CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 113: TO BE ANNOUNCED
CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 113: TO BE ANNOUNCED
UFC Fight Night: Cannonier vs Borralho
SATURDAY, AUGUST 24 FROM THE IMPENETRABLE POINTLESSNESS OF THE APEX
PRELIMS 3:30 PM PDT / 6:30 PM EDT | MAIN CARD 7 PM / 10 PM
Previously, on the August edition of the Punchsport Report:
And then the month ends on UFC Fight Night 242 on August 24--maybe. See, here's the thing. I'm writing this a little later than I normally do thanks to the ER stuff and subsequent recovery, so as of now it's July 27, which means the month is over in four days and this event is less than a month away. And, uh. It's not on the UFC's website.
The UFC did not officially confirm the existence of the August 24 event until the 6th. After keeping everyone in suspense for weeks, the main event wound up being Jared Cannonier vs Caio Borralho.
It's even weirder for me to come into this card having, thanks to my own idiot internet choices, watched this entire season of The Ultimate Fighter. Sure, I did not enjoy the experience, but I can't say I'm not emotionally invested in the journey of Ryan Loder, and Robert Valentin, and whoever the fuck the Featherweight finalists will be because I can't finish writing this card up until Tuesday evening given one of its fights hinges on a television show that can't even get a television deal anymore, which kicks it down to airing on ESPN's streaming network somewhere between OmegaBall and the Blade Masters Axe and Knife Throwing Competition.
I am thankful every day that our sport achieved mainstream legitimacy.
MAIN EVENT: VACATION CANCELLED
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Jared Cannonier (17-7, #5) vs Caio Borralho (16-1 (1), #12)
How many times have I given the 'I hate it when fighters get rebooked too soon after getting knocked out' monologue? I miss mandatory suspensions, not just for what they represent for the physical health of mixed martial artists, but for my own mental health as a viewer who is no longer guaranteed a mandatory 90-day no-contact period between Jared Cannonier fights.
We gathered here on June 8th to watch Jared Cannonier fight Nassourdine Imavov. What did I say, at the time?
I cannot help feeling this fight is really a referendum on Jared Cannonier. Imavov isn't a better wrestler than Cannonier. He's not a stronger man, his striking isn't noticeably more effective, and he most certainly does not hit harder. He's also 28, and Cannonier is 40. It hasn't escaped anyone's notice that Cannonier hasn't been his world-destroying self over his last few fights, and to be sure, it is much harder to finish a Vettori or Strickland than a Derek Brunson, but a few lackluster performances in a row and a 40th birthday make people ask difficult questions.
I think he has enough left in the tank here. I'm still pulling for JARED CANNONIER BY DECISION. But if we're running out of road, Imavov is the kind of fighter who'll make it show.
Instead of a referendum on Jared Cannonier, the fight wound up being a referendum on the way that, somehow, everything is so often bad all of the time.
One round in, Jared Cannonier was winning the fight: He was landing more both in power and volume and had controlled the grappling. Two rounds in, Jared Cannonier also didn't look particularly great: His gas tank wasn't holding up as well as it usually did and Nassourdine Imavov was outstriking him. Three rounds in, Nassourdine Imavov wasn't doing fantastically, either: He had numerically outstruck Cannonier and won round two, but round three was much less convincing for two of the three judges. Four rounds in, Nassourdine Imavov had his best moment of the fight: After taking a nasty-looking elbow, he rebounded and stunned Cannonier with a series of strikes that had him visibly hurt but fighting back.
Four rounds and ninety seconds in, referee Jason Herzog stopped the fight in a standing TKO so questionable it became the only part of the fight anyone ever talked about again. The clip on ESPN is openly subtitled "Nassourdine Imavov stuns Jared Cannonier and the Louisville crowd after a questionable finish by referee Jason Herzog." As a general rule, if you, the referee, are declared by name in a highlight reel, it's probably not for a good reason.
I spend a lot of time complaining about the officiants in this sport, so I want to be completely clear on this one: I think Jason Herzog is the best referee in the sport. I think there have been worse stoppages, frankly, but it wasn't great, and part of why Herzog is a top-tier referee was his admitting after the fight that he had to re-evaluate his criteria.
This, of course, has not stopped the UFC from enjoying having Cannonier out of the picture. They wasted no time booking Nassourdine Imavov into a pole-position fight with Brendan Allen this coming September--and they took Cannonier's TKO so seriously that they have him back in the cage defending being in the top ten at all just 77 days after the stoppage.
Because the Caio Borralho train is rolling, and by god, they must keep it on schedule.
There is this inextricable link between Caio and Jailton Almeida in my head. Some of it is their having both gone through the Contender Series within two weeks of one another and some is the hilarity of their having had a grappling match just a few months beforehand, but primarily, it was the almost out-of-body experience that was watching the UFC get really invested in pushing a pair of technically sound but not enormously exciting or charismatic jiu-jitsu stylists up the card. It was deeply unlike their usual marketing sensibilities, and as a big ol' grappling fan, I was deeply pleased by their presence.
At least until they started doing The Thing they always do and lifting them up on the wings of falling fighters.
Caio's great. I love his fighting style. He's also now fighting for a top five berth despite only one of his last five competitors coming off a win. Makhmud Muradov was a striker who'd just been pretzeled by Gerald Meerschaert in his last fight. Abus Magomedov was barely four months removed from becoming the only person Sean Strickland has managed to knock out in the last four years. Paul Craig was trying to come back after being controlled and submitted by Brendan Allen.
And now Caio Borralho gets to fight a Jared Cannonier who looked shaky and inconsistent and got Technically knocked out eleven weeks ago.
You know the regular appointment we have here in this columns where I complain about my own complaining? This is why it keeps fuckin' happening. Not only because the UFC does not stop doing this sort of thing, but because, in knowing that they will never stop, I have to keep myself focused on them to stop the subconscious urge to displace my anger onto the fighters themselves. Like, really, Caio? You're going to beat up on Poor Jared Cannonier now, at this point in his life? The man is a 40 year-old crystal healing slash QAnon enthusiast who just got fake-knocked out by the guy who couldn't beat Phil Hawes, and now you're going to go fuck him up?
It is, of course, not his fault. Caio is a great grappler and a powerful wrestler and he has passed every test the UFC has thrown at him; he cannot be held responsible for those tests coming on a considerable curve.
But, boy, it's a testament to Cannonier's skills that I still have trouble counting him out here. His grappling defense remained solid even as he began to flag in the Imavov fight, and given how much of Caio's best work comes on the ground, getting Cannonier down and out is a bigger ask than most of his other opponents. We've seen more of Caio's striking in his last couple fights, but with my deepest respect to Paul Craig and his attempts to bring back the 1930s style of boxing, there's a world of difference between the striking threat he presents as opposed to a man like Jared Cannonier.
Unless, of course, there isn't.
Like I said in that last write-up, it's been awhile since Jared has successfully melted anyone. He beat Sean Strickland, but not by much. He rung Marvin Vettori's bell repeatedly times, but never got him off his feet. The power is still there, you can see it coiled and waiting in his arms, but his ability to quickly and accurately place that power has been slipping. A year or two ago, even with my deep appreciation for Caio Borralho, I would have fairly confidently picked Jared to sprawl on him, push him back and punish him to a TKO for even trying.
Nowadays I still think Jared's got the skillset to dislodge Caio from his gameplan, but for five rounds?
CAIO BORRALHO BY DECISION. I don't think he's got the striking power to stop Jared, and I think Jared's defensive grappling is still solid enough to avoid a submission, but I don't think he'll be able to keep up with the pace. I'd love to get one more murderous uppercut, though.
CO-MAIN EVENT: THE FAN FAVORITE
WOMEN'S STRAWWEIGHT: Angela Hill (17-13, #9) vs Tabatha Ricci (10-2, #11)
You cannot kill Angela Hill. She was there at the inception of the UFC's Women's Strawweight division back in 2014, she's banked dozens of UFC fights over the course of an entire decade, she's suffered multiple losing streaks, nearly been cut repeatedly, did get cut once, she's going on 40, and by god, she's ranked in the top ten, 4 for her last 5, and just notched her first finish in almost half a decade.
There's a large part of my brain that wants to just stop the writeup there, too. Like, what else can you say about Angela Hill? What IS there to say that has not already been said, over and over, in the past ten god damned years? She's done everything. She's main-evented cards, she's fought champions and superstars and contenders alike, she's had Muay Thai standoffs and grappling festivals, she's been repeatedly disrespected by questionable split decisions against top contenders. She nearly disappeared from the sport only to become a longstanding fan favorite thanks as much for her refusal to die as her sense of humor and persistent cosplay shenanigans.
And now, when most people are thinking about retiring, she's on one of the best runs of her life. Aside from a gutsy but overmatched fight against Mackenzie Dern she's put in some of her greatest performances over the last two years, and becoming the first person to ever submit Luana Pinheiro in mixed martial arts is a hell of a way to come into this bout.
Tabatha Ricci is on the other side of the scale. She came into the UFC as an undefeated prospect with multiple world grappling championships to her name, and unfortunately, she came in as a late replacement in a higher weight class and promptly got punched stupid by one of the best fighters in the world in Manon Fiorot. But it got her foot in the door and let her run the table at Women's Strawweight, where her crushing grappling advantages saw her steamroll four women and etch her name into the rankings.
At least, at first. After those four fights, things got a little wonky in the "Baby Shark" camp. Last year Tabatha lost her undefeated Strawweight streak against the ever-difficult Loopy Godinez after getting completely shut out of her takedown attempts, but managed to escape with a slight moral victory thanks to dropping only a split decision. This past May she followed it up with a fight against Tecia Pennington, who was making her return after two years of maternity layoff, and despite getting outstruck by Tecia, and despite Tecia winning the majority of media scorecards, Tabatha this time walked away on the victorious side of a contentious split decision.
Which puts us in some profoundly weird MMAth territory. Thanks to Angie's massive resume, both of those fights are points of mutual contention. Just one year before Tabatha struggled and ultimately lost to Godinez, Hill fought Loopy and won a fairly clear 29-28. But Angie's also met up with Tecia Pennington twice--though we can probably ignore the first fight since it was nine years ago--and in their 2021 meeting, Tecia ran the table on Hill and completely shut her out, whereas even if Tabatha may have won contentiously, it was still close enough to be contentious.
Which is about as easy to parse as MMAth always is. We always discuss things like the impact of layoffs and the unknown changes that may have happened in a fighter's life and health since last we saw them, but in Tecia's case, when last she fought Angie she was three years younger, has two fights less road wear, and had yet to gestate and birth a child. If you're wondering what the numerical difference of childbirth is, it turns out it's 40% less attempted takedowns and just about 100 less attempted strikes per fifteen minutes.
This fight, I believe, comes down to Tabatha Ricci's ability to smother Angie with her grappling efforts. Hill's a cleaner, faster and more versatile striker, and given a chance she can play keepaway and kite Tabatha with leg kicks and jabs for three rounds. But Mackenzie Dern showed how to use a powerful grappling game to not only dominate Angie on the ground but keep her too worried about takedowns to adequately defend against a barrage of punches on the feet, and Tabatha is going to have to use that fear of the ground to keep Angie from outworking her on the feet.
She's got a real good chance of pulling it off, too. But, as I so often do, I am picking with my heart, and at this stage in her career I just cannot root against her. ANGELA HILL BY DECISION.
MAIN CARD: ON PROSPECTS AND THE FUTURE
MIDDLEWEIGHT TUF 32 FINAL: Robert Valentin (10-3 (1), Team Grasso) vs Ryan Loder (6-1, Team Shevchenko)
After being away from the show for years, it's bizarre to write about The Ultimate Fighter again. It's just as bizarre to gauge if it's being treated more or less respectfully than last year's finals. They were banished to the preliminary fights, which is embarrassing, but they were also the preliminary fights for a pay-per-view. Is it better to be on the ESPN prelims before a Sean O'Malley pay-per-view, or up on the main card of a Caio Borralho-mained Apex event? Is this reigning in Hell?
Make no mistake: Robert Valentin is the protagonist of The Ultimate Fighter Thirty Two Parentheses Jesus Christ. From the moment the show started Robert was given an outsized amount of camera attention, and while the deceptive editing generally employed by the series almost assuredly played a part in it, Valentin's equally outsized personality and capacity for violence carried the rest. In a season of reality television notable more for the emotional stability and quiet friendliness of its cast, Valentin was the contractually obligatory weirdo who refused to stop talking about blood and violence, brutally finished both of his show-foes, and celebrates maiming people by stomping around the cage yelling for Odin and pointing at his four hundred different runic tattoos. His first time out he dropped Giannis Bachar cold with a standing elbow in thirteen seconds; his second, he ate a bunch of Paddy McCorry punches and nearly got knocked out, but managed to whip him to the ground and pull off a leg-scissor Americana, which was, admittedly, pretty fucking cool. His defense is porous and his aggression is oddly metered, but his ability to hurt people is demonstrable.
Ryan Loder is a much more traditional TUF contestant. In a season defined and marketed solely by its broad cast of international fighters from diverse backgrounds, Ryan is A Wrestler From California. He grew up wrestling in school, he became an NCAA All-American, he retired to teach wrestling, and more or less by mistake he wound up wrestling with Urijah Faber and getting inducted into the mixed worlds of fighting for money and never, ever wearing a shirt. He loves his family, he has vaguely inspirational thoughts about his personal struggles growing up with dyslexia, and he shoots lots of takedowns. He steamrolled Tom Theocharis with his wrestling and submission games his first time out, he struggled a little more with Omran Chaaban in his second fight and ultimately had to engage in a stand-up war for the third and final round, where he made a decent accounting for himself and showed off a surprisingly solid jab in the process. That first fight, however, ultimately spoiled the season:
Tom follows Ryan to the fence to give him a hug, congratulate him, and (jokingly) land one punch; Robert Valentin, hanging over the side of the cage, offers Loder a less happy-looking fistbump and asks distressingly seriously if he wants to fight, to which Loder replies "Maybe later."
It is officially Later, and I am uncertain of my choice here. One thing I had decidedly forgotten about TUF is its ability to be both deeply educational and deeply misleading as to the qualities of its fighters. There is a world of difference between preparing for a professional fight in your camp at your home with your real and martial families and a fair amount of time to think and strategize vs being isolated in a house with a bunch of strangers pantomiming for cameras as you take two short-notice fights in a matter of weeks. Both men looked incredibly dominant once and visibly struggled once, both men dealt with being hurt and forced to come back for a hard-fought victory. Loder's orthodox jab and his crushing wrestling game are very solid counters for how loose and aggressive Valentin likes to be, but Valentin's quick submission game will make him pay dearly for any mistakes.
So, as always, I find myself forced to ask: What would make the UFC unhappier?
RYAN LODER BY DECISION.
FEATHERWEIGHT TUF 32 FINAL: Kaan Ofli (11-2-1, Team Grasso) vs Mairon Santos (13-1, Team Grasso)
And here, we have the considerably more dramatically-reached TUF final. We dealt with injury replacements, commission drama and botched weight cuts, but it was ultimately all worth it because we got here, to the end, with two top-class fighters who after an entire season of The Ultimate Fighter are assuredly better than what we're getting from the Contender Series, right?
I mean. Maybe? Maybe. Having spent the last two months watching both men fight intermittently they are, obviously, very talented. Kaan Ofli broke Nathan Fletcher's goddamn leg with a single calf kick and wrestled the hell out of multiple people. As a deep appreciator of the double leg, I am a fan of his game and I would very much like to see him go on a real Featherweight run. The complete wrestling clinic he ran on Fletcher was an exceedingly good time, and watching him pull a Cody McKenzie by choking out a far-too-confident Roedie Roets in thirty seconds was deeply gratifying. All of that being said: He is, still, a regional guy coming off regional fights. Two fights ago he was doing battle with the 4-4 road warriors of the world. His skills haven't yet been tested at the high levels of the sport, and the weird simulacrum TUF represents is, as always, an intensely shaky indicator. How you prepare when you have time to prepare is very different from how you prepare when you are stuck on a couch watching people discuss sitcoms because no one is allowed to pick up a damn phone.
Mairon Santos is both better and worse-off. The UFC, technically, already signed him once. Back in 2023 Santos was one of the four men who rotated through the chance to fight Sean Woodson, and were it not for the ever-present irritation of travel visa issues, he would...almost certainly have lost, but he would, at least, have a UFC contract as opposed to his original plan, which was fighting Tariel Abbasov for Israel Fight Night. Getting pulled into the TUF house was a boon for him, because on a roster disproportionately littered with grappling and striking specialists, Mairon shone as the best all-arounder on the show. He demonstrated a particularly solid capacity for fighting smart, fighting patient, and not only picking opponents apart at range, but battering them when they inevitably got frustrated and charged in. Here's the hitch: Do you remember Dan Argueta? The guy who's currently 1-2 (2) in the UFC and just can't quite seem to rise to its level of competition? He fought Mairon in the long, long-ago ages of 2022, and he crushed him. Complete, 10-8 tier domination on the ground that ended in a third-round TKO.
Mairon was only 21 then, and he's only 24 now. He's at the age where growth and improvement can be downright exponential, and he obviously did a solid job defending wrestling on TUF. But as much as I like Mairon's distance game, and as much as he does have a very real advantage in the striking, I'm not sure he's improved enough to stop Kaan's wrestling or his hyper-opportunistic grappling game. KAAN OFLI BY SUBMISSION.
WELTERWEIGHT: Neil Magny (29-11, #12) vs Michael Morales (16-0, NR)
The ship may have sailed on Neil Magny: Top Guy some time ago, but as much as it may feel like damning the man with faint praise, he may well be establishing himself as the greatest gatekeeper of all time. Once upon a time Magny's lanky frame, clinch tactics and endless cardio seemed like a recipe for title contention, but he instead found a role as the measuring stick for Welterweight contendership, and by god, it's a full decade later and he's doing it. The same way he once turned aside the Erick Silvas and Hector Lombards of the world, his last two years have been one continuous act of gauging which prospects are and are not ready for primetime. Max Griffin? A hair too slow for Magny. Shavkat Rakhmonov? Destroyed him with ease, he can pass. Daniel Rodriguez? Choked out, go back home. Ian Machado Garry? Multiple 10-8 rounds, you get to play with the big boys. Magny's last fight was almost incredibly on the nose for his role in the division: He met the UFC-undefeated Mike Malott, dropped the first two and a half rounds to the up-and-coming darling, and then, with ninety seconds left, he abruptly turned on the inexperienced, exhausted Malott and simply destroyed him. His striking is still a bit too loose and his takedown defense is a bit too shaky, but you cannot beat the man for sheer, unflappable experience.
But boy, Michael Morales is going to try. On the mass spectrum of marketing prospects, Morales is considered much closer to a Rakhmonov than a D-Rod. He rolled into the Contender Series as an undefeated Ecuadorian champion and he has, thus far, successfully parlayed his big-fish-in-a-small-pond act into a successful contract win and a four-fight winning streak in the UFC. He is, in some ways, my absolute favorite of the prospects to come off the contract mill, simply because he avoids all its traditional pitfalls. Morales isn't a ground specialist, he isn't a wild stand-and-bang brawler, he isn't a kill-or-be-killed wildman: He's just very, very good at everything. If my main complaint with giving Dana White discretion over who gets signed to the UFC comes from the chilling effect it has on fighters actually fighting to their best as opposed to their Most Entertaining, Morales is the notable exception. He fights behind a high guard, he mixes in wrestling when appropriate, he is more than happy to go to decisions rather than pushing and getting himself hurt, and through this, he's punched his way through sixteen people without missing a beat.
But he's never fought a Neil Magny. I won't even pretend I'm not picking MICHAEL MORALES BY DECISION here, particularly since his enormous seagull arms take away Magny's reach advantage, but this is, easily, the biggest test of his career. If he gets tired, if he makes mistakes or leaves too many openings, Magny will gladly and gleefully run up the striking tally until he can't recover. But in a three-round fight, I think Morales may not finish him, but he will outfight him.
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Edmen Shahbazyan (13-4) vs Gerald Meerschaert (36-17)
Edmen Shahbazyan had his big comeback fight after almost a year on the shelf this past March, and boy, it was weird. "The Golden Boy" has always seen his potential future as a prospect dogged by the one-dimensional nature of his gameplan. His kickboxing skills are exceedingly legitimate--maybe never more precisely demonstrated than when the preternaturally tough Brad Tavares went a full three rounds with Israel Adesanya, came back four months later and got knocked out cold by Edmen in two and a half minutes--but his grappling has been failing him ever since. After going 1 for 5 and getting outgrappled in every loss, his comeback against AJ Dobson was something of a gentle testing of the waters; Dobson COULD wrestle, but he often chose not to, and Edmen could tee off on him with only minor concern. So Dobson punched Edmen silly, and then Edmen took him down out of desperation, and ultimately Edmen knocked out a discombobulated Dobson before the round ended. Good performance, good comeback, but not a real test of his wrestling defense.
Which is why we're rolling good ol' Gerald Meerschaert out again. Gerald just passed twenty fights in the UFC, and somehow, his style continues to be regularly effective, because half the fighters in the company look at his slow-motion, walking-through-water hooks and utterly predictable wrestling and grappling game and say "surely I am too good for this to work on me," and then half of them are wrong, because he's Gerald fucking Meerschaert and he's really good at it. Knowing what he is going to do is only tangentially relevant to actually keeping him from doing it, and traditionally, the people who beat him are either solid enough wrestlers themselves to not have to worry about Meerschaert pulling a club-and-sub on them, or people who can both defend a takedown and hit really, really hard. Gerald averted a possible three-fight skid this past March by repeatedly dumping Bryan Barberena and choking him completely unconscious, and when asked what he wanted next, his reply was a beer and a nap.
Edmen would very much like to give him that nap. I can very easily see Meerschaert getting cracked upside the head as he bear-shuffles forward for his takedown attempts, but let's be honest, here: I haven't come this far as an irrepressible lover of gritty wrestlers to quit on GM3 now. GERALD MEERSCHAERT BY SUBMISSION.
PRELIMS: SLAVA CLAUS RIDES AGAIN
FEATHERWEIGHTLIGHTWEIGHT: Dennis Buzukja (12-4) vs Danny Silva (9-1) Francis Marshall (7-2)
For the record, since this has somehow come up, I must regretfully inform you that it is not, in fact, pronounced like 'bazooka,' which represents one of the great missed opportunities in mixed martial arts naming schemes. Buzukja was scouted by the UFC for the Contender Series all the way back in 2020, but after dropping a decision to the permanently unlucky Melsik Baghdasaryan he was forced to come in by the openly-acknowledged only other way you get to the UFC now: A deeply unbalanced late replacement fight. He was the fourth and final man to sign up for that aforementioned Sean Woodson fight, which he lost, he came back for Jamall Emmers and got knocked out in under a minute, and after a two-rounds-and-change-long struggle with Contender Series winner Connor Matthews he finally, mercifully got a win. He was scheduled to face Danny "El Puma" Silva here, yet another in the endless march of DWCS winners, but Silva had to pull out at the last minute, so in his place we have Francis "Fire" Marshall, who is at the trying-not-to-get-fired stage of his UFC time. Marshall, funnily enough, is also only here because of Connor Matthews, having beaten him in his first bid at the Series back in 2022, but aside from the obligatory sacrificial Contender-boosting fight, he's fallen on hard times. Getting outfought by William Gomis and knocked silly by Isaac Dulgarian is nothing to feel particularly ashamed of, but when you're a wrestling stylist first and foremost, you must know the UFC will be happy to cut you if you drop three in a row.
Which could be a big problem against a guy like Buzukja who likes to load up on his punches so hard he has to step in to throw them. It's hard not to read this as giving Buzukja a good matchup against last year's knockout victim, but he also tends to get taken down frequently, and Francis, fighting to his strengths, is a solid test for anyone's takedown defense. But it's also a short-notice fight after a year on the shelf, and I do not feel good about his chances. DENNIS BUZUKJA BY TKO.
LIGHTWEIGHT: Viacheslav Borshchev (7-4-1) vs James Llontop (14-3)
Viacheslav Borshchev is my homeboy and I guess the UFC got the desire to see him wrestled to death out of their system, because Slava Claus has a striking match again. Borshchev has some of the best boxing combinations in the company, but when he's fighting people like Nazim Sadykhov and Chase Hooper he doesn't really get a chance to actually use them. You may say that I am being a hypocrite by complaining about stylistically favorable matchups all the time only to embrace them when they happen to this one specific fighter I happen to like, and in my defense, I ask you to look at everything else I write about and realize that I need this. James "Goku" Llontop does not like to do takedowns. He was, in fact, betrayed by grappling in his UFC debut this past April: After a twelve-fight win streak that took him from his native Peru all the way to the Contender Series on the back of a half-dozen knockouts he met Chris "Taco" Padilla, stung him badly, and was taken down and strangled for his troubles.
Unless Llontop makes a disconcerting move towards a multifaceted approach to mixed martial arts in the wake of his loss we are almost guaranteed a striking showdown, and in the event of fisticuffs, I'm standing by my man. VIACHESLAV BORSHCHEV BY TKO.
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Zach Reese (7-1) vs José Medina (11-3)
This fight would be baffling if it weren't so painfully obvious. Zach Reese's part in this is in no way even remotely mysterious. He's exactly what the UFC wants: A giant 6'4" all-action Middleweight with fighting hair and wolf shirt tattoos who nicknames himself "Savage" and talks about how nothing matters as a fighter except being exciting and getting finishes. He is the anti-Michael Morales, and when the UFC tried to tee him up an almost unconscionable softball in the constantly-defeated, just-recently-concussed Cody Brundage only for Brundage to knock him out with a Rampage Jackson powerbomb, I could not keep from enjoying it. They, of course, followed it up by giving him an even softer target in Julian Marquez, a man who has done nothing but get knocked out for the last three years, and they don't appear to be ready to send Reese back to primetime yet, because this fight is arguably sadder. José Medina should probably not be in the UFC. In his fourteen career fights Medina has only beaten one man with a winning record, and that record was 4-2, and it was Medina's twelfth professional bout. Medina was on the Contender Series last October, and not only did he not win, he was taken down six times and outstruck 3:1. Dana White signed him anyway, because he liked his toughness.
Which can be more easily translated as "I can reliably book you to get brutally beaten by someone I like more than you." They imported a Contender Series loser just to increase the chances their big tall Middleweight brawler gets another win. ZACH REESE BY TKO.
WOMEN'S BANTAMWEIGHT: Josiane Nunes (10-2) vs Jacqueline Cavalcanti (6-1)
Here, in the ashes of what used to be Women's Featherweight, we find life. I was locked into rooting for Josiane Nunes almost immediately, because the prospects of a 5'2" human tank beating up people more than half a foot taller than them is the kind of fix I have been needing since Sean Sherk retired and left the world a darker, colder place. She was good at it, too: Josi was actually on a three-fight streak and only a contendership bout away from a Featherweight title shot, which is to say she was marginally better than two of the three other women at the weight class. But downsizing leads to down-sizing, and Josi's return to Bantamweight ended in obligatory disappointment, with Chelsea Chandler winning a close decision over her. Jacqueline Cavalcanti has been something of an afterthought for the company. Her Legacy Fighting Alliance championship got her the chance to take a short-notice fill-in against Zarah Fairn last year, and fortunately, Cavalcanti was able to prevail against one of the statistically least successful fighters in UFC history. And, uh, that's it. It's been just one week shy of an entire year and this is the first time the UFC has booked her to fight again.
Which is unfortunate, because she looked clean and talented and decently impressive, but not as unfortunate as how utterly unwilling I am to pick against Josi. JOSIANE NUNES BY TKO.
FEATHERWEIGHT: Zygimantas Ramaska (9-2) vs Nathan Fletcher (8-1)
Previously, on The Ultimate Fighter:
Back in the locker rooms Kaan is happy and celebrating if slightly worried about having possibly damaged his hands punching Fletcher in the head, while Fletcher is heartbroken and puts his shirt over his head so the camera doesn't get too much footage of him crying. Don't worry, buddy. They're gonna book you again.
Try to control your shock if at all possible, but they decided to sign one actual non-finalist from this season of TUF, and coincidentally, it's the British guy who trains with Paddy Pimblett. By contrast Zygimantas Ramaska was practically an obligatory signing: He had a big, fun and ultimately victorious brawl with Bekhzod Usmonov that let him show off his striking and his takedown defense, but thanks to a small fracture in his cheek the athletic commission ruled him out of his semifinal matchup with Mairon Santos. It's a waste of everyone's time and the concept of the show if you don't at least give him a make-good chance. Nathan Fletcher had one fight in which he got marginally outstruck and thoroughly outwrestled by eventual finalist Kaan Ofli, who also broke Fletcher's fibula with a single calf kick. Aside from an appreciation fight for Fletcher being tough enough to unknowingly continue training despite having a broken leg, it's a little weird that he's here and not fellow semfinalist Roedie Roets, or almost-semifinalist Edwin Cooper Jr.
But, y'know, British. For whatever convenience brought him here, Fletcher's not bad, he's very tough to get rattled, and he's got a very, very quick back take, so if Zygi lets him get too close for too long, he'll pay dearly. After seeing Fletcher struggle with Ofli's striking, though, I'm not favoring his chances against a bigger, faster, better kickboxer. ZYGIMANTAS RAMASKA BY TKO.
WOMEN'S FLYWEIGHT: Wang Cong (5-0) vs Victoria Leonardo (9-5)
Let me make this simple for you: Wang Cong is an undefeated Chinese kickboxer and mixed martial artist who is also obsessed with The Joker. She shows up to weigh-ins with Joker facepaint and laughs and then kicks people in the head. She's a world champion in Sanda, she got a real cool guillotine choke during the Road to UFC earlier this year, and she famously beat Valentina Shevchenko in Val's last-ever kickboxing bout. She could not have been more designed to bridge the Sino-American culture gap were she grown in a lab manned by Frank Miller and Hunter Campbell. And they know it, because Victoria Leonardo, with all of the respect in the world to her, is not only 1 for her last 4, and not only suffered all three of those losses by violent stoppages, but has been finished by getting kicked in her gosh darn face three separate times. Wang doesn't have half her experience and she's still a -800 favorite to win.
And that sounds just about right to me. WANG CONG BY TKO.