this writing, Zhang's at -420.
On paper, it's awful hard to disagree. In some ways, Xiaonan's style maps to Zhang's: Very mobile, deceptively hard-hitting, wrestling offense in her back pocket when she needs it. The difference in their level of success, unfortunately, is both sizable and distressingly comparative.
Yan Xiaonan and Zhang Weili debuted within a year of one another. They have exactly the same record--8 wins, 2 losses--and both of their losses were a single knockout loss and a single, ultra-close coinflip of a split decision. But the palpable difference is competition. Zhang's losses both came to Rose Namajunas, who is, arguably, the best Strawweight the UFC had. Yan's split decision came against burgeoning gatekeeper Marina Rodriguez, and her violent, one-sided knockout loss came against...who was it?
Oh, right.
Carla Esparza.
It's difficult to reduce the theory of an entire fight to one point of comparison, but if you're wondering why the betting odds are so lopsided: That's why. Carla Esparza's chance to regain her championship only happened because she knocked out Yan--the one and only stoppage by strikes she's recorded in a decade with the UFC. Yan struggled with Carla, she struggled with Marina, she struggled with Mackenzie Dern, and all of those women either got crushed by Zhang Weili, or got crushed by people who were, themselves, crushed by Zhang Weili.
Even the win that got Yan here--a 2:20 knockout over Jéssica Andrade, which is legitimately impressive--has to deal with asterisks. Not only was Andrade coming off a loss, not only was Andrade dropping back down after being up at Flyweight, but when Andrade was in her prime four years earlier and the champion of the world, Zhang Weili knocked her out, too--and it only took her forty-two seconds.
It's a stupid amount of crossover, and it's a stupid theory for the fight--even as a deeply-seated lover of comparative analysis, MMAth is unreliable at best and silly at worst--but it's impossible not to make those comparisons, and it's impossible not to drag them into technical analysis of the fight itself. What, in theory, does Yan do better than Zhang? She has more one-hit KO power, I guess, but she lands a lot less and has had much less success getting those strikes to stick. She's not much faster, she's historically a worse wrestler and grappler, and she tends to fade in the back halves of her fights.
Mostly, I would like Zhang to have a genuinely competitive title defense, because her reign could use one. Unfortunately: I just don't think it's gonna happen here. ZHANG WEILI BY TKO.
MAIN CARD: NOT ACTUALLY FOR A BELT
LIGHTWEIGHT: Justin Gaethje (25-4, #2) vs Max Holloway (25-7, #1 at Featherweight)
If there's an overarching point to the very silly amount of writing I do for this very silly sport, it's the power of stories. Whether it's Kazushi Sakuraba hunting down the Gracie family one by one or Georges St-Pierre coming out of retirement for just one night to prove he could have been a double-champion, what really fires intrigue in the sport are the stories fans create around their favorite fighters--to the point that every fighting organization on the planet tries desperately to manufacture them.
The UFC is manufacturing this story. It's Justin Gaethje, the most violent Lightweight of all time! It's Max Holloway, the toughest guy in UFC history! They're fighting for the BMF title, the coolest championship in all of sports! I said UFC 300 lacked the superfight aspect of its forefathers: This is the fight in that slot. This is a fight for the ages.
But the BMF belt is not and never has been real. Justin Gaethje and Max Holloway should rightfully be fighting for the actual championships of their actual divisions, and they aren't. And--as much as it genuinely pains me--I think this could be the fight that breaks Max Holloway.
We had a sneak preview of this fight back in 2019. By that point Max was already the UFC's biggest Featherweight and he'd already flirted with cross-class competition in his ill-fated bid to fight Khabib Nurmagomedov. It was his meeting with Dustin Poirier that introduced us to 155-pound Max, and the results were...mixed. To be clear: Max did just fine. Going five rounds with Dustin Poirier is a thing very, very few Lightweights can do, and even in loss, Max managed it admirably. He could easily have slotted into the Lightweight top ten.
But he wanted #1, and that's where things get murky. The most obvious questions about Max at 155 centered around how well his legendary chin and his volume-punching, chip-away strategy would hold up at a higher weight class, and that's where terms like "admirably" become backhanded. He hung in there with Dustin, but he also got hurt far worse and far more often than he had at 145, and despite landing 208 strikes on Dustin, he had trouble returning the favor. Max's toughness was still there, but so was a visible power differential.
That was five years ago--to the day, in fact. Max is closing in on his mid-thirties. Max has absorbed 590 more significant strikes to the head. And Justin Gaethje, at this moment in time, is better than Dustin Poirier.
The record, at this point, is ridiculous. Aside from the now-avenged Poirier loss, Gaethje has just three losses in his career: Eddie Alvarez (whose late-stage slide and refusal to let go have really hosed up an otherwise legendary career) Khabib Nurmagomedov, and Charles Oliveira. All three of those men were, at one point, the best Lightweight on the planet. What's worse: He's actually progressively improved. The wildly brawling Justin Gaethje who fought Dustin in 2018 and the measured, accurate, counter-focused Justin Gaethje who destroyed Dustin in 2023 are entirely different beasts.
Which is bad news for Max, because 2018 Gaethje wasn't all that favorable a matchup for him, either. Max has always relied on his chin to offer him opportunities to hurt people. It got him in trouble against Brian Ortega, it got him in trouble with Dustin, and it was the key to Alexander Volkanovski fully taking him apart. You cannot tank Justin Gaethje punches. It doesn't work. He hits too loving hard. All of Max's best advantages--his fearlessness, his gas tank, his toughness--are tailor-made for Justin's offense, right down to Max's tendency to sacrifice his front leg to kicks in exchange for a quicker lunge into punching range.
I would love to believe in the story of this fight as a brawl for the ages. I'd love to see Max get a run at the Lightweight title just for shits and giggles. But I think about those leg kicks, and I think about how he gets clocked repeatedly in every fight he has, and I know Max has never been knocked out but I can't see anything but JUSTIN GAETHJE BY TKO.
LIGHTWEIGHT: Charles Oliveira (34-9 (1), #1) vs Arman Tsarukyan (21-3, #4)
This is a loving fight, though.
Charles Oliveira's is one of the best stories in fight sports. He came from nothing, he dedicated his life to martial arts, he broke out of the pack as this hyped prospect the world expected great things from when he was barely past 20, and he failed. He almost got fired on three separate occasions. And then, 30 fights into his career, right about the time most fighters call it a day, he suddenly put it all together, achieved his potential, and became the best loving Lightweight in the world. His Muay Thai became incredibly dangerous and his wrestling finally began to complement the submission offense that had already been best-in-class for a decade. He knocked out Chandler, he dropped Poirier, he choked out Gaethje. The one and only man he has not been able to beat is Islam Makhachev--and he would've gotten a second crack at him back in October had he not split his eyebrow during his training camp.
He could hang onto that title shot, too. Realistically, he probably should! But Charles does not back down from fights or paydays, and Arman Tsarukyan is both. Arman got his own loss to Islam out of the way early--his UFC debut, in fact--and since then, it's been a steady climb up the ladder. Given that his only other loss was a split decision to the similarly great Mateusz Gamrot that most of the media favored Arman in, arguably, Islam's his only loss in five years, too. His wrestling has been such a standout fixture of his game that it's made people lose sight of his surprisingly deadly hands, and if ground-and-pounding multiple men into stoppages wasn't enough to make his point, his coronation as a big deal last December certainly was. He met the almost-permanent top contender Beneil Dariush and knocked him dead in barely a minute. Which is extremely appropriate, because Dariush, too, had only been knocked out by one man in the last five years--Charles Oliveira.
Here's the thing, though: I am not picking against Charles goddamn Oliveira. Arman's usual wrestling is going to be a huge danger for him here, because Charles has made a career out of wrapping up men who thought they could grapple with him. The standup is a bigger question--Arman's the stronger puncher, I'd say--but Oliveira's striking isn't just sharp in its own right, it's bolstered by the fact that he's not remotely worried about winding up on the ground because of it. Arman is going to have to worry in this fight, and I think, as with so many of Oliveira's opponents, it's going to cost him. CHARLES OLIVEIRA BY SUBMISSION.
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Bo Nickal (5-0) vs Cody Brundage (10-5)
And then, there's this. Much wailing and gnashing of teeth has been done regarding this fight's placement on the main card; the audacity of putting Bo Nickal up with so many champions and up above so many more. I don't think there is anything wrong with featuring serious prospects on main cards. You've gotta give people exposure if you want the fans to care about them, and we just finished talking about bringing in people like Alex Pereira or Brock Lesnar and giving them big marketing fights.
This isn't lame because Bo Nickal is on a main card. It's lame because three fights into his UFC career Brock Lesnar was fighting some of the greatest of all time, and three fights into his UFC career Alex Pereira was already dealing with Sean Strickland. This is Bo Nickal's third fight in the UFC, and so far, his hitlist consists of:
- Jamie Pickett, who retired after going 2-7 in the UFC
- Val "The Animal" Woodburn, a debuting, short-notice regional fighter giving up almost half a foot in size, who dropped immediately to Welterweight and is now 0-2
- Cody Brundage, a 4-4 fighter who is only still employed because Jacob Malkoun hit him in the back of the head and got disqualified
There's no mystery about this fight. It's barely even a question. Bo Nickal is a super-wrestler with an incredible grappling pedigree and knockout power to boot. Cody Brundage got outwrestled by Dalcha Lungiambula. Bo Nickal is a -2500 favorite in this fight.
UFC 100 was a jumping-off point for Jon Jones, but he was at least fighting Jake O'Brien, who'd made something of a name for himself. UFC 200 included an attempt to relaunch the UFC's favorite prospect in Kelvin Gastelum, and he had to deal with a former champion in Johny Hendricks. Even Sage Northcutt had to deal with the runner-up of The Ultimate Fighter Latin America 2 (jesus christ).
But this is UFC 300 and we're in the gimme-fights game now. Sorry, Cody. BO NICKAL BY SUBMISSION.
PRELIMS: KAYLA HARRISON STILL DOESN'T HAVE A PICTURE ON UFC.COM
LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHT: Jiří Procházka (29-4-1, #2) vs Aleksandar Rakić (14-3, #5)
Time makes fools of us all. Two years ago, Aleksandar Rakić was right on the verge of becoming the #1 contender and Jiří Procházka was winning the fight of the year and taking over as the new Light Heavyweight champion. They took polar opposite approaches to fighting: Where Jiří took pride in his status as a fist-swinging wildman who would stop at nothing to finish anyone unfortunate enough to be placed across the cage, Rakić was a defensive tactician who, when criticized for his style, replied that pretending it matters is pointless, the UFC doesn't care about him and will forget him as soon as he retires, so the more of his health he retains, the better. This is a genuinely refreshing sentiment I wish more fighters shared. Unfortunately, tendons do whatever they're gonna do, and in the biggest fight of his career and on the cusp of beating Jan Błachowicz, Rakić's ACL tore in mid-round. Less than a month later, Jiří rode the UFC's gleeful promotion of his murderous ways to his world championship; just a few months after that he, too, got injured and had to go on the shelf. Jiří was back after a year and a half, but got turned away by Alex Pereira; Rakić is fighting for the first time since his leg imploded back in May of 2022.
It's a testament to the quiet, understated value credibility still carries in this sport that despite Jiří's status as a former world champion and fan favorite knockout machine who's only lost once since 2015 and Rakić having been MIA for two years, Rakić is, shockingly, still the betting favorite here. I was all geared up to detail why Aleksandar's better-rounded gameplan and bread-and-butter wrestling and tight, accurate killshots were a bad matchup for Jiří, and for once, I apparently don't have to. It's pointless to say "but Jiří could beat him" because Jiří can beat anyone he lands on. That's just the risk of fighting the man. This does not keep me from picking ALEKSANDAR RAKIĆ BY DECISION.
FEATHERWEIGHT: Calvin Kattar (23-7, #8) vs Aljamain Sterling (23-4, #2 at Bantamweight)
Boy, I really hate this fight. I understand why it's happening, it's an extremely sensible matchup, but as someone who wants nice things to happen to Aljamain Sterling, it makes me personally unhappy, which is the greatest sin a fight promoter can commit. Calvin Kattar is one of the most popular, fun-to-watch Featherweights the UFC has to offer, and he's made it clear on numerous occasions that he solidly belongs in the top ten. Unfortunately: Many of those occasions involve losing. Kattar's must-see, all-action boxing style put the UFC's promotional engines behind him, and he had a brief flash of contendership possibility when he tooled Giga Chikadze, but every other attempt at the top has seen him turned away. Max Holloway demolished him, Josh Emmett (controversially) outworked him, and when last we saw him back in October of 2022, his leg collapsed in the middle of fighting Arnold Allen. He is, unfortunately, a gatekeeper. Once upon a time Aljamain Sterling had dreams of becoming a UFC double-champion by carrying his Bantamweight title into a Featherweight title fight, but the UFC got their way and fed his reign to Sean O'Malley, and without the bargaining power of a championship, Aljo has to settle for earning his spot the hard way. At 135 pounds his wrestling and grappling were best-in-class, and that was deeply fortunate, because his striking was often loose enough to look awkward in ways that regularly got him in trouble.
Like, lots of trouble. Henry Cejudo clipped him at one point and Henry Cejudo had to get his arms back from the LEGO Museum when he came out of retirement. Aljo's creativity fueled a lot of his grappling success, but his physicality and speed did, too. At 145 pounds, that's a much tougher sell. Against a guy like Kattar who's both bigger, stronger, a much cleaner striker, and legendarily difficult to get on the floor? CALVIN KATTAR BY TKO feels real, real likely.
WOMEN'S BANTAMWEIGHT: Holly Holm (15-6 (1), #5) vs Kayla Harrison (16-1, NR)
It should've been Larissa Pacheco, that's all I'm saying. Ahead of her return to fighting last week, Germaine de Randamie made some controversial comments about how Women's Bantamweight has been a dead division without Ronda Rousey or Amanda Nunes. As much of a diehard Raquel Pennington fan as I am: It's hard to disagree. This fight is here to ideally propel Kayla Harrison directly into title contention. Ordinarily I complain to no end about people jumping the line, but when it comes to Women's Bantamweight, there's no line to jump. If you go down the entire rankings:
- #1, Julianna Peńa, is injured
- #2, Ketlen Vieira, lost to the champ one fight ago
- #3, Mayra Bueno Silva, just lost a title fight
- #4, Irene Aldana, was the last woman Amanda Nunes destroyed
- #6, Macy Chiasson, just had her first fight at 135 in three years
- #7, Miesha Tate, ditto
- #8, Karol Rosa, ditto and she just lost to Aldana
- #9, Norma Dumont, just had her first UFC 135 fight ever
- #10, Pannie Kianzad, just lost to Chiasson
- #11, Yana Santos, is on a three-fight losing streak
- #12, Julia Avila, has one win in the last four years
- #13, Chelsea Chandler, has never made the 135 pound weight class
- #14, Germaine de Randamie, just had her first fight in three and a half years--and lost
- #15, Josiane Nunes, has not won a Bantamweight fight since 2021
That's it. That's the entire ladder. Multiple women in the rankings hadn't competed at 135 pounds until now. One of them still hasn't. Outside of the champion, the longest winning streak in the division--restricted to fights that actually took place within the division--is one. One win.
And this fight isn't any different. Holly Holm is coming off of a No Contest that should have been a submission loss. Kayla Harrison--the biggest women's prospect outside of the UFC, the Olympic gold medalist, the Ronda Rousey 2.0 multiple companies have now invested in as the solution to their promotional difficulties--is, also, on a one-fight winning streak, having just lost her undefeated record to Larissa Pacheco at the end of 2022. This is the great hope of saving Women's Bantamweight: A fighter who already lost her hype train after spending her entire career fighting at Women's Lightweight, a division that does not actually exist.
I hope she wins. I will do an awful lot of awful things to not have to see another Holly Holm championship match in my life. I hope, deeply, that we get KAYLA HARRISON BY SUBMISSION and the division gets a shot in the arm. But even if we make it past the scale, the future is rocky.
FEATHERWEIGHT: Sodiq Yusuff (13-3, #13) vs Diego Lopes (23-6, NR)
Were it not for personal emotional attachment, this would be my favorite fight on the card. Sodiq Yusuff has been knocking on the door to contendership for years. His debut in the UFC tricked people into filing him away with the other regular power punchers, but he's pretty thoroughly demonstrated just how well-rounded he is in his subsequent victories. His place in the UFC, unfortunately, is coming to be defined more by his losses. He got his shot at the top against Arnold Allen in 2021, and he almost beat him, but he just didn't do enough. He won two more bouts and got his second shot against Edson Barboza this past October, and he drat near killed him in the first round, but Edson's experience helped him survive the onslaught and beat a drained Yusuff across the cage for the rest of the night. He's great! He just hasn't been able to break the ceiling. Diego Lopes almost did it his first time out. Lopes hopped into the UFC on just four days' notice to fight Movsar Evloev, the undefeated super-grappler who's now one win away from a title shot, and Lopes came closer than drat near anyone to beating him. His cardio was astounding for how little time he had to prepare, his bottom game was dangerous as hell, and he made Evloev work for every second of his victory. Lopes has rattled off two 90-second wins since, each more impressive than the last, to the point that he's now a favorite against the comparatively-established Yusuff.
Personally, I cannot even pretend to not be in the tank. I love the way Lopes fights, I love his insistence on being a threat in every single aspect of the game, and Yusuff's tendency to fall back on his wrestling when he needs to collect himself or change the pace of the fight is real, real dangerous for him here. DIEGO LOPES BY SUBMISSION.
EARLY PRELIMS: THE JIM MILLER SHOW
LIGHTWEIGHT: Jalin Turner (14-7, #10) vs Renato Moicano (18-5-1, #13)
Both of these men are so goddamn close to being a Thing, and it's heartbreaking that one of them will have to give up the race, because they both deeply deserve to be here. Jalin Turner is a hard-hitting motherfucker who towers over almost everyone in the division, and it shows, because at 6'3" that weight cut visibly kills him. But he was just one changed mind in the judging booth away from winning a split decision against Mateusz Gamrot, and that's technically also true for his loss to Dan Hooker, but the judge who split the verdict was Adalaide Byrd and the mere mention of her name sends paroxysms of rage through veterans of multiple combat sports. Turner is tough as poo poo, he hits like a truck, and he's remarkably difficult to keep on the ground. Which is a problem for Renato Moicano, because his ability to wrap people up and control them on the ground is the main source of his success. Moicano's made himself a fan favorite half through his aggressive self-marketing and half through his propensity for violently strangling people, but he's struggled to stay consistent in the cage. He couldn't control Rafael dos Anjos, he couldn't avoid Rafael Fiziev's reach, and he struggled with the counterpunching Drew Dober put on him during their fight.
There's no shame in getting hurt by Drew Dober. He does it to a lot of people. But so does Jalin Turner, and he can do it from half a foot farther away. Eventually, JALIN TURNER BY TKO.
WOMEN'S STRAWWEIGHT: Jéssica Andrade (25-12, #5) vs Marina Rodriguez (17-3-2, #6)
Jéssica Andrade is one of my favorite fighters of all goddamn time, and I allowed my faith in her to slip. Andrade fought an inexplicable five times in 2023, and that run saw her eat three straight stoppage losses to #1 contenders in just six months, a schedule so unconscionable--particularly with a knockout right in the middle!--that when her matchup with Mackenzie Dern was announced for November I openly called for her to fire her management for attempting to monetize the sawdust in her bones. I was wrong, Andrade was right, her power-punching style flattened Dern in two rounds, and for the eighth or eleventh time, the UFC's attempt to push Mackenzie led to her eating poo poo. But that means Jéssica is still a top contender, and that means she's gotta fight more top contenders. Marina Rodriguez was on track to exit 2022 as the next big Strawweight title contender thanks to her tight jab-and-jog boxing gameplans and her solid defensive wrestling, but an upset knockout loss to Amanda Lemos knocked her out of first place, and a grappling clinic by Virna Jandiroba pushed her all the way down the ladder. They rehabilitated her with a completely nonsensical rematch victory against Michelle Waterson-Gomez, and somehow, by being the #9 fighter beating the #13 fighter, she is right back up near the top five, because math is for babies.
Analyzing this fight is a fool's errand. I could relay my concerns about Andrade's recent tendency to wade forward while flailing out haymakers, and I could theorycraft about Marina's capacity for hitting and fading away being the absolute blueprint for dealing with it, but for one, who knows what Andrade you're getting on a given night, and for two, I will not abandon my favorite twice. JÉSSICA ANDRADE BY TKO.
LIGHTWEIGHT: Bobby Green (31-15-1 (1), #14) vs Jim Miller (37-17 (1), NR)
If Max Holloway vs Justin Gaethje is the superfight of the night, this is the history fight, and make no mistake: It's the Jim Miller show. This is not to demean Bobby Green. I love Bobby Green's fighting. I have been defending it against philistines who think defense is for losers since the days of Shane Carwin. He's been around forever and he's still vital enough to have punched his way into the Lightweight top ten just last October. He's a deserving dance partner for a trip through history. But Jim Miller is the reason for the season. If Bobby Green was relevant when Shane Carwin was a thing, Jim Miller was relevant when Matt Serra was still the best Welterweight in the world. Jim Miller's UFC tenure alone predates more than half its currently active weight classes. He lost years of his career to Lyme disease, the most Oregon Trail-rear end reason a fighter has ever failed. He beat Mac Danzig at UFC 100, he knocked out Takanori Gomi at UFC 200, and fan outcry for recognition of his incredible feat got him this fight at UFC 300. During his walkout for that UFC 200 fight Mike Goldberg called attention to Miller's incredible longevity in the sport, and that was eight years ago, and he's still here. This will be his forty-loving-fourth UFC fight, and he says he wants to retire before 50--after winning the belt.
Do I think this is a good match for Jim Miller? No; Bobby Green hits faster, is far more defensively slick, and is awful hard to take down. Am I picking against Jim Miller at UFC 300? Not on your goddamn life. JIM MILLER BY DECISION.
BANTAMWEIGHT: Deiveson Figueiredo (22-3-1, #8) vs Cody Garbrandt (14-5, NR)
I cannot imagine how much restraint it took not to make this the main event of a Fight Night with a Bogdan Guskov vs Modestas Bukauskas co-main. There were a lot of skeptics about Deiveson Figueiredo's plans to move up to the 135-pound division--including me--but he proved us wrong and shut Rob Font out of their fight last December. He outstruck him at both range and in the pocket, and when Font finally started to catch his rhythm, he began dumping him on the floor just to change it up. It was a fantastic performance and a clear proof that he does, in fact, belong at Bantamweight. Two weeks later, Cody Garbrandt managed to chisel himself back into its books. Garbrandt's fall from the top is the stuff of legends--from an undefeated champion who engineered the total destruction of one of the sport's longest winning streaks by wrecking Dominick Cruz to going 1 for 6 over the next half-decade, including four vicious knockout losses--and, while it frustrated him at the time, Garbrandt being forced to spend a year and a half on the shelf thanks to opponents repeatedly pulling out with injuries was ultimately good for him. He came back in March of 2023 and put forth a workmanlike if unimpressive victory over Trevin Jones, but his one-round, one-punch annihilation of Brian Kelleher in December was his proof to the world that he was back to his old self, and nothing was going to stop him from punching his way straight to the title again.
So anyway, DEIVESON FIGUEIREDO BY TKO. There's risk here, Deiveson tends to lead with his head and if Cody pops him it could end his night real early, but he's the same kind of tough, fast and vicious that got Cody crushed by punches four times already. You should be scared of trading in the pocket with Cody Garbrandt, but if you're not, that chin is still right there for the taking, and Deiveson was a hairdresser and thus has no mortal fear left in his body.
Prelims in 30. Have fun.
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Apr 13, 2024 22:33
