SATURDAY, AUGUST 3 FROM THE ETIHAD ARENA IN ABU DHABI EARLY START TIME WARNING | PRELIMS 9 AM PDT / 12 PM EDT | MAIN CARD 12 PM / 3 PM | EARLY START TIME WARNING
Man, what does it say about the way the UFC's business currently operates that one week ago they held the big public-appeal UK supercard to appease the fanbase but they made it start at damn near midnight if you were actually a ticket-purchasing member of the British contingent so as not to lose out on those valuable pay-per-view buys, but now that we're in Abu Dhabi, by god, this card needs to start at nine in the morning in California?
And the same way I expressed genuine excitement last week, I gotta be honest: I'm not feeling this one. A top contender who deserves a title shot fighting a guy who's never faced a ranked competitor? A Shara Magomedov co-main event? The drying skeleton of Tony Ferguson? Sedriques Dumas?
At least Nick Diaz isn't implicated in this tomfoolery anymore.
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sometimes there just isn't much to say.
MAIN EVENT: PROTECT YOURSELF AT ALL TIMES BANTAMWEIGHT: Cory Sandhagen (17-4, #2) vs Umar Nurmagomedov (17-0, #10)
There are fighters who are absurdly picky about the fights they take, and there are fighters who balance risktaking with passionate advocacy for their own upward momentum, and then there is Cory goddamn Sandhagen.
Cory has been the third-best in the division for a very long time, and the second-best since the moment Aljamain Sterling shrugged his way up to Featherweight. In six full years of UFC competition Sandhagen has lost only three out of thirteen fights, and they were all to top-class world champions in Aljo himself, Petr Yan, and T.J. Dillashaw. And most folks thought Sandhagen pretty clearly beat Dillashaw.
But Cory Sandhagen probably shouldn't have been fighting TJ Dillashaw at all, and that, in truth, is the problem with his career: He is a company goddamn man, and he has yet to reap the benefits.
After beating Marlon Moraes and Frankie Edgar in 2021, Cory Sandhagen was the #4 Bantamweight in the company and TJ Dillashaw was #2 despite having not fought for three and a half years and having failed to win a fight in four. Sandhagen not only took the fight, he waited out for months after Dillashaw had to reschedule it. And he won, except he didn't. When Aljamain Sterling dropped out of his rematch with Petr Yan, Sandhagen was asked to step in and face arguably the best Bantamweight on the planet with less than a month to prepare. And he did! And he was competitive, but he lost, definitively.
But by the time Cory was ready to fight again, Sterling had already beaten Yan. Was it time for the rematch? No, of course not, it was TJ Dillashaw's turn. Sure, Dillashaw only has one working arm and the fight wound up being a low moment the UFC should still be ashamed of, but it's fine: Sandhagen got a great opportunity, because he got to defend his top contendership by beating the #10 guy in the division.
Okay, but now it's his turn, right? He's got a win again, he's still the top guy, it's time for a rematch! He and Aljo even wound up fighting within five weeks of one another! Except Sandhagen, who had somehow fallen in the rankings, had to fight Marlon "Chito" Vera, who had leapfrogged him by beating Dominick Cruz. The title shot went to Henry Cejudo instead, who was just rolling off the couch after three years of retirement.
Jesus Christ. Okay, but NOW Cory gets his shot, right? Still the top guy, now he's on a winning streak, deserved it for years? Of course not! The title shot goes to Dana White's second son Sean O'Malley, on the back of beating an unranked guy, poking Pedro Munhoz in the eye and winning a legendarily bad decision against Petr Yan. Cory Sandhagen has to fight Umar Nurmagomedov. Except Umar can't make it, so now it's Rob fucking Font instead.
But he won! He's on a three-fight winning streak! He's a top contender! Now, finally, finally, we can do the Cory Sandhagen title shot, right?
Oh, no, sorry. That belongs to Marlon Vera, the guy he just beat. Besides, weren't you listening? He has to fight Umar Nurmagomedov.
I have absolutely nothing against Umar Nurmagomedov. He's yet another in the endless marching army of the Nurmagomedovi who are actually related to each other (that's right, Said, get the fuck out), and like all of them he's got killer grappling, and like all of them he's able to throw extra power into his punches because he has very little fear of being taken down, and like all of them since the year 2020 he likes to throw kicks that don't tend to do a ton of damage but they're fun and exciting.
He's good. He's really good. You don't get to 17-0 without being really good. My problem with Umar Nurmagomedov has never been his quality, but rather, the overarching What The Hell Are We Doing nature of his time in the spotlight. Umar ran up four fights in the UFC in two years, and those victories were:
Sergey Morozov, who was also making his UFC debut, is now 3-2 and hasn't been seen in almost two years
Brian Kelleher, who was 8-5 in the company and is now 8-9 and should really probably stop
Nate Maness, who was an impressive 3-0, unranked but a solid prospect, and was inexplicably released from the UFC on a 2-fight winning streak this Summer
Raoni Barcelos, who was one fight removed from a two-fight losing streak and is only now, once again, one fight removed from a two-fight losing streak
That was all it took. Umar didn't fight a single ranked guy and he not only made it all the way to the top ten, but the UFC decided to pull an O'Malley and give him a fight that could, easily, be a title eliminator.
Maybe you're looking at his name and his record, giving the UFC credit, and assuming he's an international champion out of his native Kazakhstan, and it's close--he's definitely Kazakhstan's best Bantamweight--but nope, not a single international belt to his name. He's just a guy. He was recently fighting on a mat made out of a bunch of rugs put on top of each other, and in case you're thinking that's me trying to make some kind of funny joke about the state of international MMA, I assure you:
It's not.
And that's just the different worlds the roster seems to live in. Cory has winning streaks as long as Umar's entire UFC career, but he has to fight every contender on the ladder, but his career has been more or less in stasis for an entire year so the UFC can book him against a guy they had fighting Bekzat goddamn Almakhan five months ago.
Cory Sandhagen knows this criticism, and his response to it has always been the same: I am a Fighter, I like to Fight, and it does not matter who they tell me to Fight because If I want to be the Champion I need to be able to beat everyone anyway.
Which is how you wind up fighting below your ranking until the UFC gets what they want out of you, and I really wish managers would do a better job of professionally protecting their fighters against themselves sometimes.
Because Cory should be scared of Umar. Cory's success comes in large part from his ability to fight long, walk people into his combinations, and use his wrestling advantage over most of the division when he needs to change up the pace of a fight. Cory does not have any sort of wrestling advantage when it comes to Umar Nurmagomedov. His long jabs are going to be tougher to land around Umar's kicking game. Sitting down on right hands is going to be tougher to do with Umar trying to push him into the fence, and the clinch attacks Cory tends to sneak in will be a lot harder to get while trying not to get wrestled to the ground by a goddamn Nurmagomedov.
Cory's been in the cage with the best of the best, he's one of the most-proven contenders in the entire company, and he's up to a +330 betting-odds underdog in this fight. People are very, very convinced Umar's the next contender. The UFC's convinced enough to have been trying to program it for an entire goddamn year. I get the arguments.
But I have not come this far to stop believing in Cory Sandhagen now. Umar is very good, but he's very good against people he can dominate. Petr goddamn Yan wasn't even able to dominate Cory Sandhagen. Umar will almost certainly take Cory down, and he will almost certainly win multiple rounds of this fight, but when Cory does not fade away at the halfway point I think Umar will ultimately catch a beating.
I just hope it will be enough of one to avoid another Dillashawing. CORY SANDHAGEN BY DECISION.
CO-MAIN EVENT: WOLF TICKETS MIDDLEWEIGHT: Shara Magomedov (13-0) vs Michał Oleksiejczuk (19-8)
A couple weeks ago this fight was Nick Diaz vs Vicente Luque, and honestly, I'm not sure which would have been preferable. I really, aggressively do not want to see Nick Diaz fighting professional human beings in twenty twenty four or any year thereafter, and when they announced the fight was indefinitely postponed my reaction was solely one of relief. The man earned his rest from a sport he never really loved in the first place.
It really feels like it should be a bigger deal that the UFC employs a one-eyed fighter who has to compete on cards in Russia and the Middle East because most American states will not license him to fight. But it also felt like it should have been a bigger deal that he was caught on camera accosting, suckerpunching and stomping out a man in a shopping mall for kissing a woman in public and nothing ever came of it, so, y'know, what can you do.
If that feels familiar, it's because it was practically a month ago. Shara knocked out the perpetually unfortunate Antonio Trócoli at the UFC's big Saudi Arabian sportswashing debut back in June 22, and sure, forty-two days later seems like an awful silly amount of time to give a professional fighter to recover, but we're in Abu Dhabi and you just can't waste chances to book The International Superstar, Shara Magomedov.
Honestly, what is there to say that we didn't already go over last goddamn month? Shara Magomedov is still a guy who can't get licensed to fight outside of some very specific jurisdictions. He's still a talented kickboxer who's pretty good at hitting people. He's still the same exact fighter who almost got beat by Bruno Silva, last seen getting his own eyes surgically removed by Chris Weidman.
Which is why he's fighting Michał Oleksiejczuk. At this point I can't help feeling this refrain and rhythm is intimately familiar to anyone who's read these, so see if this has a pattern familiar enough to dance to. Michał is 1 for his last 4. Michał just got finished twice in a row in one round apiece. Michał has managed to score two takedowns in his last five years of competition, which adds up to an average of 0.15 takedowns per fight.
Michał's greatest achievement after being in the UFC since 2017 is whichever of the following you think is the coolest:
Knocking out Sam Alvey
Taking Modestas Bukauskas to a controversial split decision
Beating Khalil Rountree Jr. (in 2017!) and losing the win after failing a drug test
So if you needed to, say, get someone to fly to Abu Dhabi to fight an undefeated, one-eyed, grappling-deficient kickboxer on short notice, who better to get than the desperate guy on a losing streak who hates wrestling?
Last week, Muhammad Mokaev beat Manel Kape in a top-ten Flyweight matchup in what was also notably the final fight on Mokaev's contract. In the press conference immediately following the event, Dana White made a point out of noting the UFC would not be re-signing Mokaev, and the following day they sent a notice to their totally legitimate, absolutely independent journalistic rankings committee instructing them to remove Mokaev from their standings. This set off a bit of a conflict in the wide world of the MMA internet. Mokaev is an undefeated fighter with a seven-fight winning streak in the UFC, he is--was--ranked in their top ten, and at one point, the Kape fight had been promoted as a pay-per-view matchup and a potential title eliminator.
There wasn't even really subtext to the announcement. They cloaked it in discussion of his bad backstage behavior, but even in their own statements it was mentioned less than simply disliking him as a fighter. Disliking his fighting. Muhammad Mokaev is not an exciting, all-action, must-see-TV fighter, and the pendulum of the sport is currently swung so far away from legitimacy that the company does not feel the need to even pretend they care more about fighter antics than only promoting who they want to promote. You can be one of the absolute best in the world, but if you aren't the best in the way the UFC wants you to be, you do not belong here. Some of the internet seems to agree with this assessment and cite it as a sign that the sport is moving in the right direction; some seem taken aback by the reality of a modern UFC where an undefeated title contender can get shoved off into the regional circuit for being stylistically uninteresting.
But a lot of people are also just sort of taking a mulligan on this one. It's not worth defending Muhammad Mokaev because, after all, he's an asshole who attacked another fighter and he's just too hard to work with, so it's not worth getting mad at the UFC for releasing him. Which, hey, that's fair, and we should definitely commend the UFC for taking a stand on what is and is not appropriate conduct for one of their fighters!
And now it's a week later and here's our co-main event featuring someone who attacks random civilians in shopping malls on camera, assaults competitors at grappling competitions, and legally can't get booked to fight anywhere with a functioning athletic commission, and suddenly no one in the UFC has a goddamn thing to say.
Funny how that works.
I assume we're just going to get Shara Magomedov fights on every single Russian or Middle Eastern card the UFC runs until either he retires, he wins the brand new UFC Only In A Couple Specific Countries Championship, or he mistakenly beats up someone who someone actually gets mad about. Either way, I cannot find it in myself to feel emotionally or intellectually invested in how this fight goes, so I'm going to err on the side of 'who do I dislike the least' and say MICHAŁ OLEKSIEJCZUK BY TKO.
MAIN CARD: CONFRONTING INEVITABILITY BANTAMWEIGHT: Marlon Vera (23-9-1, #4) vs Deiveson Figueiredo (23-3-1, #6)
The rise and fall of Marlon "Chito" Vera has been a remarkable thing to watch unfold. At the end of 2020 Chito wasn't particularly highly-regarded and was notable only for upsetting the UFC's next big thing, Sean O'Malley. By the end of 2022, Vera was one of the most-loved fighters in the company and people were hungry to see him get a shot at the top of the heap. Two years later, the MMA world seems completely done with him out of sheer, unvarnished frustration. Marlon made it into contendership through one of the most unique styles in the sport--a low-volume, low-pressure approach with discerning sniper shots towards the end of rounds that was really, really cool! But it was cool because it worked. The second he got into title contention, it stopped working. He got fucked up by Cory Sandhagen (in what was, inexplicably, a split decision), he got fucked up by Pedro Munhoz (in what was, inexplicably, a decision for Vera), and in his (unfortunately explicable) rematch with Sean O'Malley for the title he got utterly outclassed for 24:55 out of a 25-minute fight. He landed his one good strike of the entire contest right as the bell rang, just to drive home the point. In a way, it's the perfect ending. The world wanted a Marlon Vera contendership run, it got it, and it failed at every step of the way, and now very few people are excited to see him and he's an underdog to a guy who was a Flyweight two fights ago.
But, in fairness, Deiveson's pretty fucking hard to bet against these days. The hairdresser-turned-manpuncher was already indisputably the second-best Flyweight in the world when he decided to leave behind the weight cut and move up to Bantamweight after finishing his ultimately unsuccessful quadrilogy with Brandon Moreno, and for as great as he is, I was, admittedly, skeptical. Figueiredo was a strong, terrifying Flyweight, but he was still middle-of-the-pack in size, and upon moving up to 135 he instantaneously became the second-smallest Bantamweight in the UFC, dwarfed only by Henry Cejudo, who cannot be conclusively proven to still exist. Navigating the kind of size and power deficits he was likely to run into seemed to be, pun unintended, a tall order. And, as is so very often the case, I was dead wrong. Deiveson showed up at the end of 2023 looking like a new man, took on perennial gatekeeper Rob Font, and shut him out with a dominant, 30-27 decision victory. The UFC decided to test the waters by having Deiveson fight former champion and standard-bearer Cody Garbrandt at UFC 300, and Deiveson not only won, he blew Garbrandt out of the water and handed him the first submission loss of his entire career. After two straight years of fighting Brandon Moreno over and over, Deiveson Figueiredo has stepped out of the long shadow of the Lego Man and he's knocking on the door of contendership at a new weight class.
A couple fights ago, I would have expressed more doubts about this match. On paper, Vera's not a great fight for Figueiredo. He's good at using long kicks and jabs, he's hard to take down and just as hard to keep down, he's got one-hitter quitter power Figgy simply has not exhibited in years, and he's very, very good at picking those shots. At least: He was. The last three straight fights have demonstrated Vera's problem consistently using those abilities against the guys at, and around, the top of the mountain. If anything, they've demonstrated how hard it is for him to get through heavier pressure. Deiveson's pressure has looked stronger than ever at his new home, and with how much trouble Chito's had pulling the trigger across 25 minutes, 15 just doesn't seem like it'll be enough.
DEVEISON FIGUEIREDO BY DECISION.
WELTERWEIGHT: Tony Ferguson (25-10) vs Michael Chiesa (16-7)
I really wanted to leave this writeup there, but that would have been unprofessional, and obviously, the Punchsport Report is a serious periodical. Look: I loved Tony Ferguson too. Everyone did. Once upon a time, he was one of the scariest people in the entire sport. That ship has not only sailed, it has crashed and fallen to the floor of the ocean and it's growing fucking barnacles. The last time Tony Ferguson beat someone was June 8, 2019. The last time Tony Ferguson beat someone who has not retired multiple times was 2016. He had a terrible mental breakdown I sincerely hope he's gotten real help for, he was thrown back into the cage too goddamn fast, and he's lost seven straight fights over the last four years. Tony Ferguson went from the top contender in the world's greatest weight class to tied with BJ Penn for the longest losing streak in UFC history, and in case you haven't checked on how BJ Penn is doing recently, he's losing street fights while repeatedly running for political office in Hawaii on a platform of 'everyone in the government is an actor' and posting things like this:
Michael Chiesa is on a similar roller coaster, but he never made it as high or as subsequently low. He topped out at #6 at the Welterweight division thanks to an extremely well-timed victory over Neil Magny, which is never anything to sneeze at, but the same way he found himself dashed on the contendership rocks at Lightweight back in the late 2010s, the top ranks of Welterweight chewed him up and spat him out. Now Chiesa is winless since 2021, coming off a three-fight losing streak over the past three and a half years, and trying to regain his credibility as one of the UFC's underrated grapplers given two of those losses weren't just submissions, but were, in fact, the same exact D'arce choke. Which is why he's fighting a guy who used to call the D'arce his specialty, and more importantly, have you considered the possibility that Michael Chiesa isn't Michael Chiesa at all, but an actor roughly Michael Chiesa's size and shape who is wearing a rubber Michael Chiesa skin-mask because the CIA is trying to fool you into voting for someone other than BJ Penn for Hawaii District 1?
Like, what do you want me to say? What can anyone possibly say, at this point? They spent a year trying to see if Tony was an actual contender anymore, and when the answer was unequivocally a harsh, resounding No they spent the following two years trying to extract value from his body to get the Michael Chandlers and Paddy Pimbletts of the world over, and now, man, I guess they're just bored. If Tony Ferguson wins, he's averted one of the worst career slumps in history by beating a man who hasn't won a fight in nearly the same amount of time. If Michael Chiesa wins, he's back in the Welterweight picture by way of defeating a man whose last Welterweight victory was the finale of The Ultimate Fighter 13 (jesus christ) all the way back in 2011 (jesus christ). This fight is so old that it is a rescheduling of a proposed fight between the two that got scrapped in Twenty Fucking Sixteen.
There is no joy or catharsis to be potentially had here. MICHAEL CHIESA BY DECISION but know that I say this not as a prediction, but as a grunt of pain.
This is the true magic of this card: A Mackenzie Dern fight I'm happy about.
Seriously. I have devoted so many paragraphs to the exhaustion I feel surrounding Mackenzie Dern's career, but as I have tried to note in each of those complaints, the problem with Mackenzie Dern has never, ever been Mackenzie Dern. Her wrestling may never have quite sharpened up and her striking went the path of volume rather than accuracy or power, but hell, it worked for her and she has steadily improved over the years. The problem has been the UFC's perpetual attempts to shove her into the contendership picture, over and over, for years. In a shocking coincidence, the time that gave Mackenzie the biggest lift to her fanbase was the time she spent between 2020 and 2021 fighting her way up the ladder as one is theoretically supposed to do. And now, after two and a half years of endless marketing push, they have Dern fighting a fairly adjacent contender. It's a god damned miracle.
And it helps that it's Loopy Godinez, not just because I am personally a fan, but because the company's been invested enough in her that, should she beat Mackenzie, that would be a positive for them rather than yet another disappointment. Which is fitting, because she was, of course, a late-replacement afterthought. Three years ago she traded her LFA championship for a short-notice loss to Jessica Penne, and unlike an awful lot of her similarly-placed contemporaries, she's turned it into a solid spot as a solid contender. Never quite at the top, but never, ever out of a fight. Her reliance on her wrestling has remained her Achilles heel, half because once you reach the upper ranks of Women's Strawweight everyone suddenly gets pretty goddamn good at grappling, half because she will sometimes elect to ignore it and box instead, which just personally makes me sad.
But, uh, this might be a good time to try to do that. There may not be a more dangerous ground operator in the division than Dern, and as good as Loopy's wrestling is, her defensive grappling was just put to the test by Virna Jandiroba, and Mackenzie is probably a tougher customer on the floor than Virna. It's Dern's tendency to swing away that will give Loopy the chance to jab and jog. Kite around the cage for fifteen minutes and play The Floor Is Lava and I will root for the upset. LOOPY GODINEZ BY DECISION.
LIGHTWEIGHT: Joel Álvarez (20-3) vs Elves Brener (16-4)
Joel Álvarez might be the best Lightweight I regularly forget exists, and it's as much from inactivity as the weird twists and turns in his career. In one moment he'll go toe to toe with Damir Ismagulov, one of the unsung Lightweights of this era; the next, the two-and-out Danilo Belluardo. Retire "Irish" Joe Duffy, the man who was once a getting prepped for a big-ticket Conor McGregor rematch, then Alexander Yakovlev, who was fencing with Demian Maia a whole-ass decade ago. Take on Thiago Moisés and Arman Tsarukyan in the space of just three months, then disappear for more than a year--for the second time in as many fights--come back, choke out Marc Diakiese, and go right back to the closet for another twelve months. What do you do with a guy whose slate of activity is so fuckin' weird that after just five wins, four of the people he beat aren't in the company anymore?
You give him Elves goddamn Brener, whose career has been even goddamn weirder. In 2022, Elves Brener was a little-known prospect fighting a 3-2 guy (who's 6-9 now!) on an undercard in Cancun. Twelve months later, he was in the UFC as a late replacement for--hey, what do you know, Joel Álvarez--scraping an absolute robbery of a decision away from Zubaira Tukhugov. Five months after that? Borderline ranked in the top fifteen after knocking out Guram Kutateladze in one of the biggest upsets of the year. How did the UFC make good on their newfound knockout-artist rankings prospect? A short-notice fight with a debuting Contender Series winner followed by a massively one-sided fight with the one-fight veteran Mykybek Orolbai. The momentum is gone just as fast as it arrived.
And now Brener gets to fight a solid striker and submission threat with almost half a foot of height and reach on him. God bless and good luck. JOEL ÁLVAREZ BY TKO.
PRELIMS: DUDAKOVA, WHERE'S MY CAR LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHT: Alonzo Menifield (15-4-1, #15) vs Azamat Murzakanov (13-0, #14)
For a brief moment, it looked like Alonzo Menifield might finally have become a Thing. He's been a promotional prospect since his Contender Series win back in 2018, but for all his crushing power and secret wrestling, he was never able to string together more than two back-to-back wins. Funnily enough, even at the height of his power last year, that was still technically true. He got two TKOs, was prevented from a third thanks to a Draw with Jimmy Crute at the turn of 2023, he avenged the tie in an instant rematch and beat Dustin Jacoby in arguably the best win of his career. And then, having once again won two fights in a row, he met Carlos Ulberg and got knocked out in twelve seconds. Which once again means a fighter who was potentially concussed less than ninety days ago is fighting and we should all be really mad, but this is so normal now I've even started to feel tired about mentioning it. And that's especially silly here, because Azamat Murzakanov is a Guy Who Knocks People Out. That's his entire identity as a fighter. He's 3-0 and already ranked because Light Heavyweight is actively on fire he's stopped 3/4 of his opponents. To be honest, ordinarily, that'd be enough to get him damn near into title contention, but the UFC's holding off because unlike most knockout artists, he visibly struggles on his way there. He was four minutes away from losing his debut fight before suddenly stinging and destroying Tafon Nchukwi, he had to batter Devin Clark for two and a half rounds before finally putting him away, and he just barely hung on for a decision against Dustin Jacoby despite being gassed to exhaustion. He's very good, but they're not quite sure if he's great.
And there's no better way to find out than giving him someone who may have received brain damage less than three months ago. From a skills perspective I think Menifield's a live dog, but in practice, AZAMAT MURZAKANOV BY TKO.
LIGHTWEIGHT: Mohammad Yahya (12-4) vs Kauê Fernandes (8-2)
If Mohammad Yahya rings a bell, that is almost certainly you remembering him from the UFC's last visit to Abu Dhabi in October. He's part of the company's growing contingent of Middle East-specific bit players, a star champion of the UAE Warriors federation out of the Emirates whose talent is real hard to properly evaluate because he just hangs out in Abu Dhabi fighting locals and every once in awhile getting pitched 1-0 guys for shits and giggles. Unsurprisingly, his UFC debut against Trevor "Lunchboxes for Hands" Peek saw him comprehensively outstruck, outwrestled, and outfought in essentially every aspect except Repeatedly Jumping On Chokes You Don't Actually Have. You almost certainly don't remember Kauê Fernandes, the Shooto Brasil champion and LFA veteran, and that's because he came in as the very first fight of the prelims on the Almeida/Lewis card that bummed everyone out last November, got wrestled to death by Marc Diakiese, and hasn't been seen since. (Neither has Diakiese, for that matter, because he promptly left the company and is making his Bellator debut next month.) It was not a confidence-inspiring performance and it didn't really give him a chance to show off any of the kicking game he's best known for.
This, hopefully, will. KAUÊ FERNANDES BY TKO.
HEAVYWEIGHT: Shamil Gaziev (12-1) vs Don'Tale Mayes (11-6 (1))
It feels appropriate that after two straight weeks of discussing the ongoing shambles of the UFC's Heavyweight prospects we're continuing the topic with Shamil Gaziev, the latest big-boy hype train to face an unfortunate derailing. Gaziev came into 2024 as a man with an honest-to-god shot at contendership, a powerful wrestler with big hands, an undefeated record and so much faith from the company that they tried to have him headline their Saudi Arabian debut. And then he was visibly exhausted all of a round and a half into his main-event showdown with Jairzinho Rozenstruik. And then he called the fight off himself before the fifth round could begin. I genuinely enjoy fighters giving a shit about their own health and well-being, and I entirely unironically support fighters deciding when they are or are not done. But, in the eyes of the UFC, that's how you go from main event prospect to prelimming against Don'Tale Mayes. And I like Mayes! I'm okay with anyone who is willing to just lift a motherfucker and elbow them to death. But after five years in the UFC, the best win Mayes has managed to put under his belt is a mid-forties Andrei Arlovski.
Here's the thing, though: He's really hard to finish. He hasn't been stopped since 2020 and he hasn't been knocked out since 2017, and he's been clipped by some big hitters. After that last fight, Gaziev's gas tank suddenly feels very precarious and all his early stoppages feel like warning signs. I'd say I'll probably regret this, but it's Heavyweight, so I regret everything already: DON'TALE MAYES BY DECISION.
LIGHTWEIGHT: Guram Kutateladze (12-4) vs Jordan Vucenic (13-2)
The fields of Guram Kutateladze fandom lie fallow, and as the only one tending the crops, my life is a mess. Guram scored a big upset in his UFC debut by beating now-#5 Mateusz Gamrot, but that was all the way back in 2020. Guram lost an incredibly close, well-fought decision to Damir Ismagulov that seemingly cemented them both as the future of the division, but that was all the way back in 2022, meaning it took almost two years to have his second UFC fight, and now Ismagulov is gone, too. It'd be more than a year before Guram made cagewalk #3, and that was his upset knockout loss to Elves Brener. And now it's more than a year later, Kutateladze has gone from a top lightweight to 1-2 after four whole years of competition, and instead of picking from the top fifteen he's fighting short-notice replacements like Jordan "The Epidemic" Vucenic. Vucenic's ken is being a big British grappler, but he likes to work in kicks more than punches, for all of his dynamic striking he grabs submissions far more often than knockouts, and he is so thoroughly covered in tattoos that he's gotten ink done on the inside of his ear, which is a level of commitment I cannot help but admire. If there's one persistent weakness in his game, it's his tendency to go headfirst into exchanges and eat hooks before he can make his way out, which plays better against regional opponents than the best in the world.
But that begs the question: Is Guram still one of the best in the world? He's looked a little worse in each fight, he's been on hiatus over and over with injuries and after yet another year off, how good will he look against a younger, hungrier fighter? I am already damned to wander Kutateladze country, so GURAM KUTATELADZE BY DECISION is a given for me, but I wish I felt confident as opposed to just hopeful.
WOMEN'S STRAWWEIGHT: Victoria Dudakova (8-0) vs Sam Hughes (8-6)
The UFC had some big hopes for Victoria Dudakova (which they still spell Viktoriia on their website even though she doesn't do that for her own personal accounts), and they've technically gotten what they want in that she's 2-0 and on her way up, but boy, it hasn't gone according to plan. Her all-finishes record ended with the first decision of her life on the Contender Series, her UFC debut ended in thirty seconds after her opponent Istela Nunes pulled a Coleman/Shogun and snapped her own arm in half defending a takedown, and her followup against Jinh Yu Frey may have been successful, but not only was it also a pretty uneventful decision, Dudakova missed weight. Her grappling is clearly legit, but things haven't materialized quite the way they should. So Sam Hughes is here to see if she can get the job done. In eight fights under the UFC's banner, "Sampage" hasn't managed to get herself anywhere near the rankings, but she has more than proven her worth as a measuring stick for those who can. She's won some underdog victories this way--she's actually been an underdog in every single one of her UFC bouts, which is kind of hilariously disrespectful--but when you're known more for your out-and-out toughness than any of your actual offense, it becomes impossible to see you for your fighting talents as opposed to how you seem in comparison to your opponents.
And when your specialty is wrestling, dealing with a grappler is a problem. VICTORIA DUDAKOVA BY DECISION.
LIGHTWEIGHT: Jai Herbert (12-5-1) vs Rolando Bedoya (14-3)
It's wild to think that Ilia Topuria is the big international star champion now and Jai Herbert almost knocked him the fuck out before he was halfway there. "The Black Country Banger" is pretty firmly ensconced in the lower depths of the Lightweight division. He's an incredibly scary striker with more stopping power than the vast majority of his contemporaries, but since that Topuria fight saw him very nearly win only to get folded like a deck chair with a single punch, he's been unable to bring that power to bear. Maybe he's understandably gunshy, maybe the higher level of competition is making things more complicated, but the danger that got him to the dance just hasn't been present for the last couple years. If I were a conspiratorially-minded writer, I would say Rolando Bedoya is here to try to coax the power back out of Jai. I was slightly perplexed by Bedoya's UFC debut in 2023, as he wasn't a particularly active fighter, he hadn't touched any of the UFC's feeder leagues, and he wasn't even a necessary-evil late replacement despite getting matched up with a near-ranked Lightweight in Khaos Williams. In one sense, Bedoya was a very successful signing: His fights are fun, he's an energetic competitor and he never stops trying to win. In another, he's 0-2 and he spent most of his last fight against Song Kenan getting repeatedly and thoroughly pasted.
But the repeated theme of Bedoya's style is tanking big power punches with his face. Against Khaos, he did it with a smile, kept coming forward and almost won a split decision. Against Kenan, he got repeatedly dropped on his ass and barely survived. If this is an attempt to get Jai to throw heat again, it's a smart one. I am choosing to believe in the man: JAI HERBERT BY TKO.
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Sedriques Dumas (9-2) vs Denis Tiuliulin (11-9)
Sedriques Dumas feels like a cautionary tale in what it means to be one of the company's favorites. After botching his debut and getting choked out by Josh Fremd the UFC spent the rest of 2023 pitching Sedriques softballs in an attempt to rehabilitate him as a prospect. And the second they felt that job was done? They threw him in there with Nursulton fucking Ruziboev, a nearly-ranked monster with more than four times his career experience. As a rule, I don't bet on things--my current mission to review all of this season of The Ultimate Fighter is an example of why--but Nursulton atomizing Sedriques in one round was a foregone conclusion. And now? It's right back to the gentle grounds. Denis Tiuliulin is 1-4 in the UFC. He has been finished by every person he's lost to, and none of those fights were remotely competitive. The only victory of his UFC career came against Jamie "The Night Wolf" Pickett, who was finally cut this year on the back of a five-fight losing streak at 2-7 overall. When you're on a three-fight losing streak and the UFC hasn't cut you, it means they particularly like you. But sometimes the UFC likes you because they see a future in you, and sometimes the UFC likes you because it knows you can bump up a flagging marketing darling.
You are here for the bump, Denis. I'm very sorry. SEDRIQUES DUMAS BY TKO.
