CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 125: INADVERTENT OPPORTUNITY
UFC 310: Pantoja vs Asakura
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 7 FROM THE T-MOBILE ARENA IN LAS VEGAS
EARLY PRELIMS: 3 PM PST / 6 PM EST | PRELIMS: 5 PM / 8 PM | MAIN CARD: 7 PM / 10 PM
Welcome to the final pay-per-view of the year. It's good! Outside of some weirdness in terms of where fights are being placed--how did Kron Gracie make it onto the main card over Aljamain Sterling or Bryan Battle--I have no complaints. Two top contendership matches, multiple all-action matchups, sanity prevailed and Nick Diaz is no longer fighting, Flyweights in the main event? We're in flavor country.
Of course, the Flyweights weren't supposed to be in the main event, but they never are.
Look: The year's almost over, we've got a high-quality pay-per-view, and next week we have to deal with Colby fucking Covington again. Enjoy the holiday blessings while they're around.
MAIN EVENT: GREAT EXPECTATIONS
FLYWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP: Alexandre Pantoja (28-5, Champion) vs Kai Asakura (21-4, NR)
This really is not a thing that happens often. In the modern era it has, in fact, only happened twice.
The UFC does not like bringing fighters in for title shots. A big part of holding court as the canonical mixed martial arts organization is maintaining your image as the best company in the business, and marketing only takes you so far. Your reputation ultimately lives and dies based on the quality of your fighters, and letting people march in from other organizations and get title shots gambles that reputation, which is why they almost never do it.
Anderson Silva was one of the best Middleweights on the planet: He had to fight Chris Leben before he got Rich Franklin. Rampage Jackson had a built-in feud with Chuck Liddell, but he wasn't allowed to address it without knocking out Marvin Eastman. Just this year, the UFC signed Kayla Harrison, one of the single biggest stars in women's MMA outside of the company, and she had to go through two fights and she hasn't even been promised a shot yet.
And when it does happen, more often than not, there's a big ol' asterisk involved. Joe Soto debuted with a Bantamweight title shot, but only after being hastily promoted from his original match lower on the card after Renan Barão was hospitalized during his weight cut. Gilbert Melendez joined the UFC with a crack at Benson Henderson's Lightweight title, but only after the UFC purchased his home company of Strikeforce and ultimately shut it down. Fighters like Ronda Rousey and José Aldo may have debuted in title fights, but they'd already been instated as champions ahead of time. More often than not, the UFC wants its imported talent to run the gauntlet first. If they win, it not only proves the investment was worth it in a lower-risk scenario, it enshrines them as A UFC Fighter in the minds of the fans. If they lose, in the grand tradition of your Hector Lombards and Cro Cops, they become another brick in the foundation that keeps the UFC elevated as the world's best fight promotion.
There have only been three real, no-asterisk title shot debuts in the modern history of the company, and one of them was Frank Trigg so we're going to politely ignore it. Of the remaining two, funnily enough, both were top talents coming in from Japan, and funnily enough, neither was a fight the UFC actually wanted.
In 2002 Matt Hughes was on his way to becoming one of the UFC's posterboys, but the company was in considerably leaner times and needed international challengers. That challenger was supposed to be Anderson Silva, four years before his actual debut, but the UFC couldn't contend with the Pride Fighting Championships pocketbook and Anderson wound up staying in Japan. In his stead the UFC brought former Shooto champion Hayato "Mach" Sakurai over for a shot at the belt, it was a complete wrestling clinic for Hughes, and after a fourth-round TKO, the company decided to wait twenty-two years to try that specific formula again.
Kai Asakura is, once again, the former champ of a big Japanese mixed martial arts promotion. He held the Bantamweight championship out in Rizin twice, the second time as recently as just his last bout. He's big, he's got great, long punches, he's a minor celebrity in Japan thanks to his older brother Mikuru's oddly popular Youtube channel, and he's got real, genuine credibility as a contender. The UFC has always been hungry to break into the Japanese market, and Kai's a near-perfect pickup for their efforts.
And they did not want him in this fight.
Kai was not supposed to be an exception to the rule. As it turns out, there were multiple attempts to give him a non-title debut in the UFC. Brandon Royval went on the record about the UFC's attempt to book him against Kai at UFC 305 this past August. He looked at the offer--risk your #1 spot in the division against an unranked fighter on the other side of the planet--and asked the UFC if they were going to give him more money or promise him a title shot in the event that he won. They said no: So did he. Fighters: Please be more like Brandon Royval.
Asakura was supposed to be another test in the UFC's import gauntlet. Instead of struggling to find him another fight, they've just decided to shoot for the moon and give him a title shot. And that has just as much to do with Alexandre Pantoja.
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.
The difference in the way the UFC markets its defending champions is genuinely wild. Alex Pereira has three title defenses, and he's the biggest active name in the sport. Islam Makhachev has three title defenses, and his fights are treated like major events. Zhang Weili has two defenses and the UFC made one of them the co-main event of UFC 300.
Alexandre Pantoja has two title defenses. He's beaten most of the contenders Flyweight has to offer, several of them multiple times. His skills have won him five separate performance bonuses. He hasn't lost a fight in four and a half years.
And he wasn't even going to be the main event of this card. Belal Muhammad was. If Dana White had the pyrokinetic capacity to do so he would immolate Belal with his mind, and he still gave him the main event over Alexandre Pantoja, the best Flyweight on the planet, and Kai Asakura, a Japanese star the UFC went out of its way to bid out from one of its competitors in the age of Contender Series winners getting who-gives-a-shit contendership fights right after their debuts.
If Tatsuro Taira had beaten Brandon Royval, maybe they would've waited and given him the shot. If Brandon Moreno vs Amir Albazi happened when it was initially scheduled for February rather than waiting until November, maybe they would've let Moreno have another bite at the apple. If Manel Kape hadn't fucked up his whole 2024 and lost to Muhammad Mokaev, they'd almost certainly have put him in. If, if, if.
Instead, we have the incredibly rare instance of the broken mechanisms of UFC Matchmaking alchemizing into something good. This is a Good Fight. Kai isn't just a worthwhile challenger, he's an interesting stylistic matchup. Pantoja's unfathomably tough, but he has a tendency to use that toughness as a weapon, absorbing strikes to work his way into range to either swing clattering hooks or drag opponents to the floor, but very few men have the lancing straights Kai does nor the accuracy with which he throws them. Asakura's bigger and stronger than most Flyweights, but he's also had trouble with shorter, stockier grapplers getting him down, and very few men have the kind of tenacity Pantoja can squeeze out of his grappling for five straight rounds.
Kai finishes almost everyone he beats, but Pantoja's never been finished in his career and it would take some perfect shots to put him out. Kai's got a size and strength advantage, but he also hasn't fought at Flyweight in seven years, when he was in his mid-twenties, and if the weight cut saps his energy at all, Pantoja could drown him in a five-round grappling assault like he's done to so many people before. Every time a Japanese fighter gets near a UFC title the mixed martial arts audience holds its breath to see if this will be the moment the nation that put MMA on the map finally gets gold in the biggest organization on Earth.
Kai could do it. He has the ability. One look at his destruction of Juan Archuleta last year shows you how Pantoja getting sloppy on his grappling entries--which he sometimes does--could get him killed. But I've seen his chin hold up under too many stiff assaults to abandon him now. ALEXANDRE PANTOJA BY SUBMISSION.
CO-MAIN EVENT: I GOT NEXT
WELTERWEIGHT: Shavkat Rakhmonov (18-0, #3) vs Ian Machado Garry (15-0, #7)
On the topic of fights that weren't supposed to happen, we've got this.
Shavkat Rakhmonov has been a future title contender since that 2020 day he walked into the UFC. In the modern age of rising competition you just don't get records like his anymore. It's not enough to be a multi-time regional champion in his home of Kazakhstan, it's not enough to be a multi-time world champion in M-1 in Russia, it's not enough to be professionally undefeated: In a decade of competition, no one has even made it to the bell with him.
No one. His weapons are too numerous and he uses them too well. He dropped Carlston Harris with a spinning hook kick. He pounded Neil Magny flat and wrapped him up in a guillotine with two seconds left in the round. He had the hardest fight of his life against Geoff Neal and responded by just choking him out standing up like he was fucking Solid Snake. One fight ago--one year ago--Shavkat became the only man to ever submit Stephen Thompson. Belal Muhammad, the best Welterweight on the planet, could not do it. Gilbert Burns, multi-time jiu-jitsu world champion, could not do it. Shavkat not only did it, he made it look easy.
And it earned him a title shot. UFC 310 was supposed to be Muhammad vs Rakhmonov, which reads as either the best fight in the division or the attempt to make the Belal era as short as possible, depending on how charitable you're willing to be. But Belal sprung a horrible bone infection in his foot, he's out until sometime midway through next year, and the UFC looked at the rankings and scanned their way down until they saw someone Irish.
Okay, fine, that's not fair. It's not! But it sure is weird, the spot Welterweight is in. Leon Edwards is the #1 guy with only the Belal loss in the last nine years, and he's not fighting. Kamaru Usman is the #2 guy, and he hasn't fought at 170 pounds in almost two years. Sean Brady just earned the #4 spot in September by beating Gilbert Burns so maybe that's too fast of a turnaround; Jack Della Maddalena just earned the #5 spot in March by also beating Gilbert Burns but he, too, has been suffering from an infected bone in his arm. The top guys are either hurt, waiting, or missing in action.
(If you're one of the people who really pays attention to the sport, you might say 'but Carl, they tried to get Usman in this fight and he said no, you have to give them credit.' To which I would say: They also tried to put Colby Covington in this fight. They get zero credit.)
But Ian Machado Garry is ready, and honestly, his presence makes it even more surprising the UFC had enough restraint to not book this as an interim title fight.
The problem with Garry has never been his fighting. He, too, is an undefeated wunderkind; he too, has exhibited some genuinely impressive skills. He's demonstrated a solid capacity for using his range, he's shown off some real, real good counterpunches, and he beat the hype-train curse by overcoming adversity in the spotlight, as Song Kenan very nearly knocked him out in 2023 and Garry did a genuinely impressive job of recovering, collecting himself, and getting the comeback TKO two rounds later.
But the UFC gave him the Roman Reigns push. I've commented before on their myriad attempts to make a new Conor McGregor in the hopes of recapturing the many, many millions they made off of his body, but Garry's the only man who can rival Paddy Pimblett in just how shameless the attempts were. They had him straight-up reciting McGregorisms in his post-fight celebrations. I've screenshot a lot of dumb UFC shit in my life, but this remains one of my absolute favorites:
It was blatant. It made the fans turn on him a little--and fueled the rancor against him when local jackass Sean Strickland spread a lot of disproven-with-basic-reading-comprehension bullshit about Garry's personal life online last year. The backlash was real and vicious, and it was a visibly rattling experience for Garry.
Which makes it hard not to wonder about its role in how his recent performances have also helped cool him off. Garry looked like a world-beater on his way to the ladder, but his actual climbing of said ladder has proven a bit disappointing. He beat Neil Magny and he did it dominantly, but he couldn't finish him, which has only looked worse as Magny's proceeded to get blown out by prospects over this past year. Garry beat the insanely tough Geoff Neal, but it took a bad first round and a split decision to get it, and he managed to beat the heavily-hyped Michael "Venom" Page this past June in a fight that saw Garry commit so hard to a neutralizing wrestling attack that he didn't break into double-digit significant strikes in a single round.
It's not that it's bad. Honestly, if you're smart enough to swallow your pride and wrestle the shit out of Michael Page, I, personally, appreciate you. But Garry's status as a hot undefeated prospect was fueled as much by his solid performances as his marketing hype, and when you have killers like Michael Morales and Carlos Prates breathing down the division's neck, leaving the crowd booing you starts to look bad.
And when you place that record against an absolute butcher like Shavkat Rakhmonov, it looks real bad. But that's part of what makes this fight fantastic. Clashing schedules and misfortune run legion in preventing really good matchups in this sport, but every once in awhile you get to see two of the best in the world meet in their primes. Both of these men are young, undefeated and full of momentum, and it's a testament to how well-regarded Garry's skills still are that fighting a man like Rakhmonov whom many have pegged as the next world champion, he's only a +300 underdog.
I can see it. I'm not buying into it--no one who reads these is shocked by the spoiler that I'm picking Rakhmonov, a man I've been ride-or-die on for four years--but I can see it. Ever since that scare against Song, Ian Garry has been very good at keeping himself well out of trouble. Hell, it's what made his last three fights anticlimactic. He's learned not to rely on his power and timing to win every fight for him and he's embraced the ability to simply neutralize his opponents so he can outscore them with potshots and clinch attacks instead. That kind of change in his mentality is an intensely promising sign for a fighter's future prospects.
But I do think those prospects will have to be postponed for a later date. Shavkat can be lackadaisical about his defense and Geoff Neal proved he can get hurt for it, but he's so dangerous in so many positions that he can afford to be, and his ability to actually outrange Garry complicates the long jabs and straights that make up his bread and butter. Garry's recent love for the clinch is also an absolutely terrible idea against Rakhmonov, against whom the floor is essentially lava.
I don't think Garry will get blown out in a round. I do think he's losing his undefeated streak. SHAVKAT RAKHMONOV BY SUBMISSION.
MAIN CARD: I, TOO, GOT NEXT
HEAVYWEIGHT: Ciryl Gane (12-2, #2) vs Alexander Vokov (38-10, #3)
And now, the latest in the neverending trainwreck that is the top of the UFC's Heavyweight division. Ciryl Gane is the point at which the entire weight class fell apart. He was an undefeated kickboxing sensation who made it through the UFC's ladder without ever fighting a wrestler, and then, when the UFC decided to play hardball with Francis Ngannou, Gane was willing to play scab and fight for an interim title, for which Ngannou double-legged him to death and left the company in disgust. Gane picked up the torch for the Heavyweight division and marched proudly into another title fight, in which a half-awake Jon Jones effortlessly stuffed him in a burlap sack and buried him in the Nevada desert. His performance was so profoundly lousy that I actually picked Serghei Spivac to beat Gane in his comeback fight later that year, but Spivac, lifelong wrestler, decided to shoot one real takedown in two rounds and got destroyed for his sins, so now we're stuck with Ciryl Gane in yet another title eliminator.
And this time it's against Alexander Volkov, who was handily defeated by Ciryl Gane just three years ago. Volkov's had a solid run since then! Sure, he got destroyed by Tom Aspinall, but Aspinall does that to everyone, and in the meantime Volkov destroyed three separate Heavyweights, which is a fantastic way to forget that he was pretty handily defeated by Ciryl Gane just three years ago. In the very recent past Sergei Pavlovich was the scariest Heavyweight on the planet, and then Aspinall beat him, too, but where Aspinall simply blew Pavlovich out of the water in one minute, Volkov took him apart at length, keeping him at the edge of jabs and body kicks and refusing to let him ever engage in his power-punching gameplan. It was easily one of the most impressive performances of Volkov's career and it demonstrated just how well his ability to use his height to his advantage has matured, which is just what he needed to keep people from remembering that he was pretty handily defeated by Ciryl Gane just three years ago.
Look: I'd love it if Volkov won this fight. It'd be great! But we already saw his capacity for fighting at range fail him against Gane once, and I don't think the math has changed all that much in their respective styles. Moreover: It's really hard to be emotionally invested in the outcome of this fight when both men have been easily trucked by one of the current Heavyweight champions. CIRYL GANE BY DECISION, but the future seems dim.
FEATHERWEIGHT: Bryce Mitchell (16-2, #13) vs Kron Gracie (5-2, NR)
This is just a bizarre fucking fight, and I guess that's appropriate for Bryce Mitchell and the reality-warping field of nonsense that surrounds him. There are times that I question the use of Wikipedia as a source for information, but sometimes it serves as a fantastically concise point of summary:
And sometimes it serves as a remarkable source for comedy, because whoever wrote that section of his page was smart enough to make this the very next line:
Bryce Mitchell has always been a weird asshole, but for the first time in his mixed martial arts career, he's currently a vulnerable one, too. That long undefeated streak came to a crushing end at the hands of Ilia Topuria in 2022, which is fine, because he's Ilia fucking Topuria. But we haven't seen Mitchell since Josh Emmett knocked him out so violently at the end of 2023 that multiple people watching the fight thought he was dead. When you're a top fifteen fighter and you get so thoroughly ruled out of contention, you will almost always find yourself having to defend your spot against an up-and-coming prospect the UFC wants to test.
Or, y'know. Kron Gracie.
Yeah, I don't know. I don't know, man. Kron Gracie's here. He hasn't won a fight since February of 2019, he got beat silly by Cub Swanson in October of that year and took almost four years off from the sport, he showed up again in May of 2023 and looked so absurdly bad against Charles Jourdain that Dana White talked openly about if Kron should be competing anymore, and that was it. That was it! One fight in more than five years and he lost so badly that he had to blame having too much respect for Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu to do things like 'not get punched' or 'punch back.' And from that, here, today, he is fighting for a top fifteen berth in the rankings. Sean Woodson, who is undefeated at Featherweight and on a three-fight winning streak that includes Charles Jourdain, is fighting an unranked man on the prelims of next week's televised fight night. Kron Gracie, who hasn't won a fight since the cancellation of The Big Bang Theory and whose last crack at the apple went so poorly that the post-fight presser was largely about management's confusion about what he was doing in the sport at all, is on the main card of this pay-per-view fighting for a number by his name.
This sport, man. Unless Kron has spent the last year and a half meditating on how to properly obsess over kickboxing lessons, this fight comes down to either a) Kron being able to take Bryce down, or b) Bryce being dumb enough to grapple with him. Do I believe in a)? Not even slightly. But b)? That's the scary one. BRYCE MITCHELL BY DECISION, but never underestimate his ability to do the worst possible thing.
FEATHERWEIGHT: Nate Landwehr (18-5) vs Choi Doo-ho (15-4-1)
This fight was booked on the sole basis of theoretical chaos and I am entirely here for it. Nate Landwehr understands exactly what the UFC wants from him and he is doing his best to exhaustively provide. His all-action style and his 1980s professional wrestling promos made him an instant hit with the audience, and the company tried to capitalize on it by pushing him up the ladder, and unfortunately, Dan Ige styled on him so thoroughly that it more or less ended the hopes for his ascension through the ranks. But that opened him up for more fun fights, and by god, that's what the people want.
And few people are more fun than Choi Doo-ho. "The Korean Superboy" was the UFC's big hope for a South Korean champion--a young, fast, nearly-undefeated all-arounder with a laser beam of a right hand--but his streak came to an end in 2016 thanks to Cub Swanson. It was a fight-of-the-year candidate and it gave him even more traction with the fans, but a loss is a loss. And the following seven years brought him nothing but further losses, injuries, and the mandatory military service he was obligated to serve. He returned in 2023 and got a heartbreak of a draw against Kyle Nelson thanks to a point deduction, and it was just this past July that Choi finally got his first victory in eight years thanks to a beautiful knockout over Bill Algeo.
Landwehr is a very tough matchup for him, though. Choi's at his best when he has room to move, breathe and counter; Landwehr's high-pressure style makes that very, very difficult. Choi will have opportunities to snipe Nate on his way in, but I cannot help thinking he will crack under the onslaught. NATE LANDWEHR BY TKO.
PRELIMS: OKAY, BUT WHY AREN'T THESE ON THE MAIN CARD
LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHT: Dominick Reyes (13-4, #12) vs Anthony Smith (37-20, #13)
Dominick Reyes won a damn fight, y'all. After five years spent wandering in the wilderness and eating progressively more concerning knockout losses, Reyes got back in the cage this June against Dustin Jacoby--a man who has shared the cage with Azamat Murzakanov, Alonzo Menifield and Khalil Rountree Jr. without suffering a stoppage in the UFC--and Reyes not only beat him, he destroyed him. It did my heart good to see the man who was once robbed of a rightful decision against Jon Jones finally get a goddamn win again. Of course, it is, still, one win in five years. Anthony Smith hasn't been doing so hot either. Everyone has been dogging Smith about retirement, and it's been tough to deny the optics of the situation. In 2021, Smith fought Ryan Spann and strangled him within minutes; two losses and two years later they had a rematch that saw Smith just barely scrape a split decision. Some hope arose when the UFC tried to feed him to their new undefeated hype beast in Vitor Petrino, only for Petrino to hurl himself headfirst into a guillotine, and Smith spent his post-fight crowing about how people needed to respect him more and not count him out. One month later, he lost a fight to a Middleweight.
You may think I'm going to make some kind of cutting remark about a top fifteen Light Heavyweight fight between a man with one win in half a decade and a man who just got outworked by a 185-pounder. My friends: I cannot have hate in my heart for this. Yes, the division is a tire fire; yes, both men could easily be retired. But Dominick Reyes won a fight. This is a time for celebration. This is a time for faith. DOMINICK REYES BY TKO.
WELTERWEIGHT: Vicente Luque (22-10-1, #14) vs Themba Gorimbo (14-4, NR)
We have narrowly averted a tragedy. On two separate occasions this year the UFC has attempted to book Vicente Luque, a top Welterweight who's been going multiple rounds with serious contenders, against Nick Diaz, who hasn't fought in three years and hasn't won a fight in more than thirteen. This Summer, the match was scratched due to unspecified travel issues that definitely had nothing to do with the fight being in Abu Dhabi and Nick Diaz being 75% THC by volume; this second scheduling fell apart in mid-November after video popped up on social media with an extremely weathered Nick Diaz shirtless on a streetcorner seemingly setting grass on fire. This sport is fucking hard on people and I have nothing funny to say about his struggles; I mostly hope he just gets help. Luque, after the trouble he had with Joaquin Buckley in his last fight, needs a more vital challenge anyway--his traditional violent kickboxing hasn't been up to snuff in his last couple appearances, and a solid fight with a solid prospect will either help him get back to his basics or prove some unfortunate postulates about how much gas he has left in the tank. That's particularly convenient for Themba Gorimbo, because he needs a real prospect test. Since stumbling in his debut back in 2023 Gorimbo's rifled off four consecutive wins, but none have provided the kind of definitive victory or audience-grabbing statement he really needs to justify his place in the division.
This is an excellent opportunity for him. None of the men Luque has lost to are schlubs, he's been fighting the best of the best, but he's looked slow and gunshy compared to where he was just a few fights ago. If he can't pull the trigger and stop Gorimbo from outpacing and outworking him, he's going to get ground away. I am, as always, overly attached to my aging icons of violence, so I'm choosing to believe in VICENTE LUQUE BY DECISION, but this could get real depressing.
FEATHERWEIGHT: Movsar Evloev (18-0, #5) vs Aljamain Sterling (24-4, #9)
Like, let's just put this in perspective. Movsar Evloev is an undefeated top contender. No one has been able to beat him. He outwrestled Dan Ige and Diego Lopes and he beat Arnold Allen, and the only other person in UFC history who can match that victory is Max by God Holloway. He's on an eight-fight winning streak in one of the harshest shark tanks in the sport. Aljamain Sterling is unequivocally one of the best Bantamweights in UFC history. He beat Cory Sandhagen, he beat Petr Yan, he let the UFC schedule him into three title defenses in 300 days, and he lost the title to Sean O'Malley in a match so promotionally slanted that its instant replay was brought to you by an advertising co-promotion with Sean O'Malley. He promptly went up to Featherweight, took on a huge challenge in Calvin Kattar, and ragdolled him with ease. One fight ago, Movsar Evloev was beating a man who was just in a title eliminator; one fight ago, Aljamain Sterling was debuting at a new weight class after just losing a world championship he held for two and a half years, and now two of the best grapplers in the entire sport are fighting for a top five ranking.
This is a prelim fight, booked under Themba Gorimbo, Nate Landwehr and Kron Gracie.
I am old enough to remember Dana White's 2008 video rant about how 'fucking illegal' it was to encourage Seth Petruzelli not to use his grappling advantage against Kimbo Slice back in the halcyon days of EliteXC. I miss the days when being predominantly a wrestling stylist did not doom you to have to win thrice as many fights as a striker to get the attention you deserve. Unless you're Colby Covington. This is a stylistically fascinating fight, and it by all means should end with Movsar being able to control Aljo, and for some reason, that simply isn't computing in my head. I am choosing to believe in creative grappling and divisional chaos. ALJAMAIN STERLING BY DECISION.
WELTERWEIGHT: Randy Brown (19-5) vs Bryan Battle (11-2 (1))
However much I may bitch about the aspects of emphasizing violence over technique, it does not mean I do not appreciate violence, and this matchup is entirely about violence. Randy Brown and Bryan Battle are both excellent purveyors of tall, lanky pugilism, but where Brown has dealt with setbacks induced by his own overaggression leading him to the occasional knockout loss, Battle's only dropped fight in the UFC came from being wrestled into paste by Rinat Fakhretdinov, meaning he still has the utmost confidence in his ability to march forward and mulch people like a human woodchipper. Except for the one time he poked Ange Loosa in the eye, got a No Contest and then tried to start a fight with him after the bell over it. That was slightly less cool.
It's hard to get more theoretically fun than this. Both men like their high-octane striking matches, but they're also accustomed to having range advantages, and this is one of the exceptionally rare times they'll be on even footing. Once upon a time I would've cited Randy's tendency to drown under pressure, but he's decidedly matured. Battle is very, very good at creating chaos in the cage, though, and his quick movement between attacks up close and at distance could disrupt Brown's rhythm. I'm going with BRYAN BATTLE BY TKO, but this is a giant tossup.
EARLY PRELIMS: DEATH CAN ONLY BE DELAYED
CATCHWEIGHT, 195 POUNDS: Chris Weidman (16-7) vs Eryk Anders (16-8 (1))
We were supposed to be free. We were supposed to have escaped. This fight was supposed to happen on the prelims of UFC 309 last month, but food poisoning scratched Anders just before the broadcast began. On one hand: We are once again damned to the existential crisis that is this fight. On the other: I get to do a rerun, so who can truly say if it's bad.
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.
FLYWEIGHT: Cody Durden (17-6-1, #14) vs Joshua Van (11-2, NR)
Cody Durden has successfully staved off execution. He walked into his September 7 showdown with Matt Schnell staring down the barrel of a three-fight losing streak if he managed to drop another one, and the first round was competitive and saw him get cracked upside the head a bunch, but Matt Schnell was considerate enough to begin the second round by charging headfirst into Durden's armpit, and the subsequent choke was quick and gratifying. Did he fight enormously smart? No. Did it work? That's all that matters. Joshua Van, by contrast, is trying to recapture momentum. His UFC tenure started with three impressive wins in seven months, which is a blistering pace, but fighters repeatedly getting injured stole half a year of his career, and when he finally got back in the cage he met the always-game Charles Johnson and won the first two rounds, but Johnson came back and knocked him out in the third. Van was in the cage again two months later, which, to be honest, bums me the fuck out, but he beat Edgar Cháirez and I've long since lost the fight over concussion protocols and must learn to live with our new reality.
Durden's brawling style is going to run into trouble against Van's movement and counterstriking, so this feels like more of a referendum on Durden's ability to take Van down. I'm betting against it. JOSHUA VAN BY DECISION.
WELTERWEIGHT: Michael Chiesa (17-7) vs Max Griffin (20-10)
There's a certain freedom in aging into veterancy. At one point, Michael Chiesa was fighting in title eliminators and Max Griffin was punching his way towards top ten rankings, and with as much respect as possible to both of these men, those times have passed. Chiesa went on a three-fight, three-year losing streak and returned to the winning column this past August thanks to a victory over Tony Ferguson, which is, at this point, kind of like getting rich by throwing orphans off a cliff. Max Griffin never had a dramatic fall-off, he simply seemed to repeatedly hit a ceiling in the division, and now, as a man who hasn't had back-to-back wins in years and just celebrated his 39th birthday one week ago, there just aren't many expectations placed on him by the fanbase. No one is expecting a career renaissance for either of these men. They simply exist as decent fighters who can generally be relied upon for a decent time. There are far worse fates.
This fight is essentially just a test of Griffin's takedown defense. Striking has never been Chiesa's strong suit--in two dozen fights across fourteen years he has, in fact, never scored a knockout in a professional bout--and Griffin exists primarily to beat up legs and heads. He hits hard and he takes damage very well. He also gets taken down eventually by most of his opponents. I think Chiesa's going to get him on the ground, but I don't think he'll do it consistently enough to avoid the damage coming back his way. MAX GRIFFIN BY TKO.
LIGHTWEIGHT: Clay Guida (38-24) vs Chase Hooper (14-3-1)
I feel very silly for using the phrase "aging into veterancy" one fight before talking about Clay Guida. In July, we officially passed twenty-one years of Clay Guida. Clay Guida's mixed martial arts career is old enough to legally drink. Clay Guida has people on his record who started fighting in the previous century. He has always existed, he irresponsibly continues to exist, and time itself has no hold on his perpetual nature. Chase Hooper is his inverted mirror image: A man defined by youth. Chase Hooper walked so Raul Rosas Jr. could run. He was signed to the UFC far too young as an undefeated teenaged grappling prodigy, he gained a lot of hype with a great debut, and he promptly lost his streak one fight later and the audience forgot about him, because when you have been around for so little time that 'he is young and undefeated' is your entire persona, losing one of those is crippling. It is only now, four years later, that Hooper has managed to once again put together a winning streak, and all it took was a series of fights against ill-equipped competition meant explicitly to rehabilitate Hooper as a prospect.
Which is why he is fighting a 42 year-old former star with an 18-18 record. Chase Hooper will almost assuredly win this fight. He's a better-flowing grappler, he's too good at wrestling to fall victim to Guida's single-leg attacks, and he's bigger, rangier and snappier with his punches. Realistically, this is Hooper taking a fairly quick victory. But I am not, and have never been, real. CLAY GUIDA BY DECISION.
HEAVYWEIGHT: Kennedy Nzechukwu (13-5) vs Łukasz Brzeski (9-5-1)
I am angry about this fight. You may think it's because I haven't forgiven Kennedy Nzechukwu for beating up a Chris Barnett who busted his leg during fight introductions five weeks ago, and that doesn't help, but it's not that. You may think it's because Łukasz Brzeski has one victory in six bouts under the corporate banner of the UFC and is somehow, inexplicably, still here, and that does grate on me, but it's not that, either. I can forgive both of these men for their sins against my soul. But this was supposed to be a bout between Brzeski and a 6'7" Heavyweight named Tallison Teixeira before he got injured and had to be replaced. Do you know what kind of joy in my heart I could have gotten making dumb, obvious jokes about a 6'7" Heavyweight named Tallison? This was a gift from the heavens to make a difficult month easier, and then he got injured and now it's just a Kennedy Nzechukwu squash match instead.
How dare the world ruin my cloud. KENNEDY NZECHUKWU BY TKO.