CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS

Episode 20: KATTAR VS EMMETT, or YOU AND YOUR RACIST FRIEND

PRELIMS 1:00 PM PST/4:00 PM EST VIA ESPN+ | MAIN CARD 4:00 PM PST/7:00 PM EST VIA ESPN+

After one of the best MMA cards in history last week we're having an event that's more of a post-party cigarette. There's a sort of nostalgia to it, though--featherweight main event, no one bigger than 185 on the card, a bunch of quality fighters no one's heard of, Donald Cerrone and Eddie Wineland hanging around--if you squint, and take a shot, it's almost a WEC event.

MAIN EVENT: JOSH EMMETT IS PROMOTED BY SKYRIM

FEATHERWEIGHT: Calvin Kattar (23-5, #4) vs Josh Emmett (17-2, #7)

There are many cruel aspects of mixed martial arts, but one of the cruelest is how fighters are so easily defined by the coolest thing that happened to them. Sometimes this can work to your benefit--Travis Browne stayed relevant after years of getting repeatedly destroyed because people remembered that one time he murdered Alistair Overeem by just spamming the front kick button over and over--and sometimes you can be Jeremy Stephens, fight for two decades, and still be primarily remembered as the butt end of a coked-up Irishman's one-liners.

Calvin Kattar is an exceptional fighter. He has some of the best-flowing combinations in the sport, paired with a granite chin and an inexhaustible heart. He joined the UFC as a last-minute fill-in against the very tough Andre Fili and dominated him, followed it with a fight of the year candidate and firmly ensconced himself as a must-see fighter, and though it took him almost four years of effort to get there, through blood and bludgeonings, he earned his shot at the bigtime: A main event slot against one of the UFC's most popular fighters in Max Holloway, in what was the UFC's debut on ABC, one of the biggest television networks in the world.

This is traditionally where I write "and then y fighter destroyed x fighter," but that's an insufficient descriptor. A fighter getting knocked out by a wild right hand is a destruction. What Max Holloway gave Calvin Kattar was a career-defining beating. It wasn't simply that he defeated Kattar, it's that he defeated him so thoroughly that at one point Holloway was facing away from Kattar and conversing with the commentary booth while effortlessly slipping Kattar's attacks and counterpunching him in the face. When the final bell rang, Max Holloway had outstruck Calvin Kattar 447-134, absolutely smashing the UFC's previous striking differential record of 180 (which was also held by Max Holloway). Calvin Kattar didn't just lose the fight, he lost his reputation. He wasn't the best boxer at featherweight, he wasn't the best combination striker in the UFC, and despite his years of work, he was instantly forgotten as a title contender.

And the UFC knew it, too, because rather than a tune-up or a gentler challenge they did what they always do when they think someone's value has plateaued: Use them as a stepping stone. World-class kickboxer Giga Chikadze was being promotionally pushed to a title shot, but he needed a signature win, and Calvin Kattar, after taking a full year off to recover and rebuild, was the fallen contender whose credibility they wanted imparted to their new star. Calvin Kattar instead imparted what he had learned from his experience with Max Holloway by shutting Giga out. He mixed his striking and wrestling in ways no one had previously seen, and while the striking numbers look close on paper, in practice, Kattar won 50-45 and looked barely bruised, while Chikadze went to the hospital looking like he'd been in a car accident. It wasn't simply about beating Giga Chikadze: It was about making clear that no one could rule Calvin Kattar out of anything.

Josh Emmett, by contrast, is trying to get ruled into things. Emmett's something of a dark horse at featherweight, a hard-hitting wrestle-boxer with an incredibly dangerous combination of punching power and an absolute refusal to ever give a fuck. He will draw down and throw at full strength and in constant repetition, and is one of the precious few fighters who's just as likely to knock his opponent dead in the third round as the first. This poses a mystery: Why is an exciting, hard-hitting featherweight knockout artist who's been in the UFC for seven years and racked up an impressive 8-2 record in the time only now really getting noticed as a potential contender?

The timing of losses is definitely a consideration. Emmett's initial UFC success was curbed by Desmond Green, a genuinely good fighter whose unfortunate tendency towards driving under the influence would end his UFC career (and much more importantly kill two people); the loss propelled Emmett down to his signature class at featherweight, but just four months into his tenure at 145 he earned the ignoble honor of becoming the (as of this writing) last man to be not just defeated but knocked out by the aforementioned Jeremy Stephens, which only proceeded to look worse after Stephens proceeded to lose every fight he's had in the following four years. That's the kind of loss that can take a whole lot of winning to wash off.

Which brings up another consideration: Emmett's wins. Some of those victories that looked very impressive at the time--his domination of Felipe Arantes, his knockouts over Ricardo Lamas and Mirsad Bektić--came against fighters who were in hindsight at the end of their careers and retired after just a couple more bouts. Others, like Michael Johnson and Dan Ige, were entering lengthy losing streaks that would thoroughly sap their credibility.

Some part of it may simply be style. All of this is inarguably unfair to Josh Emmett, who is fighting at the highest level of the sport and soundly defeating extremely tough men in impressive fashion. But when you're fighting in a shark tank like featherweight and you're competing against superhuman rugby players and endlessly punching Hawaiian kickboxers and taekwondo prodigies who're landing cartwheel kicks in professional fights and Korean zombies, every little bit counts. Josh Emmett is a very, very good fighter with some fantastic wins and exceptional fights, but he's never found that signature moment that embeds him in the collective consciousness of the mixed martial arts fanbase.

So he's taken the long way up. But now he's here, in the top ten, fighting a top contender. Calvin Kattar wants to remind people why he's in the top five; Josh Emmett wants people to realize he belongs there. Who gets the position?

Josh Emmett is a good fighter. He hits like a truck and he fearlessly wades forward to make those shots worthwhile. And in this case, that's probably a really bad thing. Calvin Kattar's counterstrikes are some of his best shots, and his speed and accuracy against Emmett's looping overhands are a bad matchup. I think Josh Emmett is going to try to punch Kattar into the fence and sneak in wrestling assaults to keep him guessing, I think Kattar's going to make him pay with jab counters on his way in and inside elbows on his way out, and I think, after an accumulation of damage, Calvin Kattar gets a TKO.

CO-MAIN EVENT: FOR ONCE THE AVID REDDITOR ISN'T THE BIGOT

LIGHTWEIGHT: Donald Cerrone (36-16 (2)) vs Joe Lauzon (28-15)

This is a cursed fight that's currently on its third rescheduling, so I'm going to give myself a rare break and reprint what I wrote the last time it was supposed to happen at UFC 274, before Donald Cerrone gave himself taco poisoning the morning of the fight. Quoth Carl from the heady, ancient days of one month ago:

"Donald "Cowboy" Cerrone is Dana White's favorite fighter of all time: An angry white bigot who doesn't think weight classes exist, is really good at grappling and ignores it completely, takes fights on zero notice, never complains about getting paid $200,000 to main event a pay-per-view against Conor McGregor and once helped torpedo the concept of a fighters' union. He's a big ol' dumbo, and at one point he was one of the most consistently successful fighters in the UFC and held victories over multiple world champions. In 2022, he's 36-16 (2) and he hasn't won a fight in three years and you have to go back seven years to find more than two people he beat who are still in the UFC and one of them is Matt Brown who retired like three times over that period. He's still a dangerous striker and he's still an accomplished wrestler and most of the people he's lost to are top-tier fighters, but on the other hand, he got rocked by a jumping shoulder strike thrown by a cocaine-addicted featherweight.

Joe "J-Lau" Lauzon got his nickname in high school as a reference to Jennifer Lopez, which is one of the best ways to date a fighter I can imagine. Lauzon was a very, very bad man when he first entered the UFC, and proved it with a shock upset of former champion Jens Pulver in his debut--which made it awkward when Lauzon was on The Ultimate Fighter 5 shortly thereafter, making it the only time a competitor on the show had ever beaten one of the coaches. He had deceptive punching power, fueled in part by his ability to swing quickly between conservative approaches and sprinting offense, and his grappling was tricky and effective. His defense and his wrestling prowess, however, have never quite been there, and they kept him from ever really breaking out of the middle of the pack. He's 28-15 and more than his succession of recent losses, he just plain hasn't fought since October of 2019. How his athleticism is doing these days is a bit of a question mark.

And ultimately, I think even had he stayed active this would've been a bad matchup for him. Lauzon's always had trouble with well-rounded strikers, and his usual grappling advantage isn't going to help him against Cerrone. His biggest advantage is Cerrone's these-days questionable chin and his own willingness to commit to his punches, but Joe's had historical issues with strong kickers and Cerrone's still one of the best. Donald Cerrone wins a decision and we all briefly remember the WEC and sigh one last time."

Let me add to past Carl's thoughts: I don't think I sufficiently noted that Donald Cerrone is a fake cosplay cowboy trust fund baby who grew up in the city with rich parents and got into fratboy fights in the street because he would always get bailed out because that's what happens with rich white dudes. He's an unapologetic sexist, racist, homophobe and transphobe, and while I'm picking him to win because I think he'll win, I would really, really prefer it if Joe somehow both knocked him out and, thanks to irresponsible refereeing, choked him out too. I will very rarely be happier if one of my picks eats shit.

MAIN CARD: FIVE DIFFERENT COUNTRIES BUT THE DUDE NAMED HOLLAND COMES FROM CALIFORNIA

WELTERWEIGHT: Tim Means (32-12-1) vs Kevin Holland (22-7)

Tim Means has been at this so long his UFC debut happened not only when the UFC was still broadcast by Fox Sports, but when Fox Sports 2 had not yet been rebranded and was still known as FUEL TV, the Extreme Sports Network that advertised itself with Angry Men Cutting Meat In Half With Swords. For the virtual entirety of his UFC tenure Tim Means has been generally described by fans as 'we have Matt Brown at home' thanks as much to the similarity in their aggressive, combination-heavy style anchored by clinch assaults and bodylock takedowns as that one time they actually fought each other and instead of a barnburner it was just Brown punching him a few times and choking him out.

But The Dirty Bird's lengthy tenure as a reliable UFC midcarder is suddenly threatening to push him up towards the top fifteen. First it was his hard-fought victory over Argentinian prospect Laureano Staropoli, then his face-crushing victory against weapons-grade idiocy elemental Mike Perry, and his third win, and with it his first three-fight winning streak in seven years, came after he upset the highly-touted Nicolas Dalby. At 38, Tim Means is quite possibly in the best divisional position of his career.

Which is why the UFC is ready to use him as a launching pad. Kevin Holland became one of the UFC's biggest stars in the pandemic era thanks to the audience's inability to avoid him because he never, ever stopped fighting. Holland boasts one of the most insane schedules in the sport's history: His official UFC debut came in August of 2018, and in the intervening 46 months he has managed 15 fights in the UFC. He took five fights in 2020 alone, and it could potentially have been six or even seven, had he not injured his shoulder early in the year and caught COVID at its end.

He didn't do poorly, either. Kevin Holland was a perfectly acceptable and even potential top ten fighter at middleweight, but unfortunately, his style was made of wild, violent striking with a side of Diazesque refusal to ever stop talking in mid-fight, and once he reached the upper echelon of the division and found people who knew how to shoot doubles, he was cooked. He decided to maximize his giant size and reach advantage by dropping down to welterweight, a weight class that most assuredly doesn't have any good wrestlers in its top ranks.

Fortunately for him, he's not fighting one of them here. Tim Means can wrestle, he does very solid bodylock work and he's been known to dive on a single-leg here and there, but his bread and butter is striking. He likes to fight behind a long jab, he likes to mix combinations together in the pocket, he likes to bully people. Kevin Holland has half a foot of reach on him, swings faster than him, and hits harder than him. Tim will not be able to effectively bully him, and that neutralizes a lot of his offense. Unless his plan revolves around catching long kicks for takedowns or crashing recklessly into the clinch, I think he gets the worst of most striking exchanges and it inevitably costs him. Kevin Holland by TKO.

MIDDLEWEIGHT: Joaquin Buckley (14-4) vs Albert Duraev (15-3)

Remember that thing I wrote up top about fighters being defined by the coolest thing that happened to them? Joaquin Buckley is a genuinely skilled fighter with a half-dozen UFC appearances and almost twenty mixed martial arts bouts in his life, and people know him for exactly one thing, and that's knocking a man out with a reverse leaping screw kick. Do they know who he did it to? Definitely not. Do they know about his other knockouts? Not even slightly. But they know about his one big crazy highlight, and that's enough to damn him forever with the expectation that he'll do it again.

Albert Duraev is intent on not giving him the chance. Duraev is, and try to maintain your composure at the shockingly unusual sentence I am about to write, a Russian wrestling/sambo stylist who backs up a grappling-focused assault with dangerous if undisciplined boxing that veers too regularly into brawling for his own good. This did not stop him from holding the ACB middleweight championship or neck-cranking his way through the Contender Series, but it did make his UFC debut against Roman Kopylov a win that was much closer than it should have been.

That's right, it's striker vs grappler again. I know I traditionally come down on the side of the grappler, and you'll assuredly be surprised to know that I am, once again, picking the grappler. Buckley has a path to victory here--Duraev likes to brawl too much for his own good and his sometimes sloppy crash entries are tailor-made for a power puncher like Buckley--but Buckley also likes backing into the cage and getting his legs ripped out from under him too much for my comfort. Albert Duraev by decision.

LIGHTWEIGHT: Damir Ismagulov (23-1) vs Guram Kutateladze (12-2)

Damir Ismagulov is the most promising prospect no one's ever heard of, primarily because despite being 4-0 in the UFC and holding dominating victories over multiple notable fighters this is the first time he's been off the early prelims. Hell, three of his four victories happened in the curtain-jerking, why-are-you-watching-this very first match. And I don't really get why. Ismagulov is another in the endless procession of fighters out of Russia (although he's a Kazakh) who alternate between really grinding clinch wrestling and wild spinning back kicks, his only loss was in his rookie year, he's typically a fun watch as long as you don't mind grappling.

But his first-ever main card draw is a tough fucking out. Guram "Georgian Viking" Kutateladze is both a huge threat and a question mark; he made his UFC debut in 2020, immediately became the only fighter to ever beat current top 15 fighter Mateusz Gamrot, pulverizing his ribs with heavy kicks, stopping most of his takedowns and managing to escape too much heavy damage when he couldn't. It was a genuinely impressive start. And then he repeatedly busted his knee and had to sit out for almost two years. Guram is finally healthy and finally ready to get ranked.

This is my biggest pick 'em on the card. Ismagulov is a great wrestler with a much more varied striking arsenal than Gamrot, but Kutateladze has much better defense than most of Ismagulov's opponents and kicks a lot fucking harder. I'm banking on the idea that Ismagulov's pressure is going to stifle Guram's kicking game and lead to a decision victory for Damir Ismagulov, but this could very, very easily go either way.

MIDDLEWEIGHT: Julian Marquez (9-2) vs Gregory Rodrigues (11-4)

Julian Marquez has been in the UFC for five years and multiple fight of the night awards and some impressive brawl-driven chokes and yet nothing he's done is as cool as nicknaming himself The Cuban Missile Crisis. Marquez is an aggressive, brawling power striker, as indicated by his repeated wobbling of Sam Alvey, and it regularly costs him, as indicated by his repeatedly getting wobbled by Sam Alvey. He has some quick, violent chokeholds, but he tends to only employ them after he's already hurt his opponents.

Gregory "Robocop" Rodrigues looks like he should not win fights. His footwork is plodding and flat, his spine is often nearly straight, he has virtually no head movement or defensive guard, he throws lots of arm punches, his takedowns are sloppy and his positional control is lousy. I have picked against Gregory Rodrigues in all three of his UFC fights to date on this assessment, and every time he has somehow won anyway. (Including his last fight, which was a not-great split decision he probably should have won.)

I want to do it again. Marquez is a better striker and a better grappler. On paper, he should dribble Rodrigues' head off the fence with ease. For once, I am choosing to learn my lesson. Gregory Rodrigues will get cracked repeatedly in the head and Gregory Rodrigues will win a decision anyway. The hot stove is hot.

PRELIMS: HI, EDDIE; BYE, EDDIE

BANTAMWEIGHT: Adrian Yanez (15-3) vs Tony Kelley (8-2)

Sometimes fights are booked for rankings, or styles, or housecleaning. I am convinced that some fights are booked just because the matchmakers want to have fun at their jobs. Adrian Yanez and Tony Kelley have very different UFC records, experience levels and divisional positions, Yanez is a technical striker and Kelley is a brawler, but both men are brothers in arms as in 2021, separated by just four months, both men punched out Randy "The Zohan" Costa in two rounds. This is a battle to see which fighter truly hates Adam Sandler more.

And Yanez should win fairly handily. Kelley's best attribute is his ability to overwhelm people with aggression; Yanez is a counterstriker with much, much more striking experience and arguably hits harder anyway. Adrian Yanez by decision.

WOMEN'S FLYWEIGHT: Jasmine Jasudavicius (7-1) vs Natália Silva (12-5-1)

I picked against Jasmine Jasudavicius in her UFC debut against Kay Hansen, citing that her previous fights made her look deeply sloppy as both a striker and a grappler. She proceeded to jab the crap out of Hansen and threw up some ground and pound elbows and hammerfists just for starters, showing enough improvement in her clinch trips and distance management that I felt very silly. And here I am, once again evaluating someone for their UFC debut by watching their regional tape, and the very first thing Natália Silva does in her most recent fight is throw a cross by bringing her feet completely forward and even and standing so awkwardly she clinches to avoid tipping backwards. Jesus wept.

Silva's got some good balance defending takedowns and a decent clinch trip, but she punches like Bethe Correia is puppeteering her from under the cage and she likes to defend strikes by walking backward until she hits a wall. Her reliance on defending herself with the clinch isn't going to do her any favors here, as Jasudavicius is not only also a solid clinch fighter in her own right but has a big ol' size and strength advantage. Jasmine Jasudavicius by decision.

WELTERWEIGHT: Jeremiah Wells (10-2-1) vs Court McGee (21-10)

Court McGee has had the same fight for twelve consecutive years. I have come to grudgingly but genuinely respect it. In a sport with as many ups, downs and precipitous drops as mixed martial arts, Court McGee has been living and dying by the clinch-grinding sword for an entire epoch. In 23 fights under the UFC's banner Court McGee has only been finished once, and that was by Santiago Ponzinibbio, one of the division's best punchers. Jeremiah Wells, by contrast, is only two fights into his UFC career: A short-notice knockout against Warlley Alves and a complete grapple-mauling of the distinctly outmatched Blood Diamond. He likes takedowns, he likes hooks, he likes swinging hooks before he takes you down.

In other words: He likes to fight the kind of fight Court McGee has been fighting longer than Wells' entire career. When you walk into the ocean, you get wet. Court McGee by decision.

FEATHERWEIGHT: Danny Chavez (11-4-1) vs Ricardo Ramos (15-4)

One of the things people have come to love most about mixed martial arts is its ever-changing meta. Thirty years ago, no one knew how to grapple. Twenty years ago fighters thought the jab was pointless. Ten years ago everyone thought calf kicks were silly. We celebrate the observable collective consciousness within the body public of fighters. But I'm here, my friends, to tell you that there is a dark side: The Bad Meta. Neutral flying knees. Ill-advised guillotine jumps. And the greatest, most widespread scourge of all: Random spinning kicks. You know damn well you didn't time or even really aim it, you know it's not going to land, but god damn it, you've been taking your striking classes seriously and you want people to know.

This is a roundabout way of saying this will probably be a fun if kind of sloppy fight from two people with effective if too-wild offense and they're gonna throw a lot of dumb shit. Ricardo Ramos gets a submission after the fight eventually winds up on the ground and rear naked chokes get involved.

WOMEN'S STRAWWEIGHT: Gloria de Paula (6-4) vs Maria Oliveira (12-5)

Four months ago, Gloria de Paula was a floundering Contender Series baby with an 0-2 UFC record, a shaky wrestling game, and a pink slip in her future. One close but victorious fight against Diana Belbita halted her slide back to the regionals, and as is tradition, she gets to defend her newfound security against another embattled prospect: Maria de Oliveira Neta, aka Spider Girl, Muay Thai specialist and one-time Kanna Asakura armbar victim, who despite a massive size and reach advantage got repeatedly ragdolled by Tabatha Ricci back in October.

No mystery here: de Paula is going to want this fight on the ground. Oliveira won't have her usual massive reach advantage, but de Paula also isn't great shakes as an offensive wrestler; her throws out of the clinch are good, but her shots from a distance are pretty lackluster. I think Gloria de Paula still winds up getting a decision. Oliveira doesn't do great against pressure and de Paula has a solid chin that should let her punch through the jab and control the fight up close.

BANTAMWEIGHT: Cody Stamann (19-5-1) vs Eddie Wineland (24-15-1)

This fight is butts. Eddie Wineland was one of my favorite WEC fighters back in the day, a rangy bantamweight with boxing that was, and I cannot stress the temporality of this enough, very impressive for the time. That was thirteen years ago. Under the post-absorption UFC's banner, Eddie Wineland has a promotional record of 6-9. He's won one fight in the last six years. Eddie Wineland was at one point one of the most interesting strikers in mixed martial arts, and then Barack Obama took office, and now he's a fighter so long in the toothlessness that they felt he was safe enough to put against Sean O'Malley. There comes a time when one must let go.

You may have noticed I said nothing about Cody Stamann. That is because there is nothing to be said about Cody Stamann. He's a wrestler made of equal parts bad opinions and a profoundly Hollywood-driven misunderstanding of Spartan culture and, in all likelihood, world history. His favorite movie is Wedding Crashers, his favorite band is Kid Rock, he's going to win this fight and it's going to make me sad. Cody Stamann by decision.

MIDDLEWEIGHT: Phil Hawes (11-3) vs Deron Winn (7-2)

Phil "Megatron" Hawes is a fighter forever struggling to be as cool as his nickname. He likes big punches and he likes doing damage, but he also likes suffocating his opponents by clinching them against the cage and holding on for dear life. It would arguably be to his benefit to do it more; his last two wins saw him getting wobbled in his attempts to engage in the standup war and his last fight saw him controlling four minutes of kickboxing only to get abruptly knocked out anyway. Wrestling may not be an option for him this time, however: He's fighting Deron Winn. The simplest way to express the wrestling-centric nature of Deron Winn's fight style is not to address it, but rather, to note that Deron Winn is a 5'6" middleweight. Deron Winn has publicly stated how tired he is of internet clowns telling him his height should determine his weight class. Deron Winn can be whatever he wants in life, and I hope he's happy with his career path and his 2-2 UFC record. Incidentally, you have to go down to bantamweight to find a 5'5" man in the UFC.

Phil Hawes by decision. Not so much because Phil Hawes has more than half a foot of both height and reach on Deron Winn, or because Phil Hawes has a toolset that overlaps enough with Deron Winn's to potentially defuse it, but because Deron Winn exhausts himself throwing power doubles and not actually getting any damage in and Phil Hawes will make him hurt for it.

MIDDLEWEIGHT: Kyle Daukaus (11-2) vs Roman Dolidze (9-1)

Kyle "The D'Arce Knight" Daukaus has a very bad nickname. Fortunately for him, so does Roman "The Caucasian" Dolidze. Both fighters are cautionary tales in the difference between regional and international fight scenes; both fighters looked like absolute murderers in their respective stomping grounds and entered the UFC with a lot of hype, went "oh, shit," and are now laboring under the weight of being fighters already largely forgotten by their fanbases. They're both well-rounded fighters who do a lot of good work transitioning cleanly between striking and grappling, with Daukaus preferring to punch people into sprawling so he can attack front chokes and Dolidze preferring to leg kick people into the fence so he can grind them out in the clinch.

Unfortunately, Kyle Daukaus is both a product of the American educational system and directly related to a cop, so fighting someone named "The Caucasian" is going to make him conflicted and gunshy. Roman Dolidze by decision.