- CarlCX
- Dec 14, 2003
-
|
It's time for the first pay-per-view of the post-300 era and we are back in Rio. The card has stayed intact save for losing Jean Silva vs William Gomis after Gomis came in underweight and was so visibly hosed by the cut they refused to let him fight; Klose vs Silva got moved up to the main prelims to fill the void. Expect a little potential dead air.
On the topic of UFC 301:
CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 100: HAVE NO FEARS, WE'VE GOT STORIES FOR YEARS
SATURDAY, MAY 4 FROM THE FARMASI ARENA IN RIO DE JANEIRO
EARLY PRELIMS 3 PM PDT / 6 PM EDT | PRELIMS 5 PM / 8 PM | MAIN CARD 7 PM / 10 PM
I try not to talk about myself too much in these things, but we're gonna break from format a little bit this week and get personal, because god drat, we've been through one hundred of these already. We can have a personal week once every two and a half years.
Christ, two and a half years. The first official writeup I did was for Calvin Kattar vs Giga Chikadze, the UFC's first card of 2022. That's really recent! 27 months shouldn't feel like it was all that long ago! But there were twenty fighters on that card and ten of them have already been cut, and boy, if that isn't a testament to just how fast the sport moves these days.
Or, hell, how fast the world does.
It's outright passe at this point to pull a Norman Mailer and talk about combat sports as a way of symbolizing or tracking social change--which is admittedly pretty funny given how deeply culturally intertwined they've been with the rise of an awful lot of awful things over the last twenty years--but I don't think we really need to do it, anyway. I know multiple friends who've had to flee multiple countries and I would bet that's an insanely common sentence these days. No one's unaware of just how bad things have been.
It's been a rough two years. COVID, health problems, losing pets, losing family (these two categories, realistically, are the same), the travails of time that wear away at us all. But it has, in some ways, been two of the better years of my life. I got engaged to my favorite human being. I learned to get my writing out of Google Docs folders no one will ever see. I promised I would do this silly, passionate thing, and through hospitals and plane trips and at one point having to type around holes in my fingers after breaking up a dog fight, I have somehow made it through one hundred of these without missing any.
I know a number of people--including some readers--who have found it progressively harder to enjoy or even watch the UFC thanks to their gleeful participation in some of the worst politics on Earth. In conversation with good brother Marching Powder last Summer, I made a flippant comment that's stayed in the back of my head ever since as a sort of mission statement:
As the UFC has drifted even further to the right and become an out-and-out platform for total bullshit, it has made me more determined to stick around. I'm not ceding the space of this sport to some of the worst motherfuckers on the planet just because they got louder and more desperate. I was renting UFC on VHS before Dana White was here and I'll still be watching the day after he wakes up in Hell.
However much I complain--and however much more I am certain to as we continue down the slide to a one-company world of mixed martial arts--I do, still, love this sport, and half of the point of doing this was to stay connected to the part of me that does. For however much honest cynicism I dispense on a weekly basis, if you are reading this, I hope there is a part of that love that resonates with you, too.
And if you are reading this: Thank you for reading this. Learning that this helps anyone follow or care about the sport remains as stunning and motivating as it did the first time someone said it to me, and by the time I say hello again in late 2026, I hope I have not let you down.
Here's to a hundred more.
you can hear the crowd chants already
MAIN EVENT: THE FLYWEIGHT SITUATION, PART TWO
 FLYWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP: Alexandre Pantoja (27-5, Champion) vs Steve Erceg (12-1, #10)
Believe it or not, this is the first time in the history of the UFC we have back-to-back Flyweight main events. Last June's Kara-France vs Albazi was the UFC's first Flyweight main event in 30 months, and now we're blessed with a veritable cornucopia of small-man fight times. It's a golden age for the Flyweight division, and things have never been better.
Which is why the champion with a single title defense is skipping everyone else in the top ten and fighting its lowest ranked person.
Alexandre Pantoja, to be fair, does not make it easy. He already beat Manel Kape, Alex Perez, Brandon Moreno and Brandon Royval--twice, in fact, because he truly hates Brandons. (It's technically three for Moreno, but that gets into existential territory about how real fights on The Ultimate Fighter are.) The only people with victories over Pantoja in the entirety of the last decade are Askar Askarov, who left the UFC of his own accord just two fights later, Deiveson Figueiredo, who's now chasing a 135-pound title fight, and Dustin Ortiz, who despite being one of the division's best fighters was cut from the UFC in 2019 back when they were planning on deleting Flyweight altogether. He doesn't have many unvanquished enemies left. and it mostly involves the negated status of every other potential contender.
But there's been a lot of discussion about the idea that this fight is the best the UFC can realistically do given the rankings. If you go down the ladder, it goes something like this:
- #1, Brandon Royval, is just one fight removed from his unsuccessful challenge for the title
- #2, Brandon Moreno, just lost to Brandon Royval
- #3, Amir Albazi, is on the shelf with a neck injury
- #4, Kai Kara-France, is coming back from a concussion
- #5, Matheus Nicolau, was booked to fight Alex Perez, who in fact beat him last week (the UFC likes to be lazy about updating their rankings, and hell, same)
- #6, Manel Kape, pulled out of his own fight with the aforementioned Nicolau for unknown reasons and is unbooked
- #7, Muhammad Mokaev, just beat Alex Perez this past March, but it was a fan-unfriendly wrestling performance
- #8, Alex Perez, was booked against Matheus Nicolau and knocked him out in a round
- #9, Tim Elliott, was already booked against Tatsuro Taira
It's kind of wild how that list gets real thin the farther you go down it, isn't it? We can't book Matheus Nicolau, because we'd have to sacrifice a whole-rear end UFC Apex main event. Sure, we just rebooked Alex Perez into a Flyweight main event, but using him for a title fight a week later? Totally crazy. And we obviously can't book Muhammad Mokaev, because he wasn't exciting. And we can't do anyone Pantoja already beat! The Flyweight division having a title rematch? That's just crazy talk.
But Steve Erceg? Now that's a haircut you can set your watch to.
I know I just did a list, but we have to do another one, because the Steve Erceg journey through the UFC is some wonderfully silly poo poo:
- He gets signed to the UFC thanks to his victory over Soichiro Hirai, who is, a year later, 4-4 in his career
- He gets pulled from his debut against Contender Series winner Clayton Carpenter so he can fill in against the #10-ranked David Dvořák when Dvořák's opponent, Matt Schnell, pulls out
- He beats Dvořák, gets booked against Matt Schnell in his place, and then Schnell pulls out again, leaving Erceg to face the unranked, 1-1 Alessandro Costa
- He beats Costa and gets booked against Matt Schnell again, who at this point is ranked #9
- He knocks Schnell out in the second round, and having beaten both the #10 and #9-ranked fighters, is somehow still only ranked #10
- He gets a loving shot at the champion anyway
It's just a hilarious confluence of events. David Dvořák was already on the first losing streak of his life when Erceg beat him. Alessandro Costa's only UFC win was against a man who'd just come back from a two-year retirement from the sport and gotten knocked out in the first round. Matt Schnell, the #9 ranked fighter in the sport, is 1 for his last 5 and hadn't beaten anyone in the top ten since the summer of 2019. Once again, the UFC is pushing a dude into title contention by skipping the ladder, and once again, it has a lot less to do with his record or his skills than his having just scored a really cool knockout in his last fight. As always, I am in the position of waving my arms and ranting angrily about matchmaking and credibility and the way the sport should be.
Except: I'm cool with it.
Should Matheus Nicolau have been pulled from his Apex main event for a better title challenger? Probably. Would Muhammad Mokaev have been a more popular, more deserving title contender? Definitely.
Am I mad about it? As much as I feel like I probably should be--no. Not even a little.
Goddamn near every single Flyweight championship fight for years has been a rematch. Henry Cejudo won the title in a rematch. Deiveson Figueiredo won the title in a rematch. He spent most of his title reign trading back and forth in three separate rematches with Brandon Moreno. Alexandre Pantoja won his belt in a rematch with Brandon Moreno and defended it in a rematch with Brandon Royval.
Are the 'the UFC had no choice' arguments sound? God, no. They're the UFC, they can do whatever they want. They could have scheduled the next 125-pound championship match anytime, with any one of a number of more deserving contenders. They got José loving Aldo for the co-main event of this pay-per-view. Getting Steve Erceg a title shot was a choice, not a necessity.
Is it worth getting mad over? If you're Muhammad Mokaev: Definitely. You should probably be furious. If you're a fan? It's fine, man. There are a lot of cases of divisional injustice and preferential treatment to get mad about, and with Dustin Poirier about to get a championship fight next month lord knows we're going to talk about it, but all things being considered? Flyweight could use some new blood, the #7 guy getting passed up for the #10 guy isn't a particularly broad injustice, and on the mass spectrum of the UFC's matchmaking sins, It's Fine.
And, helpfully, it's a really interesting fight. Alexandre Pantoja is an amazing fighter, but it's hard to miss his tendency to work behind his chin. He was actually outstruck in all of his last four victories, but his willingness to walk through punches to land his own--or, more commonly, to get his opponents on the floor where he can use his ridiculously dangerous grappling game--won him those fights anyway. Steve Erceg has shown off some exceptionally sound boxing in his fights thus far. When Erceg was first booked against Dvořák, even though I picked against him, I commented on his ability to sneak left hooks into extremely tight spaces, and that's been a money punch for him in the UFC and is, in fact, the punch that got him this fight.
But his reliance on it has also gotten him in real trouble. Alessandro Costa gave Erceg hell, and the first time Erceg really hurt Matt Schnell he got entirely too excited about it and nearly got flattened for his troubles. Erceg knows how dangerous his offense is, but the urgency with which he pursues it overrides his defensive instincts. When he's pecking away at range, he's extremely sound; when he closes in, he gets hurt.
Or, more commonly, grappled. Steve's very good at getting up and reversing positions, but he still gets into those positions, and Pantoja is all about dangerous positions. He hurts people up close, he grapples people out of offensive attempts and when he gets them where he wants them, he's very, very hard to stop. If Erceg wins this fight it'll be by either jab-and-jogging Pantoja or flattening him in five minutes; if Pantoja wins, it's by dragging Erceg through hell. ALEXANDRE PANTOJA BY SUBMISSION feels more likely.
CO-MAIN EVENT: CONTRACTUALLY OBLIGATORY
BANTAMWEIGHT: Jonathan Martinez (19-4, #13) vs José Aldo (31-8, NR)
There are a number of alternate universes in which I love this fight. It's José Aldo! He's back! The greatest Featherweight of all time is back in mixed martial arts, we should all be celebrating! And then you realize he's 37, and he's fighting one of the best Bantamweights in the company, and he doesn't even really want to be here.
In a rare moment of honesty in the mixed martial arts business, in the lead-up to this event, Aldo very openly discussed the fight happening thanks to the greatest of combat sports traditions: Contractual Obligations. He very publicly retired from MMA two years ago after losing to Merab Dvalishvili and he spent all of 2023 taking boxing fights in an attempt to build his way to one of those rare-yet-present big-money MMA/boxing crossover bouts. But he still has one fight left on his UFC contract, and as long as that's true, any one of those big-money fights is legally problematic--as is, say, potentially angling for a payday from the Professional Fighters League while they still have money to throw around.
So he's back. Which doesn't have to be that bad, honestly. Even if it's a one-off, José Aldo is an absolute legend of the sport and having a one-night-only return in his hometown is a great way to add one more piece to one of MMA's greatest legacies.
Which is when you learn that this was supposed to be a legacy vs legacy fight between Aldo and Dominick Cruz, but Cruz--try to be shocked--had an undisclosed medical issue during his camp. But, hey: What about Henry Cejudo, he's still here! Or maybe Chito Vera? Cody Garbrandt? A rematch with Cub loving Swanson, just for one last touch of WEC memorabilia?
It's funny, because a year and a half ago I didn't just say the same things about Frankie Edgar, I said it about an awful lot of the same people:
Frankie Edgar is riding into the sunset. And in a better sport, a better world, his retirement fight would be an event: A battle of legends against Dominick Cruz, a clash of diminished but still popular champions against Cody Garbrandt, one last gritty veteran war against Jim Miller.
But mixed martial arts is cruel and confusing, and the aging wrestler always puts over the new guy on his way out of the territory.
Can we do better this time? Can a motherfucker get a real retirement match?
Nope! Sorry. Best we can do is Jonathan Martinez.
I'm a big fan of Jonathan Martinez. I'm a sucker for a journeyman-who-breaks-from-the-pack story, and Martinez going from a 4-3 fighter having persistent weight cutting issues to a top-fifteen fighter on a six-fight winning streak? That's real, real hard to beat. Doing it by just leg kicking the poo poo out of a whole bunch of people? That's a fighter grabbing directly for my heart. The "Dragon" who was struggling with Andre Ewell and getting dropped by Davey Grant feels a whole world away from the fighter who took on one of Bantamweight's biggest punchers in Adrian Yanez and had him whiffing on almost 75% of his strikes. Hell, thanks to the same leg kicks that took out Yanez, Martinez is one of just three men to ever knock out our last-paragraph buddy Cub Swanson. The first man to do it? José Aldo.
There's a school of thought that trying to trade leg kicks with Aldo, one of the sport's most devastating haters of leg bones, is a terrible idea. But multiple fighters have had a whole lot of success against Aldo by battering his legs, half to keep him from sitting down on his own offensive kicking game, half to capitalize on Aldo's largely successful late-career self-reinvention as a boxer. Martinez has considerable power and accuracy in his hands too, but his kicks are his most reliable weapon. Is using them on Aldo a strategic error?
Honestly? I don't think so. I don't think it's because Aldo's markedly worse than he used to be, either. Unlike most folks in his position, he still looked like a contender when he retired from the sport--the worst thing you can say about him is he got swamped by Merab Dvalishvili, who does that to goddamn near everyone on the planet. Aldo is still extremely dangerous, and a lapse in judgment or timing for Martinez could get him smoked in seconds.
But whether it's having one foot out the door on the sport already, or a particular faith in Martinez and his leg-kicking game, or simply a lingering distaste for Aldo's Minions sleepover party with Jair Bolsonaro, I'm going with my gut and picking JONATHAN MARTINEZ BY DECISION.
MAIN CARD: THE WILD LIFE OF IGGY POTS
LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHT: Anthony Smith (37-19, #10) vs Vitor Petrino (11-0, #15)
Welcome to your most-likely-to-be-depressing fight of the night. Five years ago, Anthony Smith was the #3-ranked Light Heavyweight on the planet fighting Jon Jones in a pay-per-view main event. Since that night he's 4-6, he's had teeth removed from his head by fists, and he's been knocked out twice in his last four fights. In 2021, Anthony Smith fought Ryan Spann, dominated him, dropped him and choked him out in a single round. They had a rematch this past September, just shy of two years later, and Smith won again, but this time it was a skin-of-his-teeth split decision that could have easily gone the other way. There are two ways to look at this: Either you believe Ryan Spann has improved by leaps and bounds, which his current three-fight losing streak would seem to impeach, or you believe that Anthony Smith, who is passing his mid-thirties, has been fighting for almost twenty years and holds 56 fights' worth of wear and tear, has started to degenerate as a fighter. People have always underrated Smith thanks to his record, but in a division of specialists, he's always been a solid all-around competitor: Solid jabs, solid leg kicks, surprisingly dangerous grappling and the wisdom to effectively mix them together. But the glue holding them together was his ability to out-tough his opponents, and unfortunately, you can only be so tough for so long when the wolves are at your door.
I do not know what Vitor Petrino's fursona is, but if anything, this fight is the UFC's attempt to find out. Petrino's drat near the precise ideal of how the UFC wants to do business these days: They got a big, scary muscleman on the Contender Series as an undefeated almost-all-finishes wrecking machine, he walked into the UFC with his record intact, he took three fights in 2023 like a good company man and won them all, and now, just five months in, he's already on his second fight of 2024. He's a big finishing machine and the future of the division and already the #15 guy in the company! Of course, the first guy he beat went 0-4 and got released and the last guy he beat is the now-retired Tyson "The Last Man To Get Finished By Shogun" Pedro, but gently caress, it's Light Heavyweight, how much can you really ask for. On one hand: I'm a lot more impressed by Vitor now that we've seen him go deeper into fights. Barnstormers with quick finishes aren't very rare at 205 pounds; complete fighters who can handle striking and grappling for fifteen minutes are. On the other: Being the only man in Anton Turkalj's UFC record not to finish him? That's not a great sign. Dropping a round to Tyson Pedro and having to wrestle him for dear life to make it to the bell? When your reputation as a Contender Series Alumnus was built around being a human wrecking ball, that's really not a great sign.
And yet: VITOR PETRINO BY TKO. As disrespectful as it feels to say Tyson Pedro will fare better against a man than Anthony Smith, at this stage in his career, I don't think it's unwarranted. There are ways for him to win, here; Petrino had a lot of trouble with Pedro's leg kicks and they're one of Smith's specialties, and Petrino's overaggressive style could get him reversed by Smith's continually underrated grappling. But I just don't have faith in Smith's ability to avoid Petrino's power for fifteen minutes.
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Michel Pereira (30-11 (2)) vs Ihor Potieria (21-5)
This wasn't intended to be a squash match, and both men were initially booked into better-suited fights, but sometimes things simply work out in favor of chaos.
Michel Pereira has found his home. "Demolidor" was still very talented and dangerous as a Welterweight, but cutting that much weight left him visibly drained--and sometimes it kept him from reaching the class at all. After losing out on a high-profile matchup with Stephen Thompson thanks to a botched weight cut, Pereira made the move to 185 pounds at the end of 2023, and after knocking out Andre Petroski and choking out Michał Oleksiejczuk in just barely over one minute apiece, it was clearly the right choice. He's bigger, he's somehow actually faster, and he's been able to use that newfound physicality to really string his attacks together in ways that previously escaped him. He was originally going to have a stiffer test tonight against fellow multifaceted striking standout Makhmud Muradov, but thanks to our old friend the staph infection, he couldn't make it.
In his place: Ihor Potieria. Ol' Iggy Pots has been through a real goddamn weird path in the UFC. He did the Contender Series thing, joined the roster looking like a killing machine on a half-decade-long winning streak, and was immediately immolated by Nicolae Negumereanu. And then, somehow, he became the man chosen to retire a legend of the sport in Maurício Rua in front of an extremely sad Rio de Janeiro crowd. And then he got knocked the gently caress out twice in a row, and then he dropped to 185 pounds in an attempt to save his UFC career, and he won--but only after failing to actually make the weight in the first place. As his followup performance, he was supposed to fight in Saudi Arabia next month against the undefeated Russian sensation Shara Magomedov, a man who tends to fight only in places that aren't concerned about licensing a fighter with one eye.
But this fight needed to be rescued, so here we are. This is, pretty unequivocally, a gimme fight for Pereira. Ihor hits hard when he connects, but he's also a little too wild, a little too aggressive, and a little too prone to getting his poo poo completely hosed up by people who can throw straight punches. MICHEL PEREIRA BY TKO.
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Paul Craig (17-7-1, #13) vs Caio Borralho (15-1 (1), #14)
I almost gave this fight special recognition for its potential in achieving mixed martial comedy. Paul "Bearjew" Craig is a man so easily memed that you're compelled to write his nickname every time you refer to him. He punches like a boxer in the pre-Queensbury era, he gets cracked in nearly every fight he has and he loses large parts of the fights he wins, and yet, somehow, he's been ranked at the top of two different weight classes. His guard game has broken a dozen dreams. But his run as a 185-pound contender hit a speedbump last November when Brendan Allen completely shut him down. There's only room for one grungy, underrated grappler at Middleweight, and it is not Paul "Bearjew" Craig.
There is absolutely nothing underrated about Caio Borralho's grappling. Despite being one of Brazil's better prospects, "The Natural" inexplicably had to win two separate Contender Series fights in twenty-one days to get his UFC contract, and since then, it's been smooth sailing. He's taken down and outgrappled five men in a row, he's developed some solid striking to round out his game, and until his last fight with Abus Magomedov, he'd been drat near perfect in the organization. He still won, of course, but Magomedov was the first man in the UFC Caio failed to take down, and some of Magomedov's kicks gave him a fair bit of trouble. Caio took over in the back half of the fight, but how much of that was Caio wearing him down and how much was Magomedov's persistent problems with cardio is up for debate.
But, uh, that's not going to be much of a problem in this fight. I don't think the grappling in this fight is as cut-and-dry as it might seem--Caio may be a technically better grappler than Brendan Allen, but Allen's creativity and flow are the real stars of his game--but I don't think it matters, because this fight really doesn't have to go to the ground anyway. Caio can jab Craig all night, and he probably will. CAIO BORRALHO BY DECISION.
PRELIMS: JOJO BRITO AND THE LUCINDO THEORY
FEATHERWEIGHT: Joanderson Brito (16-3-1) vs Jack Shore (17-1)
This is flavor country, for me. It's fitting he's here, because Joanderson Brito was on that aforementioned Kattar/Chikadze card that started me down this terrible path, which means I've been straight-up in the tank for him for one hundred UFC events and have no intention of stopping. His striking is vicious and powerful, his grappling is crushing, and his choke game is opportunistic and fast as hell, which Jonathan Pearce found out the hard way during Brito's most recent fight this past November when, in the course of about a minute, Pearce taunted Brito from top position to do something about Pearce holding him down, Brito promptly sprang to his knees, wrapped up Pearce's neck and choked him out, and then, to celebrate, he pulled a Derrick Lewis and took off his pants. Jack Shore is just trying to keep his career on the drat rails. He was the undefeated Bantamweight champion of Cage Warriors when he joined the UFC back in 2019, but between COVID, health issues and just plain bad luck with his opponents, he's only managed six fights across the last five years. Between losing his undefeated streak to Ricky Simón and busting the poo poo out of his knee in 2022, Shore decided to take his Welsh fighting arts up ten pounds to Featherweight. He looked great in his debut at the class last year after strangling Makwan Amirkhani, but in fairness, Makwan Amirkhani has fallen on some pretty hard goddamn times lately.
If you have read any of these, you know I'm picking Brito. This could, however, be a dangerous fight for him. Brito's a fantastic fighter, but he's also a frontrunner who likes imposing his gameplan on his enemies. Jonathan Pearce demonstrated how taking that ability away from Brito can hurt him, Bill Algeo showed how to use Brito's pace against him and gradually take him apart, and Jack Shore's offensive wrestling and pocket striking could work just as well into Brito's high-pressure game. That said, I ain't gettin' off my boat. JOANDERSON BRITO BY SUBMISSION.
WOMEN'S STRAWWEIGHT: Karolina Kowalkiewicz (16-7, #13) vs Iasmin Lucindo (15-5, NR)
The Karolina Kowalkiewicz comeback has been one of the best MMA stories in years. Karolina was an early standout in the then-nascent Strawweight division back in 2015 as an undefeated top contender who outworked everyone she fought. And then she went 3 for 9 and became one of the precious few fighters to ever drop five in a row in the UFC, let alone doing so without getting released. The entire MMA world more or less gave up on Karolina, and in hindsight, the competition she was facing really speaks for itself. Only one of the seven women who've defeated Karolina was not either a UFC champion, a former challenger for a world championship, or, through beating her, would go on to become one of those challengers. Karolina's four-fight comeback winning streak has been wonderful to watch, but it has also been against women at the periphery of the top fifteen. Iasmin Lucindo does not in any way break this pattern, but the UFC has real hopes that, eventually, she will. They put a lot of marketing hype behind the big Yazmin/Iasmin war of 2022 when Yazmin Jauregui beat Lucindo in the rare mutual UFC debut fight, and Lucindo's been winning ever since: First a decision over Brogan Walker, the runner-up of The Ultimate Fighter 30 (jesus christ), then a submission over Polyana Viana. Her swarming strikes and her surprisingly crushing top game have driven her success in the division, even if she eats a foot to the face here and there during her pursuit of those takedowns.
Iasmin's a big favorite here, half because people have not forgotten Karolina's lean years, half because Karolina even at her best tends to be a reactive fighter, and Iasmin's drowning pace is tailor-made to keep her from mounting any meaningful offense. But I have also seen Karolina take advantage of overaggressive ground assaults with her own underrated back-takes, and god dammit, I want an upset. KAROLINA KOWALKIEWICZ BY SUBMISSION.
LIGHTWEIGHT: Elves Brener (16-3) vs Myktybek Orolbai (12-1-1)
My sins have come to force me to apologize. Elves Brener and Myktybek Orolbai are both fighters who wound up in unexpected-replacement situations, and in both cases I underestimated them, and in both cases I was wrong. Elves Brener, the veteran of no less than the PREDADOR FIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP, took a formerly-ranked Lightweight in Guram Kutateladze, went to war with him for three rounds and punched his lights out with two minutes to spare. Myktybek Orolbai, who had already fought just three weeks prior to his UFC debut, took a fill-in fight against the knockout artist Uroš Medić, and despite getting his brain rattled in the first round he threw Medić around like a sack of flour and cranked his neckbones into submission in the second. Brener's followup knockout over Kaynan Kruschewsky means his power isn't just a fluke and his ability to atomize people with single punches is a problem for the division; Orolbai is getting his first chance at a fully-trained, fully-scheduled fight, meaning he's either going to look even better, or he's no longer going to be a total mystery and Brener's going to know to play the-floor-is-lava against him.
The odds favor Orolbai, and I agree. I don't think he'll be able to pretzel Brener the way he did Medić--Brener's no slouch as a grappler himself--but I do think he'll control the fight. MYKTYBEK OROLBAI BY DECISION.
LIGHTWEIGHT: Joaquim Silva (13-4) vs Drakkar Klose (14-2-1)
Joaquim Silva's had a weird goddamn career lately. Three fights ago he was sending the 0-5 (1) Jesse Ronson out of the UFC midway through a preliminary card, two fights ago he was co-main eventing against current top contender Arman Tsarukyan and at one point he drat near knocked him out and came inches away from turning the entire rankings upside down, and one fight later he was struggling with Clay Guida. And now, after two straight high-profile fights--one of which he won!--he's all the way down on the prelims again, because some fighters are not looked upon by management as fighters, but rather, matchmaking puzzle pieces. Drakkar Klose is a hell of a puzzle piece. He's been around the UFC since 2017, he's only got two losses in his entire career and they were to white-hot fighters in Beneil Dariush and the now-forgotten David Teymur, and he still feels like an only partially-known quantity for the division because he just can't stay consistently present. He missed two years for COVID between 2020 and 2022, he came back, won two fights and then went right back on the shelf for a year and a half thanks to an ACL injury, and this past December he finally walked back into the UFC, took on a real stiff fighter in Joe Solecki, and knocked him out by simply picking him up and slamming him on the side of his loving skull.
Silva's a scary fighter in his own right, and I could talk about his striking power vs Klose's defensive technique, but as a much simpler rule, I do not pick against anyone who bodyslammed someone to death in their last fight. DRAKKAR KLOSE BY DECISION.
EARLY PRELIMS: LAST SEASON'S FIGHTS
LIGHTWEIGHT: Mauricio Ruffy (9-1) vs Jamie Mullarkey (17-7)
Every once in awhile I fail to live up to my own intellectual standards and do the stupid American thing of laughing at a foreign name, but in this case I feel less bad about it because I don't think 'Mauricio Ruffy' is a silly name, I think it's just extremely fun to say. Even if you're not doing the Portuguese R-as-H thing. Both ways work. It's a gem. But Mauricio makes me nervous, man. On one hand he comes from the greatest mixed martial arts background there is--being a huge anime nerd, in his case for One Piece--on the other, he really likes that mummy-stance fighting style where he keeps his arms out in front of him and his chin completely upright, and it already got him knocked out once by Manoel Sousa (who the UFC really, really should've gotten), and I cannot help thinking a dude like Jamie Mullarkey, who has been doing this for a decade and has proven himself to be both tough as poo poo and a big-punching chaos elemental in his own right, will be able to find that target too. Mullarkey's an underdog here because he's gotten knocked out twice in his last three fights, and that is, in fairness, a great reason to doubt someone! But he's also not that far removed from wrestling Jalin Turner and I think people are chiseling his epitaph just a touch early.
JAMIE MULLARKEY BY TKO.
WOMEN'S FLYWEIGHT: Dione Barbosa (6-2) vs Ernesta Kareckaite (5-0-1)
If you look into the mirror in a darkened room and say "STYLES MAKE FIGHTS" five times, this fight materializes and you get to watch it. Both of these women are making their debuts after victories on the Contender Series, but where Barbosa, as a dyed-in-the-wool grappler, won hers by snatching an armbar from the bottom and looking pretty good in the process, Kareckaite, a kickboxer, had a big brawl with "Crispy" Carli Judice and narrowly squeaked out a split decision, meaning she falls into the "didn't look great, but did look Fun" category the UFC is really trying to pursue these days. On paper, Barbosa's career is bizarre: In just her third fight she beat the already 9-3 Karine Silva, who's now in the UFC's top fifteen, but one fight later she got knocked out by Josiane Nunes, who should be a Featherweight, and proceeded to get routed by Jena Bishop, who's now one of the PFL's better up-and-coming contenders. Ernesta's just sort of present. Three of her six career victories came against people who'd never won a fight, and the three times she's fought people with commensurate experience she's managed a draw and two split decisions. This by no means makes her a bad fighter, but it does make her an unproven one, and it continues to call into question a UFC that's trying its damnedest to get Ernesta Kareckaites into the roster while letting go of Jennifers Maia and Tailas Santosi.
DIONE BARBOSA BY SUBMISSION. I am a man of bias and in near-pure striker vs grappler matchups I will always bias towards the grapplers and then get really mad and grumpy when they lose anyway.
LIGHTWEIGHT: Ismael Bonfim (19-4) vs Vinc Pichel (14-3)
Reruns! This fight was supposed to happen six goddamn months ago on the Jailton Almeida vs Derrick Lewis card, but Bonfim blew his weight cut by half an entire weight class and Pichel, incensed at his unprofessionalism, refused to let the fight go on. I don't know why it took half a year to reschedule the fight, but we're here, so take it away, Wayback Machine.
LIGHTWEIGHT: Ismael Bonfim (19-4) vs Vinc Pichel (14-3)
You can't have one Bonfim without the other. Ismael's in the unfortunate position of trying to get his mojo back. His outboxing and flying-knee-flattening of Terrance McKinney was one of the UFC's best debuts in years, but five months later that hype train got violently derailed. After thirteen straight wins and nine straight years without a defeat, Ismael stepped into the cage against Benoît Saint-Denis this past July. A few seconds into the fight, Saint-Denis hit Bonfim with a kick to the body and Bonfim slapped his side and told him to try it again; Benoît replied by marching forward and kicking him in the ribs over and over without a care in the world. As it turns out, being a hard counterpuncher doesn't help when your opponent can eat your hooks and chuck you to the goddamn mat anyway. Bonfim tapped out with twelve seconds left in the round. He's very, very mad about it, and he wants revenge.
And the UFC wants to see if he can defend takedowns. When last we saw Vinc Pichel, I wrote this:
Vinc "From Hell" Pichel is one of those fighters people regularly forget exists. At 14-2 he's by no means bad: He's a very solid grappler and a decent striker. But he's gotten absolutely destroyed by superior wrestlers in his two cracks at the top ten, one of which was a very entertaining suplex knockout at the hands of poor lost Rustam Khabilov, and he's only managed one fight a year for the past four years, which has made it easy for him to slip through the cracks in the shark tank that is the lightweight division.
But he's a good test for Bonfim. Pichel's an incredibly tough motherfucker with just two stoppage losses in his entire career. He's not as clean or technical as Bonfim, but he's a better pressure fighter. My money's still on ISMAEL BONFIM BY DECISION, because we've seen Bonfim's gas tank before and I don't think he'll have stamina problems while he plays matador with Pichel, but if he focuses too much on countering instead of range management and winds up stuck on the cage, he could be in for a very long night.
FLYWEIGHT: Alessandro Costa (13-4) vs Kevin Borjas (9-2)
I am mad about this fight. It's not because the fight is bad: This could easily wind up being the best fight on the card. Alessandro Costa hasn't had a boring fight yet in his three-fight UFC tenure and in two of those three fights he gave much higher-ranked, well-regarded opponents hell, and Kevin Borjas is a best bout machine who had a fantastic fight with a future contender in Joshua Van in his UFC debut. They may both be fighting to get on the winning side of things, but the skills are more than present and both men have a ton of upside. I am not mad at this fight because of its fighters, I am mad because the world of UFC matchmaking is still so inherently screwy that Alessandro Costa's last fight was against Steve Erceg, the guy main-eventing this pay-per-view, and with only one additional fight separating the two, Erceg is in a title fight and Costa is curtain-jerking the show. It's like a living example of how meaningless the matchmaking can be and writing about it is like staring into the sun.
ALESSANDRO COSTA BY DECISION. Happy one hundred episodes, everyone.
Prelims in thirty.
|
#
?
May 4, 2024 22:31
