CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 126: WHAT WE LEARN TO LIVE WITH
UFC Fight Night: Covington vs Buckley
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 14 FROM THE AMALIE ARENA IN TAMPA, FLORIDA
PRELIMS: 4 PM PST / 7 PM EST | MAIN CARD: 7 PM / 10 PM
Fuck it. Let's end the year with spite.
MAIN EVENT: A MULTITUDE OF FRUSTRATIONS
WELTERWEIGHT: Colby Covington (17-4, #6) vs Joaquin Buckley (20-6, #9)
This is the second consecutive time I find myself spending the final UFC writeup of the year forced to discuss Colby Covington, and I am only resenting it more in 2024. After complaining about them so thoroughly last time I am going to challenge myself to put off talking about the politics of the situation for as long as I can possibly resist. My guess: Twelve paragraphs.
For those who need a recap: Despite being the stylistic embodiment of the grinding wrestler the UFC claims to loathe, Colby Covington is the beneficiary of some of the worst push-booking in company history. In 2019, Colby soared to a title shot on the back of a seven-fight winning streak, an endless raft of deeply boring shit-talking, and a victory over former champion Robbie Lawler, who was, at the time, on a two-fight losing streak. Covington fought Kamaru Usman, got knocked out in the fifth round, and refused to ever shut the fuck up about how he was robbed by the referee and would trounce Usman in a rematch.
He immediately earned his second title shot by, once again, beating a former champion on a two-fight losing streak. This time it was Tyron Woodley. But it was Colby's first stoppage victory in four years! Because Woodley separated a rib defending a takedown. Colby got his second crack at Usman, and he was even louder and stupider the second time around, and he lost again, this time by unanimous decision. Once again, he cried foul and vowed revenge, and once again, he swore he would win the rematch.
Once again, he earned a title shot, and once again, he earned it by beating a man on a two-fight losing streak. This time it was Jorge Masvidal, whose highest-ranked claim to fame was also losing two title shots against Usman, and the UFC was extremely open to booking the rubber match for an 0-2 trilogy. They didn't get the chance--Masvidal suckerpunched Colby on a city street and put him out of action in what really feels like it should have been a bigger deal--and in the time it took Colby to heal, the division moved on. Leon Edwards, who had deserved a title shot for years, did what Colby couldn't by knocking Usman cold and beating him again in a rematch. There were new contenders, good contenders, and the division no longer had a use for Colby Covington.
He, of course, got the title shot anyway. Having not won a fight in more than a year and a half, having no victories over active UFC Welterweights, Colby got to fight for the belt for the third time in five fights. Everyone knew it was horseshit; it didn't matter. The UFC wanted Colby in the main. They wanted Colby with the belt, and having seen Usman's success wrestling with Edwards, they knew Colby could do it.
Except Colby could not, in fact, do it. Colby went two for ten on takedown attempts--Leon went two for three. He outstruck Colby in four of five rounds and won the same amount, and the fan response was bafflement at just how lousy Colby looked. He slunk away into the shadows, there was no news of a return, and the world happily moved on from the Colby Covington experiment.
The original main event of UFC 310, the final pay-per-view of the year, was Belal Muhammad defending the Welterweight championship against Shavkat Rakhmonov, and the main event of this, the final Fight Night of the year, was Joaquin Buckley vs Ian Machado Garry. Champion vs top contender; top prospect vs top prospect. It made sense.
At the very end of October, rumor broke that Belal was injured and wouldn't be able to make it to the fight. The UFC was pursuing a possible interim title fight, and in our communal discord, I had a premonition of doom:
As it turns out: We were almost there. Shavkat Rakhmonov confirmed the UFC did, in fact, want him vs Colby, and it was only Colby deciding it wasn't worth the risk that kept it from happening. So Shavkat got Ian Garry, and Joaquin Buckley is stuck with this motherfucker.
And I want to talk about Joaquin Buckley. I really do. I want to talk about what a great turnaround he's had and just how difficult it is to come back from struggling at Middleweight and flourish the way he has. We're only a couple years divorced from Buckley's well-established reputation as a guy who couldn't break into the fringe of his division--a hard-hitting power puncher with endurance problems who would forever be defined by one really cool viral knockout he could never replicate. When Chris Curtis punched him out in 2022 it felt like the end of his prospects.
Going down to an even tougher weight class in Welterweight when you're made of muscle like Buckley is? That's tough. Going on a five-fight winning streak at that class? That's even tougher. Knocking out Vicente Luque and Stephen Thompson in a single calendar year? That's just fucking ridiculous. Buckley's matured out of his previous limitations, shored up his gas tank and learned to really harness his power in ways that are downright scary.
Which makes it a shame we did not get Buckley vs Garry. That was an inherently fascinating matchup: Buckley's power and timing against Garry's evasion and counterpunching. There were some real future-of-the-division stakes to it. Instead, we have this fight, which is essentially just a pass/fail on if Buckley can keep Colby from taking him down. If he can? He wins. If he can't? Everything sucks forever.
I knew I was going to wind up quoting some piece of my angry screed from last year, and I thought it would be one of the many bits of impotent whining about Colby's record, but instead, I find I keep thinking about this:
There's a certain sense of futility that drips into being a fan. Barring the success of the antitrust lawsuit or an abrupt meteor strike, there's nothing that's really going to change the UFC; its money doesn't even come from its own consumers anymore.
It's hard not to feel that futility even more acutely after 2024. We could talk about the matchmaking or the business or the Contender Series or Jon Jones turning Heavyweight into even more of a farce than it already was or Conor McGregor being found liable for rape and our sport's expectations having fallen so low that UFC management's response was a shrug and the hope that he'll fight for them next year, but it's all a way to put off facing up to the reality of the world's premier mixed martial arts organization having successfully served as a propaganda platform for Donald Trump and aided in the rise of some of the worst people on the planet to positions of terrible power.
And here at the end of all of that is Colby Covington, the living embodiment of the post-ironic world of right-wing grievance politics. He hasn't beaten anyone coming off a win in six and a half years, he's lost more title shots than 99% of fighters will ever receive and he's only not fighting in a title eliminator because he decided this was a better career move. It doesn't matter that it's ridiculous: The ridiculousness is the point.
There could not be a better reminder of the present moment in all its depressing absurdity. I think Colby's going to have a tough time getting Buckley down and I think over five rounds he's getting fucked up, and I'm hoping at least one of my political hopes for the year will pan out. JOAQUIN BUCKLEY BY TKO.
CO-MAIN EVENT: SHITS AND GIGGLES
FEATHERWEIGHT: Cub Swanson (29-14) vs Billy Quarantillo (18-6)
After all of that angry fugue-state writing about things mattering we have a fight that kind of doesn't matter, and that rules.
I have appreciated Cub Swanson since WEC 26 all the way back in 2007. That he is still kicking after twenty years of combat is somewhere between astonishing and disconcerting, but the man's fun factor has never waned. The creativity he brings to his striking has always been a delight and seeing him pull it out and wheelkick the Darren Elkinses of the world in the 2020s does my heart good.
But the days of Cub Swanson being A Thing have been over for some time. The last rankings-relevant win of Swanson's career was his absolute classic with Choi Doo-ho, and that was damn near a decade ago. These days he only really gets two types of bouts: Just-for-fun matchups against people the UFC isn't too invested in and put-over-the-new-guy matchups with prospects the company would like to support.
Sometimes that means getting to see Cub beat up Kron Gracie or outwork Hakeem Dawodu, which is grand. Most of the time it's Cub getting strangled by Renato Moicano, or Cub getting his intestines displaced by Giga Chikadze's foot, or Cub getting his legs Owen Harted by Jonathan Martinez. The last time we saw Cub it was in an ultimate-veterancy matchup with Andre Fili, and after about as close a contest as you can get, Fili took a split decision.
Billy Quarantillo is an odd sort of modern equivalent, which is fascinating, given that he's only five years younger than Cub. He, too, came into the UFC with a good amount of credibility behind him as a solid prospect, and he, too, earned a fan favorite reputation for his action-heavy style, and he, too, got a solid push from the UFC in exchange for his promise to be exciting.
But 'being exciting' does not often translate into 'becoming a contender,' and despite their attempts to give him opportunities, Billy just hasn't been able to get over the hump, and the constant crashes against the ceiling have managed to harm the audience's willingness to get invested in him.
For the last four straight years Quarantillo has been unable to string together back-to-back wins, and the losses have only gotten harsher. It's one thing to get outworked by Gavin Tucker or Shane Burgos, losses that leave room for hope; when you're getting knocked the fuck out by Edson Barboza or choked out by Youssef Zalal, and your durability and recovery are central hallmarks of your style, things start looking dim.
Which makes it the perfect time for these two to meet. Neither Cub nor Billy are in danger of tilting the rankings. Both are suffering from a lack of inertia and both are at risk of burning the ends of their wicks. The stakes are secondary to the likelihood that these men will have a really fun fucking fight.
But that means I am rooting for joy rather than logic, and only one of these two has brought me twenty years of entertainment. Abandoning him now would mark me a coward. CUB SWANSON BY DECISION.
MAIN CARD: PROMOTIONAL DEMOTION
FLYWEIGHT: Manel Kape (19-7, #9) vs Bruno Silva (14-5-2 (1), #12)
It's really hard to fall like Manel Kape has while only actually losing a single fight. For the entirety of 2023, Kape was a man on the verge of contendership who kept getting shat on by fate. Alex Perez, Deiveson Figueiredo and Kai Kara-France all had to pull out of fights with Kape thanks to medical issues, and Kape was extremely loud and incredibly weird about insulting all of them for their cowardice and weakness and 'defective genes,' in one of the rare cases of someone Sephiroth-posting in real life. Kape promptly spent the entire first half of 2024 blowing his weight cut and having to repeatedly pull out of fights with Matheus Nicolau. And then he got into a bunch of dust-ups with Muhammad Mokaev and lost to him in a fight so uneventful the UFC cut Mokaev over it. (Somehow Kape, who did even less, was fine.) Two years ago Manel Kape was on the cusp of contention; now he is fighting to protect his ranking against the bottom of the ladder while watching Kai Asakura, a man he knocked out, get a shot at the belt.
Bruno Silva has been enjoying the opposite trajectory. Within a year of his UFC debut Silva had notched two losses and a No Contest--which would have been a loss had it not been for Khalid Taha running afoul of USADA, and boy that's just a fun sentence to say--and it looked like his run would be over before it could really start. One meeting with JP Buys, one of the most unfortunate fighters in UFC history, changed everything. It is 2024, Bruno's on a four-fight finishing streak, and in the process he because the only man to ever submit Tyson Nam and the only man to ever knock out the irritatingly durable Cody Durden. He's fast as hell, he hits like a truck, and he has been fighting like a man who knows he has to make up ground as fast as possible to stay afloat in a division that is both incredibly competitive and persistently gutted by management.
But, boy, Kape is good. He's really good. He's a complex fighter with an incredibly well-rounded skillset who is damn near impossible to stop, and against a sprinter like Bruno, that's a big mountain to overcome. Logically, this should be Kape's fight to lose. Inexplicably, I am following my hunch and saying BRUNO SILVA BY TKO. I don't know why.
LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHT: Dustin Jacoby (19-9-1) vs Vitor Petrino (11-1)
Oh, the directions careers could have gone were it not for the whims of the judges. In 2022, Dustin Jacoby had gone nine straight fights without a loss and looked ready for a step up into contendership. Then he fought Khalil Rountree Jr., pretty clearly won the fight, and lost a split decision anyway. Khalil went on to fight Chris Daukaus and Anthony Smith, both at enormously vulnerable moments in their careers, and got a shot at the world championship out of it. Jacoby stayed stuck in the periphery of the rankings, went 1 for his last 4, and became the first man in half a decade to lose a fight to Dominick Reyes. The sliding doors of the sport are cruel.
But no crueler than the life of a hyped prospect. Vitor Petrino was one of the UFC's big Contender Series hopes: An undefeated wrecking machine in the always-thin forests of Light Heavyweight with a 100% finishing rate. In fairness, he made the jump to the UFC famously, rattling off a four-fight winning streak in a division where knockouts are constant threats. In equal fairness, he was doing it against folks like Tyson Pedro and Anton Turkalj. In total unfairness, he was the only one of Turkalj's UFC opponents who didn't finish him. The signs were there, and when the UFC tried to get Petrino into the rankings this past May, he paid them off by diving headfirst into Anthony Smith's armpit and getting choked out in two minutes.
I have always been a bit skeptical of Petrino, and even now, with Jacoby's current career struggles, I see bad things for him. DUSTIN JACOBY BY DECISION.
BANTAMWEIGHT: Daniel Marcos (16-0 (1)) vs Adrian Yañez (17-5)
This is one of the rare cases of a replacement fight appealing to me more than its original scheduling. Daniel Marcos has been riding the razor's edge of prospectdom for years--there's a reason there are so few undefeated Bantamweights out there--but he's struggled to retain opponents, and he probably should've lost against Davey Grant, and his 2024 got off to a rocky start when his fight with Aoriqileng ended in a No Contest after Marcos threw a front kick just as Aori jumped for a knee, which led to Marcos instead punting his groin as hard as he possibly could. A comeback against John Castañeda proved more successful, but Marcos was slated to have a real tough showdown with Said Nurmagomedov tonight.
But Said couldn't make it, and in his stead we have Adrian Yañez, and boy, that's just much more fun. Partially, it's because Adrian Yañez is a similar range-heavy striker and my endless lust for leg kicks demands the kind of satiation that can only come from shinbones hitting shinbones for fifteen minutes. Philosophically, it's because Yañez is on the comeback road and hungry again. At the outset of 2023 he was on a five-fight winning streak and jockeying for a ranking; by the turn of 2024 he'd been stopped on strikes twice in a row and looked condemned to the edge of the division. He's been regaining momentum, he wants another shot at the top, and eating another prospect is his best chance.
More than predicting this fight, I just wanna fuckin' see it. There's potential for an extremely technical striking war here. Gun to my head, I'm siding with Adrian's pressure, but this is a coinflip and a half. ADRIAN YAÑEZ BY DECISION.
LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHT: Navajo Stirling (5-0) vs Tuco Tokkos (10-4)
Writing these cards from the top down leads to situations where I gush about a technical striking battle and then write about the ends of the Earth. Navajo Stirling is another import from New Zealand's City Kickboxing camp, the group that brought us Israel Adesanya, Dan Hooker and Kai Kara-France, but where all of them were accomplished before entering the UFC, Navajo is 5-0 with exactly one victory over an opponent with more wins than losses. He's tall, he knocks people out, he has had one solid challenge in his career, and there are definitely no longterm consequences to the sport that this is the primary path into its highest echelon of competition now.
Similarly: Hi, Tuco Tokkos. It's funny, because Tuco went the other way: The first half of his career was actually relatively solid, including fighting in Bellator, toiling at Middleweight, and going up through Fury FC like a good prospect should. Then he got a shot at the big leagues thanks to Road to UFC's need for sideshows and found himself knocked stupid by Zhang Mingyang in one round. After that, despite being ten fights deep into his career, it was time to hit reverse and fight the 3-2 and 1-11 and 19-10 fighters of the world until he got another chance at the spotlight. And he did, making his UFC debut this past May, where he was immediately outwrestled by Oumar Sy and choked out while repeatedly commenting on how big Sy was rather than focusing on defending himself.
What're you gonna do, man. This is the sport. We must accept that half of the UFC's roster space is now dedicated to minimum-wage gambling on low-experience prospects in the hope that one of them turns out to be Conor McGregor again. NAVAJO STIRLING BY TKO.
PRELIMS: LET'S END THE YEAR ON MODERATE ANNOYANCE
LIGHTWEIGHT: Michael Johnson (22-19) vs Ottman Azaitar (13-2)
After a certain point in a fighter's career you stop describing them and start describing the passage of time they've witnessed, and that's so inherently disrespectful to a career as fucking weird as Michael Johnson's. This is a guy with victories over Edson Barboza, Tony Ferguson and Dustin Poirier to his name, a runner-up to The Ultimate Fighter 12 (jesus christ), a damn-near fifteen-year veteran of the biggest mixed martial arts company in history. And he's fighting this fight to try to get back his 50/50 record. All that space, all that time, and he is, as of today, 14-15 in the UFC, because time makes fools of us all. Ottman Azaitar, in fairness, more than most. You can divide Ottman's career into two precise sections. In the first, which runs from 2014 to 2020, he was a regional champion, a wrecking machine with a 92% finishing rate, and one of the scariest prospects in the sport. Then, in 2021, he was suspended for trying to sneak a backpack into an Abu Dhabi hotel during COVID, and later again for running afoul of USADA. (Manager Ali Abdelaziz says the backpack was full of potatoes.) In the post-potato phase of his career, Azaitar has fought twice in 51 months and got knocked out in the first round both times. There is rarely a harsher demarcation.
I dunno, man. I've predicted Johnson's fights for decades and you truly never know which version of him will show up on fight night. As cooked as Azaitar has seemed, particularly in our brave new post-USADA world, I'm still thinking OTTMAN AZAITAR BY TKO.
LIGHTWEIGHT: Joel Álvarez (21-3) vs Drakkar Klose (15-2-1)
Some of the best parts of this sport come from the struggles of fighters who just can't crack the glass ceiling. Both of these men are spectacularly skilled competitors with long, well-proven track records, and both men have beaten everyone in front of them except the best. Joel Álvarez has choked his way across the Lightweight division and even picked up a genuinely impressive rout of Thiago Moisés in the process, but he couldn't outwork the deeply underrated Damir Ismagulov and he got pounded out by the next title contender, Arman Tsarukyan. Drakkar Klose has been kicking around the UFC for seven years, and in that time he's rolled together a genuinely impressive 9-2 record, but he couldn't beat the stopped-too-soon David Teymur, and he ate the only stoppage loss of his career against top contender Beneil Dariush. They're both tough, they're both phenomenal, and they're both perpetually in search of the win that finally gets them in the mix.
But Joel's also a foot taller, 7" rangier, and a more versatile striker. I'd like to see Klose use his power in the clinch to deny Joel his range, but I'm still thinking JOEL ÁLVAREZ BY TKO.
FEATHERWEIGHT: Sean Woodson (12-1-1) vs Fernando Padilla (16-5)
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.
Yup. It's this fight. The real funny thing is Woodson had a fair amount of good will from management once upon a time--early Contender Series baby, got a real neat knockout, had long, fun combination-heavy boxing--but he stumbled against Julian Erosa and adopted a more conservative, defensively sound style that made him a bit less exciting to watch, and now, despite having not lost since 2020, Sean and his giant boxing range are here on the prelims, fighting to defend his hard-earned spot against a guy who just got here last year and is already 2-1. Padilla's his own brand of tough, and he finishes most of his wins, and he costs less money, and by god, that's what matters. But, in fairness, Woodson lost to Julian Erosa four and a half years ago and Padilla knocked out Julian Erosa in 2023, so who am I to question the wisdom of the matchmakers?
I have to acknowledge that spite drives a lot of my predictions, but I do not have to let that acknowledgment improve me as a human being. SEAN WOODSON BY DECISION.
FEATHERWEIGHT: Miles Johns (15-2 (1)) vs Felipe Lima (13-1)
Miles Johns deserves better, too, and the real tragedy is how close he came to getting it. After a half-decade's toil in the Bantamweight division, "Chapo" finally got far enough with the UFC to receive his shot at the spotlight. He was scheduled against Cody Garbrandt, former champion and star, this past October. And then it got pushed back a month--we never found out why--and then it got scrapped altogether thanks to a Garbrandt injury just four days before the fight. Now, instead of meeting a former champion on a full training camp, Johns gets one month of preparation to fight a Featherweight in his own division. On the plus side, Felipe Lima is a small Featherweight, so they're just about the same size. On the minus, Lima's on a thirteen-fight winning streak and just choked out the similarly streaking Muhammad Naimov in his UFC debut this past June.
We haven't seen Johns lose in awhile, but this one's going to test him. FELIPE LIMA BY SUBMISSION.
WOMEN'S FLYWEIGHT: Miranda Maverick (14-5, #12) vs Jamey-Lyn Horth (7-1, NR)
On the topic of coming close to relevance, we have poor Miranda Maverick. Let us start where I always start when it comes to discussing her: Maycee Barber, company favorite, lost against Miranda Maverick in 2021, and it was only by grace of the worst robbery of the year that Maycee came away with the victory. But Maverick got beat by Erin Blanchfield one fight later, so the rage faded after it was clear she wouldn't have won her way through contention anyway. Maverick was supposed to have a top fifteen fight against Tracy Cortez this past July, but the UFC pulled Cortez for a main event against Rose Namajunas instead, and Maverick was left buried in the prelims against the unranked Dione Barbosa. She won--marking her third straight victory--and for her troubles, she is, once again, buried in the prelims against an unranked opponent, this time Jamey-Lyn Horth, who also just had a fucking fight at the start of November. I would like to once again say that fighting three rounds, taking dozens of strikes, and coming back to do it again immediately is a bad fucking idea.
But so is most of the sport. MIRANDA MAVERICK BY DECISION.
BANTAMWEIGHT: Davey Grant (13-7) vs Ramon Taveras (10-2)
I do not feel great about this fight, but in fairness, I don't feel great about most of the Ramon Taveras UFC story. Taveras fought Serhiy Sidey on the Contender Series in 2023, missed weight and got stopped in the first round. He disputed the stoppage, as did Dana White, and after winning a fight against Cortavious Romious (who also got another shot at the show and is now also in the UFC, as the Contender Series shifts towards its inevitable goal of simply being an open door), the UFC booked Sidey/Taveras 2 in the UFC proper. Once again, Taveras missed weight--this time by half a division--and after a hard, back-and-forth fight, 100% of media scorecards had Sidey winning the decision. Taveras got it anyway. And now Taveras gets to fight Davey Grant, who was on a solid UFC run up until he, too, lost a controversial split to Daniel Marcos and took a year and a half off thanks to neck surgery.
I have very bad feelings about Grant coming off major surgery and a sixteen-month layoff against someone who swings as hard as Taveras does. My faith is not wavering, I'm still picking DAVEY GRANT BY TKO, but my hackles are raised.
WOMEN'S STRAWWEIGHT: Josefine Knutsson (8-0) vs Piera Rodriguez (9-2)
And here, at the end of the year, we have the return of Piera Rodriguez from maybe the dumbest loss of 2024. Piera had a frustrating stretch leading up to the fight--she lost her undefeated streak to Gillian Robertson, spent a year on the shelf rehabbing a broken arm, and then lost a fight against Cynthia Calvillo after Calvillo's botched weight cut--but when she stepped into the cage this past May against Ariane Carnelossi she won the first round, outwrestled Carnelossi repeatedly, and damn near knocked her out with a boot to the head. And then she headbutted her, and the referee said 'hey, please don't,' and in response, Piera immediately headbutted her again, this time so blatantly she clearly could not have been doing anything else. Carnelossi could not continue, and after going undefeated in her first nine fights Piera took her second consecutive loss, this time by just an aggressively silly disqualification. The UFC is now booking her against a new, different undefeated Contender Series winner. The intention is not subtle.
Piera's good, but she's been a bit of a mess these past couple years, and Knutsson's performance against Julia Polastri was good enough that I'm willing to side with her. JOSEFINE KNUTSSON BY DECISION.