CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 111: CAUGHT IN THE LOOP
CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 111: CAUGHT IN THE LOOP
UFC Fight Night: Tybura vs Spivac 2
SATURDAY, AUGUST 3 FROM THE ETIHAD ARENA IN ABU DHABI
PRELIMS 2 PM PDT / 5 PM EDT | MAIN CARD 4 PM / 7 PM
I have been feeling something of a sense of existential concern about my writing.
It's not that I'm going anywhere; I am most assuredly not. (Well, we are moving next month, but I'm speaking figuratively.) With the hole the UFC has been in for the last couple months--the cancelled main events, the poor decisionmaking, the cutting of good talent, the stumping for some of the worst people on Earth, you know the drill--I've kept writing about the structure surrounding the fighters more than the fighters themselves.
Those conversations are important, or I would not also care about having them. But the more I focus on the inextricable negativity surrounding the structure of the sport, the more I feel I'm failing to communicate the very real joy I still feel about its existence. In reflecting on the UFC's less-than-great Summer, I came into this week wanting to make a conscious effort to, for once, ignore the structurally poor state of the company and inherently meaningless matchups and indifference towards their fans in favor of focusing on the simple, inalienable joy of the sport.
And then I remembered this weekend is an Apex card with a four year-old Heavyweight rematch for a main event and a top ten Women's Bantamweight fight buried in the prelims.
So. Y'know.
Maybe we'll try for joy again next week.
MAIN EVENT: SPIN THOSE WHEELS
HEAVYWEIGHT: Marcin Tybura (25-8, #8) vs Serghei Spivac (16-4, #9)
I have written many words about my adulation for both of these men and their angry wrestlegrinding ways, and yet I have so little love in my heart for this fight. I've waxed rhapsodic about my appreciation for grapplers coming together to violently headbutt each other in their repeated attempts to secure takedowns, but there is an inescapable feeling of pointlessness to this fight that I simply cannot find it in myself to forgive.
Realistically: Both of these men have been thoroughly eliminated from title contention. Marcin Tybura is doing an awful lot better than his early UFC days back in 2016-2019, and being 8 for your last 10 is nothing at all to sneeze at in a land of absolute chaos like the Heavyweight division, but those two losses loom pretty fucking large. In 2021 he was taken to an extremely clear-cut decision by Alexander Volkov, who is, himself, fighting for potential contendership come October, and just last year Tybura welcomed now-interim champion Tom Aspinall back from injury layoff by getting knocked silly in just barely over one minute.
These losses don't necessarily have to spell the end of one's prospects. With time, a winning streak and victories over notable contenders, you can be rehabilitated into a believable contender! Unfortunately, Marcin Tybura doesn't have any of those things. He's never beaten a credible contender, he's on a one-fight winning streak thanks to a strangling of the sadly flagging Tai Tuivasa this past March, and that imparted so much momentum to his career that he's following it by not only fighting down in the rankings, but fighting someone he already definitively beat in Serghei Spivac.
Oh, Serghei Spivac. You've been at this so long the UFC has changed the spelling of your name three separate times. Despite his lower ranking and considerably lesser number of fights, Spivac's actually come considerably closer to the top of the heap. He, too, choked out Tai Tuivasa! He outgrappled unfortunate militia-creator Aleksei Oleinik! He fought Augusto Sakai, who knocked out Marcin Tybura, and pounded him out in two rounds! In the single biggest victory of his career, he met multiple-time title contender and all-time Heavyweight hero Derrick Lewis and joined all-timer Daniel Cormier as the second man to ever choke him out, which very legitimately put him on a road to contention!
But that road ended extremely poorly. The last time we saw Serghei was September of 2023, where he fought Ciryl Gane, inexplicably refused to wrestle, and got the crap kicked out of him to the tune of a 10:1 striking ratio. But it was only the second-worst loss of Spivac's 2020s--with the first being a first-round knockout loss to, once again, Tom goddamn Aspinall. Like Tybura, Spivac is good, but he's made it clear he simply does not currently belong in title contention.
And ordinarily, that's actually a good thing. Having a score of almost-but-not-quite contenders is healthy for a weight class. It provides a field of credible fighters for younger, newer prospects to test themselves against, and those tests become a shorthand for the audience to easily understand where a new arrival fits in. Anderson Silva doesn't get rocketed to Rich Franklin without making Chris Leben look helpless first. Alexander Volkanovski doesn't perk eyebrows if he doesn't knock the absolute shit out of Chad Mendes. Your Spivacs and Tyburae are the way you bring the next generation of stars to bear.
Unfortunately, as we've already established:
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.
There is no one waiting to eat the old, so the old are forced to eat each other. And nothing, but nothing, deadens the joys of cannibalism like having to go back for seconds.
Marcin Tybura and Serghei Spivac fought on the undercard of UFC on ESPN: Benavidez vs Figueiredo back in February of 2020. It was not close. Tybura outstruck Spivac almost 3:1, outgrappled him completely, and won a wide, definitive decision. There were no questions left unanswered by their fight. There were no moments of near-victory that could have otherwise been capitalized on. There were no exciting fireworks that could theoretically be recreated. It was a 30-27 decision (except for one judge's 29-28, which was silly) and by the end of it the crowd was booing and there was no doubt about who the better man was.
So what we're left with is a rematch of a definitive fight, with essentially no new stakes, being fittingly staged within a largely empty warehouse for almost nobody.
Aside from the puncher's chance granted by the gods to every large man, the only real tension underpinning this fight is the idea that over the last four and a half years either Serghei Spivac has considerably improved or Marcin Tybura has considerably declined. With a deep respect to two of my favorite grinding wrestlers: They seem pretty similar. Their better performances have seemingly come not so much from their own improvements as their getting to fight lower-quality competition. Every solid grappler looks like a monster when they're steamrolling Greg fucking Hardy.
I think this is simply MARCIN TYBURA BY DECISION again, only this time it will take twenty-five minutes and there will be no one around to boo except us.
CO-MAIN EVENT: WHY THE FUCK NOT
The co-main event has changed three times in the last 48 hours. Up until this morning, it was Chris Gutierrez vs Quang Le. If you wonder why this is only two paragraphs long but I devoted a mini-essay to a random fight on the main card, it's because it was the co-main until shortly before publishing, I've already rewritten this three times, and I have other things I need to fucking do.
FEATHERWEIGHT: Damon Jackson (23-6-1) vs Chepe Mariscal (16-6)
Damon Jackson was so, so very close to being a thing. The four-fight winning streak and the one-minute upset knockout over Pat Sabatini that led "The Leech" to the precipice of the top fifteen was exactly the kind of emphatic run that turns a little-known fighter into a serious prospect, and his furious clinch attacks made it a particular joy to see. But Damon spent his 2023 testing the waters of the top ranks, and unfortunately, he drowned. In his one shot at a number by his name against Dan Ige, the Cerberus of Featherweight, Jackson wound up limp on the canvas and covered in his own blood; in his comeback fight seven months later he dropped a decision to fellow lifelong almost-a-thing Billy Quarantillo. Even though he won his last fight, Jackson only closely scraped a decision away from Alexander Hernandez. It's hard to say 'this fighter has found their ceiling' without being inherently disrespectful--there's always room for growth and it's rarely wise to fully count a competitor out. But it is cruelly objectively fair to say Jackson's best successes have come against fighters who never quite made it to the mountain, and every time he's met the tier of peers who walk that gatekeeper line, he's either struggled or failed.
There are a multitude of reasons so many fighters jump at the chance to be a late-replacement signing for the UFC, and Chepe Mariscal is one of the best current examples. In the Spring of 2023 Chepe was scheduled to fight the 12-7 Toby "2 Quick" Misech in front of a couple hundred people in the vaunted halls of the John T. Rhodes Myrtle Beach Sports Center. But undefeated Contender Series prospect Trevor Peek needed an opponent on short notice, and by god, Myrtle Beach just can't compete with Jacksonville. Chepe stepped into the UFC and won an upset victory in a wild brawl against one of its wildest brawlers. Just barely over two months later he flew to Australia to face the hugely-hyped Jack Jenkins in front of a hometown crowd, and he lost the first round of the fight but ultimately won anyway after Jenkins snapped his own arm failing to defend a throw. Seven months after that, Chepe was filling in on short notice again just to derail one of France's best prospects in Morgan Charriere. Just one year and change, and Chepe has gone from a 50/50 fighter in the Legacy Fighting Alliance to a 3-0 prospect in the UFC who would have been fighting for a berth in the top fifteen if our last-paragraph buddy Dan Ige hadn't been pulled to fight Diego Lopes on three hours' notice.
I enjoyed Jackson's rise up the ladder and I was rooting for him against Ige, but after his last three performances, and after seeing Chepe wreck someone's whole shit with a throw in the clinch where Jackson is at his best, I just don't see this going his way. CHEPE MARISCAL BY TKO.
MAIN CARD: THROWN IN THE MIXER
WELTERWEIGHT: Danny Barlow 8-0) vs Nikolay Veretennikov (12-4)
I try to stay intellectually grounded in my analysis of fighters, but as long as Danny Barlow cruelly and unnecessarily requires me to type the nickname "LeftHand2God" every time he fights I will be perpetually forced to root against him with at least some portion of my soul. Like roughly eighty-three percent of the current roster, Barlow went through the Contender Series, excited Dana's blood by knocking a man out, was immediately signed to the UFC, and has yet to have a scheduled fight work out correctly because the sport is wildly unstable right now for some reason that assuredly has nothing to do with the origins of his contract. He was supposed to meet Yusaku Kinoshita in his debut this past February, but wound up having to knock out short-notice replacement Josh Quinlan instead. Up until a few days ago Barlow was supposed to utilize his angry man-punching skills against fellow brawling machine Uroš Medić, but busted ribs sent him away and forced a replacement.
And, as we know, there are no Welterweights in the UFC who could possibly need to get booked, so the company was just cruelly forced to hire someone new. Nikolay Veretennikov is a fresh, last-minute pickup most notable for serving as the Welterweight champion of Arizona's United Fight League. He came from the Kazakhstani fight scene a whole-ass decade ago, but he chose the life of prestige and power afforded only by the gaping asshole of my home state that is Orange County. Having willingly consumed the bile of the Earth, Veretennikov sought payment for his soul by going on the Contender Series in 2021. Unfortunately, he happened to meet Michael Morales, who is competing for a top fifteen ranking in two weeks. Nikolay went to the aforementioned UFL, won its belt, and steepled his fingers to (very accurately) wait for his chance to trade in his gold for a quick ticket to the big show.
Unlike a lot of folks we talk about, I have zero complaints with Nikolay testing the waters of the UFC. He's fought his way to this level, he's earned the shot. That said, having watched a bunch of footage of him: I just don't think he's got it. He hits hard, the power is very much there, but a lot of his success seems to stem from being bigger than most of his opponents and simply outpowering them. His hands aren't very fast, his wrestling isn't very technical, and most importantly, he hangs his head in during his exchanges and gets clipped in most of his fights. Barlow's just as tall, he's got almost half a foot of range on his side, and he hits very, very hard. Given enough chances, I think he turns Veretennikov's lights out. DANNY BARLOW BY TKO.
BANTAMWEIGHT: Chris Gutierrez (20-5-2) vs Quang Le (8-0)
Sure! Sure. We can do this. Okay.
Chris Gutierrez was supposed to fight Javid Basharat tonight. There's a clear narrative behind the matchup: Two fighters who came as close as possible to the rankings only to fall short, with Gutierrez getting pushed back down the line after being outfought by Pedro Munhoz and Yadong Song. It was a battle of leg kicks and strategic takedowns, meant to shake out two newly-struggling prospects and see who held onto the ladder.
On Monday, word leaked out the fight had been cancelled. It didn't come through the UFC itself, of course, but from fight reporters with sources in the camps. This, too, had a clear narrative, but it was the UFC's continual flailing difficulties with keeping their headlining fights together. But the Bantamweight roster's an awfully big one, and assuredly, they would find a solid replacement.
On Tuesday, the UFC announced a number of changes to the card, including, at last, acknowledging the co-main event. Basharat's replacement would not, in fact, be a similarly solid prospect or a borderline-ranked contender, but rather, Quang Le.
I've opined about how soon Contender Series fighters would be getting rocketed to headline fights off initial performances, but this is a fun one: Quang Le hasn't actually had his Contender Series fight yet. He was scheduled for this September, but got pulled away for this instead. To get to know your new competitor, I present to you a complete, unabridged listing of the eight great foes of Quang Le:
Kyles "Kraze" Vang, who went 0-2 and retired
Austin Robinson, who just rose to 4-2 after beating the 2-19 Sean Johnson
Dan "Soko" Sokolowski, still going strong at 4-15
Sam "Night Night" Paneitz, the 3-3 main event veteran of True Revelation MMA
Henry Huff, who to be clear is not Henri Hooft, who just scratched his way to 5-4
Sal Guerriero, who is 6-4 with only one win over anyone who ever won a fight; their match went to a split decision
"The Real Deal" Cody Peterson, who is 6-2 and fought Quang after almost five years of retirement
Myanmar's own Tial "The Dragon Leg" Thang, a 6-4 veteran of ONE Championship
For the record, his Contender Series opponent was to be Aaron "Tauzemup" Tau, who himself was coming off dramatic victories over men who are 1-8, 10-8, and 5-6.
Whenever this comes up many point out that Apex cards are the lowest tier of UFC events, and therefore the matchmaking matters less. But the many are wrong, because it is the official, publicly stated position of the UFC that all of their cards are great and the only ones dissatisfied by them are whiny people looking for attention on the internet.
So remember: If the idea of borderline-ranked, 8-3-1 Chris Gutierrez facing Mystic Lake Casino Veteran Quang Le doesn't excite you, that's a you problem.
I spent several hours watching Quang Le tape. He seems like the same flavor of Okay most of the products of the Contender Series tend to be. Strong offense, very little defense, tanks punches and kicks to land rights rather than evading them. Our sport is one of chaos and it is always possible Quang Le gets the Cinderella story and drops Gutierrez.
But he eats leg kicks like candy, and he gets blasted across the chin even in fights he's winning, and having watched it, he probably should've lost that split decision to Guerriero, who is, himself, not yet that great.
And it is unbelievably frustrating that this matchmaking is just a fact of life in 2024.
CHRIS GUTIERREZ BY TKO.
WOMEN'S BANTAMWEIGHT: Yana Santos (14-8, #12) vs Chelsea Chandler (6-2, #14)
I can't even bring myself to go through my files to find daniel-cormier-dana-come-on.png for this shit anymore. I have, as always, nothing against either of these fighters. Yana Santos is fifteen years deep into a career that's taken her across the globe and matched her up with a bunch of world champions. She's tough as nails and experienced as hell. She's also got a losing UFC record, she's at the periphery of the division, she's on a three-fight losing streak and at three and a half years of age her last victory is officially too old to be considered a toddler. Chelsea Chandler is relatively new blood in the division: She came over from Invicta as a top-ranked Featherweight contender, made the jump to the UFC late in 2022, and has thus far made a solid 2-1 run of things. She's gritty, her top control is hard to break, and she's never been stopped. She's also never made Women's Bantamweight in the UFC. Her previous two fights were at 145 pounds, and in her whoops-they-closed-my-division 135-pound debut, she missed the mark. She's just barely ranked in a weight class she's never competed in.
And down on the prelims, about four fights from now (depending on how many times this card gets shuffled before it airs), there's a fight between Karol Rosa and Pannie Kianzad for an actual, honest to god, top ten ranking in this very division. Not only is it a higher-ranked bout, and not only is Karol Rosa one fight removed from a fight-of-the-year candidate, but the last time we saw Yana Santos in the octagon she lost a fight against Karol Rosa.
You could promote a top ten bout between two other, more accomplished women, one of whom just had an epic battle with the last woman to ever challenge Amanda Nunes for a title, and you could put this on the prelims instead.
But that is not what we are here for, I guess. This is why I struggle. YANA SANTOS BY DECISION, but my heart just isn't in it.
BANTAMWEIGHT: Toshiomi Kazama (10-4) vs Charalampos Grigoriou (8-4)
What do you know, it's another rescheduling of a fight that didn't quite work out. The UFC had high hopes for Toshiomi Kazama when he rolled into the inaugural Road to UFC tournament--strong, dangerous grappler from Japan, lots of great submissions, Pancrase tournament champion, how can you not--but by the end of the Road it was pretty clear Rinya Nakamura was the golden child, and he proved it by knocking Kazama down in eleven seconds, letting him back up, and knocking him completely limp twenty seconds later. There were some hopes for a recovery when they booked Kazama against the embattled Garrett Armfield last Summer, but it only bought him another four minutes before getting knocked out all over again.
So they tried to get him in with the guy what knocks everyone out. Charalampos Grigoriou was supposed to roll off the Contender Series and into a successful debut by way of Kazama's skull this past March, but injuries forced him to contend with Chad "The Monster" Anheliger instead. Anheliger was 1-2 in the company, a sizable underdog, and won anyway after kicking Grigoriou's leg into total dysfunction and punching him up for two straight rounds. The degree to which Charalampos looked gassed and exhausted midway through their fight soured people on him, but to be honest, I'm not really sure how much of that was legitimate didn't-train exhaustion as opposed to the sort of abrupt, panicked exhaustion you feel when one of the limbs that connects you to the Earth no longer works and you don't know what to do.
But they made this fight for Charalampos to win, and they still want that win. I still like Kazama, I still like his forward pressure and I still like his grappling, but he's shown a repeated inability to moderate that pressure with the desire to not get constantly punched in the face. Against a boxer like Grigoriou, I don't think it'll take long. CHARALAMPOS GRIGORIOU BY TKO.
PRELIMS: CONTENDER SERIES REMATCHES
WOMEN'S BANTAMWEIGHT: Karol Rosa (17-6, #8) vs Pannie Kianzad (17-8, #11)
The funny part is I'm even madder now than when I first wrote about Santos/Chandler. At that time in the long-long ago of Monday evening, there were only five fights scheduled for the main card. After the shakeup with the co-main and the cancellation of Jafel Filho vs Allan Nascimento they decided to flip the card spacing, expand the main card to six fights and drop the prelims to four. And they still kept this down here. Nikolay Veretennikov ranks a debut appearance just below the co-main event, but this top ten Women's Bantamweight fight does not, even now. Karol Rosa and Irene Aldana beat the shit out of each other last December, man. Rosa's one of the few Featherweights who made the return to 135 pounds gracefully and damn near punched her way into the top five in the process. Pannie Kianzad's recent history has been much less successful. In 2018 she was the runner-up to Macy Chiasson on The Ultimate Fighter 28 (jesus christ), in 2021 she was rising through the ranks only to be turned aside by eventual champion Raquel Pennington, and today, she's 1 for her last 4 and no longer has an active professional victory over an active UFC fighter. But it's Women's Bantamweight and they're kinda desperate right now.
As much as I appreciate Pannie's clinch game, KAROL ROSA BY DECISION. She hits harder, she hits more, and she takes a much better punch.
HEAVYWEIGHT: Jhonata Diniz (7-0) vs Karl Williams (10-1)
No, I love this. I love this. I spend so much time complaining about the UFC pampering and protecting its striking prospects, and I spend so much time doomsaying the prospectless future of Heavyweight, and here, the company gives me a beautiful, lovely softball. They got a guy! He's an undefeated kickboxer with a 100% finishing rate! Sure, he looked a little not-great in his debut fight where he almost got wrestled to death by Austen Lane, but he came back and knocked him out, so it's fine! What do we do next? Throw him to the wrestling wolves. Karl Williams wrestles kickboxers. It's all he goddamn does. He's the only Heavyweight left gutsy enough to just spam takedown attempts for fifteen minutes. He ragdolled Łukasz Brzeski eight times and he just got a decision over Justin Tafa after hitting seven doubles. He is a smothering ground-and-pound throwback who damn near never finishes anyone, and I adore him for it, and in this one moment, I adore the UFC for simply letting nature take its course.
Unless Diniz lamps him in thirty seconds. Then I curse this world and every sin it has ever caused. For now, though, KARL WILLIAMS BY DECISION.
FEATHERWEIGHT: Youssef Zalal (14-5-1) vs Jarno Errens (14-5-1)
Honestly, this could have gone in the why-is-this-on-the-prelims complaint, too. Youssef Zalal has successfully passed through perdition. He was cut from the UFC in 2022, he went back to the regional scene, he won an incredibly silly one-night tournament involving fighting in boxing, kickboxing and MMA one after the other, and in recognition of his efforts to recognize and celebrate the madness of combat, management brought him back on a late replacement necessity contract. But he ran the table on Billy Quarantillo and became the first man to ever submit him, so hey, dude, welcome the fuck back. Enjoy your prelim berth with Jarno Errens. Errens isn't quite on the bubble, but he is in the bubble's orbit. His debut was an incredibly uneventful loss to William Gomis, his followup was a game but ultimately deeply unsuccessful challenge against Seung Woo Choi, and the one thing currently saving his job is an upset victory over Contender Series winner Steven Nguyen this past March, because the Contender Series pales against the French.
Errens isn't bad, but I don't have a lot of faith in him here. YOUSSEF ZALAL BY DECISION.
WOMEN'S STRAWWEIGHT: Stephanie Luciano (5-1-1) vs Talita Alencar (5-0-1)
The first fight of this UFC event is a Contender Series rematch. I hated it the first time it happened when it was Ramon Taveras vs Serhiy Sidey and I hate it now. Luciano is a striker. Alencar is a grappler. They had a striker vs grappler match and nobody won, and the UFC signed them anyway because the Contender Series is gradually morphing into an endless conduit for locking in underpaid rookies. Talita Alencar already made her UFC debut last December, and she fought and pretty visibly lost to Invicta champion Rayanne dos Santos, but she won a decision anyway because somehow, despite being an active menace across forty years of judging controversies, nobody can stop Adalaide Byrd. But beating or at least "beating" a world champion is now so deeply meaningful that it gets you actively reversed in your career because god dammit, we have unfinished Contender Series business, and a UFC card is now just a vessel for the Contender Series to inhabit.
Another draw. Rocks fall and the building goes out of service. The fight is stopped when a skewer of egrets breaks into the Apex and abducts Jon Anik. Futsunushi and Takemikazuchi come down from the heavens and order the contest stopped on the grounds of What Have You Done To The Concept Of Sport.
Or I flip a coin, and that coin says TALITA ALENCAR BY DECISION.