CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 123: EMBRACE THE FUTURE
UFC 309: Jones vs Miocic
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 16 FROM MADISON SQUARE GARDEN IN NEW YORK CITY
EARLY PRELIMS 3 PM PST / 6 PM EST | PRELIMS 5 PM / 8 PM | MAIN CARD 7 PM / 10 PM
I haven't been looking forward to this. I haven't been looking forward to this for more than a year, at this point, and somehow, this specific moment in time is the most I ever haven't looked forward to it.
I find myself having to say this at least a few times a year, which seems like a bad sign, but I love this sport and I love writing about that love. So many of these write-ups wind up consisting largely of anger and complaints, because there is an awful lot to be angry about, but it's the moments like Topuria vs Holloway and Royval vs Taira and Makhachev vs Volkanovski (the first time, anyway) that I love writing about, because they offer the rare chance to be joyful about mixed martial arts.
And I vastly prefer joy over anger. Writing bitter, disappointed screeds leaves me feeling hollow about a thing I want to engage with.
But I also try to be honest, and on a night where the UFC tries to rewrite an ending to its own aborted Heavyweight legacy with one of the least necessary fights of all time and follows it up with an entirely undeserved top contendership rematch and underlines all of it with (supposedly) a Donald Trump victory lap?
We're gonna get pretty bitter.
MAIN EVENT: AN EMPTY LEGACY
HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP: Jon Jones (27-1 (1), Champion) vs Stipe Miocic (20-4, #8)
If you're even remotely online complaining about this fight has become passe, and if you're not, complaining about this fight sounds completely insane.
The UFC has been very, very clear: This Is The Biggest Heavyweight Fight Of All Time. Jon Jones, the greatest mixed martial artist in the history of the sport, the man who destroyed the entire Light Heavyweight division, went up to Heavyweight and made its top contender look like an idiot! Stipe Miocic, the people's champion, the recordholder for the most defenses the Heavyweight division has ever seen, the only other man to beat Daniel Cormier, the best the 265-pound slate has to offer! This is a fight to determine the true legacy for the greatest UFC Heavyweight Champion of all time!
It's a great marketing campaign. It's also pretty fitting that UFC on TNT, an official advertising branch for their UK broadcasts, tweeted about the fight without realizing they'd pulled a fanmade poster that took a different perspective:
So. Let's talk about the reality of the situation.
This belt isn't real. That, in itself, is not particularly unusual: Championship belts aren't real. They're marketing devices used to bolster an organization's claim on legitimacy, and as a cursory examination of the PFL Superfight Championship, the UFC's BMF title, or ONE's breathless exaltation of Anatoly Malykhin becoming the sport's first triple champion while only actually beating two people will tell you, that legitimacy is paper-thin.
But it can grow. Belts can become real. The UFC has operated as the center of mixed martial arts for twenty years, and over those two decades their championships have become the standard by which the sport is measured, and while an awful lot of that comes down to advertising, just as much springs from repeatedly consuming its competitors. There's a fascination with lineal titles in combat sports--marking the progression of a championship not by its strictly recognized path, but by who actually beat those champions and where those trails wound up--and at the start of 2023, the UFC Heavyweight Championship was also, lineally:
The Pride Heavyweight Championship
The Strikeforce Heavyweight Championship
The DREAM Heavyweight Championship
The Pancrase Heavyweight Championship
The International Fight League Heavyweight Championship
The King of the Cage Heavyweight Championship
The World Series of Fighting Heavyweight Championship
The Cage Fury Fighting Heavyweight Championship
The Elite Xtreme Combat Heavyweight Championship
The Fighting Network RINGS Openweight Championship
The Icon Sport SuperBrawl Heavvyweight Championship
The Jungle Fight Heavyweight Championship
The International Vale Tudo Heavyweight Championship
The Cage Warriors Heavyweight Championship
The TKO Major League MMA Heavyweight Championship
And we could keep going. We haven't even exhausted the list of countries the title took over, let alone organizations. When the best fighters in the world inevitably filter through your organization you inevitably build a legacy around your marketing devices.
But that legacy left when the UFC fired active Heavyweight champion Francis Ngannou.
When Jon Jones vs Ciryl Gane was booked in 2023, the UFC made sure to wear its marketing insecurity on its sleeve by repeatedly emphasizing the undisputed nature of the title fight. We may have just fired the greatest Heavyweight on the planet and thrown our own title out the window in the process, but this is still the UFC, and our belt is the best, and this new belt's legacy will be just as grand and just as undisputed as the last one.
So how's that legacy gone so far?
Well, Jon Jones trashcanned Gane, got injured and went on the shelf for twenty months, and in the time it's taken Jones to come back the UFC coined an interim champion in Tom Aspinall who has already defended his interim title, and Jones has made clear on numerous public occasions that the idea of him fighting Aspinall and reunifying the title is silly because Aspinall isn't in his league and doesn't deserve it.
But Stipe Miocic sure does.
I loved Stipe Miocic's fighting. I was a big fan of his stoic wrestleboxing style. I rooted for him to become the understated, soft-spoken champion of the world and I celebrated his ascent into the record books as the mathematical best. His body-shot TKO over Daniel Cormier is one of my favorite mid-fight adjustments. I would have loved to write about his fights.
But I haven't, because I started doing this just shy of three years ago, and he's been gone since March of 2021.
One of the most common forms of critique for this fight comes in the form of comical lists of all the things that have happened since Stipe last fought in the UFC. Alex Pereira's entire run in the company, Brandon Moreno and Deiveson Figueiredo trading the Flyweight title back and forth three times, Amanda Nunes losing her championship, winning it back, defending it, retiring and being replaced, Conor McGregor breaking his leg, leaving for two years, coming back to do The Ultimate Fighter, delaying his comeback fight for another year and cancelling it again anyway, the UFC changing their entire fight uniform provider, the rise and fall of NFTs, two whole Taylor Swift albums, so on into infinity.
It's true, and it's really fun, but there's a much simpler and more damning passage of time you can mark: The last time Stipe Miocic won a fight, he was in his thirties, and now he's forty-two and he hasn't set foot in a cage in almost four years and hasn't won a fight in close to five.
No one Stipe Miocic beat in his long run as the greatest UFC Heavyweight is still in the UFC. Most of his peers are retired.
The title he set the record for doesn't even exist anymore.
I said in the preamble that I try to be honest, and I stand by that, so honestly: That's it. That's the entire story of this fight. The reason I feel cynical and empty every time I try to write about Jon Jones vs Stipe Miocic is the honest reflection of how cynical and empty Jon Jones vs Stipe Miocic is.
There's barely any point in analyzing it on its technical merits as a fight, because these two men combine for one fight in the last three and a half years. If you try to discuss the likelihood that Jones could have trouble with Stipe's boxing, or how difficult it will be for Stipe to counter-wrestle Jon's takedowns, you're not discussing a living evaluation of a fighter's strengths, you're forecasting based on memories of a time when Khabib Nurmagomedov was still a champion. If you treat this the way the UFC wants you to--a question of the legacy each man carries and what it means for them to win--you have to reckon with the reality that neither man is the actual Heavyweight champion and both have said they'd rather retire than fight either of the men who can lay claim to the title.
And if you accept the UFC's framing as the greatest Heavyweight fight they've ever promoted, you have to accept that in a history that includes Mark Coleman, Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira, Cain Velasquez and Francis Ngannou, the best the company can give you isn't a Tom Aspinall or an Alexander Volkov, but a showdown between the greatest Heavyweight of the previous decade and a man who's only fought at the weight class once.
It's a grudge match without a grudge. It's a story no one asked to be told.
It's a battle for a legacy of nothing.
The great hope offered by this fight isn't the possibility that Jon Jones can beat Stipe Miocic and this, somehow, will finally cement him as the greatest fighter of all time, or the hope that Stipe can knock Jones out and ride off into the sunset as the man who finally slew the dragon--it's the hope that whatever happens, when it's finally over, we can move on from the hollowing out of the Heavyweight division and start the long process of rebuilding the single biggest championship in the sport.
Except, of course, that the odds-on favorite for the next shot at the Heavyweight championship is Alex Pereira.
It's turtles all the way down, and in the face of meaninglessness we must cling to hope, and the hope, every time Jon Jones fights, is that someone will finally punch Jon Jones in the goddamn face. If this is the end of the road and both men are in fact retiring after this is over, then let us not deviate from the path that brought us here, and against logic, reason and responsibility, let us hope for STIPE MIOCIC BY TKO so all of this can at least have been in service of a happy ending.
CO-MAIN EVENT: A PROFESSIONAL APOLOGY
LIGHTWEIGHT: Charles Oliveira (34-10 (1), #2) vs Michael Chandler (23-8, #7)
And then, there's this.
Let's get one-half of the obvious out of the way up front: This is a rematch. Charles Oliveira and Michael Chandler met back in the hopeful days of May in 2021 to fill the throne Khabib Nurmagomedov had left vacant. Oliveira was riding an eight-fight, three-year winning streak that included dispatching multiple top contenders; Chandler had signed with the UFC a year after getting knocked out in Bellator and had beaten Dan Hooker. Chandler had scorched Oliveira in the first round and nearly knocked him out twice; Oliveira came out for the second round, walked right through him and knocked him out nineteen seconds later.
Fun fight! Definitive fight. How's life been for both men in the following two years, that they've wound up crossing paths again? Well, in Charles Oliveira's case, he:
Successfully defended his title by choking out Dustin Poirier
Submitted Justin Gaethje, but became the first UFC champion to lose his belt on the scale thanks to a .5-pound weight miss
Fought Islam Makhachev for the title, put forth a valiant effort but was ultimately overmatched
Made an underdog comeback by destroying top contender Beneil Dariush in one round
Lost an absurdly close split decision against #1 contender Arman Tsarukyan
Pretty impressive! How about the last three years of Chandler's career?
He got beat to shit by Justin Gaethje
He got tooled up by Tony Ferguson for a round but knocked him out in the second, marking Tony's fourth straight loss out of what would eventually be eight (so far!)
He fought Dustin Poirier, blatantly fouled him by punching him in the back of the head and shoving his fingers into his mouth to try to force a choke, and wound up getting choked out by Poirier in the third round instead
Boy, that sure does seem a lot less impressive. Is there some other missing piece of context that explains why Michael Chandler is suddenly in a top contendership match despite losing three of his last four fights, including one to the man he's fighting here tonight?
Well,
He coached The Ultimate Fighter against Conor McGregor and wasted two years of his fighting career chasing a McGregor money match that the UFC had plenty of reason to think was never going to happen, and Chandler hung on like a good company man even after Conor delayed the fight for an entire year, did enough steroids that the UFC cancelled their drug testing agreement with USADA while openly citing their insistence on testing Conor as the final straw, only for Conor to skate on the fight again over a broken toe less than two weeks before it was going to happen while the UFC quietly no-commented regarding journalists having known the fight was off for weeks beforehand.
Oh, right. That. That thing.
Charles Oliveira is one of the three best Lightweights on the planet. We can say this factually because he has factually tested and proven it repeatedly. His comeback run to the championship was one of the best stories this sport has ever told, he could easily have faded into obscurity after losing his title over the unspeakable advantage granted by one-half of one imperial pound and instead he annihilated two more top contenders, he would have rematched Islam had he not suffered a cut in training, and had he a little more control time or a little more goodwill from the judges, he could still easily have been the #1 contender right now.
Michael Chandler is 2-3 in the UFC, the only man he's beaten in the past four years just broke the record for the longest losing streak in company history, and he is getting this crack at top contendership as a public apology from management for promising him Conor McGregor for two straight years and refusing to deliver.
Does he deserve it? Objectively, no, not even remotely. But here's the funny little problem with the Lightweight division right now: Arman Tsarukyan just beat Oliveira and is waiting for his rightful title shot, Justin Gaethje is still nursing his wounds from getting flattened by Max Holloway, Max Holloway just got flattened by Ilia Topuria, and Dustin Poirier vowed to take at most one more fight before retiring for good.
That's everyone else in the top five spoken for. The contendership bracket is frozen solid and the UFC needs more people in the mix.
And once you've gotten over concepts like "deserve" and "marketability" and "we paid a lot of fucking money for this contract and we want a return on investment," you are left with the awareness that however much he may have lost, you cannot ever count Michael Chandler out of a fight. If Charles Oliveira would be a top contender but for one more sympathetic judge, Michael Chandler would be a world champion if he'd landed just a couple more punches on Oliveira's head. He may have ultimately gotten the shit kicked out of him by Gaethje, but he also walked straight up to Gaethje and socked him in the face so hard he almost dropped. He may have had to cheat repeatedly to almost beat Dustin Poirier, but hey, he almost beat Dustin Poirier!
Just, y'know.
By cheating.
Michael Chandler can beat anyone in the Lightweight division. He throws his whole ass into his punches and he pursues damage with a reckless disregard for his own health, and were he not constantly fighting some of the absolute best fighters in the history of the Lightweight division, his record would probably look a whole lot better.
But we've already done this once. He could detonate another of those bombs on Oliveira's head and finish the job this time, it wouldn't be shocking; he's still one of the scariest first-round fighters in the sport. But I have more faith in Oliveira than just about any fighter on the planet, and he's managed to look steadily better even now, forty-five fights into his career.
I have faith he'll do better this time, and his performance last time was already enough. CHARLES OLIVEIRA BY SUBMISSION.
MAIN CARD: OLD BO MEDICINE SHOW
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Bo Nickal (6-0) vs Paul Craig (17-8-1)
The Bo Nickal roadshow must roll on. Bo is one of the living ideals the Contender Series exists to find: A fighter who came preassembled with a built-in fanbase, a solid skillset and too little experience in the sport to command a high price. His background as a super-wrestler made him a must-have, and he has become a living embodiment of just how schizophrenic the UFC is right now. Compared to their other prospects, Bo has been significantly pushed; he never brushed the prelims, he's been featured on main cards in all three of his fights, and they were all on high-profile pay-per-views. Deiveson Figueiredo, Kayla Harrison and Jiří Procházka didn't rate main card berths on UFC 300: Bo Nickal did. They've also been bringing him up as gently as possible, matching him only with opponents he was a quadruple-digit favorite over, so as to get him ring time. And yet, they're completely willing to throw him right into the main event on a moment's notice, as evidenced by the news that they tried to have him fight Robert fucking Whittaker on short notice when Khamzat Chimaev pulled out of their bout this past Summer. He's a 6-0 rookie who's never come anywhere close to the rankings, and he also would have been in a #1 contendership bout if he hadn't been hiking in the mountains when they called him. This is the sport, and it is passing us all by.
If nothing else, it definitely seems to be passing by Paul Craig. "Bearjew" always felt like an odd fit for the upper echelons of Light Heavyweight. He punched like a boxer from the 1890s, he missed 4/5 of his takedown attempts (personal best: Going 1 for 16 on Kennedy Nzechukwu) and he seemed to magnetically draw strikes toward his face. And somehow, none of this stopped him from winning. He'd still get knocked out on an extremely consistent basis, and somehow, he'd lure people into his guard and submit them anyway. Dude's a nearly-even 9-8-1 in the UFC, and somehow across that run he's got victories--stoppages!--over two world champions and a #1 contender. But knockout losses are still knockout losses, and Craig made the drop to Middleweight in 2023 in the hopes of reinvigorating his career. For one brief, shining moment, it worked: He stopped André Muniz in an upset performance and broke into the top fifteen in his very first fight in the division. And then he went right back to getting crushed. He was dominated and submitted by a more effective grappler in Brendan Allen, and he was knocked loopy by Caio Borralho, and now they want him picked off by one more up-and-coming star just to complete the trifecta.
They're almost certainly going to get it, too. This is the least favored Bo has ever been in a UFC bout, in the sense that he's only a -1000 favorite. The only real source of tension in this fight comes from the possibility that Bo will get silly and give into Craig's guard like so many before him, but not only has Bo generally shown he keeps his head on his shoulders when he fights, he also punches fast and hard enough that the grappling may not even enter the equation. BO NICKAL BY TKO.
WOMEN'S FLYWEIGHT: Viviane Araújo (12-6, #9) vs Karine Silva (18-4, #11)
There is a certain level of incredible irritation that comes from not being able to climb the mountain. Viviane Araújo is, objectively, one of the best female mixed martial artists on the planet. She's been beating people below the top ten for her entire career, she's exhibited the kind of well-rounded game that adapts itself to grapplers, wrestlers and strikers alike, and after almost a decade of fighting the best of the best she's only been finished once, and it was seven and a half years ago. She's a fantastic competitor by any measurement. But in terms of the two measurements that count most in this sport--how high you've gotten in the rankings and how many neat highlights you've let the UFC throw into video packages--she's perpetually nil. She may never get finished, but it's been five and a half years since she finished anyone else, and when you're too good to lose to prospects, not good enough to get into money fights, and unlikely to produce marketing-friendly clips, you unintentionally establish yourself as A Problem for the matchmakers.
Karine Silva has established herself as one of their foremost problemsolvers. I was pretty skeptical of Karine when she made her UFC debut back in 2022--her competition hadn't been great, her tape made her look loose and vulnerable, and the Contender Series fight that set her up in the UFC proper saw her gassing visibly, getting lit up and winning when her opponent more or less shoved her own head into a guillotine choke. I was wrong as hell, and it's the kind of wrong I absolutely love to be. Whatever combination of shoring up her game, having time to actually prepare for her opponents and generally growing as a fighter she's employed in her training, it's worked out fantastically for her. She drops people, she chokes people, she scored an honest to god heel hook in the 2020s, she even avenged an early-career loss to Maryna Moroz and became the only woman to ever finish her in the process. Karine even shed her finishes-at-all-cost mentality by carefully controlling Ariane da Silva to a solid, workmanlike decision in her last fight.
The UFC's hoping she can get another foot in the record books here. Araújo has never been stopped, and I'm not convinced Karine's going to get it done, but I do think she's proven herself strong enough in the clinch to keep Viviane from shutting down her movement and offense the way she's managed with so many other fighters. KARINE SILVA BY DECISION.
LIGHTWEIGHT: Mauricio Ruffy (10-1) vs James Llontop (14-4)
The Fighting Nerds takeover is continuing on schedule. Fight camps enjoying collective success have long been a staple of the sport, and right now, the São Paulo collective and their Dudley Boyz glasses are running roughshod over the UFC. Caio Borralho is already knocking on the contendership door at Middleweight, Carlos Prates just established himself as a ranked Welterweight, Jean Silva's been butchering people at Featherweight, and Mauricio Ruffy is their heir apparent for the Lightweight division. Even knowing how dangerous Ruffy's striking was, I picked against him in his UFC debut this past May. Having seem him exhibit the same mummy-handed defensive porousness across multiple fights, I thought Jamie Mullarkey and his veteran wiles would give him trouble. That was, as it turned out, a very silly call. Ruffy trashed Mullarkey in a single round, broke his face in multiple places, and established himself as an immediate threat to the division.
The UFC had Ruffy teed up for another highlight-reel performance in his initial booking against Charlie Campbell, who is that unfortunate combination of tough and hittable that plays right into the hands of power strikers, but Campbell had to pull out at the end of October, and with one week's prep time, James Llontop is the new prospective sacrifice. Llontop is still in his rookie year with the UFC, and somehow, he's already on the precipice of being done. He made his debut in April, missed weight, stunned Chris Padilla with a big combination and proceeded to get taken down and submitted in seconds anyway. He came back four months later, met my hero Viacheslav "Slava Claus" Borshchev, and despite landing a real gnarly eyepoke (and, in fairness, having a solid third-round rally), he still dropped a decision. Llontop's entire game is fearless striking, but he gets clipped as often as he gives those clips out, and boy, that's not great when your opponent has a 100% knockout rate.
To some extent I cannot help wondering if this fight is just happening because Ruffy is a huge One Piece nerd and Llontop is nicknamed "Goku" and someone in the matchmaking department thought putting them together would be really, really funny. It's what I'd do, which is why I have been disinvited from team meetings in every job I've ever held. MAURICIO RUFFY BY TKO.
PRELIMS: THE ANDERSINGULARITY
BANTAMWEIGHT: Jonathan Martinez (19-5, #13) vs Marcus McGhee (9-1, NR)
The swings in this sport are absolutely fucking brutal. One fight ago Jonathan Martinez was one of the UFC's hotter prospects, a Bantamweight striker on a six-fight winning streak with multiple leg kick TKOs and victories over high-ticket fighters like Said Nurmagomedov and Adrian Yañez, and the company thought highly enough of him to set up the single biggest fight of his entire career: A Rio de Janeiro matchup with a coming-out-of-retirement José Aldo. Against arguably the greatest Featherweight of all time, Martinez was a betting favorite, and a win that visible was presented as his ticket to stardom. José Aldo, however, is still José Aldo. Martinez got completely shut out, and after six years of working his way up the ladder, after six straight victories to earn his spot in the rankings, he's flipped from battling for glory against José Aldo to fighting for his spot against Marcus McGhee. I have, to be clear, no problem with Marcus McGhee. His short-notice debut against Journey Newson last year proved to be one of the best regional-fighter-abruptly-shoved-into-the-spotlight performances we've gotten in quite some time, and going from fighting an 8-7 guy under the LFA to 3-0 in the UFC and competing for a spot in the top fifteen is one of the best feelgood stories of the year. That said: The combined UFC records of those three wins after their fights? 2-9 (1). McGhee is the precisely correct combination of having a good story, being a reliable finisher, and carrying the cheapest possible contract the UFC can offer, and at this specific moment in time, those three things together can win you the world.
I adore McGhee's fighting style. The pressure he puts forward and the speed with which he switches between winging punches and shooting single-legs are both incredibly fun to watch. But part of the fun is McGhee's willingness to absorb strikes to get in range, and his disregard for leg and head kicks just feels like too much of a liability against a striker like Martinez. JONATHAN MARTINEZ BY TKO.
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Chris Weidman (16-7) vs Eryk Anders (16-8 (1))
No. Come on. Really? This isn't a fight, this is an eldritch summoning ritual that seeks to bring the twin MMA gods of Comedy and Nihilism together in the hopes that as the two become one, they will sing the dirge that ends the world.
Chris Weidman was at one point the definitive champion of a new generation, the man who slew Anderson Silva and ushered in the modern age of mixed martial arts. That age was more than a decade ago. Since then he's shattered his leg once, been knocked out five times and gone 3 for his last 10, and of those three, one was a man who had to drop back down to Welterweight for sake of his career, one was a fighter on the verge of getting cut to go terrorize the PFL, and one, his most recent and egregious example, was poor Bruno Silva, whom Weidman beat with a genuinely incredible double-eyepoke so blatant that it forced an instant replay reassessment, but despite a CSI zoom-enhance showing Weidman flicking eyeball jelly off his fingernails the state athletic commission of New Jersey agreed that, by their standards, everything was fine. Eryk Anders just Is. Eryk Anders has Been. After nearly twenty fights in the UFC, the entirety of the fanbase can agree by consensus that Eryk Anders Exists. You may think this is a statement about Eryk Anders being a boring fighter, and to some extent that accusation is unavoidable, but in truth, it is more than a simple evaluation of entertainment value, it is an observation of an act of defiance of God. Eryk Anders is the fighting equivalent of the uncanny feeling you get from liminal spaces. Eryk Anders will reliably give you fifteen to twenty-five minutes of cagefighting, the most memorable sport of the last thirty years of human history, and when the fight ends you may not even be aware it happened at all. There will be a hole in your mind where your short-term memory was, and your drink will have come closer to room temperature, and thousands of skin cells will have sloughed from your body, and that time will simply be lost to you.
It has been. It is. It will be again. Watch him if you dare. ERYK ANDERS BY DECISION.
LIGHTWEIGHT: Jim Miller (37-18 (1)) vs Damon Jackson (23-7-1 (1))
It's hard not to feel like any new chapter of the Jim Miller story could be the last. Jim Miller has been around for so goddamn long that his "A-10" nickname refers to a fighter jet the US military is actively decommissioning. He outlasted the fucking Warthog. For years, Jim Miller's stated goal was a fight on UFC 300, in the hopes of becoming the one and only fighter to participate on each of the UFC's big centennial blowouts. He succeeded, in the sense that he made it onto the early prelims: He failed, in the sense that Bobby Green stomped him so badly one judge turned in a 30-25 scorecard. There's no shame in losing to Bobby Green--there's no shame in any part of Jim Miller's MMA record--but there's nowhere for him to really go anymore, either. Jim's the veteran bogeyman of the division, tooling around fighting prospects until he decides it's time to lay down the gloves. Damon Jackson's position is considerably more desperate. At the start of 2023 Jackson was riding the best winning streak of his life and co-main eventing UFC cards in ranked fights; as 2024 winds down he's 1 for his last 4 and trying to stay afloat. His surprising counters in the pocket and his crushing clinch grappling have kept him alive on the roster, but if Jim Miller's 30-25 was bad, Jackson's last fight against Chepe Mariscal saw two 30-25s, and Michael Bell was only marginally more merciful at 30-26. Damon's clawing for his job, and the UFC's handed him a tough out if he wants to keep it.
It's my coinflip for the night. Jackson's got sharper boxing, Miller's got sharper leg kicks, Jackson's more accomplished in the clinch, Miller's a stronger grappler on the ground. If anything, I doubt either man will be able to truly implement his strengths against the other and this will come down to a grinding kickboxing match between two non-kickboxers. For sake of my heart: JIM MILLER BY DECISION.
FEATHERWEIGHT: David Onama (12-2) vs Roberto Romero (8-3-1)
David Onama just cannot keep a damn opponent. His 2021 jump to the UFC was met with surprising hype given his relative inexperience, but Glory MMA cited him as their secret weapon, and an undefeated streak always pulls in eyeballs. He, of course, promptly lost his debut, and his success since has been dotted with the constant loss of opponents. He was supposed to fight Austin Lingo: He wound up with last-minute replacement debut Garrett Armfield. Jarno Errens became Khusein Askhabov, who became the 0-1 Gabriel Santos. He had a bout scheduled against Lucas Alexander last year; his own injuries turned it into five months on the shelf and a weight miss against Jonathan Pearce. And this week Onama was supposed to meet fellow prospect-in-evaluation Lucas Almeida, but once again, his opponent could not make it, and once again, his replacement is a debuting guy. Roberto Romero took this fight with three days to prepare, he has spent almost his entire career fighting for Combate Global, and the results have been slightly mixed. On one hand, his wrestleboxing ways have earned him some cool finishes and he's won far more than he's lost. On the other, being as it is Combate Global, those finishes include things like lighting up an 0-1 guy, struggling with the upper tier of Combate's competition, and ultimately losing his unbeaten streak in his penultimate fight. He's solid, he's tough, he's got a good chin, and he has mostly wrestled people who do not appear to be great at it.
Mostly, I don't think his wrestleboxing is a match for Onama's wrestleboxing. DAVID ONAMA BY DECISION.
EARLY PRELIMS: SOMEHOW STILL HERE
HEAVYWEIGHT: Marcin Tybura (25-9, #9) vs Jhonata Diniz (8-0, NR)
Providence has this funny way of smiling specifically on Heavyweight strikers. Three fights ago Jhonata Diniz was a promising kickboxer-turned-mixed-martial-artist who'd only fought one man with a winning record, and that record was 11-8. Two fights ago, he'd gotten his Contender Series victory and made it into the UFC proper. One fight ago he'd beaten the 0-2 (1) Austen Lane, who dominated him with wrestling only to gas after one round, and when last we saw Diniz, he'd drawn wrestling expert Karl Williams, who inexplicably chose not to wrestle during their fight. We were supposed to see Diniz fight Derrick Lewis for a spot at the fringes of the top fifteen two weeks ago, but Lewis had to pull out over undisclosed medical issues just before the event, so now, Diniz gets to fight all the way up into the top ten, if he can beat Marcin Tybura. Combat Sports God is real, and he misses the golden days of the K-1 Grand Prix.
If Tybura forgets his lifelong wrestling abilities I will become a fight fixing conspiracist. MARCIN TYBURA BY TKO.
WELTERWEIGHT: Mickey Gall (7-6) vs Ramiz Brahimaj (10-5)
Sometimes the UFC makes it extremely clear they are only keeping you around out of contractual obligation, and they will do their best to destroy you at all costs until they have squeezed enough copper out of your blood to make pennies. (Yes, I know they're made of zinc now.) The UFC signed Mickey Gall eight and a half years ago because he won their Someone Who Could Conceivably Lose To CM Punk In An MMA Fight sweepstakes, and Gall made the critical career error of wronging the company by beating both him and their ultra-hyped child soldier project in Sage Northcutt, and they have never forgiven him. In another world, Mickey Gall was brought up gently as a fellow young and indisputably talented grappling prospect: In ours he had fought Diego Sanchez, Mike Perry and Alex Morono by the time he reached double-digit fight experience. Gall's on a three-fight losing streak that's taken three full years to accumulate, and if he wants to avert it and his own almost-certain release from the company, he has to adapt his own grappling strength to beat Ramiz Brahimaj, a man who has not only never been submitted in his life, but who has only faced a stoppage once, and that wasn't even because he himself couldn't continue, but rather his ear was almost detached from his skull by a Max Griffin elbow and the referee decided that was probably bad.
Gall has always been tougher than his record indicates, but I do not think he is tough enough for Ramiz. RAMIZ BRAHIMAJ BY DECISION.
WELTERWEIGHT: Bassil Hafez (9-4-1) vs Oban Elliott (11-2)
Fun fact: The last fight on Bassil Hafez's record? A June 1 victory over Mickey Gall. On this card? Going on one slot below Mickey Gall. I am entirely, painfully aware that literally no one cares about this but me, but god damn it, someone has to. Hafez was another of those regional Cinderella stories, an unheralded journeyman who got called up to the UFC with no notice to play sacrificial lamb to a star only to damn near upset the apple cart by wrestling Jack Della Maddalena to a split decision. The Gall fight was pretty fucking close, too--Hafez proved his wrestling credentials are entirely legitimate, but he struggled with Gall's own grappling and wound up going about 50/50 with him on their feet. Oban Elliott's Welsh Chael Sonnen tribute act has pulled him through a seven-fight winning streak to get here, and sure, his first UFC fight may have seen a bunch of angry Southern Californians booing him for his grappling inaction, and sure, he went tooth and nail in the wrestling game with a Preston Parsons who's gone 50/50 in the company, but he's tall and he's from the UK and that means he will get wrestling matches until either he wins or dies.
That said, I hope this actually IS a wrestling match as opposed to two extremely solid wrestlers deciding to have an awkward kickboxing fight because they can't get a grappling advantage. Going with the underdog and saying BASSIL HAFEZ BY DECISION based solely on grit.
WOMEN'S FLYWEIGHT: Veronica Hardy (9-4-1) vs Eduarda Moura (10-1)
We have two real opposite stories at work here, In one, Veronica Hardy is on her way up the ranks, having gone from three years on the shelf healing up persistent concussion issues to a three-fight winning streak. Her successful return has been deeply gratifying to see in a division (and, hell, sport) that most often makes post-concussion returns scary at best and tragic at worst, but her skills have been tighter than ever and her heart has been on display over two extremely close fights. Eduarda Moura is coming from the other end of the story. She made it into the UFC as an undefeated Strawweight prospect with a suspiciously shallow resume and the company dutifully booked her against the embattled Montserrat Ruiz as a -650 favorite, and Moura's complete destruction of Ruiz would have been wholly appreciated were it not for Moura also missing weight by almost five pounds. She vowed to do better next time, and she did--in the sense that she missed by a pound and a half instead, then proceeded to get very slowly, unpleasantly ground out by Denise Gomes as Moura slowly gassed out. Now Moura's been forced up to Flyweight, which is good for her weight cuts and bad for her size advantage, and she really needs to turn it around before the bookers regret their time investment.
But Moura's biggest advantage is the physicality of her wrestling game, and Hardy's proven to be a solid counter-grappler who can go fifteen minutes without stopping, and at this point, that might be enough. VERONICA HARDY BY DECISION.