CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 108: WORKING AS INTENDED
CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 108: WORKING AS INTENDED
UFC Fight Night: Lemos vs Jandiroba
SATURDAY, JULY 20 FROM THE NEVERENDING NOTHING THAT IS THE UFC APEX
PRELIMS 2 PM PDT / 5 PM EDT | MAIN CARD 5 PM / 8 PM
One week after I complained about a card with 1112 fights on it and only 3 ranked fighters that somehow avoided being condemned to the world of Apex fodder, we once again have a card with 12 fights on it and only 3 ranked fighters and we can no longer avoid being right back here in the land of darkness. But last week had Rose Namajunas and Drew Dober, and this week we've got Virna Jandiroba and Kurt Holobaugh, so exile was just inevitable, I suppose.
In some ways it's a solid card I'm surprisingly excited for--there are a half-dozen fights I'm looking forward to, here--and in some ways, primarily name value and pressworthiness, it's one of the weakest cards the UFC has ever promoted. Which, I imagine, has something to do with the UK pay-per-view next weekend that's currently scheduled for 14 fights, five of which could easily headline any televised card.
But we've got Virna Jandiroba, so eat shit, future us of next week.
MAIN EVENT: WHO'S ON THIRD
WOMEN'S STRAWWEIGHT: Amanda Lemos (14-3-1, #3) vs Virna Jandiroba (20-3, #5)
The ambivalence I feel about this fight is very real, and it stems not from any form of distaste for either woman--big fan of both--but from the position Women's Strawweight finds itself in.
I'm going to go all the way back to last Summer for a minute.
In the ten-plus months since last we saw Weili Zhang, her list of contenders has gotten weird. Carla Esparza went on hiatus to have a baby, which, hey, congratulations, good luck, and please don't raise them on your personal diet of Fox News. Rose Namajunas moved up to the flyweight division. Jéssica Andrade went from an obvious top contender to a three-fight losing streak across two separate divisions. But it's not all bad news, because Xiaonan Yan is riding the best victories of her career, setting up a possible all-China superfight, and Tatiana Suarez came back after almost four years on the shelf and was in the top five within just a few months. There are options!
We are not doing those options. We're doing Amanda Lemos.
I said at the time that my issue was not with Amanda Lemos the fighter, whose bonafides are obvious, but Amanda Lemos the top contender when other options were legion. She got her shot at Zhang Weili and it was, ultimately, one of the most one-sided championship fights in mixed martial arts history. The UFC put Zhang and Xiaonan Yan together next, as most folks had hoped, and it was a much better if still incredibly definitive victory for Zhang. So now it's Tatiana Suarez time, right?
Nope! You waited to pull the trigger and she got hurt again. Who else do you have available while she recovers?
To the UFC's chagrin, you have Amanda Lemos and Virna Jandiroba, and god knows they've tried not to get here. They didn't want another Amanda Lemos contendership fight, they wanted to feed her--and Jandiroba, in fact--to Suarez in preparation for a title shot. When Suarez got hurt, did they pick the #5-ranked Jandiroba, or the rising Marina Rodriguez, or the suddenly-resurgent Jéssica Andrade?
Of course not! They picked the woman Jéssica Andrade had just violently knocked out. If you've been reading these for any length of time, you know exactly who I'm talking about.
Instead, having been violently knocked out by the #5 fighter in the division just three months ago, Mackenzie Dern is now going to fight the #3 fighter in the division, because half the UFC's booking plans for Women's Strawweight revolve around a big flashing sign that says "MACKENZIE DERN TITLE FIGHT" and no one gets to go home until it happens.
happens.
They tried the only idea they had and they were left on empty.
So, despite the UFC's best efforts, they are once again in the contendership hole. #1's out, #2 just lost her shot. Who's on third?
Only the people you tried to keep back out of contendership.
But boy, contendership is a hard argument to make for Amanda Lemos. She's far, far too good not to keep vital in the top five, but she's only one fight removed from her shot at the top of the mountain leading to her getting thrown in a goddamn trash compactor. Doing the universe a public service by dropping Mackenzie Dern and once again frustrating the matchmaking department is well, good and appreciated, but she's not even a year removed from getting outstruck 296-29 by the champion. Even in a vacuum formed by pure sport and neutral marketing, you have to make an absolute monster of a statement to get another bite at the apple after the apple kicks your ass that badly.
The UFC has tried very hard to keep Virna Jandiroba from getting anywhere the entire apple cart. Jandiroba is top five in this division, she's on a three-fight winning streak, she's about to have her tenth fight in the company after half a decade of competition, and god dammit, you know what I'm about to say: She's been off the prelims once. And it wasn't even recently, it was four years ago, and it wasn't because she was on the verge of contention, as she was #13 at the time, and it wasn't because the UFC had some grand plans for her. It was she was fighting--you guessed it--Mackenzie Dern. She wasn't there to succeed, she was there to put over the person they wanted to succeed, and having done so she was banished back to the prelims forever.
Which is a goddamn shame, because Jandiroba is great. She's a grappling monster who uses her confidence in her ground game to sling leather at will, and her career losses came against people who could either match her in grappling or speed away too quickly to let her corner them in the first place. Even then, they weren't easy. Jandiroba almost stopped Carla Esparza, almost knocked out Amanda Ribas, and busted Mackenzie's Dern face wide open. She's never been dominated, she's never been stopped, and anytime she's wanted a fight on the ground she's gotten it there even if she had to jump a damn armbar to do it.
But she hasn't personally finished anyone since 2020, and in the era of marketability, that's a killer. And after getting cracked and wobbled by Mackenzie Dern--and after seeing Mackenzie Dern get repeatedly cracked and wobbled by Amanda Lemos--this matchup presents some real historical issues for Jandiroba.
At the same time, Lemos has been effectively grappled by all but one of the UFC competitors who've ever tried to take her down. She was grounded and nearly submitted by Dern, she was wrestled to death by Zhang Weili, career Atomweight Michelle Waterson-Gomez got her on the floor. Jéssica Andrade failed to take her down and decided to simply choke her out standing instead. Strong grapplers have been a weakness for her entire career.
Jandiroba's tendency to use her grappling to focus on striking is her biggest potential weakness here. She's no slouch, but she doesn't hit nearly as clean or as hard as Lemos does. Her takedowns tend to come from hounding opponents out of footwork space so she can chuck them on the floor, but a bigger, heavier hitter like Lemos makes that gameplan very, very dangerous to implement.
And that's the ambivalence, isn't it? This is an interesting stylistic matchup between two of the top contenders in the division who present hard counters for one another. But the UFC doesn't want either of them getting a shot at the belt, making this a fight that is, in all likelihood, for the right to be an alternate for Tatiana Suarez when she gets back from her time on the shelf.
Best in the world, third in the pecking order.
VIRNA JANDIROBA BY DECISION. My confidence in this pick is much lower than I would like it to be. Virna's going to have to navigate twenty-five minutes worth of counters, but I have more faith in her wrestling than I do in Amanda Lemos and her ability to stay upright.
CO-MAIN EVENT: YOU CANNOT ABANDON THE IRON TURTLE
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Brad Tavares (20-9) vs Jun Yong Park (17-6)
The math of what does and doesn't catch on in this sport is nonsense.
Brad Tavares has spent damn near his entire career in the UFC. Twenty-eight men wound up fighting in the preliminary round of The Ultimate Fighter 11 (ahura mazda) all the way back in 2010, but only two are still actively participating in mixed martial arts. One is Court McGee, who is 3 for his last 10 and has been talking about retiring for half a decade. The other is Brad Tavares, who just beat a former world champion one fight ago.
His career is almost silly. Six different world champions, a score of title contenders, a featured role in a reality television show that aired right alongside no less than Blue Mountain State and reruns of Son of the Beach. He's been a measuring stick at the highest level of the sport longer than most fighters last altogether. His tenure as a gatekeeper of the sport is almost irrationally stable in its tenure.
And, man, people just don't really care. Tavares has been doing this forever and his resume stands with some of the best and the consciousness of the sport just refuses to flow around him. He's been here since Jason Mraz won two goddamn Grammys and their psychic impacts on their respective fields of study are just about even.
Because you can't make people care. You can do something cool enough that they cannot keep themselves from caring, but you cannot force the care to exist. People must irrationally choose to care.
From that perspective, it must kind of suck when someone like Jun Yong Park shows up and a surprising number of people just kind of love them.
Maybe it's his victory dance. Maybe my dreams have come true and the world is really invested in clinch grappling again. Maybe he's going to spend his entire career coasting on the good will he earned for defeating Eryk Anders. Maybe you just can't underestimate the value of a good nickname in marketing and "The Iron Turtle" is an absolute first-ballot contender for the greatest of all time.
There's no Topurian superstardom behind him, but there is more fan good will and desire for success behind Park than just about anyone else in the Middleweight division shy of Robert Whittaker himself, and Park has done his damnedest to not let his fans down. He had a rough go of it in his UFC debut against Anthony Hernandez, and he got punched out by Gregory Rodrigues almost three years ago, but thanks to his strict dedication to gritty, hard-nosed clinch-throwing Bothering Of Men, he's on a four-fight winning streak.
It should probably be five. When last we saw him in December it was in a split-decision loss to André Muniz, but most of the media cards had Park ahead. Muniz was a tough test, to be sure, as one of the few grapplers capable of really bucking Park off of him and forcing him to defend some terrible positions, but that fight also ended with Park on top of him, slugging him in the face. In a better world, Park is fighting for a spot in the rankings tonight.
But in a better world, Brad Tavares is better-regarded by the mixed martial arts fanbase. He's still exceptionally mobile given how much mileage he's accrued, and his leg kicks are still an underrated part of his gameplan, and he's also gotten stunned by strikes in ways he used to comfortably absorb twice in his last three fights. At a certain point, inevitability gets us all, and nothing is more inevitable than the likelihood that The Iron Turtle is going to drag you down and hurt you. JUN YONG PARK BY SUBMISSION.
MAIN CARD: SECRETLY PROGRAMMED FOR SOUTH KOREA
FEATHERWEIGHT: Steve Garcia (15-5) vs Seung Woo Choi (11-6)
Steve Garcia is one of the more interesting fighters the UFC doesn't quite know what to do with. Garcia's come a long way from winning on the Contender Series but being denied a contract on account of missing weight--funny how it was fine when Jake Hadley did it--and after a couple early stumbles he's somehow on a three-fight winning streak, each of which was a brutal stoppage but the best of which remains that time he beat Chase Hooper so badly he knocked him down three times in a single minute. As is the style of our sin-cursed time, Garcia is an all-or-nothing slang-and-bang fighter who wings wild leather out of a distinct and extreme hatred for the existence of faces, and it tends to get him caught and hurt. Fortunately: He's pretty good at getting back up and hurting people even worse. If you're not a multifaceted opponent who can really switch up gameplans to force Garcia to think about grappling or a straight-line counter-sniper like Maheshate who can see through Garcia's onslaught and drop him, you are going to get punched in the face and it's going to suck.
I don't know if Seung Woo Choi is that guy. He's more than capable of being dangerous, as Julian Erosa's chin can attest, and when last we saw Choi he was soundly outworking Jarno Errens, but these specific fights are easier to pick out because we've barely seen Choi at all. Since a split decision loss to Josh Culibao back in the Summer of 2022 (which, as happens so often, had absolutely no business being a split decision), Choi's only made it to the cage once a year. He got knocked silly by Michael Trizano towards the end of that year, he didn't come back until the UFC visited Singapore in August of 2023, and here on this conspicuously South Korean card eleven months later we are once again graced by his presence. It's hard to feel anything but lost in the shuffle when you're so rarely dealt into a hand. It's particularly frustrating given the way that Errens fight showed off some considerable improvements in Choi's game. Where Trizano showed Choi his aggression could get him caught and hurt by a straighter, calmer striker, Errens saw Choi taking the reins as the measured counterpuncher who carefully picked his spots and succeeded because of it.
As always, this is the trouble with less active fighters. Has Choi spent the time refining his timing? Has the year off made him better prepared, or will Garcia's activity drown him? Do I cling to false concepts like ring time because it's easier to attach an artificial narrative to fighting than accept that every punch is an expression of chaos and, on a long enough timeframe, Matt Serra will eventually knock out Georges St-Pierre? STEVE GARCIA BY TKO in a desperate attempt to reassert reality.
LIGHTWEIGHT: Kurt Holobaugh (20-8) vs Kaynan Kruschewsky (15-2 (1))
We're going to talk about this more when we get to the prelims, but it bothers the crap out of me that Kurt Holobaugh just lost a fight to Trey Ogden four months ago, and here he is on the main card in a featured bout, and poor Trey Ogden is all the way down on the third fight of the prelims. Justice for the Samurai Ghost. Holobaugh is one of the ultimate expressions of the futility that surrounds the modern incarnation of The Ultimate Fighter, as he's one fight removed from becoming the big comeback-kid winner of TUF 31 (honestly, at this point, who has the energy), and he celebrated his return to the UFC roster by immediately losing his first fight. There is a certain kind of pain that is just unavoidable, here. Holobaugh is on his third UFC stint--his first started in goddamn 2013--and over eleven years and three contracts he's 1-5 with the company and that sole win was his Ultimate Fighter finale, which only barely counts. I admire his refusal to give up, but it leaves him with nowhere to go.
Nowhere but the loving arms of Kaynan Kruschewsky. Kaynan is yet another in the disconcertingly long line of genuine prospects whose potentially promising debuts were sacrificed in the interests of maintaining card continuity. He's a solid, hard-hitting fighter with some particularly fast leg kicks and a Jungle Fight title belt to his name, but after winning his way into the UFC through the Contender Series, they decided he was better used as a short-notice, four-day replacement opponent for Elves Brener, the borderline-ranked Lightweight who'd just become the first man to ever knock out Guram Kutateladze. This may shock and amaze you, but Kaynan ended his night face-down and motionless. As much as I may complain about Holobaugh being booked above Ogden, it's a very welcome and thoroughly deserved thank-you to Kaynan that he's getting booked this high. There are only so many ways to apologize to someone for getting them murdered in their big debut fight.
And man, I just still don't have a ton of faith in Holobaugh. KAYNAN KRUSCHEWSKY BY TKO.
FLYWEIGHT: Cody Durden (16-5-1, #14) vs Bruno Silva (13-5-2 (1), NR)
Poor Cody Durden just cannot hold onto momentum, no matter how hard he tries. After a tough 1-2-1 start to his UFC career, Durden's angry wrestleboxing ways finally brought him to the rankings in 2023. Durden walked into the very last UFC event of the year on the best winning streak of his life as the #15 Flyweight in the company. He was trained, he had a full camp, and he professed he was ready to finally get into the top position he truly deserved. And then Tagir Ulanbekov just completely disassembled him. Dropped him, hurt him repeatedly, took him down at will and kept trying to strangle him until, two rounds in, he finally succeeded. When you look at the losses in Durden's UFC career--every one of them a submission defeat to a higher-ranked, higher-level grappler--you begin to wonder if there's a ceiling on his success.
Bruno Silva is in pre-crisis Cody Durden's position. He went 0-2 (1) in his introductory year in the UFC, he got soundly outworked by Tagir Ulanbekov, and now he's rebounded from nearly getting cut with the best winning streak of his career. In a moment of absurd specificity, both winning streaks even started the same way: Durden and Silva both bludgeoning an entirely overmatched JP Buys with fistic knockouts. Where Durden focused on working his way to decisions, however, Silva never quite stopped crushing people. He scored a one-minute knockout over Victor Rodriguez that seemingly ejected him from the sport entirely and when last we saw Silva all the way back in March of 2023 he choked out the ever-dangerous Tyson Nam. Bruno was booked to come back this September, but he wound up having to wait after his opponent, one, uh, Cody Durden, wasn't cleared to fight.
So this is revenge, I suppose. Durden's tough as hell and you cannot count him out against someone who likes to fight as furiously as Silva, but he's got a serious speed disadvantage in the striking and given how much trouble Bruno gave Ulanbekov in their grappling exchanges, Durden keeping Silva down long enough to stifle him is hard to see. BRUNO SILVA BY DECISION.
FEATHERWEIGHT: Doo Ho Choi (14-4-1) vs Bill Algeo (18-8)
I want to be clear, before anything else, that I like Doo Ho Choi. The entire MMA world fell in love with his fighting spirit during his war with Cub Swanson, and he deserves every one of those laurels. But those laurels are almost ten years old. Those laurels have crumbled into dust with the passing of time. I say "x fighter hasn't won since y year" an awful lot in these writeups, but this might be a real record: Between injuries, reschedulings and his mandatory military service as a South Korean citizen, Doo Ho Choi has not won a fight since June 8, 2016. Only one of the fourteen men Doo Ho Choi has defeated is still actively participating in mixed martial arts, and, funnily enough, it's his very first opponent from all the way back in 2009. Choi was supposed to make a big comeback last year as a successful fan favorite, but a surprisingly tough fight against Kyle Nelson and a point deduction for a headbutt left him with a draw and another seventeen months to think about what he did.
Which is funny, because Kyle Nelson sure did fuck up Bill Algeo's day, too. "Señor Perfecto" spent two years toiling away before finally getting some fan attention thanks to an upset victory over Joanderson Brito right at the start of 2022, and despite a tough decision loss to Andre Fili, his ascension up the ranks as both a potential prospect and an audience favorite has been one of the more fun stories in the sport, and a main-card victory over the once-heralded Alexander Hernandez last year put Algeo right in range for a potential shot at the rankings. But Kyle goddamn Nelson had other ideas. After 26 professional fights, Nelson became the first man to ever stop Algeo with strikes, although true to his absurdly tough form it was a standing TKO and Algeo is still mad about it. And I, too, am mad about it, because that was barely one hundred days ago and sure enough, Algeo's right back in the cage about to fight another guy who hits like a goddamn Buick.
I like Algeo a lot more than I like Choi. On paper and in a vacuum, Algeo outworks Choi and wears him down to a late stoppage as he's done multiple times before. But Algeo has been incredibly active, and after the beating he took just a few months ago I have a bad feeling about his ability to deal with Choi's right hand finding his jaw. DOO HO CHOI BY TKO, while I hope I'm just worrying too much.
PRELIMS: LARGE MAN ANCHOR
FEATHERWEIGHT: Jeong Yeong Lee (11-1) vs Hyder Amil (9-0)
This? This is a good-ass fight. This is the kind of sensible prospect matchmaking that usually gets skunked by overprotective marketing. Jeong Yeong Lee was one of the better finds from the first Road to UFC tournament in 2022, a champion from South Korea's Road FC who gave up his belt to try his hand at the big show, and it all went swimmingly for him--except the final, which was an exceptionally close fight with China's Yi Zha that wound up hinging not on either competitor's skills but on a referee error that cost Yi ground position and the north side of a split decision. Lee's struggles with Zha's wrestling led me to pick against him for his first full-on UFC fight this past February, as Blake Bilder's wrestling was equally formidable, but Lee showed off considerable improvements by not just thrashing Bilder on the feet but outwrestling him all night. Having passed the American Wrestler test, Lee's reward is Hyder Amil, whose predominant sphere of influence is wanting to punch you repeatedly. We also saw Amil's UFC debut in February, having earned a successful Contender Series shot after six and a half years of toiling through Bellator, the LFA and the true testing ground of future greats that is San Francisco's own ZHONG LUO'S DRAGON HOUSE. He wasted no time in taking the fight to the once-hyped Fernie Garcia, the man who should have been king and instead wound up bounced out of the company on an 0-4 streak. Amil's was both the last and worse of those losses: Where Fernie had put up solid fights against all of his other opponents, Hamil outwrestled him, outstruck him 3:1, and battered him so badly the ref called a standing TKO just two minutes into the second round.
The potential carnage quotient of this fight is extremely high. Amil's good at applying enormous amounts of pressure, but Lee's shown off the ability to stay cool and land long counters and well-timed wrestling through it. I lean JEONG YEONG LEE BY DECISION but this could be closer than people think.
BANTAMWEIGHT: Brian Kelleher (24-15) vs Cody Gibson (19-10)
Recent life has not been kind to Brian Kelleher. His run as a dependable multi-weight-class journeyman was long and solid, but 2022 ended with Keller not only taking back-to-back losses for the first time in four years, but first-round submissions at that. He was in training for a fight with Journey Newson when the UFC informed him his medical examinations had turned up neck problems so serious he might have to retire, but Kelleher, ever the warrior, went through eight months of treatment and rehab before making a happy, celebrated comeback right at the end of the year. Said comeback saw him flattened in one round by Cody Garbrandt. It's been a great career, but Kelleher's on three straight stoppage losses, staring down turning 38 next month and almost retired once already: It's hard to see the future looking up. Meanwhile, Cody Gibson is trying not to let his second chance slip through his fingers. Like Kurt Holobaugh up above Gibson was cut from the UFC after a 1-3 run back in 2015, cleaned up on the regional circuit for six years, made it onto the comeback-kids team for The Ultimate Fighter 31 (I don't want to review this week's episode) and made it to the finals; unlike Holobaugh, Gibson lost his championship fight. The UFC kept him on anyway, as a) he's a fighter who would rather be fun than safe and b) by god have you seen these cards we need everyone we can get, but his followup match against Miles "Chapo" Johns this past March was equally unsuccessful. One fight ago Gibson was looking at a TUF championship; now he is staring down the possibility of going 0-3 and getting cut all over again.
But Gibson's a strong betting favorite here, and as much as I've enjoyed Kelleher's career, that seems entirely correct. Not only is he against the wall, not only has he been taking worse and worse losses, he now has to make yet another comeback against a significantly larger, equally hard-hitting man with more than half a foot of reach on him. CODY GIBSON BY TKO, much as it pains me to say it.
WOMEN'S FLYWEIGHT: Miranda Maverick (13-5) vs Dione Barbosa (7-2)
Miranda Maverick got screwed, man. Maverick was supposed to fight Tracy Cortez here, a fight that could have put her back in the top fifteen with a good performance. Which is funny, because the last time we saw Miranda Maverick she did fight the #15-ranked Andrea Lee, and she did win, but rankings aren't real so it didn't get her anywhere. The fight fell apart when Cortez got plucked away to fill in against Rose Namajunas in last weekend's main event, so once again, instead of a chance to move forward, the borderline-ranked nine-fight veteran Maverick is fighting all the way down against a Contender Series fighter who just made her debut two months ago. Dione Barbosa came through the Contender Series last year as a career grappler, which is the sort of thing that would've gotten her tossed out for moral offense a few years ago but nowadays everyone's welcome, and she lived up to her -250 favorite hype as a talented grappler against a noted non-grappling striker in Ernesta Kareckaite by, uh, coming shockingly close to losing. Barbosa went 2 for 11 on her takedown attempts, at one point got taken down herself by the kickboxer, and actually wound up significantly outstruck by the end of the fight. But she got the decision!
Which entitled her to get in real trouble against more experienced fighters. We've seen Miranda struggle with superior grapplers and wrestlers, but the Kareckaite fight didn't convince me Barbosa's got that much power behind her wrestling let alone the ability to mix up her gameplan enough to truly be effective. Throw in the experience gap, Maverick having already been in camp for Cortez vs Barbosa taking the fight with less than a month to prepare and my generally unfortunate tendency to wish for universal injustice to right itself through fight results, and MIRANDA MAVERICK BY DECISION is the voice of futility.
LIGHTWEIGHT: Loik Radzhabov (18-5-1) vs Trey Ogden (17-6 (1))
What was I just saying about my irrational sense of fight justice? Loik Radzhabov is cool and all, he's a beefy tank man who's still recovering from the ego damage of getting stopped for the first time by Mateusz Rębecki last year, but we're not here to talk about him. Trey Ogden debuted in the UFC with a split decision that could easily have gone his way, but, of course, it didn't. Trey Ogden was supposed to lose to Daniel Zellhuber, the UFC's new Contender Series golden boy--as in his nickname is literally "Golden Boy"--and Ogden beat him. Zellhuber was rewarded with the high-profile Lando Vannata; Trey Ogden got another Contender Series rookie in Manuel Torres, and when Torres couldn't make the fight, it was a short-notice match against another Contender Series push in Ignacio Bahamondes. Trey Ogden's next match was, unsurprisingly, another early prelims fight against another Contender Series leftover in Nikolas Motta, whom he dominated from pillar to post, but 90 seconds before what would have been a lopsided decision for Ogden, the referee fucked up and incorrectly called for a submission stoppage for Ogden--and because it was a referee's error rather than a foul, the fight had to be ruled a No Contest. Once again, Trey Ogden comes back, once again, Trey Ogden is given a prelim fight, and once again it's a promotional curveball against our friend from earlier on the card and newly-crowned TUF winner, Kurt Holobaugh. And Ogden wins! again!
And now he's even lower on the prelims against an even less visible fighter with an even worse promotional record, and honestly, what do you want from the man? TREY OGDEN BY DECISION, but for all I know, he's going to take Loik down 47 times in a single round and outstrike him 250:2 and then lose the fight anyway because someone threw the blue shell from Mario Kart at him.
WOMEN'S BANTAMWEIGHT: Luana Carolina (10-4) vs Lucie Pudilová (14-9)
Luana Carolina might have one of the most underratedly weird UFC careers of the modern era. She came from the one and only international season of the Contender Series, a failed experiment that has already fired most of its winners. She's only just passed the point of having more successful UFC fights than cancelled ones, but she, herself, has almost never been the reason for those cancellations. She has five UFC wins, but only one of them is over someone with a winning record, and it's Loopy Godinez, who's now a top ten fighter at an entirely different weight class. She's missed weight twice, including in her last fight, but hasn't been forced to move up. None of that is at risk of changing here, either. Lucie Pudilová may have gotten screwed out of one of the worst decisions in recent memory last year, but that only lowered her to an already-unfortunate 3-7 in the UFC. The wrestling-heavy game that made her a star in her native Czechia never quite worked out for her stateside. The only woman she's beaten in the UFC in the last six years is Yanan Wu, whom I described once with one of the most disrespectful things I've ever written about a fighter, about which I still feel guilty:
Yanan Wu...she tries, man.
I wish more nice things happened for Lucie. I don't see this being one of them. LUANA CAROLINA BY DECISION.
HEAVYWEIGHT: Mohammed Usman (10-3) vs Thomas Petersen (8-2)
And here, at the end of all things, we have Heavyweight, and don't tell me you didn't know this would be what waits to greet us at the mouth of Hell. Sometimes I think I beat up on the big boy division too much, but sometimes we get fights like this and I remember I don't do it nearly enough. I want to really drill down, here, to emphasize the Sisyphean nightmare the up-and-coming Heavyweight ranks currently are. There are no fresh, rising Heavyweight contenders. None. Everyone in the top fifteen either already got their shots, already got multiple shots, or has never been anywhere remotely near one and looks unlikely to ever get there. The average ranked Heavyweight is 35, there is in fact only one ranked Heavyweight below 30, and it's Serghei Spivac, who's 29, already got the shit kicked out of him by both Tom Aspinall and Ciryl Gane, and is about to spin his wheels in a no-stakes rematch with Marcin Tybura, who is directly adjacent to him in the rankings. The Heavyweight champion Jon Jones is 1-0 in the division and has fought once in the last four years, and when he comes back he'll be defending against Stipe Miocic, who has also only fought once in the last four years, and the odds-on likelihood is both retiring afterward. Derrick Lewis is 39, has retired twice, and is still the division's most popular fighter. None of the UFC's Heavyweight bets have paid off. None of their prospects have flourished. There is no one waiting in the bullpen to save the division.
So when I joke about fights like this being the future of the UFC's Heavyweight division, I need you to understand that I am not, in fact, joking, I am whistling in a graveyard. Mohammed Usman is going on 36, has at best semi-functional knees, has already missed almost a year rehabbing hand injuries, and has already lost whatever minimal momentum he had after getting routed by Mick Parkin this past March. Thomas Petersen was already one of the UFC's lesser-regarded prospects thanks to his loss to the equally-derided prospect Waldo "Salsa Boy" Cortes-Acosta, but a victory over the never-beat-a-winning-fighter Chandler Cole on the Contender Series was enough to get him into the UFC--whereupon he was immediately beaten by Jamal Pogues, who, himself, lost all of his momentum after getting beat by Mick Parkin.
These are two UFC Heavyweight prospects and they're both coming off losses already and they're essentially seeing who can be the less bad Mick Parkin-adjacent loser. And as far as Heavyweight goes, this is it, man. Unless you've decided to get really invested in Karl Williams shooting single-legs against the fence forever, unless you want to see Jailton Almeida make his contendership comeback or you think Ciryl Gane's got his wrestling together this time, this is your prospect check.
This is why I mock. This is why I weep. This is how I deal with the psychic damage. MOHAMMED USMAN BY DECISION.