CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 117: MANDATORY FUN
CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 117: MANDATORY FUN
UFC 307: Pereira vs Rountree Jr.
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 5 FROM THE DELTA CENTER IN SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH
EARLY PRELIMS 3:30 PM PDT / 6:30 PM EDT | PRELIMS 5 PM / 8 PM | MAIN CARD 7 PM / 10 PM
There have only been three UFC pay-per-views headlined by a women's title fight in the last four years (almost four and a half). Counting this one, across seventy numbered pay-per-view cards, that is roughly 4.3%. Women are around 20% of the UFC's roster and they get four point three percent of the PPV headliners.
Or, rather: Amanda Nunes got four point three percent. Since her retirement in June of 2023 there have been six women's championship bouts (counting this one) and they have all been relegated to co-headliner status or demoted to an ESPN broadcast. For mysterious reasons, not only do women's title fights get booked at a snail's pace--why is Zhang Weili only fighting once a year--they get booked under men's title bouts which have actual marketing behind them.
Anyway, here's a pay-per-view with a title bout between the Women's Bantamweight Champion and the number one contender. It is the co-main event. The main event is Alex Pereira and a guy who was fighting Chris Daukaus one fight ago.
MAIN EVENT: OKAY
LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP: Alex Pereira (11-2, Champion) vs Khalil Rountree Jr. (13-5 (1), #8)
Chris Daukaus! Really! Gosh.
Alex Pereira might be the defining success of the UFC's marketing machine, and they know it, because they are milking him for all he is worth. While this is damning with faint praise in the modern era of the UFC, Poatan is by far the most-talked-about champion in the company. He's a knockout master! He's a stone-cold killer! He's just the third man to record multiple 205-pound title defenses in damn near twenty years!
But his title reign is also declining in quality pretty fast because they keep making silly-ass matchups for him.
His title win over Jiří Procházka was great. His fight with Jamahal Hill was fine, but it was absorbed in the clusterfuck that was the poorly-executed nature of UFC 300 and barely had time to bake. His completely inexplicable rematch defense against Jiří was exactly as abrupt as a last-minute title defense thrown hastily together to convince people not to get refunds for a Conor McGregor rugpull could be.
There's an incredibly logical match to make at Light Heavyweight. It is, undeniably, the only title match to make at Light Heavyweight. Magomed Ankalaev has not lost a fight in six years. He is on a twelve-fight unbeaten streak, and I only say 'unbeaten' because of an immediately-avenged No Contest and a gratuitously bad judging decision that stuck him with a draw instead of a deserved win and a championship to his name. With Raquel Pennington, Belal Muhammad and Merab Dvalishvili all finally avenged, Ankalaev is the undisputed bannerman for passed-over contenders in the UFC.
And they're still passing him over. Magomed still doesn't have a title shot. He's facing Aleksandar Rakić at UFC 308 later this month.
I'm going to repeat that, because it bears repeating: The world champion has an undisputed top contender, and that top contender is fighting later this month, and instead of putting them together, the top contender is scheduled against a guy on a two-fight losing streak.
And the champion is fighting a guy who just fought Chris Daukaus.
Alex Pereira--or his management, anyway--have spoken out about this and mocked Ankalaev for being a boring fighter. Which is funny, because Ankalaev has as many knockouts in the UFC as Pereira does. (More, if you believe in Pride rules.) The uncharitable read is the UFC--and maybe Pereira's team--think Ankalaev has a pretty good chance of unseating him, and they want to get as much mileage out of him as possible before that happens.
Which is why the champion is fighting a guy who just fought Chris Daukaus.
The UFC's been doing a fun thing in their advertisement bumpers for this pay-per-view: They don't really mention Khalil Rountree Jr.'s ranking or his worthiness as a contender, they instead keep repeating 'he's knocked out four of his last five opponents.' Which is true! And those opponents were:
Anthony Smith, who was 1 for his last 3, is perpetually on the brink of retirement, and just lost a fight to a Middleweight
Chris Daukaus, who had not only lost his last three fights before Rountree but had been knocked out in each one and, additionally, was making his 205-pound debut
Karl Roberson, who was fleeing the Middleweight division on a two-fight losing streak and had not won a 205-pound fight since 2017
Modestas Bukauskas, who was also on a two-fight losing streak, had been knocked out in one, and was cut from the UFC after losing to Khalil
The fifth opponent, for the record? The one Rountree didn't knock out? That would be Dustin Jacoby, who was about to start the worst skid of his life that hit its apex this past June when he became the first man to lost a fight to Dominick Reyes in half a decade. Khalil beat Jacoby by split decision. Funny story about that decision:
I am not an unreasonable man. I am not unwilling to entertain underdog title fights. I learned to love the Steve Erceg championship bout this past Spring. But when you have to drop your own marketing down to "our contender has knocked out most but not all of his recent opponents and those are all the details we are prepared to provide at this time" even you, the marketing team, aren't really taking this shit seriously anymore. Even you have to approach this with your tongue in your cheek.
And it's particularly galling because the truth would be marketable enough. Just be honest. You are booking this fight because Khalil Rountree Jr. has never shot a takedown in his fucking life. Just say it! Put a big fucking banner up that reads "WE MADE THIS FIGHT BECAUSE THESE TWO GUYS ARE BOTH KICKBOXERS WHO HIT REALLY HARD AND WE CAN GUARANTEE YOU NO ONE WILL TRY TO USE THE SATANIC ART OF WRESTLING." Put little fine-print filigree around the edges so the really studious fans will see the disclaimer that says "WE REALLY REALLY HOPE ALEX PEREIRA HAS LEARNED TO DEFEND TAKEDOWNS BUT WE CAN'T BE SURE AND AT THIS POINT WE'D RATHER NOT FIND OUT."
I like watching Khalil Rountree Jr. fight! I enjoy his leg kicks and I enjoy the way he sneaks hooks over the guard and I enjoy the way he somehow still gets people to underestimate his stopping power almost a decade after he started knocking people out! But I am also old enough to remember the far-away times of 2021 when Rountree couldn't handle the striking combinations of Marcin Prachnio. It's one thing to improve considerably and work your way to a title shot based on your elevated skills. It's another to get there because you were fourth in line for the Chris Daukaus dunk tank.
And yet, in the midst of all of this, I have an urge to pick Khalil just because the strongest force in mixed martial arts is, and will always be, comedy. Six years ago the UFC booked world-class kickboxing champion Gökhan Saki, in just the third MMA fight of his career, against a then-coming-off-a-loss Rountree in the hopes that he'd get a big star-making win, and Khalil punched Saki out in ninety seconds and he never fought in MMA again.
You cannot tell me you cannot see the path to righteousness here. A champion the UFC has invested years of marketing into, whom they are already grooming for not one but two different champion vs champion bouts, whom they are adamantly keeping away from his top contender, gets a completely obligatory afterthought of a fight against an enormously undeserving fighter who just so happens to also punch like a Mack Truck? There's absolutely a comedy-fueled outcome in which Rountree sneaks a big left hand under Pereira's guard and shuts his lights out and just ruins everything.
And I want that. I even crave that. My heart seeks the absolute chaos of a Khalil Rountree Jr. championship reign that torpedoes between two and five big-money matchups the UFC is desperately banking on.
But I don't think we're going to get it. Rountree's success comes from being able to out-power, out-speed and out-technique his opponents, and he likely does have the speed advantage over the more languid Pereira, but he most definitely isn't beating him on technique, and everything he throws will have to overcome a 4" reach deficit against a man who drops people with single counterpunches.
ALEX PEREIRA BY TKO, but know that Groucho Marx watches fights from the afterlife, and he's very, very interested.
CO-MAIN EVENT: SELF-MARKETING IS THE ONLY MARKETING
WOMEN'S BANTAMWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP: Raquel Pennington (16-8, Champion) vs Julianna Peña (10-5, #1)
I have been complaining about the marketing-imposed heat death of Women's Bantamweight for months, and we have finally arrived here, where the land meets the sky and we can truly see just how bad things are.
The same way we ask why Magomed Ankalaev didn't get the shot at Alex Pereira, we must, with even more incredulity, ask why Kayla Harrison is fighting on this card and somehow it's not for the Women's Bantamweight Championship. In an era of Contender Series roster flooding and antitrust lawsuits, the UFC very, very rarely makes big bids for free agents. They didn't get Paul Hughes. They didn't get Cedric Doumbe. They let Francis Ngannou walk into an eight-figure boxing purse. But they signed Kayla Harrison after her PFL contract expired, because Women's Bantamweight is wanting for stars.
This remains deeply insulting to Raquel Pennington. "Rocky" has become one of the most commonly-derided champions in UFC history thanks to her grinding wrestling game and her plethora of victories by long, slow decisions. Elements of the fanbase call her unmarketable, immemorable and inherently disposable, there as a transitional belt pillow to be immediately replaced by anyone else at the first possible convenience.
Which is funny, because an awful lot of those same talking heads were adamant about Colby Covington being a deeply important fighter you were obligated to pay attention to. No one is shocked that the UFC decided not to put the marketing machine behind the open lesbian like they did the screaming Trump catchphrase man, obviously, and equally, no one who is paying attention is shocked to see the difference in paths between these two fighters.
Because Raquel Pennington had to go through six years of hell to get back to the top after her failure. She got her shot at Amanda Nunes in 2018, it went just as poorly as all of Amanda's other challengers, and then Raquel put her head down and ground her way through damn near every contender they put in her way. They pushed her back down enough times that Raquel had to win six fights--spaced out by a real unfortunate loss to Holly Holm at the start--to get back into title contention.
All Julianna Peña had to do was exist.
When Peña got her shot at Nunes at the end of 2021, it was on the strength of a one-fight winning streak, and said win came against Sara McMann, who was, herself, on a single win after two consecutive losses and a two-year layoff. It was an aggressively silly, rankings-defying fight, and Peña was a completely overlooked +700 underdog, and, of course, she shocked the world and won one of the biggest upsets in the sport's history.
Anytime a dominant champion gets dethroned, doubts seep into the narrative. Anderson Silva wasn't himself because he was clowning too much, Alexander Volkanovski wasn't recovered from the Islam Makhachev knockout, José Aldo got too far in his own head. The emotional investment people have in fighters they've watched for years makes them want to find explanations more mollifying than They Just Lost. But--every once in awhile--something does, in fact, seem off. The world had watched Amanda Nunes fight for years, and the Nunes who fought Julianna Peña in 2021 looked visibly compromised. Slow, confused, exhausted. Peña, as one does, cited them as excuses for people who just didn't want to accept that she was the actual best in the world.
And then they ran it back, and it turned out that Amanda Nunes really did have an off night, because she beat the shit out of Julianna Peña. There was no swift knockout or submission that could allow Peña to claim a similar fluke: Nunes destroyed her in a prolonged, five-round shut-out of a fight that saw her dropping Peña like a cartoon character throws out garbage. There were multiple 10-8 rounds. There was no question about the better fighter. But the series was tied, and the UFC had absolutely nothing else in the tank, so they gleefully booked the trilogy.
It never happened. Julianna Peña got injured in training and dropped off the map for rehabilitation.
The UFC's argument is obvious: Julianna Peña never got her rubber match and she's the last woman to beat Nunes, so no matter what happened in their rematch, she's the #1 contender and nothing can shake that.
Here's the counterargument: Julianna Peña hasn't fought in more than two years, hasn't won a fight in almost three, and does not hold a victory over a single active fighter on the UFC roster.
We're not even talking about ranked opponents, we're talking about anyone. In fact, out of the ten women Julianna has defeated in her career, only three are still active in the sport at all--and even two of them, Sara McMann and Cat Zingano, are active in the sense that they're technically signed to the dying ghost of Bellator, the PFL didn't want them, and they haven't been booked to fight in more than a year.
Raquel Pennington had to go through multiple chain-yankings across multiple years of beating multiple contenders to get back to the belt. Julianna Peña is here because people remember her name being attached to the only Women's Bantamweight the UFC has bothered to get anyone to care about since Ronda Rousey retired.
There is, of course, no force on Earth that would make me pick Julianna in this fight on general principle, being as I strenuously dislike both a) this kind of endlessly cynical, low-effort, market-nobody matchmaking and b) her. Even in a vacuum, I would still favor Raquel's wrestling over Julianna's, nor do I think Raquel has a lot to fear from Julianna's angry windmill punching. But a Julianna Peña who's been on the shelf for 2+ years and is coming back into the cage after an enormous rib injury layoff?
I am pulling for RAQUEL PENNINGTON BY DECISION and I hope the universe is pulling with me.
MAIN CARD: ENTERING THE ROTATION
BANTAMWEIGHT: José Aldo (32-8, #10) vs Mario Bautista (14-2, #11)
You would think after almost twenty damn years I would learn not to doubt José Aldo. When his UFC return was announced this past May, my reaction was a touch muted. As I said at the time, I didn't doubt Aldo could still be a contender, or even think he was necessarily washed up, but after two years away from the sport and three rather uninspiring boxing matches, I wasn't sure how well his skills matched up with the new generation of Bantamweight strikers. I was, as I so often am, completely wrong. Aldo pitched a perfect game against Jonathan Martinez, outstriking him in every round, touching him up at will, and shutting him out so completely that he had to console a visibly frustrated Martinez after the fight was over. His skills are clearly still entirely intact, and his cardio hasn't missed a beat.
Which makes it really weird that he's fighting down in the rankings! Like, no disrespect to Mario Bautista intended, here, he's a really fun fighter who's proven to be really slick at mixing his striking and his grappling into smooth, singular attacks. He also just beat Da'Mon Blackshear and Ricky Simón. Bautista's done good work establishing himself as a genuinely solid dark horse for the Bantamweight division--it took Trevin Jones power and Cory Sandhagen capabilities to deal him his only two losses, and both were years ago--and a six-fight winning streak is undeniable momentum. But Ricky is the only fighter in that streak who actually has a winning record in the UFC, and he gave Bautista a fifteen-minute war that is only aging slightly poorly now that Ricky's on a three-fight losing streak and the verge of release. That does not mean Bautista's a lame duck here; he fights at a blistering pace and a lot of his success comes from simply drowning his opponents in offense.
But I'm not making the same mistake again. JOSÉ ALDO BY DECISION.
WOMEN'S BANTAMWEIGHT: Ketlen Vieira (14-3, #2) vs Kayla Harrison (17-1, #3)
And here, as said above, we have our sort of unnecessary title eliminator. Ketlen Vieira has been at the Almost But Not Quite level of top contendership for around five years, now. Her initial winning streak took her almost to the top, but Irene Aldana shut her down, and Yana Santos--and a weight miss on Vieira's part--closed the door a bit tighter. The UFC tried to use her misfortune to springboard the recently-unretired Miesha Tate back into contendership, but Ketlen ruined the plan by dominating Tate, and then she squeaked out a victory over Holly Holm to get herself into a title eliminator with Raquel Pennington. But she once again disappointed the UFC by coming up on the wrong side of a decision. Now, it's time for Vieira to pass the fortune forward.
Because the UFC, the fanbase and essentially the entire world are expecting Ketlen to lose this fight. Kayla Harrison was brought in to fight for the title. The entire point of contracting Kayla Harrison is getting her to fight for the title. It's frankly shocking the company had enough restraint to force her to fight one more time before putting her in for the title. Between PFL, Invicta and the UFC we're now three companies deep on the six-year mission to turn Kayla into Ronda Rousey 2.0, and having preemptively jettisoned her undefeated record en route to the UFC and thus no longer having to worry about finally losing and running into the woods, she's got a real shot at it. Her debut against Holly Holm was about as definitive as a UFC debut gets, and choking her out looks real good against Vieira's own split decision over Holm.
KAYLA HARRISON BY SUBMISSION is the pick every single gambling house in the country is going with. Vieira's better than she gets credit for, to the point that her +500-600 underdog status here feels a bit overblown, but as mobile and defensively sound as she can be, I don't think it'll keep her from getting chucked to the floor across three rounds of attempts.
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Roman Dolidze (13-3, #10) vs Kevin Holland (26-11 (1), #15)
The path Roman Dolidze has taken across the UFC in 2024 is deeply, deeply bizarre. At the start of the year he was numerically eliminated from real Middleweight contendership after getting trounced by Nassourdine Imavov--except it became a majority decision rather than a unanimous decision thanks primarily to Imavov losing a point for flagrant cheating. Dolidze was supposed to rebound with a fringe-top-ten fight against Anthony Hernandez, but a hand injury for Hernandez scratched the fight. Then, three weeks later, complete chaos erupted at UFC 303: Jamahal Hill was supposed to fight Khalil Rountree Jr., but Rountree got flagged for a drug failure that wound up being tainted supplements, so Hill was given Carlos Ulberg, only for Hill to blow out his knee, leaving Ulberg to fight Anthony Smith, only for Ulberg to pull out with injuries, and thus, with a week to prepare, Roman Dolidze went up to 205 pounds to face the #10 Light Heavyweight in the UFC. And he won! Roman Dolidze could have laid claim to a ranking at a higher, shittier weight class!
But he didn't want it. He wanted to be a late replacement again. Kevin Holland was supposed to fight Chris Curtis tonight, but a broken foot took Curtis out of the running. Holland's been on his own weight class-defying odyssey. He left 185 pounds and dropped to 170 in 2022, and he was good enough to get into the top fifteen, but he found himself repeatedly dashed on the rocks of real contendership. When you get outgrappled by Khamzat Chimaev, outkicked by Stephen Thompson, outpunched by Jack Della Maddalena and outdanced by Michael "Venom" Page, you have been shut out of essentially every aspect of contendership and there's nowhere to go but back up to Middleweight. His return bout against Michał Oleksiejczuk this past June was successful but marred by controversy; he snatched an armbar on Oleksiejczuk and got a technical stoppage after Herb Dean ruled the arm had been broken, but Michał disagreed, and given that Michał actually wound up back in the cage again two full months before Holland did, he probably had a point.
But the past is the past and we must live in the present, and in that present, this feels like a really bad matchup for Dolidze. If he can get Holland on the floor he's got a real grappling advantage and can probably pretzel Holland's legs behind his head, but Dolidze's shown a real problem with speed disadvantages in his fights, and not only is Holland real fuckin' fast, he's got half a foot of reach he can use to bounce punches off Roman's head while he approaches. KEVIN HOLLAND BY TKO.
PRELIMS: KARATE MAN VS HUMAN BRICK
WELTERWEIGHT: Stephen Thompson (17-7-1, #9) vs Joaquin Buckley (19-6, #11)
I'm not sure the UFC ever truly forgave Stephen Thompson for failing to rid them of Tyron Woodley. Thompson's bouncy karate style has dealt with one of the hardest schedules in MMA history: Over the last full decade of his career 9 of his 14 opponents either were world champions or fought for the chance to become one. Thompson soundly defeated four of the five men left over, and the fifth, Shavkat Rakhmonov, is almost certainly about to challenge for the title in his next fight. Thompson's loss to Shavkat is unfortunately indicative of the Extracting Value phase of his career. Using Thompson to get contenders over isn't anything new--the UFC's been doing it since Darren Till back in 2018--but in the here and now, Thompson is 1 for his last 4. There's no shame in losing to the top-tier title challengers he's losing to, but it does stunt your momentum enough that the company gets to pair you with progressively lower prospects, and that's the path that leads us to Joaquin Buckley. I was skeptical when Buckley dropped out of the Middleweight division to pursue a future at 170 pounds, given the wrestling and cardio advantages his opponents would seem to have, but the man has improved both his conditioning and his game, and they've propelled him to a four-fight winning streak that has him knocking on the door of contention. Some of it has been weird--I still have no idea what on earth perpetual violence engine Vicente Luque was doing during their bout, but it sure wasn't fighting--and it's real, real strange to proceed to a Welterweight contendership bout after beating Nursulton Ruziboev, who had never fought at Welterweight in the UFC before. But Buckley has won, and has defied my expectations for his impending loss every step of the way.
Which is why I am picking STEPHEN THOMPSON BY DECISION. Buckley's best advantages come from physicality, but his striking and wrestling rely a lot more on said physicality than cleanliness of technique. If he can pin Thompson to the fence and drag him through fifteen minutes of grappling he won't have trouble, but Thompson has been very good at staying the hell away from people as long as they aren't among the best grapplers in the sport, and I'm just not convinced Buckley's there.
WOMEN'S STRAWWEIGHT: Marina Rodriguez (17-4-2, #6) vs Iasmin Lucindo (16-5, #14)
The UFC has kind-of sort-of given up on Marina Rodriguez. Marina was one of the earliest women brought forth from the Contender Series, the UFC put a lot of hype behind her tight boxing and solid gas tank, and then her 2018 debut wound up being a majority draw against Randa Markos, a woman who ultimately retired at 11-11-1, and boy, that probably should have set their expectations. It is not that Marina Rodriguez is bad. Marina Rodriguez has never been bad. She's very, very good, she's been a rankings fixture for years, and after ten years of competition against some of the best in the world she's only ever been stopped once. But she's cemented herself as a fighter who just can't quite win The Big One. She couldn't beat Cynthia Calvillo in 2019, she lost a split decision to Carla Esparza in 2020, she only barely made it past Xiaonan Yan in 2022, and she's spent the last two years of her career on the worst run of her life, going 1-3 against all her ranked competition. And that one win came against Michelle Waterson-Rodriguez, whom she'd already crushed once and who retired just one fight later. Thus, like Stephen Thompson, Rodriguez is on prospect check duty. The UFC had big hopes for Iasmin Lucindo, too. In a rare case of actually promoting a fighter, they made a lot of noise about her double-debut fight against fellow rookie Yazmin Jauregui back in the Summer of 2022. Lucindo lost a tough, scrappy battle, but she ultimately won the war; Jauregui is a mixed bag of success and failure, whereas Lucindo is on an unbroken three-fight winning streak that culminated in a big victory over fan favorite and recently-resurgent Karolina Kowalkiewicz. And, boy, it was one-sided. Iasmin's pace and her ability to mix aggressive boxing with quick switches into stifling grappling attacks have made her enough of a potential contender that the UFC is ready to jump her from the periphery of the division all the way into the zone of contention.
This is a real tough matchup. Marina may be on a skid, but she hasn't looked actively bad in any of those losses. I am still going with IASMIN LUCINDO BY DECISION just based on her ability to keep Marina on her back foot all night, but Marina's probably the biggest live underdog on the card.
LIGHTWEIGHT: Austin Hubbard (16-7) vs Alexander Hernandez (14-8)
Poor Alexander Hernandez seems like he's on his way out. Once upon a time Hernandez was a hugely-hyped prospect with serious championship potential; that time was 2018. In 2024, Hernandez is 3 for his last 9, 1 for his last 5, and is kept from the dreaded three-fight losing streak by a sole decision victory over Jim Miller. Hernandez was hoping a drop to Featherweight would reignite his career, but he has yet to actually score a victory after four attempts at the weight class, and the future isn't looking much brighter. Austin "Thud" Hubbard was the runner-up for The Ultimate Fighter 31 (do you still have energy for this gimmick, because I sure don't), a title he had choked away from him by Kurt Holobaugh. Both men were on the second-chance team, having been cut from the UFC previously--in Hubbard's case it was after going a respectable 3-5--but Holobaugh lost his first fight as a newly-contracted UFC fighter and Hubbard won his, so who's really the TUF champion? (It's Holobaugh.) Also, while Hubbard may have beaten Michal Figlak, he lost on every single media scorecard in large part because Figlak outstruck and outgrappled him, but judges do what judges do.
This is, at this point, more of a check-up on Hernandez. It's one thing to lose to Billy Quarantillo and Renato Moicano; if you cannot beat Austin Hubbard, the dream is over. But they're back at 155 pounds, and I just did not like what I saw from Hubbard in that Figlak fight, and while I will almost certainly regret it, I'm choosing to believe one more time. ALEXANDER HERNANDEZ BY DECISION.
MIDDLEWEIGHT: César Almeida (5-1) vs Ihor Potieria (21-6)
Remember what I was saying up in the main event about the strongest force in mixed martial arts being comedy? Ihor Potieria is one of its gods on Earth, and we are blessed to live at the same time he walks our lands. Ihor got on the UFC's radar by taking ridiculous squash matches in his native Ukraine--we're talking about facing debuting fighters when he was 16 bouts into his career--and rode a knockout over an even bigger can crusher in the Contender Series to the company proper, where he was immediately destroyed by everyone he fought. Except Shogun. In the middle of getting crushed by prospects, Potieria somehow, inexplicably, got tapped for living legend Maurício Rua's retirement fight. The last moment of one of the greatest careers in combat sports came to an end with Pride tournament champion, UFC world champion and one of the greatest 205-pound fighters of all time getting punched stupid by a guy who got flattened by Carlos Ulberg a few months later. The UFC has no love for this man. They throw him at every prospect they're mildly invested in. Hell, he was supposed to be sacrificed to the preposterously overpushed Shara Magomedov in Saudi Arabia before plans had to change. César Almeida is neither a Shara nor a Shogun, he's just a former kickboxer who beat Alex Pereira more than a decade ago, and the UFC would love to get him somewhere that matters, but he struggled with Dylan Budka and he lost to Roman Kopylov and very little looks good for his future prospects.
But he can probably beat up Ihor Potieria. CÉSAR ALMEIDA BY TKO.
EARLY PRELIMS: YOU DESERVED BETTER, CARLA
LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHT: Ovince St. Preux (27-17) vs Ryan Spann (21-10)
This bout was scheduled for last month's Burns vs Brady card and had to be hastily cancelled at the last minute after St. Preux got sick, and that means it's rerun time.
I don't know, man. What do you want me to say? What can I say? What can anyone possibly say? It's Ryan Spann, who somehow simultaneously has a definitive knockout victory over a top 15 opponent yet remains on a three-fight losing streak and looks nigh-unto done, and it's OSP, who has been fighting since Space Ghost Coast to Coast was still being made and hasn't managed back-to-back victories since 2017, and even then it was only because said victories were bridged together by a bout with Yushin Okami, the third-most promising Middleweight contender of 2006. It's 2024 and this is a borderline-ranked fight between a competitor with two 2020s losses to Anthony Smith and a seventy-two year-old man and whoever wins has the honor of getting to fight Alonzo Menifield or Dustin Jacoby while the cells in our skin slowly break down and slough away in a desperate attempt to escape the horrors of the Light Heavyweight division.
I flipped a coin and it fell into a crack in the Earth rather than render judgment on the death of meaning. RYAN SPANN BY DECISION.
WOMEN'S STRAWWEIGHT: Carla Esparza (19-7) vs Tecia Pennington (13-7)
It's both deeply disrespectful and oddly appropriate that this is the end of the Carla Esparza story. I have no love lost for Carla, and a perfunctory glance through my history of writing about her and her habit of going on Fox News to misgender trans people for kicks is illustrative, but in a sport that takes itself more seriously, she would considerably more respected than she is now. She's the first-ever Women's Strawweight champion in UFC history, she's a two-time champion despite nearly a decade separating her reigns, and both of those title victories came over one of the greatest ever in Rose Namajunas. Hell, Carla has a definitive victory over Alexa Grasso, a champion an entire weight class up and the woman who dethroned a GOAT candidate in Valentina Shevchenko. Weili Zhang had to accept a decision victory against Xiaonan Yan; Carla stopped her in two rounds. Virna Jandiroba is on the precipice of a title fight after proving herself to be one of the most dangerous grapplers in the division; Carla outgrappled her and almost choked her out. Esparza vs Namajunas 2 is one of the worst fights in mixed martial arts history, but by god, if that isn't an accomplishment of its own, nothing is. And now, in her retirement fight, Carla is fighting second fiddle to Ovince St. Preux all the way down on the early prelims and she's a betting underdog to Tecia Pennington.
She probably should be. Tecia's faster and essentially impossible to finish and just dealt with Mackenzie Dern's grappling without folding; she'll probably win. But I will see Carla off into the sunset with one last salute. Godspeed, you bigoted jackass. CARLA ESPARZA BY DECISION.
WELTERWEIGHT: Court McGee (21-13) vs Tim Means (33-16-1)
I refuse to believe this fight hasn't already happened. I refuse to believe this fight hasn't happened a dozen times. I refuse to believe Court McGee and Tim Means have not been fighting each other for the entirety of their combined UFC tenures. Means is at 15-13 (1), McGee's at 10-12, and that means between these two fighters alone we've got 51 UFC fights, which is a preposterous statistic, and somehow in that half-century of combat these two men who have fought everyone have not fought each other. I've been a fan of both men and their styles for just about a decade and a half, which is a terrifying sentence, and between the violent, tricky opportunism of Means and the grinding inevitability of Court McGee, it's tough to tell who has the better resume for giving people just some of the most miserable nights of their entire lives.
But I do think McGee has less left in the tank. In my heart of hearts I want this to be another Zak Cummings/Ed Herman situation where both men retire together. For now, however: TIM MEANS BY DECISION.