CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 118: WHAT WE LEARN TO LIVE WITH
UFC Fight Night: Royval vs Taira
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 12 FROM THE MERCILESS NOTHING OF THE APEX
PRELIMS 1 PM PDT / 4 PM EDT | MAIN CARD 4 PM / 7 PM
Just for the record, the text isn't bad because I messed up cropping it or something, they made it that way on purpose. They made three aspect ratio variants of the poster, each cuts the text in a different way and none of them display the whole thing. Graphic design is my etc. etc.
When I wrote the monthly previews for this card I said I was looking forward to it. This is, still, true. Royval/Taira is a hell of a fight, Tavares/Park should be fun, you can't ever go wrong with CJ Vergara--there's a lot of entertainment value to be had here.
But it's also hard to ignore only having two ranked fighters on the entire card. It is hard to ignore 2/3 of the fighters on this card either coming off a loss or making their UFC debut. Virtually all of the real meaning in this card comes from its main event and everything else is killing time.
But, boy, it's a main event.
MAIN EVENT: TOO GOOD FOR THIS
FLYWEIGHT: Brandon Royval (16-7, #1) vs Tatsuro Taira (16-0, #5)
Flyweight gives us such glorious bounties, but it challenges itself through its own excellence.
The division has an issue, and it's world champion Alexandre Pantoja. Namely: He's already beaten so many goddamn contenders. He beat Brandon Royval twice. He beat Brandon Moreno three times. He choked out Alex Perez, he survived Steve Erceg, he outworked Manel Kape, he knocked out Matt Schnell. He even beat Kai Kara-France back on The Ultimate Fighter 24 (jesus christ). As a champion he's already beaten more than half of the top ten--several of them multiple times.
When you're Brandon Royval, that's a problem. On one hand: You are, easily, one of the absolute best Flyweights in the world. The only people to beat you in the UFC are world champions Pantoja and Moreno, and you even avenged that Moreno loss just this year! But you also got beat by Pantoja less than twelve months ago, and it was the second time, and it was a near-shutout on the scorecards. It takes a lot of rebuilding to get another crack at the top of the mountain, but it takes even more when it's the second time the man on top has kicked you back down to Earth.
It turns you into a problem the UFC needs to solve, and make no mistake, this is their attempt at solving it. When you're the #1 contender, and you're coming off a main-event victory over a former world champion in the middle of Mexico City, and your next fight is an Apex fight against the guy at #5?
They're not doing it for you.
Tatsuro Taira has been a UFC contendership project since the day he walked through the door back in May of 2022. The UFC has wanted a Japanese champion for a very long time--they've had five men try in their 31 years of operation and none were able to succeed aside from one special exception in the form of Kazushi Sakuraba, who managed to win a four-man tournament by fighting one guy twice in five minutes--and Taira's the best chance they've had in a long time. Undefeated as both an amateur and professional, already held gold under Shooto, incredibly dangerous submissions from both top and bottom positions, quick, canny wrestling and, when he needs it, a laser beam of a right hand.
The world already expected a lot from Taira at his debut, and in the rare story of a prospect panning out, he's made good on all of those expectations. He choked out CJ Vergara, he stopped Jesus Aguilar, he pounded out Carlos Hernandez, and in his true contendership exam this past June he took on Alex Perez and damn near crippled him. He didn't knock him out, he didn't submit him: He got up in the backpack position, he hooked his foot behind one of Alex's knees, and he blew the other one out sweeping him to the ground. Some tried to write it off as a freak accident, but respectfully, if a man crawls on your back, immobilizes your leg and forces you to collapse so hard one of your limbs implodes, that's not an accident, that's art.
Of course, this begs the question: Why are we here? If Taira's already 6-0, if he's getting brutal finishes, if Royval has already failed to win the big one, why are we having this specific fight?
I said Taira was a UFC project. Unfortunately, at the same time they've made good on him, they've kinda bungled him. Taira is 6-0, and all of those wins were extremely solid. Five of them also happened on the prelims. Four of those five were on the early prelims. Taira's second-to-last fight was outranked by Luana Santos vs Stephanie Egger.
They took him from five straight preliminary bouts to an Apex main event. It wasn't a good Apex card, either--if you think that Brad Tavares vs Jun Yong Park fight in the next section is a little weak on name value as a co-main event, the anchor for Taira/Perez was Miles Johns vs Douglas Silva de Andrade. And I love Douglas Silva de Andrade. But for all of his promise, and for all the credibility the UFC has successfully attached to Tatsuro Taira, they've failed to actually make him visible.
Which is where Brandon Royval comes back into the picture. Royval's been a quiet MVP for the UFC, and they know it, because they've kept him as far away from the empty warehouse that is the Apex as possible. Where most fighters suffer the indignity of the darkness, Royval has been reserved for cards with live crowds since January of 2022. They're fully aware of his talents and his must-see-TV status; they're fully aware of how little they want him back in another title fight unless they have no other choice.
Coincidentally, Tatsuro Taira is a -350 favorite to win this fight.
There is, to some extent, a desire in the fanbase to see Taira win. It may not be fair to Royval, but we've seen him do this twice and I don't think anyone expects a different result from "Raw Dawg" getting a third bite at the apple. Taira is new, young, undefeated and the best possibility the sport has for fulfilling the Takanori Gomi prophecy of a Japanese fighter getting gold in one of the best weight classes in the western world. A couple years ago I would have picked Taira without a second thought.
But Brandon Royval has tuned up his game. The Royval who lost to Moreno and Pantoja the first time around fought wild and tended to lose control of his weapons, his cardio and, sometimes, his shoulder joints; the Royval of 2023 has learned to be patient, learned to reserve his sprints for opportunistic moments. Taira's conservative approach and carefully-scouted punches would have chewed up wild-eyed do-or-die Royval, but the current era of the man is a much tougher challenge.
That said: TATSURO TAIRA BY SUBMISSION. Taira's best work is on the ground, and that's where he's going to want to take Royval apart. The standup is dangerous for him, but his top control is far more likely to break Royval down once he gets him there. If he can avoid the flurries, pick his spots and force Royval to defend the grappling all night, eventually, he'll make an opening. And assuredly, this Apex victory will change everything.
CO-MAIN EVENT: Brad Tavares vs Jun Yong Park
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Brad Tavares vs Jun Yong Park
It's not even that I don't like these guys. I love these guys! I have written about my intense appreciation for the longevity of Brad Tavares and the cult of personality surrounding the Iron Turtle's violent clinch assailings on numerous occasions. But for one, it's kind of a big step down in relevance from the main, and for two, it was supposed to happen in July.
Tavares and Park were a day away from mixing it up as the co-main for Amanda Lemos vs Virna Jandiroba, and they came out, and they made weight, and then Park turned out to have a staph infection and doctors immediately cancelled the whole thing.
But that means I get to do my favorite thing: Air a rerun.
The math of what does and doesn't catch on in this sport is nonsense.
Brad Tavares has spent damn near his entire career in the UFC. Twenty-eight men wound up fighting in the preliminary round of The Ultimate Fighter 11 (ahura mazda) all the way back in 2010, but only two are still actively participating in mixed martial arts. One is Court McGee, who is 3 for his last 10 and has been talking about retiring for half a decade. The other is Brad Tavares, who just beat a former world champion one fight ago.
His career is almost silly. Six different world champions, a score of title contenders, a featured role in a reality television show that aired right alongside no less than Blue Mountain State and reruns of Son of the Beach. He's been a measuring stick at the highest level of the sport longer than most fighters last altogether. His tenure as a gatekeeper of the sport is almost irrationally stable in its tenure.
And, man, people just don't really care. Tavares has been doing this forever and his resume stands with some of the best and the consciousness of the sport just refuses to flow around him. He's been here since Jason Mraz won two goddamn Grammys and their psychic impacts on their respective fields of study are just about even.
Because you can't make people care. You can do something cool enough that they cannot keep themselves from caring, but you cannot force the care to exist. People must irrationally choose to care.
From that perspective, it must kind of suck when someone like Jun Yong Park shows up and a surprising number of people just kind of love them.
Maybe it's his victory dance. Maybe my dreams have come true and the world is really invested in clinch grappling again. Maybe he's going to spend his entire career coasting on the good will he earned for defeating Eryk Anders. Maybe you just can't underestimate the value of a good nickname in marketing and "The Iron Turtle" is an absolute first-ballot contender for the greatest of all time.
There's no Topurian superstardom behind him, but there is more fan good will and desire for success behind Park than just about anyone else in the Middleweight division shy of Robert Whittaker himself, and Park has done his damnedest to not let his fans down. He had a rough go of it in his UFC debut against Anthony Hernandez, and he got punched out by Gregory Rodrigues almost three years ago, but thanks to his strict dedication to gritty, hard-nosed clinch-throwing Bothering Of Men, he's on a four-fight winning streak.
It should probably be five. When last we saw him in December it was in a split-decision loss to André Muniz, but most of the media cards had Park ahead. Muniz was a tough test, to be sure, as one of the few grapplers capable of really bucking Park off of him and forcing him to defend some terrible positions, but that fight also ended with Park on top of him, slugging him in the face. In a better world, Park is fighting for a spot in the rankings tonight.
But in a better world, Brad Tavares is better-regarded by the mixed martial arts fanbase. He's still exceptionally mobile given how much mileage he's accrued, and his leg kicks are still an underrated part of his gameplan, and he's also gotten stunned by strikes in ways he used to comfortably absorb twice in his last three fights. At a certain point, inevitability gets us all, and nothing is more inevitable than the likelihood that The Iron Turtle is going to drag you down and hurt you. JUN YONG PARK BY SUBMISSION.
MAIN CARD: I GET BY WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM MY FREMDS
LIGHTWEIGHT: Grant Dawson (21-2-1) vs Rafa García (16-3)
There's some real A Tale of Two Cities shit happening in the world of Grant Dawson. One week ago we saw a man get a title shot on extremely dubious grounds because he was categorically guaranteed to come nowhere close to attempting a takedown--and because it was Light Heavyweight, one of the weakest divisions in the sport. Down at Lightweight, arguably the strongest division in the sport, Grant Dawson burnt through nine straight fights over almost five years without a loss--but because it was Lightweight, and because he was a wrestling-type Pokémon, it only begrudgingly got him into the #10 spot. When he finally got his first main event it wasn't even against a ranked fighter, but the unranked Bobby Green, and when Green shocked the world by crumpling Dawson with one punch it sent Grant all the way to the back of the line. He was back on the prelims fighting Joe Solecki one fight later, and now he's here, still unranked, still fighting people well below the rankings that the UFC would much rather see get ahead.
And they do love them some Rafa García. Rafa was an undefeated champion in Mexico's Combate Americas when the UFC picked him up on a late replacement contract, and three and a half years later, he's...well, he's 4-3, but it's a surprisingly well-pushed 4-3. If the UFC does not at least care about you a little, they do not put you in the cage with Clay Guida, who at this point is essentially the Brooklyn Brawler of mixed martial arts. Garcia's all-around skillset doesn't translate into finishes all that often, which makes the UFC's pushing a little unusual, but he's also always fun to watch, never out of a fight, and one of the dying embers of a company that scouted the world for top talent rather than compressing them all through the Play-Doh extruder of the Contender Series. Even Dawson, himself, went through the grist mill. Ordinarily, you cannot stop the UFC from giving their Contenders the best matchups in the world. But Dawson shoots doubles and Rafa throws punches, and by god, we know where the bread is buttered.
But the buttered side always hits the ground, and in all likelihood, so will Rafa. He's fun as hell, but he also got outwrestled by Drakkar Klose not too long ago, and Dawson's one of the best wrestlers in the division. There is a big difference between stopping doubles from 2023 Clay Guida and stopping them from someone whose bones are not yet filled with sawdust. If Rafa can keep Dawson at length and lamp him coming in the same way Green did, he's got a chance, but that kind of one-shot timing and power has never been his wheelhouse, and in a three-round grind, I favor the wrestler. GRANT DAWSON BY DECISION.
WOMEN'S STRAWWEIGHT: Cory McKenna (8-3) vs Julia Polastri (12-4)
I have to admit, I'm a little surprised to see Cory McKenna this high on the card. I'm not complaining--lord knows I do enough complaining about the UFC's general refusal to promote women--but McKenna's only been on the main portion of a card once in her four years in the UFC, and that once was, uh, her debut four years ago. It's especially surprising given that the last time we saw Cory she got run through by Jaqueline Amorim in a minute and a half. Twice! In one of those moments that reminds you there are no actual rules or penalties in the sport and all regulations are merely suggestions, Cory took Jaqueline down, was almost immediately stuck in a triangle choke, made about 90% of the sign of tapping out only to not actually touch the leg, prompting the referee to stop the fight and rescind his own decision about two seconds later without actually pausing the action. So Amorim ripped her arm apart instead. It's half a year later, McKenna's got functional limbs again, and she wants revenge.
Which is convenient, because Julia Polastri does, too. It took an aggressively silly amount of effort for "Psycho" to finally get into the UFC. A dozen wins, a knockout over a future Invicta champion, a title fight in the LFA, two strikes at the Contender Series, but in 2023 Polastri finally got her contract. And then she sat on the shelf for 2/3 of a year because no one could make it into the cage. Josefine Knutsson was injured, Stephanie Luciano had Dengue fever, and the UFC had nothing for Polastri to do but wait for one of them to get better. Finally, this past June, Julia got her debut thanks to a rescheduling of that Knutsson fight, and after seven years of professional fighting Polastri finally got her moment in the UFC cage. She, of course, lost. Knutsson jabbed and kicked her at will, and despite a rally in the second round that saw Polastri finally exerting ground control she failed to get the finish or a single nod from any judges, be they professional or media.
McKenna presents different challenges. There's no fear of getting outstruck at range for Polastri here; McKenna has maybe the shortest reach in the company at 58.5" and she tends to use it by swimming in for hooks and double-legs. McKenna is, however, a decent wrestler, which means Polastri will have trouble enacting her usual top game control. Polastri can crack, and given a chance she can sit McKenna down, but when I picture the fight I'm just seeing a prolonged swarming. CORY MCKENNA BY DECISION.
WELTERWEIGHT: Daniel Rodriguez (17-5) vs Alex Morono (24-10)
The Daniel Rodriguez star has fallen awfully far. Towards the end of 2022, "D-Rod" looked like a dark horse contender for the Welterweight division: A hard-chinned, technically sound boxer with some real sting in his jabs and genuine fluidity in his combinations. After a close but controversial split decision against Li Jingliang at the ill-fated Chimaev vs DiazDiaz vs Ferguson, he even had a top fifteen ranking to his name. And then he got choked out by Neil Magny. And then he got crushed by Ian Machado Garry in one round. And then he tried to welcome Kelvin Gastelum back to 170 pounds, wound up fighting at 185 after Kelvin couldn't make weight, and lost the fight anyway. It's not just the three-fight losing streak or the death of his momentum, it's his degradation as a fighter. Rodriguez missed an entire year to have hand surgery (and serve a suspension after pissing hot for ostarine), and while some of his losses can obviously be chalked up to harder competition, he's seemed downright gunshy since repairing his phalanges. As it turns out, when your best weapon is your boxing, that's a problem.
Alex Morono is downright lost in the shuffle. Morono's 20+ fights deep into his UFC career at this point, he's more than cemented his place in the company, but where exactly that place is has come into question. For a long time Morono was at the periphery of the rankings, but he got there backwards, going from Donald Cerrone to David Zawada to fuckin' Mickey Gall. Beating Matthew Semelsberger was cool, but now that Semi the Jedi is 1 for his last 5, it's less impressive. Morono was half a round away from beating Santiago Ponzinibbio, but then he got trashed, and now he may be trading wins and losses back and forth, but the wins will be over folks like Tim Means or Court McGee and the losses will be against Niko Price and Joaquin Buckley. He's been pretty categorically eliminated from relevance, which means he has to either establish himself as a gatekeeper or tumble down further into 'a vaguely-recognizable name we trot out to get trashed by people we care about' territory.
And if you'd asked me about this fight a couple years ago I would have said Rodriguez would carve Morono up without hesitation, and now, man, I'm not sure. Morono's a forward-moving fighter, and Rodriguez at his best was a pace-setting puncher, but he hasn't set the pace in several fights and, frankly, he hasn't done much punching to write home about recently. At the end of the day I think Morono's tendency to keep the same pace through a fight is going to let Rodriguez catch him, so I'm going with DANIEL RODRIGUEZ BY TKO, but if he loses this may be the end of my faith in D-Rod.
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Josh Fremd (11-6) vs Abdul Razak Alhassan (12-6 (1))
Poor, poor Josh Fremd. The UFC expected nothing from you but a series of losses, and then you beat Sedriques Dumas, whom Dana White inexplicably loves, and then you made it worse by committing the cardinal sin of missing weight, and after that it was into the woodchipper for you. Roman Kopylov punched out your liver, Andre Petroski ground you into the mat for fifteen minutes while an audience booed the both of you, and now you're the underdog in a fight with a guy who's lost as many UFC fights as he's won. I will never not carry a deep-seated appreciation for your derailing of the Dumas express, but I fear your time with us is limited and I am missing you already.
Which may be premature, because Abdul Razak Alhassan hasn't been setting the world on fire either. He's 6-6 (1) in the UFC, 1/3 of his wins in the company were just fighting Sabah Homasi repeatedly, and somehow, he went from being a coinflip away from beating Joaquin Buckley to getting dominated by Joe Pyfer. But the greatest hilarity and/or indignity came from his fight with Cody Brundage this past July, which ended in a No Contest just thirty-seven seconds in after Alhassan chose to defend a takedown by repeatedly stabbing Brundage in the brainstem with 12-6 elbows. Even with the forthcoming rule change: Still incredibly illegal.
I would love to see Fremd hang on a bit longer here, and he's got a giant half-foot size advantage, but Alhassan undoubtedly hits harder and, with his judo background, will be much harder for Fremd to neutralize in the clinch. Regretfully, I've gotta go ABDUL RAZAK ALHASSAN BY DECISION, but I would enjoy being wrong.
PRELIMS: NITE TRAIN TO TERROR
WELTERWEIGHT: Chidi Njokuani (23-10) vs Jared Gooden (23-9)
The UFC had really big plans for Chidi Njokuani, and three years and a 3-3 record later, they're still really reluctant to give them up. Chidi was supposed to be part of the new vanguard of Welterweight knockout artists, with ridiculous reach, stopping power to spare and an allergy to wrestling--after five attempts at shooting under the UFC's corporate banner Chidi's takedown accuracy rating is 0%, so you may be able to gather why--and becoming the first man to knock out the particularly durable Marc-André Barriault made a solid case for him. And then he lost three fights in a row. He went tough-for-tough with Gregory Rodrigues, which is always a mistake, and he got ground out by Albert Duraev, which happens to a lot of folks, but Michał Oleksiejczuk simply knocked him out, and that's a bad look for a killer striker. When last we saw Chidi he managed to beat Rhys McKee, but it was a close call against his wrestling, and when you're scraping close decisions off people who've gone 0-4 in the UFC it's a bad look. But it is a look, and Jared Gooden is still trying to get one of his own. Gooden got cut from the UFC back in 2021 on the back of a 1-for-3 run and a weight miss, he had a truly bizarre stint on the regional circuit that included two separate victories by opponents inexplicably injuring themselves in mid-fight and a third where Demarques Jackson was so tired he knocked himself down throwing a haymaker and couldn't get back up. People tried to hold it against Gooden that he missed weight again in his return to the UFC last year, but it was a last-minute, days-of-notice affair, so it's pretty understandable. Unfortunately, he still lost. He had a solid comeback right at the end of the year with a club-and-sub over Wellington Turman, so it's not all bad news.
This fight is, though. Gooden's not a power-wrestler, he's not a dominating-top-game kind of guy, he likes to stand and bang, and that is, coincidentally, Chidi's best kind of matchup. CHIDI NJOKUANI BY TKO.
FLYWEIGHT: CJ Vergara (12-5-1) vs Ramazonbek Temirov (17-2)
Poor CJ Vergara is seemingly responsible for dealing with every major international prospect that comes through the Flyweight division. He got eaten alive by our main event superstar Tatsuro Taira in 2022, he just finished getting thoroughly outwrestled by Kazakhstani prospect Asu Almabayev this past March, and now, as a 50/50 fighter in the UFC in a division with almost no easy fights, he has to deal with Uzbekistan's Ramazan Temirov. Temirov's been on prospect watch for awhile, but the hardcore fanbase will know him from the 2023 he spent beating the absolute shit out of solid Japanese Flyweights in Rizin. Takaki Soya may not be the best, but I'll say this: John Dodson fighting bareknuckle couldn't stop Takaki Soya, WEC title challenger Yoshiro Maeda couldn't stop Takaki Soya, Ramazonbek Temirov dropped him in one round. Vergara is a wild fighter himself, but his wild streak comes from pursuing aggressive flying knees and hunting for finishes when he sees openings. Temirov's wild streak comes from throwing John Lineker punches where he pivots his entire body into single arm swings.
It would not surprise me at all to see Temirov's aggression used against him, it would not surprise me to see Vergara control him and ground him out, but I'm choosing to hope for the fun answer. RAMAZONBEK TEMIROV BY TKO.
FEATHERWEIGHT: Jonathan Pearce (14-6) vs Pat Sabatini (18-5)
The universe is mocking me. This fight exists so the universe can mock me. I have written so, so very many words about my radical love of grinding wrestlers over the years, but I have always held that there are two I simply cannot find the emotions in my heart to care for, and it's these two dudes right here. They're the breaking point; the place my great grappling glacier falls from under my feet and drifts into the sea to become so many McDonalds ice cubes. I may have held it against Jonathan Pearce since day one that he chose "JSP" as a nickname, because truly, come the fuck on, but I have no such excuse for Pat Sabatini. There was no provocation, no event that drove me away from his double-legging arms. Hell, he hit a goddamn heel hook! In the UFC! In the 2020s! I should by all rights worship at his altar. But I see Pat Sabatini and my eyes glaze over and all I can think about is how much I miss Sean Sherk and how much more I wish I wasn't so plugged into this sport that I see the ridiculous shit 90% of professional fighters spend their free time tweeting about, and then my eyes cease to glaze over and it turns out both men have lost multiple fights recently and I somehow failed to notice.
They're both solid wrestlers but I think Pearce is a bit more technical, and he's also a lot fucking bigger. JONATHAN PEARCE BY DECISION.
WELTERWEIGHT: Niko Price (16-7) vs Themba Gorimbo (13-4)
Boy, if you're Niko Price, you've gotta be kind of pissed off, right? You just beat Alex Morono! It was only four months ago! It was on the main card of a fucking Islam Makhachev vs Dustin Poirier pay-per-view! And yet, somehow, you're all the way down here, midway through the preliminary card fighting as a +250 underdog, and Alex Morono, the guy you just beat, is up on the main card fighting a guy who was just in the ring with Kelvin fucking Gastelum. Like, if you're Niko Price you've gotta know the UFC isn't going to invest in you anymore, you've been trading wins and losses back and forth for six straight years and you get a win turned into a No Contest every few years because you smoke too much weed, but fun fact: You know who Niko Price beat that first time in 2017 his weed cost him a win? ALEX MORONO. He beat the dude twice in two separate decades and he's still playing second fiddle to him. Christ alive. Themba Gorimbo remains an anomaly, as the UFC clearly wants to put marketing behind him and turn him into a real thing, but they just don't quite get how he fits into the puzzle. He's not a knockout artist, he's not a grappling expert, he's just Pretty Good and softly-spoken and in the grim future of war the techpriests no longer have access to the ancient scriptures on how to promote good fighters, only loud ones.
So Price is the yardstick. Themba has the all-around skills to win this fight, he can beat Price to the punch and he should be able to ground him when necessary, but Price is also a tough motherfucker and very few people have managed to walk through him. I'm still going with THEMBA GORIMBO BY DECISION but he's going to have to account for Price's ability to fight like a fucking weirdo.
HEAVYWEIGHT: Junior Tafa (5-3) vs Sean Sharaf (4-0)
I swear to god, Heavyweight. I swear. For months this fight was Waldo Cortes-Acosta vs Chris Barnett, which is, in fairness, very funny matchmaking. "Salsa Boy" pulled out, so with a few weeks of notice it turned into Chris Barnett vs Junior Tafa, which is less funny. Now, thanks to Hurricane Helene, Chris Barnett is stranded in Florida. So with three days before fight time and neither of the original participants left, this fight is now Junior Tafa vs Sean Sharaf. Or, to put it more bluntly: This is a professional bout in the premiere mixed martial arts organization on the planet between one guy who's 1-3 in the company and one guy whose career victories up to this point consist of, unabridged:
Bruno "Pelo Loco" Casillas, who was 1-4
Nathan "Bam Bam" Mullett, who was 0-0
"Big Bad Chad" Chadricc Kindle, who was 0-1
LJ "El Furioso" Torres, who was 3-1-1
So you have two choices here. Your first choice is Junior Tafa, who has lost to everyone he's faced in the UFC except Parker Porter, got leg kicked to death one fight ago, and in his last bout got heel hooked by Valter Walker, threw a fit about the fight being stopped over a silly thing like 'I screamed in pain because my leg was being torn apart' and ultimately walked across the ring to slap Valter in the face after the fight was over, which somehow did not get him penalized or thrown out by security. Your second choice is Sean Sharaf, whose total career fight time is under ten minutes and has mostly walked forward uppercutting people in the face because under a certain threshold that's the main skill you need as a Heavyweight.
Or you can take the third path, the left hand path, and swear off the Heavyweight division and its wiles, and focus instead on things that matter, like Women's Bantamweight. SEAN SHARAF BY SUBMISSION, because what can you do but pick the funniest outcome?
BANTAMWEIGHT: Dan Argueta (9-2 (2)) vs Cody Haddon (7-1)
On the topic of the pains of futility, we have poor Dan Argueta. Dan is by no means a bad fighter. He was an LFA champion, he was undefeated up until he joined the UFC, he knocked out this year's TUF winner Mairon Santos and remains the sole blemish on his record. He is categorically good. But his UFC tenure has been a goddamn mess. He has one win in the company, and it was over Nick Aguierre, a local fighter who'd made it to 7-0 while having only ever fought one man with a winning record. Aside from that? He got thwomped by Damon Jackson, he had a win over Ronnie Lawrence overturned on the spot after it turned out Lawrence wasn't actually in any trouble nor had he passed out, and he got comprehensively outfought by Miles Johns only for Johns to lose the win after testing positive for turinabol. But hey: That means, technically, Dan Argueta went three fights in the UFC without a loss! At which point Jean Matsumoto choked him unconscious. So what do you do with a problem like Dan Argueta? You give him Cody Haddon, who just won a Contender Series bout in August to make his way into the company. How'd he get the opportunity? By winning the HEX Fight Series Interim Bantamweight Championship and then defeating their champion to unify the undisputed title. Who was the champion? Why, the 9-7 Paul Loga, of course. What do Cody Haddon and Paul Loga have in common? They both got beat up by Steve Erceg, who is Not A Bantamweight.
Cody Haddon's boxing offense isn't bad, but his defense leaves a lot to be desired. As poor as Argueta's record might look these days, I've got a lot more faith in his skillset than I do Haddon's. DAN ARGUETA BY DECISION.
FLYWEIGHT: Clayton Carpenter (7-0) vs Lucas Rocha (17-1)
Funnily enough, Steve Erceg comes up here, too. Clayton Carpenter came off the Contender Series as an undefeated if extremely green prospect in 2022, and he sailed into the company on the back of a submission victory over poor Juancamilo Ronderos, who was brought into the UFC way too early and disposed of just as quickly. Carpenter was supposed to fight Erceg in the latter's UFC debut, but visa issues kept Erceg from making the date and the UFC decided the best thing to do with Clayton Carpenter was Nothing. Carpenter is an undefeated prospect with a UFC win and he has been sitting on the shelf for 602 days. Lucas Rocha's story is more familiar: He came up through the LFA, he got on the Contender Series, he won, and then his debut fight fell apart and he broke his shit training and had to miss half a year of his competitive prime, as you so often do. Rocha has more than twice Carpenter's experience, has fought much more consistent competition, and is still an underdog because numbers are meaningless and everything I complain about is a lie.
Carpenter still has hype for his grappling skills, and I get why. Rocha is a stiffer striker, but he opens himself up to bad ground positions because he has faith he can roll through them. I don't think Clayton will let him roll. CLAYTON CARPENTER BY SUBMISSION.