CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 107: ALTITUDE ADJUSTMENT
CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 107: ALTITUDE ADJUSTMENT
UFC Fight Night: Namajunas vs Cortez
SATURDAY, JULY 13 FROM THE BALL ARENA IN DENVER, COLORADO
PRELIMS 4 PM EDT / 7 PM PDT | MAIN CARD 7 PM / 10 PM
Any time the UFC takes a week off I find myself struck with this sense that their next card has to be special. They had a break! They're so rare that, surely, we're not getting stuck with Apex fodder again, right?
Well, good news and bad news. The good news: We're not in the Apex! Bad news: We probably should be.
This is the third straight event that lost a headliner in the last two weeks before the card. This is a fully-promoted, tickets-being-sold event despite having just eleven scheduled fights and only three ranked fighters within them. This is an event with multiple late replacements who, this being held in Denver, are fighting not just inadequate time to prepare, but high, cardio-impacting elevation.
The shitshow potential is very, very high. But that also means it could be very, very funny.
MAIN EVENT: IT'S WHAT WE'VE GOT, OKAY
WOMEN'S FLYWEIGHT: Rose Namajunas (12-6, #6) vs Tracy Cortez (11-1, #11)
For the third time in a row, we have lost a scheduled main event.
Until recently, your scheduled headliner here was Rose Namajunas vs Maycee Barber. It was exactly the kind of fight the UFC loves: A top star for the division fighting an up-and-coming promotional favorite with legitimate contendership implications. But Barber got hurt and Tracy Cortez was slotted in her place.
I spend a lot of time figuring out what I want to say about a given event, but when I sit down to actually write these essays they generally fall into one of two categories. The first is a stream of consciousness, where I just type whatever happens to be in my heart, go until I'm empty, and fill lines with silly video game references, an overabundance of emotional investment in a cruel sport or, increasingly more often, both. The second is mental warfare that sees me painstakingly hammering out two or three sentences at a time before pausing and alt-tabbing to a Youtube video or an unrelated piece of work or whatever window Slay the Spire happens to be running in (for the record: I am terrible at it) because I have to repeatedly trigger a little flash of dopamine over and over to get through discussing the finer points of Joe Pyfer or the reasons you should invest some of your fleeting time on Earth in watching a Shamil Gaziev fight.
When this was Namajunas/Barber I knew I wanted to talk about the life cycle of being promotionally-favored and how, historically-speaking, older favorites almost always wind up fed to the new. When this switched over to Namajunas/Cortez I thought about taking yet another pass at the massive-ranking-disparity-fights-because-we-can't-lose-a-main-event thing that keeps coming up over and over, and when I searched my soul for words, one image just kept coming up:
Some of it is, as stated, going through this same exact matchmaking clusterfuck deal again. Some of it is both of these fighters--whom I like!--being in rather weird places. The last time we saw Rose Namajunas, this was where I was at:
I mean this with as little disrespect as is humanly possible to a fighter I have liked for ten years: This is the farthest away Rose Namajunas has ever been from feeling like a potentially vital contender.
It made sense. Rose had fought just once a year for the past three years, and those fights included the loss of her Strawweight Championship to Carla Esparza in one of the worst mixed martial arts matches of all time, which was followed by a completely indefensible nigh-unto-title-eliminator against the #2-ranked Women's Flyweight, Manon Fiorot, which Rose also plainly lost. That above-mentioned third fight was a showdown this past March with Amanda Ribas, a persistently-rejected contender who'd gone four years without back-to-back wins and had just been absolutely destroyed by the now-wayward Maycee Barber. Rose managed to beat her, but it was not only an irritatingly close fight, it was, once again, a fairly uneventful performance.
'Uneventful' is an unfortunately good way to describe Rose in 2024, and that's depressing, because she was one of the most eventful fighters in the goddamn sport. She snatched flying armbars, she choked out Michelle Waterson-Gomez, she dropped Joanna Jędrzejczyk at the height of her power, she kicked Zhang Weili's head off. Even when she lost, she managed to lose by getting fucking powerbombed in a mixed martial arts fight. Rose Namajunas was must-see television. And then, suddenly, she wasn't. She looked completely lost in the Esparza fight, and when she came back more than a year later as a Flyweight she and her style had matured--but they'd matured into something that was both less interesting and less effective. The creative combinations and aggressive grappling and opportunistic killshots gave way to rangefinding and careful defense and the refusal to commit.
The last time we saw Tracy Cortez was also just a touch on the weird side, but for entirely different reasons:
This is primarily because we haven't seen Tracy Cortez fight in 16 months, and that is primarily because Tracy Cortez has been struggling with getting her mental health in order.
I've been a Tracy Cortez partisan since her cup of coffee in Invicta, and I was extremely glad to see her make her way to the UFC, and I was almost patronizingly proud to see her open up about her mental health struggles. She's always been an extremely solid grappler and an incredibly tough competitor, so watching her claw her way into the UFC's top fifteen and force the company to acknowledge her was deeply gratifying. Even if it involved just barely managing to beat Jasmine Jasudavicius, or, somehow, Justine Kish.
But just as Rose Namajunas isn't what she used to be, Tracy Cortez isn't really anything yet. The UFC, with its usual deep-seated love for people who don't finish fights, has managed to book Tracy Cortez five times without ever really promoting her. She spent her first two fights winning while curtain-jerking prelims, she was suddenly promoted to the main card--a card that, coincidentally, had eight different replacements, reschedulings and cancellations--and after winning her third fight, and the first ever to make it to television, she was right back down to being stuck midway through the prelims in her fourth fight, and despite winning that, too, she was down even lower for her last appearance.
Tracy Cortez took this fight in part because she was already preparing for a fight. She was initially booked against the unranked Miranda Maverick on next weekend's Lemos vs Jandiroba, in what would've been the sixth fight of Cortez's undefeated UFC run.
Do you want to guess which part of the card it was scheduled to be on?
This is the issue with the UFC's matchmaking; this is the issue with the scramble to fill space. When Rose Namajunas was taken from 'just lost the Strawweight title in a fight so bad it becomes historically significant' and pushed up to 'debuting at a higher weight class against the next top contender in an immediate title eliminator,' the argument was simple: It's Rose Namajunas. She's special. The rules can bend for her, because she's one of the best to ever do it and whatever she does matters that extra little bit.
And then she lost. And then she had another forgettable fight. And then she had a contendership match that didn't pan out so instead Rose Namajunas, the top attraction, the franchise player, is main eventing a throwaway card produced out of content obligations against a woman who was a week away from spending all but one of her first six UFC fights toiling away on prelims only a portion of an already apathetic audience watches. Within just a few fights, whatever special qualities Rose lent to her booking have been exhausted to the point that she's now on an even keel with Tracy Cortez, who is very good, undefeated, on a five-fight winning streak, and until just two weeks ago wasn't even going to be fighting ranked competition.
And now she's matched up with one of the most important women in mixed martial arts history, who is ranked higher than her despite being 1-1 at the weight class.
And I fear she is going to lose.
Rose may not be the wild-eyed marvel she used to be, but she's still extremely technically sound. She's spry and agile and incredibly difficult to keep on the ground if you happen to take her down, and as solid an all-arounder as Tracy is, she's also, seemingly, a more limited fighter. The trouble she's exhibited against people like Melissa Gatto and Jasmine Jasudavicius shows just how tough it is for her to hold on in prolonged standing exchanges, and her wrestling can be effective, but her best takedowns typically come from countering overaggressive opponents, and if there's one thing Rose's occasionally baffling new style is good for, it is being the precise opposite of overaggressive.
I'd like to be wrong about this one. I'd like to see Tracy dominate the grappling and finally force the UFC to accept her as a contender by picking off an all-time great. But with her usual gameplan, and with how quickly she's adjusting to a much trickier fighter, ROSE NAMAJUNAS BY DECISION is too likely to ignore.
CO-MAIN EVENT: THESE MEN ARE A COMBINED 4-6 IN THEIR LAST TEN FIGHTS
WELTERWEIGHT: Santiago Ponzinibbio (29-7) vs Muslim Salikhov (19-5)
Like, really, how often is a co-main event also a potential Loser Leaves Town match?
Santiago Ponzinibbio was a bad motherfucker, man. The Welterweight division has always been one of the best, toughest divisions in the sport, and despite losing his very first fight in the UFC, for years, Ponzinibbio still looked like its next champion. His chin was difficult to crack, his use of range was inspired, his boxing was incredibly fluid and he laid violent beatings on almost everyone he faced. At the height of his power he had the second-longest winning streak in the weight class, he had some of the best finishes in the weight class, and he had just entered the top ten in dramatic fashion as the first person to ever punch out Neil Magny.
It was amazing; it was also 2018. Santiago would miss almost two and a half years thanks to injuries and a near-fatal infection from surgery, and when he came back, things just weren't quite the same. Maybe he was understandably diminished by damn near dying and having to rebuild his entire body; maybe he was suffering the effects of coming back on the south side of his mid-thirties; maybe the level of competition rose in his absence. The Santiago Ponzinibbio with the amazing winning streak became the Santiago Ponzinibbio who's gone 2-4 since his 2021 return, and one of those wins was over a Miguel Baeza who's now on a four-fight losing streak, and the other, a knockout over an Alex Morono who took the fight with just three days to prepare and still almost knocked Ponzinibbio out and was two minutes away from a shutout decision victory before he got sloppy.
Muslim Salikhov wasn't that much different. He made the trip to the UFC after a very successful run in Russia and China, he, too, got thoroughly outgrappled and lost his UFC debut, and he proceeded to rattle off the kind of winning streak that makes you stand out conspicuously even in the Welterweight shark tank. Between the beginning of 2018 and the end of 2021 Salikhov racked up five consecutive victories over progressively tougher competition, which, funnily enough, started with one of Santiago's victims in Nordine Taleb--except where Santiago had taken him to a decision, Muslim flattened him in one round. Which was unusual, because Muslim Salikhov was not typically a power puncher. His success came from working in combinations and counterpunches; placing spinning wheel kicks and check hooks.
At least, it used to. Lately, his success doesn't really come at all. Since 2022 Muslim is 1-3, and that includes the first two knockout losses of his entire career. His bid at the rankings ended with Li Jingliang dropping him in ten minutes, his short-lived comeback tour ended with Nicolas Dalby outworking him, and after more than half a year on the shelf, Muslim's attempt to cling to the periphery of the division by tackling Randy Brown saws Muslim instead getting completely flattened in a single round. There's no blame for rising competition or the sport passing him by, this time, but there is something to be said for also hitting the wall of age, as Salikhov just turned 40 last month.
I have always biased towards Salikhov. My craving for combinations is so great that I will pick him over Randy Brown even knowing it is entirely ludicrous. I have never learned this lesson, and now Muslim is staring down a third straight loss against an incredibly dangerous boxer who, once again, has height, reach and power over him.
And yet, still, I refuse. MUSLIM SALIKHOV BY TKO.
LIGHTWEIGHT: Drew Dober (27-13) vs Jean Silva (13-2)
What was I just saying about being exhausted by last-minute, rankings-adjacent fights?
Drew Dober has been fighting mixed martial arts bouts since George W. Bush was in office, and not only has he come inches away from the Lightweight top ten on three different occasions, every one of those occasions came in just the last five years. His heavy-handed wrestle-boxing style took awhile to truly blossom, but it resulted in some fantastically memorable knockouts and, for a few brief, wonderful moments in time, seemed poised to make him a potential contender. But punching really hard is not enough to get you past Beneil Dariush, or Islam Makhachev, or Matt Frevola--well, it can be enough to get you past Matt Frevola, but if he hits you instead all bets are off. We've talked about the way the UFC loses sight of what to do with fighters after they fall off the mountain one too many times; what to do with people who just demonstrably can't get into contendership but are too dangerous to match up against people you really care about. They wind up in the Weird Zone, fighting seemingly random fights. This was no different: Drew Dober was supposed to fight Mike "Beast Boy" Davis, who has only had five UFC fights in five years of UFC employment. But Davis tore his bicep, and as always, the UFC needed a replacement.
And, boy, they sure did choose one. If you saw the name 'Jean Silva' up there and got confused because you swear we just discussed him, don't worry, you're not crazy, you just have a sense of object permanence the UFC has spent years trying to surgically remove from your brain. Jean Silva is a career Featherweight with one ("1") 155-pound bout in his life and he just fought two rounds with Charles Jourdain fourteen days ago. A huge chunk of the UFC's broadcast last week was devoted to how great people like Diego Lopes and Dan Ige are for accepting short-notice fights, and Dana White went on to talk about how fantastic it is to promote in an era where real fighters act like real fighters instead of pitching fits about esoteric concepts like 'professionalism' and 'adequate time to prepare' and 'not being treated like interchangeable parts in a terrible machine.' The alternative, of course, is the UFC could adequately prepare their cards for injuries and not get into positions where they, say, rebook a fighter from a different weight class two weeks after his last fight, but it's a lot easier to praise fighters for their amazing martial spirit and willingness to do whatever the promoter needs than it is to, say, fucking unionize so this kind of thing doesn't happen on a near-weekly basis.
This will probably be the most fun fight on the card. Dober's a wildman who swings for the fences and Silva's an all-action striker with a fantastic sense of timing. It'll be great. It still shouldn't be happening, and the sport is slightly less legitimate every time something like this is accepted as a part of modern mixed martial arts. JEAN SILVA BY TKO.
WELTERWEIGHT: Gabriel Bonfim (15-1) vs Ange Loosa (10-3 (1))
Oh, to witness the fall of the House of Bonfim. Gabriel and Ismael Bonfim both looked poised to take over the UFC: Ismael as the veteran who deposed one of Russia's best Lightweights and crushed Terrance McKinney, bigger but younger brother Gabriel as the undefeated wunderkind who submitted damn near everyone he fought and ran up a two-fight UFC winning streak right off the bat. They were talented, they were composed, and they were seemingly a step ahead of everyone they faced. But Ismael was the first to fail, his grappling ultimately falling short against Benoît Saint Denis, and four months later Gabriel followed suit, taking a dominant first round over Nicolas Dalby only to, like so many prospects before him, fall victim to Dalby's unnatural ability to overwhelm people. Gabriel ate a second-round TKO last November and that was the last time we saw him, making this the first time in his career he has ever had to come back and rebuild after a loss.
Ange Loosa is trying to rebuild after some much weirder shit. Loosa's entire career has been one of back-and-forth swings, with upset victories in Russia leading to losing his American debut; comeback victories being followed immediately by failed bids at the Contender Series; inexplicable fights against veterans with five times his experience leading to late-replacement UFC contracts anyway. It was only after his first UFC fight that Ange Loosa finally managed to build momentum off of two back-to-back wins--granted they were against guys who were 1-3 and 0-4 in the UFC and it took a year and change to just get those two fights together, but who's counting--but it put Loosa in position to meet the surging Bryan Battle this past March. And then all that momentum went back out the window after Battle poked him in the eye, sent the fight to a No Contest, called him a coward looking for a way out and nearly provoked a post-fight brawl.
Why the UFC didn't go for the cheap heat rematch, I have no idea. Given Gabriel's versatility, Loosa's occasional cardio difficulties and this fight taking place at altitude, I'm even more behind GABRIEL BONFIM BY DECISION than I would ordinarily be, but Loosa's never been finished before, I'm not sure Bonfim will be able to get it done, and we just saw Bonfim fall apart in a second round, so if he hasn't addressed his issues staying physically and mentally in a fight if it doesn't end in the first round, he could wind up flagging and losing a decision.
FEATHERWEIGHT: Christian Rodriguez (11-1) vs Julian Erosa (29-11)
In a near neighbor to our reality, Christian Rodriguez is one of the UFC's rising stars right now. He's on a four-fight winning streak, he's ended three undefeated streaks in a row and he destroyed one of the company's most-hyped signees live on an Israel Adesanya pay-per-view. On paper, he should be riding high as a new top prospect. Unfortunately, the UFC didn't want him to beat Raul Rosas Jr., they wanted him to lose, and they especially held it against Rodriguez that he not only crushed their big marketing hope, he missed weight right before he did it. There was a not-at-all subtle hope that Cameron Saaiman would beat Rodriguez as revenge, and not only did Rodriguez win again, he missed weight again by an even larger margin. He got forced up to 145 pounds and made to fight recent signee Isaac Dulgarian when last we saw him this past March, and he made weight, but he committed a different cardinal sin: He won a split decision despite failing to carry the fight on even a single media scorecard.
Julian Erosa is a once-promising prospect who has unfortunately fallen into People Forget He's Still Here territory. Erosa spent years as one of the division's most underratedly dangerous men, a weird violence tornado with headkicks, flying knees and chokes at deeply unexpected angles, but that underrating came largely from his own inconsistence. No one forgot his three-and-out UFC stint back in 2019, or the way he could transition effortlessly from destroying someone as impossibly tough as Nate Landwehr directly into getting flattened by Choi Seung-Woo, and when Erosa's winning ways led to two straight knockout losses in just four and a half months, a lot of the fanbase simply tuned out entirely. Erosa wisely took an entire year off to heal his brain meat, and when he came back this past March he almost made it to a third knockout in a row after getting violently dropped by Ricardo Ramos, but Ramos dutifully throwing himself headfirst into Erosa's armpit allowed him to come away with a submission victory instead.
There's a very solid chance for Rodriguez to get shocked here. He's a historically slow starter who tends to take heavy damage while he's timing out his opponents, and Erosa's a sprinter who throws himself whole-assedly into finishing opportunities. It is fully feasible Erosa closes this out in the first three minutes. But I think it's more likely he doesn't, and that means CHRISTIAN RODRIGUEZ BY DECISION as the UFC continues to wonder who will rid them of this meddlesome CeeRod.
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Abdul Razak Alhassan (12-6) vs Cody Brundage (10-6)
This is one of those Fighters Who Aren't Long For the UFC fights, and it's tragic because neither guy is that bad, they're just on particularly bad stretches. Abdul Razak Alhassan is an even 6-6 in the UFC, but unfortunately, the majority of those victories stopped coming all the way back in 2018. Over the last five years, "Judo Thunder" is 2-5 across two separate weight classes. His process of torturing himself to make the 170-pound Welterweight limit eventually failed him and his move up to Middleweight seemed to pay some level of dividends, as he still wasn't doing great, but he averted his losing streak, got a couple knockouts, and even took the now-ranked Joaquin Buckley to a split decision that could easily have gone the other way. And getting knocked cold by Khaos Williams or choked out by Joe Pyfer is absolutely nothing to be ashamed of. But the cold, hard cruelty of numbers means he's a 50/50 fighter with just shy of thrice as many losses as wins in the last half-decade and he's about to turn 39. Time is not on his side and neither is the UFC.
And boy, if there's anyone who's more than used to the UFC not being on his side, it's Cody Brundage. Goddamn near every moment of Brundage's time in the spotlight has been defined by promotional misery. He lost on the Contender Series, he got brought up on one of the millions of short-notice replacement contracts that are now the grease on the gears that keeps the company running and immediately lost, he got booked into two straight underdog fights against better-hyped competitors whom he shockingly stopped, and the UFC promptly condemned him to the serving-repeatedly-as-a-late-replacement-against-hyped-prospects salt mines where he was destroyed by progressively less qualified fighters in a run that began with national champions and ended with Sedriques Dumas. Brundage was staring down a fourth consecutive loss when he was saved by, of all things, a disqualification, when Jacob Malkoun got bored of how thoroughly he was beating Brundage and elected to hit him in the brainstem for no goddamn reason. The UFC, in their usual compassion, had him back from this blunt force head trauma just seventy days later, because goddammit, they had a new Contender Series knockout artist and Brundage needed to do his job. Instead, shockingly, he chucked Zack Reese like a sack of potatoes, knocked him out, and scored his first unequivocal victory in five fights! So they immediately marched him out to get destroyed by Bo Nickal.
Again: It's the UFC. They're not subtle when they don't care. Brundage is at his best when his wrestleboxing toughness can shine, and Alhassan's an interesting question mark there. His nickname isn't just for show, he does well in the clinch and he's only been submitted once in his career, but he gives up an awful lot of takedowns and Brundage has taken down all but one of the UFC fighters he's ever shot on. Alhassan hits a whole lot harder and he's more than capable of turning Brundage's lights out on his way in, but with his wrestling troubles, I'm betting on CODY BRUNDAGE BY DECISION.
PRELIMS: WHERE THE COOL KIDS LIVE
WOMEN'S FLYWEIGHT: Jasmine Jasudavicius (10-3, #15) vs Fatima Kline (6-0, NR)
This was a much nicer fight for Jasmine Jasudavicius one week ago. Jasmine has been one of the UFC's favorite fighters to book, as a solid all-arounder with a winning record who tries as hard as possible to book three fights a year and doesn't turn down a damn thing. They could not ask for more from a company woman, and it's kept her constantly, steadily scheduled, but it's also repeatedly derailed her. Her first winning streak got kicked out of her body by the now-surging Natália Silva, her second fell victim to tonight's abrupt main eventer Tracy Cortez, and having just gotten back on a winning track, Jasmine was looking forward to a fight with Viviane Araujo, whose near-even record belies having gone tooth and nail with some of the best fighters the division has to offer. But Viviane got injured and Jasmine doesn't turn anyone down, so now, on short notice, she gets to fight one of the most-hyped prospects in women's mixed martial arts, Fatima Kline. "The Archangel" is still fairly new to the sport, but she's been notching successful performances across grappling circuits since 2020, from the Medusa Women's Grappling Series to the Abu Dhabi Combat Club American trials, and she has made a lot of people leave with abruptly double-jointed knees. Her transition to MMA's gone even better: She's undefeated, despite her background she's got more knockouts than submissions, and she's won Cage Fury championships at both Strawweight and Flyweight. The only thing I have to hold against her is citing Rose Namajunas as "my fighting inspiration while I was growing up," because christ alive, how dare you make me feel that old.
We're in legitimately interesting territory, here. Fatima is so highly-regarded as a prospect that she's actually the betting favorite, which is both wild and understandable, as it's much easier to get hyped for someone who's never lost a fight. But Jasmine is easily the toughest opponent of her career, and as a bigger, stronger woman who not only has twice Fatima's experience but has spent half of that time fighting at the highest level of the sport, it wouldn't be at all shocking to see Fatima simply get outworked. I'm still leaning towards FATIMA KLINE BY DECISION, but one way or another, this fight should be illuminating as to just how far she'll go in mixed martial arts.
FLYWEIGHT: Joshua Van (10-1) vs Charles Johnson (15-6)
Let's summarize exactly how annoying Joshua Van's 2024 has been:
Not just four cancelled fights in one year, four cancelled fights in two months. Joshua Van entered 2024 as one of the Flyweight division's dark horses, a hard-hitting all-action big-tattoos kind of dude who hasn't lost a fight since 2021 and surged to a three-fight winning streak within a year of joining the UFC. And now he cannot get a goddamn match to stick, and what's worse, those entirely theoretical matches have been all over the spectrum of meaning. Lucas Rocha is a Contender Series winner who has yet to fight in the UFC. Sumudaerji is a 50/50 fighter who hasn't won in longer than it took Van to lose. Tatsuro Taira is the hottest prospect in the division and now a top-five fighter. Tagir Ulanbekov is a barely-ranked competitor who couldn't make weight. And Charles Johnson, god bless him, is persistently Present. I cannot hide my Charles Johnson fandom anymore, and I cannot help feeling that said fandom is somehow insulting, because 'Carl loves underdogs who occasionally surpass expectations' is the very definition of damning with faint praise. He doesn't hit that hard, his grappling isn't that great, he isn't an amazing wrestler, but he's really good at everything and he's damn near impossible to stop, and by god, I am a sucker for that.
CHARLES JOHNSON BY DECISION, because I am trying to manifest will into reality. Get on 'em, InnerG.
WOMEN'S FLYWEIGHT: Luana Santos (7-1) vs Mariya Agapova (10-4)
It wouldn't be a UFC card without at least one intended gimme fight. Luana Santos stormed onto the UFC with a humbling first-round drubbing of TUF 30 (jesus christ) winner (jesus christ) Juliana Miller at 125 pounds, and then she abruptly stepped all the way up to 135 to beat Stephanie Egger, which would have been more impressive had Luana not missed the higher-class weight limit by four pounds. At the time Santos apologized for the miss with some unexplained statements about medical exam results; it wasn't until this month that she opened up about her struggle with an autoimmune disorder called Hashimoto's disease that fucked up her entire body, temporarily destroyed her thyroid and left her hair falling out. After a year and a half to heal up, get her body back in balance and manage her condition she's ready to try again, and the UFC is playing ball by giving her Mariya Agapova. I previously wrote about Agapova as one of the best sprinters in women's mixed martial arts, as she looks like an absolute monster for the first round of her fights and, by and large, she gets stomped if she does not win before it ends. She's also been unbooked for the last two years, has reportedly been kicked out of multiple gyms for threatening violence against other athletes, has been publicly demanding the UFC book her for the last four months, and showed up on Instagram back in May claiming she was about to be homeless due to a combination of being locked into a no-compete clause, unable to find stable income, and, according to her, having to duck friends attempting to sell her into sex slavery.
All of which is to say: I have no goddamn idea what's going on in Mariya Agapova's life, but it sounds like she needs help and support she's not going to get from the UFC, and I deeply hope someone's in a position to give it to her. LUANA SANTOS BY SUBMISSION and, for better or worse, it should be the end of Agapova's contract woes.
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Josh Fremd (11-5) vs Andre Petroski (10-3)
Sometimes, you just wish a fighter's story ended earlier. It's not because you wish ill on them--I have nothing but respect for Josh Fremd, which is a sentence I say with the full disclosure that I have not looked at his Twitter account and would, I'd bet, be disappointed--but because Fremd's UFC tenure has mostly been defined by loss, but for one brief, shining moment, he was possessed by the Spirit Bomb force of the audience and choked out Sedriques Dumas as a +200 underdog. Unless you're going to be a world champion, you're probably not getting to a higher plane of moral victory than that. You wouldn't be dealing with getting your liver punched out by Roman Kopylov a year ago, and you definitely wouldn't be looking at a fight with Andre Petroski, a man from whom I once expected success. Petroski's grappling credentials, out-and-out toughness and a great upset submission over an undefeated Nick Maximov made me an early adopter of the hype train. But that was two years ago, and in the modern era, Andre Petroski is riding two straight knockout losses and the last one came from, uh, ramming himself headfirst into Jacob Malkoun's hip and collapsing.
I don't know. I don't know! I don't know why things happen any more than you do. If you'd asked me about this fight a year ago I would have picked Petroski before the sentence was out of your mouth, but at this point I feel like his managers are committing straight-up malpractice. He got flatlined by Michel Pereira in October, he was back in the cage five months later, he got flatlined again by the mysteries of the human body, and he's back in the cage again three months after that. This is not good for your fucking head. JOSH FREMD BY TKO, somehow.
BANTAMWEIGHT: Montel Jackson (13-2) vs Da'Mon Blackshear (14-6-1)
Being a good soldier for the UFC is bad for your goddamn career. In the Summer of 2023 Da'Mon Blackshear was very abruptly a hot prospect. His UFC record hadn't been great--a draw with Youssef Zalal here, a loss to Farid Basharat there--but all it takes is one good moment to take off, and Blackshear got two. He scored an upset knockout over Luan Lacerda in June, and just barely two months later he went viral for nailing a Twister, one of the rarest submissions in the sport. Blackshear got the spotlight, and rather than calling his shots or preparing for his future, he decided to be the Ultimate Company Man and fill in for a replacement fight just one week later, where he was dutifully and unanimously beaten by Mario Bautista. All that hype dissipated on the spot, and in exchange for his efforts it's eleven months later and he's only getting booked because--still the company man--he's acting as a late replacement for Montel Jackson, whom the UFC has been trying to book the absolute shit out of. He was supposed to fight Chris "Frankie Edgar Exterminator" Gutierrez in October but got hurt, he was supposed to fight borderline-ranked Said Nurmagomedov and then Farid Basharat last month but both got injured, and now, belatedly, it's Blackshear.
Please do not do favors for the UFC, or any company, that they would not do for you. MONTEL JACKSON BY DECISION.