CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 133: THAT'S MORE LIKE IT
UFC Fight Night: Kape vs Almabayev
SATURDAY, MARCH 1 FROM THE FULMINATING SWIRL OF THE APEX
PRELIMS 1 PM PST / 4 PM EST | MAIN CARD 4 PM / 7 PM
Y'know, even in a world that no longer cares that COVID exists, I don't hate the Apex as a concept. I know a road schedule is hard to maintain and the idea of a home arena for the UFC to hold cards is a thing I can understand at a logistical level. If Apex cards were as good as road cards, I'd be much more forgiving about them. Especially when there are some fun scraps on the docket! You can't be too upset, right? It's MMA! It's fun!
Anyway we're back in the Apex and there are three ranked fighters and the main event is a late replacement and the co-main event is Cody Brundage vs Julian Marquez.
Yeah. I know. I know.
MAIN EVENT: CIRCULAR CURSES
FLYWEIGHT: Manel Kape (20-7, #6) vs Asu Almabayev (21-2, #8)
I have to be honest, at this point I find Manel Kape's suffering pretty funny.
Like, really. The man spent two years getting dicked around by opponents getting injured or having to be rescheduling or messing up their weight cuts, all the while orbiting contention, all the while waiting for a higher-ranked matchup, all the while bitching incessantly about the rest of the division's cowardice and unprofessionalism and occasionally throwing anti-gay slurs around. And then he finally gets a top five fight--and he blows his weight cut and the fight gets rescheduled and he gets injured and can't make it to the cage.
Three months later, Kape gets his second chance. Muhammed Mokaev is an undefeated prospect with serious title potential and he's also even more of a headcase than Kape. The two clash repeatedly in the lead-up to the fight, both claim the other assaulted them at the hotel (but only Mokaev admits to actually doing it), and Kape criticizes Mokaev for being a boring wrestler who can't fight and vows Mokaev won't outwrestle him. He's wrong twice: Mokaev both outwrestles and outstrikes him. Kape's four-fight winning streak comes to an end and takes his momentum with it.
Except the UFC fires Mokaev and pretends the fight didn't happen, which remains one of the most underratedly bonkers moves they've made in awhile.
But hey, good for Kape! He gets to go back to way things were! Which means fighting down in the rankings. He picked off an overmatched Bruno Silva, called for a title eliminator and got one. Manel Kape would finally, finally have his contendership challenge against Brandon Royval, the rightful #1 contender in the division.
And then Royval got injured, and suddenly, hey: It's Asu Almabayev.
Almabayev's fighting off his own scheduling snafus. After rattling off a genuinely impressive four wins in fourteen months, no one had any issues whatsoever with Almabayev getting tested in the top ten. He brought his championship wrestling game straight from Kazakhstan without missing a single step, he grounded and dominated everyone in his way, and when he got in the cage with Matheus Nicolau this past October--a man who beat Kape back in 2021--Almabayev neutralized him just as he had everyone else. He took his number, he got into the top ten, and he made himself ready for a contendership bout.
First it was going to be Steve Erceg, former title challenger now on a two-fight losing streak--but the UFC decided, rather than a reasonable top ten challenge, Erceg should get rebooked into a bout with #2 contender Brandon Moreno instead, because failing upwards is cool and good. Then it was going to be a prospect match against the perpetually missing-in-action Allan "Puro Osso" Nascimento, which had the potential to be one of the best grappling matches of the year--but then Royval needed a replacement.
So Almabayev's angry Kazakh wrestling got pulled into the main event, and once again, we have a potential title eliminator being waged by two legitimately great prospects except they're adjusting their camps from their planned opponents and have a minimum of time to actually prepare. Meanwhile the #2 guy is fighting the #9 guy who just got knocked out, and the guy who knocked him out is not yet booked.
Flyweight's so good, and its champion is one of the best in the sport, but the division's in such a fuckin' snaggle and I don't know how they're going to get it out.
Anyway, I have very little faith in Kape not to choke in the face of five rounds of Almabayev trying to wrestle him to death. Am I just still mad yelling slurs doesn't get punishment anymore? Probably. ASU ALMABAYEV BY DECISION is still the call.
CO-MAIN EVENT: YES, REALLY
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Cody Brundage (10-6 (1)) vs Julian Marquez (9-5)
I try not to be down on this sport more than I need to be, but sometimes I see people talking about a card being good and then its co-main event is Cody Brundage vs Julian Marquez and I wonder how we are not all just screaming, constantly, in an unceasing chorus of madness.
Like, what are we doing here? What is our purpose on Earth in relation to this sport and the moments in time that will be devoted to this match? These two men combine for ten fights in just a hair over the last two years, and between them they have only intentionally won one of those ten, and somehow, that path has led them to one another in a co-main event on a television.
Well, 'somehow' is doing some heavy lifting. There's no mystery about this. Cody Brundage is one of the UFC's reliable hands for losing fights. They didn't really want him in the first place--he got picked up on a late-replacement contract back in 2021--and since then he's been their personal Barry Horowitz. Rodolfo Vieira lost again? Call Cody Brundage. Sedriques Dumas fucked up his debut? Call Cody Brundage. Bo Nickal needs an opponent? Cody god damned Brundage.
They relied on it so much that it started backfiring in progressively less likely ways. When I used 'intentionally' as a victory qualifier, it's because Brundage actually has two wins to his record in 2023--the first just came after Jacob Malkoun, in the middle of completely fucking up his shit, elbowed him in the back of the head and promptly got disqualified. Brundage was supposed to make it up to the UFC by putting over their big new Contender Series man, Zach Reese, and he promptly powerbombed Reese into unconsciousness in one of the bigger numerical upsets of the entire year.
Unfortunately that just got him the aforementioned Bo Nickal mauling. But then Abdul Razak Alhassan once again managed to punch the shit out of the back of Brundage's apparently magnetic brain, but he, at least, got away with a No Contest instead of a DQ. This path of jobber destruction was intended to continue here: Brundage was supposed to face Ryan Loder, the Middleweight champion of The Ultimate Fighter 32 (jesus christ), but Loder got hurt.
And the UFC doesn't have anyone else for Brundage to conveniently lose to right now, so, it's Julian Marquez, the man whose entire career is now dated by the fact that his greatest brush with success came not from fighting, but from publicly asking out Miley Cyrus and then blowing it.
Marquez has not won a fight in almost four years. Marquez has only actually participated in three fights in almost four years, and he got knocked out in every single one of them. At this point, Julian Marquez getting knocked out is an annual fixture of the UFC. In 2022 it was Gregory Rodrigues putting him out in a single round, in 2023 it was Marc-André Barriault punching him out against the fence, and this past June it was Zach Reese--recovering from his aforementioned loss to Brundage--dropping Marquez in twenty seconds.
And that's our co-main event. It's a guy who's only beaten Zach Reese in the last fourteen months against a guy who's only lost to Zach Reese in the last fourteen months. I can't even manifest the emotional energy necessary to tell you about Brundage's wrestling vs Marquez's punching. CODY BRUNDAGE BY TKO when the cage breaks in mid-fight under the weight of a match so momentous.
MAIN CARD: THE PUNCHING POWER OF A FORD PINTO
LIGHTWEIGHT: Nasrat Haqparast (17-5) vs Esteban Ribovics (14-1)
Even in victory, Nasrat Haqparast is having trouble finding his footing. Once upon a time he was considered a surefire Lightweight contender, and after a slow but definitive return to his winning ways, 2024 was supposed to be Nasrat's chance to reclaim his potential as a championship prospect. Instead he only made it to the cage once in fifteen months and his only addition to the annals of mixed martial arts was playing a part in the ongoing curse plaguing Jared Gordon. Their fight was close, but most of the audience was left thinking Gordon had done enough to win, and once again the judges disagreed. Now Nasrat is riding a four-fight winning streak in a very tough division, but none of those victories have done enough for him to get him back over the hump towards contention.
Which is how you end up dealing with Esteban Ribovics. "El Gringo" is riding a similar story on a shorter scale: He came off the Contender Series as an undefeated prospect with a 100% finishing rate, rode into the UFC as a well-hyped prospect, and promptly got rolled in his debut and lost all his momentum on the spot. The last year and a half of his life was dedicated to recapturing that momentum, and he pulled it off in a progressively more impressive chain that started with beating Kamuela Kirk, moved to obliterating Terrance McKinney in under a minute, and concluded last September with a fight-of-the-year contender against Daniel Zellhuber. Ribovics is on a winning streak again, he's perilously close to officially Mattering, and he needs one more good win to get his foot in the door.
I was super high on Nasrat once upon a time, as I am anyone with a sharp jab, solid boxing and the willingness to use it, but after the Jared Gordon fight I'm not sure what he's got for Ribovics. I don't know that the speed or the kicking game will be things he can get himself around. ESTEBAN RIBOVICS BY DECISION.
HEAVYWEIGHT: Austen Lane (13-5 (1)) vs Mario Pinto (9-0)
I am obligated to forgive Austen Lane now. I am required by God's law. Sure, getting obliterated by Jhonata Diniz and Justin Tafa is not promising for a Heavyweight prospect, but for two terrible years the big new super-hype machine at the big boy division was 6'7" Robelis Despaigne, a gangly Olympic medalist in Taekwondo, and he's no longer in the UFC because Austen goddamn Lane wrestled him into paste. For cementing wrestling as the supreme martial art and reminding the world that Being Really Tall is perpetually overrated, I must give Austen Lane another fair shake.
To my great surprise, I'm pretty excited for Mario Pinto. It's very, very rare that I see a Contender Series Heavyweight I don't immediately find myself disliking, but that's because most of them are sloppy brawling machines who correctly recognize that swinging for the fences is the likeliest path to the UFC and, at Heavyweight, will still be enough to get you into the top thirty. Having watched as much of Pinto's tape as I could find, I'm impressed by the patience he displays and the degree to which he paces himself, which is exactly how he was ironically able to win his contract: He simply waited for his opponent to come forward so he could blast him out with a counterpunch in a minute and a half.
Getting my hopes up for a Heavyweight is an aggressively silly and assuredly self-destructive thing to do, but for once I'm going to allow it. MARIO PINTO BY TKO.
FEATHERWEIGHT: William Gomis (14-2) vs Hyder Amil (10-0)
Just as I was obligated to forgive Austen Lane, I am obligated to make William Gomis my enemy. I've been a Gomis booster for some time--the long body kicks, the patient rangefighting and the willingness to peck, clinch and run even if an audience is booing are some of my favorite fighting traits. But in his last fight, Gomis committed the unforgivable sin of winning a split decision he didn't really deserve against Joanderson Brito, who I will gleefully cape for until my bones collapse. It was a close fight, it realistically was not a robbery, but I refuse to accept any reality that involves Joanderson Brito losing.
Hyder Amil is real close to getting the fast-track treatment from the UFC. He's undefeated, he's a persistent finisher, he's only been in the company for a year and he's already got two knockout victories, and what's more, he scored them against folks who'd never actually been knocked out before. Fernie Garcia went toe-to-toe with Rinya Nakamura without dropping; Amil stopped him standing in a round and a half. Lee Jeong Yeong made it a decade in the sport and took the first Road to UFC tournament without suffering a stoppage; Amil knocked him out in a minute.
They want to see Amil rid them of Gomis. He's got a size, range and experience disadvantage, unfortunately, and all of those will be real difficult to navigate, and as much as I want Brito to be avenged, I also want his loss to mean something. WILLIAM GOMIS BY DECISION.
WELTERWEIGHT: Danny Barlow (9-0) vs Sam Patterson (12-2-1)
We're one year and two fights into the Danny "LeftHand2God" Barlow UFC arc, so it's time to do an annual review. You beat up Josh Quinlan! That's good! Sure, he was a late replacement, but a win's a win. But you missed weight and only barely won a split decision against Nikolay Veretennikov, who was last seen getting effortlessly destroyed by Austin Vanderford. That's bad! Like, it's better than losing, obviously, but it hasn't aged great, and normally it takes a lot longer for a win to age.
Sam Patterson got his lesson-learning out of the way early. He, too, had a big amount of hype behind his UFC debut, and having committed the ultimate in hubris by cutting down to 155 pounds as a 6'3" monster, getting knocked the fuck out in barely a minute by a man half a foot shorter than him was probably the best thing that could happen to his career. Patterson's done much better at Welterweight, he's rededicated himself to his grappling, and it's working real well for him.
But he does still catch punches with his face, and that's a dangerous thing to do against someone who hits as hard as Barlow. A lot of this fight is going to come down to Patterson's ability to get this fight off the feet, but if he can't do it, DANNY BARLOW BY KO feels likely.
PRELIMS: OUT OF TIME
FEATHERWEIGHT: Chepe Mariscal (17-6) vs Ricardo Ramos (17-6)
At this point it's hard to see Chepe Mariscal's name on a card and not anticipate a good time. Chepe's been providing both fun fights and persistent success in his UFC run--if anything, he's one of the rare dudes who's been more consistently successful in the UFC than he was on the regional circuit. Granted, some of this is the difference between fighting Joanderson Brito and Trevor Peek, but if we stop to think about the way the level of competition outside the UFC can now be higher than it is inside we're going to collapse into a pit of ennui. Which is, coincidentally, what Ricardo Ramos has been trying to pull himself out of. Ramos was at one point a massively promising contender, but a series of high-level losses set him back repeatedly and taking back-to-back losses for the first time in his career--especially when they were both first-round guillotine submissions--had folks wondering if he was done altogether. But now he's coming off his first win in almost three years! Well, sort of. It was a split decision and it was really, really close and Joshua Culibao could easily have taken it.
This is an extended way of saying my hopes are not high. CHEPE MARISCAL BY DECISION.
BANTAMWEIGHT: Douglas Silva de Andrade (29-6) vs John Castañeda (21-7)
I don't care. I don't care that he's 1 for his last 3. I don't care that he's been categorically eliminated from ever getting into the top five. I don't care that he's almost 40 at Bantamweight. I am fully in the tank for Douglas Silva de Andrade and his face-forward violence and I will not stop until either he wins the title, he retires to go make bareknuckle fighting money, or I die. I refuse to let the dream go. And John "Sexi Mexi" Castañeda will not take it from me. Sure, both of you lost to Miles Johns, but DSDA lost to Miles Johns better, and by god, I will cling to that with every fibre of my being.
DOUGLAS SILVA DE ANDRADE BY DECISION.
WOMEN'S FLYWEIGHT: Andrea Lee (13-10) vs JJ Aldrich (13-7)
This fight feels like it fell in a time portal in 2019 and just now returned to the primary blade of reality. Six years ago Andrea Lee was a top ten Flyweight and JJ Aldrich was a very promising, well-rounded prospect and both were expected to orbit contention for a very long time. It's 2025 now: JJ Aldrich is struggling to stay afloat and Andrea Lee has one of the longest losing streaks in the history of the UFC's women's divisions. Five fights, man. That's rough, especially when one of those was a textbook eyebrow-raising Maycee Barber-favoring split decision. But Lee has been looking progressively worse in those losses, and it portends bad things that she got outworked by Montana De La Rosa in her last fight given that just one fight earlier, Montana had herself been outworked by, uh, JJ Aldrich.
Sorry, Andrea. I rooted for you for awhile but I think it might be over. JJ ALDRICH BY DECISION.
FEATHERWEIGHT: Danny Silva (9-1) vs Lucas Almeida (15-3)
I can't help noticing that the more distanced I feel from the matchmaking on a given card, the less I am capable of talking about the fighters themselves. When Danny Silva made his UFC debut last March I watched his tape and was sufficiently unimpressed that I spent his entire write-up complaining about the way the UFC leaves international talent on the mat in favor of cheaper, more convenient Americans even when they get beat, and I predicted Silva would lose to Josh Culibao. To his credit, he didn't! But it was a split decision that could have very, very easily gone the other way, which leaves me still pretty lukewarm on his prospects. But I'm not huge on Lucas Almeida, either. He's got solid striking at a distance and he struggles mightily with wrestling, which is why they haven't booked him against anyone who can wrestle in almost two years.
LUCAS ALMEIDA BY DECISION because I have slightly more faith in his chops, but when I try to imagine this fight it feels like peering into an oil slick.
WOMEN'S FLYWEIGHT: Montana De La Rosa (13-9-1) vs Luana Carolina (11-4)
Speaking of Montana De La Rosa, here she is. Here's the thing: Montana has never been bad. Never! Her strength of schedule is actually kind of monstrous in hindsight, and getting choked out by Mackenzie Dern or Tatiana Suarez is nothing to sneeze at. She's talented, she's athletic and she's got a solid all-around game. She just gets perpetually rolled by the upper echelons of her division and, uh, also JJ Aldrich. Luana Carolina has just as many UFC wins as Montana in 2/3 as many attempts, but it's also easier to deal with Lucie Pudilová and Poliana Botelho than it is Maycee Barber, and Carolina hasn't managed to score any wins so impressive that it makes people forget she's missed the 125-pound mark twice.
But she'll probably win. I dunno, man. I feel compelled to say MONTANA DE LA ROSA BY DECISION but I can't help feeling this is one of those cards where my sense of exhaustion with the sport is total enough that I'm just picking what I would like to see happen rather than even attempting to make informed decisions. Luana will probably win this fight and I'm doing this anyway.
FLYWEIGHT: Charles Johnson (17-6, #12) vs Ramazan Temirov (18-2, NR)
This, at the end of things, is the locus of that aforementioned exhaustion. The inherent promise of mixed martial arts--of sport as a whole, really--is the idea that successful performances will move you up the ladder towards something that matters. Charles Johnson is on a four-fight winning streak at Flyweight, maybe the most talent-dense division in the sport. He knocked Joshua Van silly last July and earned his place in the top fifteen, for which he was rewarded by having to fight Sumudaerji, who was unranked. Now that Johnson is a streaking, defending, ranked competitor, he is...once again fighting an unranked man with one win in the UFC and this time he's doing it by curtain-jerking the prelims of an Apex card. It's not that Ramazan Temirov is by any means bad; he's great and he clearly deserves his place in the UFC and I would not be shocked to see him in contention next year and there's a real good chance by the time I finish this sentence I will have talked myself into picking Temirov to win this fight. It's not his talent. It's the idea that the sport is so broken that Charles Johnson is a #12 fighter on a great winning streak and he cannot get a shot at anyone in the top ten, but Steve Erceg, the guy who got a title shot despite being #10, lost two fights in a row and is now somehow ranked higher than the last time he won, is about to fight the #2 guy in the division.
It's not that the fight is bad. It's that the idea of progression is broken and that makes it so goddamn hard to get emotionally invested in anything if it's all going to be arbitrary anyway. RAMAZAN TEMIROV BY TKO but I hope I'm wrong.