CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 134: FINALLY
UFC 313: Pereira vs Ankalaev
SATURDAY, MARCH 8 FROM THE T-MOBILE ARENA IN LAS VEGAS, NEVADA
EARLY PRELIMS 3:30 PM PST / 6:30 PM EST | PRELIMS 5 PM / 8 PM | MAIN CARD 7 PM / 10 PM
Mixed martial arts fans, this is your oasis. It's not perfect, but it's a solid show with some good matches and one of the most necessary championship bouts in the sport. Last week we had a weird Apex card that ended in heartbreak, next week we have an even worse Apex card that will end in a Middleweight rematch no one asked for, but in this moment, at least, we get Alex Pereira, Magomed Ankalaev, Amanda Lemos, and the most important thing you can be in the sport: A champion from The Ultimate Fighter.
God bless us, everyone.
MAIN EVENT: IT FUCKING TOOK YOU LONG ENOUGH
LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP: Alex Pereira (12-2, Champion) vs Magomed Ankalaev (20-1-1 (1), #1)
The moment this fight got announced, I knew I was going to self-indulgently quote this bit from Alex Pereira's defense against Khalil Rountree Jr. last year.
There's an incredibly logical match to make at Light Heavyweight. It is, undeniably, the only title match to make at Light Heavyweight. Magomed Ankalaev has not lost a fight in six years. He is on a twelve-fight unbeaten streak, and I only say 'unbeaten' because of an immediately-avenged No Contest and a gratuitously bad judging decision that stuck him with a draw instead of a deserved win and a championship to his name. With Raquel Pennington, Belal Muhammad and Merab Dvalishvili all finally avenged, Ankalaev is the undisputed bannerman for passed-over contenders in the UFC.
And they're still passing him over. Magomed still doesn't have a title shot. He's facing Aleksandar Rakić at UFC 308 later this month.
I'm going to repeat that, because it bears repeating: The world champion has an undisputed top contender, and that top contender is fighting later this month, and instead of putting them together, the top contender is scheduled against a guy on a two-fight losing streak.
And the champion is fighting a guy who just fought Chris Daukaus.
But, oddly, I think the point I really wanted to make came from last week's curtain-jerking fight between Charles Johnson and Ramazan Temirov.
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.
No matter what point of origin you pick for mixed martial arts--whether it's the Gracies organizing a pay-per-view tournament or Satoru Sayama wanting to bring back the legitimacy of professional wrestling or our ancient predecessors getting really into Pankration and Leitai--there is an unavoidable struggle of sport vs spectacle. The growth of combat sports as a whole has always required a symbiotic relationship between the two. You don't retain a core audience without a structure they can enjoy, and you can't make people stay without it, but you can't get them through the door without some kind of attraction.
But it's much easier to chase the attraction than the structure. Combat sports promoters have been falling all over themselves trying to invent casual-friendly draws since the dawn of time, to the point that a certain sort of alchemy has formed around it. Everyone has their own angle on how much prestige you have to build to create a superstar and how much of that prestige you can mortgage for money before you run into trouble. Because that's the real problem with attractions: They don't tend to last. Conor McGregor is going to go chase boxing money, Kimbo Slice is going to get beaten by TUF runners-up, Brock Lesnar's intestines are going to collapse under the weight of his many steak dinners and Bobby Ologun's stock will go down when he can't win a fight. Your attraction is going to burn out and the structure you sold to put them on top will have to be rebuilt.
It is one of the classic problems of combat sports, and somehow, in the annals of attraction booking, Alex Pereira is one of the only outliers who successfully transitioned from spectacle to sport. But he had an awful lot of help.
Let's be fully real: Alex Pereira did not earn his spot through mixed martial arts. He made it to the UFC because he beat Israel Adesanya repeatedly when they were both kickboxers, and when Izzy suddenly became the biggest thing going in the UFC, they had no problems whatsoever bringing in a 3-1 Pereira in the hopes of getting him to title contention as quickly as possible. It took them exactly one year. Three fights, two knockouts, one ranked opponent: That's all they needed to get their big spectacle fight.
Except Pereira actually won. Not only did Pereira become the first Middleweight mixed martial artist to ever beat Adesanya, he punched him out standing. He's not an attraction anymore, he's a phenomenon! He beat The Man, by the transitive property he is now The Man, and once he's done with an obligatory Adesanya rematch, he's going to be a star!
Except Adesanya crumpled him in two rounds. Left him so flat he wouldn't stop repeating his "frozen like Elsa" soundbite for years, which, in hindsight, was the real sign that Adesanya's career was about to hit the skids. Well, like we said, attractions tend to flame out, but it's okay, they got their money out of him, so it was worth it anyw--
Oh. He's the Light Heavyweight Champion of the World now.
That was fast.
Yeah, they just pretended like it didn't happen. Pereira went up to 205, survived a split decision against #3 contender Jan BÅ‚achowicz by the absolute skin of his teeth, and got a title shot off that one victory. And then he won. And won. And kept fucking winning. He was the Middleweight titleholder for 147 days, he lost in his first attempt at a defense, and he was a two-division champion two fights later, and now he's one of just seven 205-pound champions to ever record multiple title defenses.
And a big part of that has been their staunch refusal to put Magomed Ankalaev in front of him.
You already got Ankalaev's resume in the opening section of this write-up. His unbeaten streak is three years older than Pereira's entire UFC run. His skills are more visibly well-rounded than Pereira's have ever been. He has more Light Heavyweight knockouts than Pereira does. He's beaten more ranked opponents than Pereira has.
Hell, it's actually disrespectful to call Ankalaev a deserving contender who's been denied a rightful title shot; if anything, he's a deserving champion who's been denied his rightful title. The only reason Pereira was able to fight Jiřà Procházka for the title in the first place was the series of unfortunate events that sprung from Magomed Ankalaev and Jan Błachowicz fighting for the belt at the end of 2022. It was a close, back-and-forth fight that saw Jan hobble Ankalaev with leg kicks only for Ankalaev to come back and spend the back half of the fight mauling him on the ground. It was grueling, it was rough, and 23 out of 25 box scores had Ankalaev winning the decision and the belt.
So it was, of course, a split draw.
The audience went insane. Ankalaev was apoplectic. Jan himself used his post-fight interview to say Ankalaev won and should be the rightful champion. Even if the UFC didn't want to run it back Ankalaev was clearly the division's top contender, and it was absurd to think anyone else deserved the shot.
It took almost two and a half years and three fights to get there.
Magomed Ankalaev did not get a title shot. Magomed Ankalaev got Johnny Walker, at the time on a three-fight winning streak, in the desperate hopes that their favorite knockout artist could be rehabilitated. When that fight ended in a No Contest after an errant knee on the ground, the UFC rebooked it less than two months later. Ankalaev, having clearly gotten the message, ignored his groundwork and simply knocked Walker the fuck out on the feet.
But, hey: Top contender who just destroyed a man in a televised main event! Still hasn't lost a fight since the first Trump administration! It's time now, right?
No! It's time to fight Aleksandar fucking Rakić, a man on a two-fight losing streak who hadn't won a match since 2021.
This is, in microcosm, the problem. Alex Pereira is by no means bad, he's clearly and demonstrably one of the best strikers in mixed martial arts history. But he had the red carpet rolled out as thoroughly as it could possibly be. He's a dyed-in-the-wool kickboxer and in ten UFC fights his only competition with even a passing interest in wrestling was Jan, a lifelong knockout artist who just happens to throw a takedown here and there, and he still came a hair's breadth from wrestling Pereira's entire career trajectory away.
If you score that split draw the way it should have been scored, Magomed Ankalaev has as many UFC wins as Pereira does mixed martial arts wins altogether, and they still had Pereira fight Khalil Rountree Jr. first.
This fight is the struggle of spectacle vs sport personified. It's not Alex Pereira's fault he's spectacle. He's one of the most successful spectacles in the history of combat sports. But you don't keep your champion away from a top contender for three straight fights unless you're afraid he might lose.
And they're right to be afraid. This could easily be the end of the Alex Pereira train. But the irony here is Magomed Ankalaev's wrestling really isn't that great. His takedowns are pretty basic and he doesn't try to do them all that much--after his last two fights, which coincidentally and pointedly featured zero attempts at getting his opponents to the ground, his average has fallen below one takedown per fight.
But aside from Jan, he's the only contender who might try. Jiřà Procházka ain't shooting no takedowns. Jamahal Hill would rather die than debase himself by wrestling. Carlos Ulberg thinks takedowns are a new form of creatine powder. Khalil Rountree Jr. was given his title shot solely because he does nothing but strike.
Everything about the Alex Pereira experiment has been built around keeping him as far away from grappling as possible, and they delayed this completely inevitable title fight until they had exhausted every other option they had at the weight class. If Izzy hadn't lost to Dricus, I cannot imagine we would be talking about anything other than Alex/Izzy 3: Champ Champ Edition and Magomed would be fighting Dominick Reyes in the co-main event of UFC Fight Night: Pyfer vs Kopylov.
But eventually, if you want to think of mixed martial arts as anything even resembling a sport, you have to make the right fight.
Thankfully, it's a really goddamn good fight. Both of these men are incredibly capable of losing. No matter how hard Pereira crams his takedown defense with Glover Teixeira, he's still a lifelong striker who's had a lot of trouble with pretty rudimentary wrestling assaults, and Ankalaev's got the takedowns to make him pay for it and power enough in his hands to keep him from being too comfortable not to worry about getting cracked. Ankalaev's striking defense can also be downright porous when it comes to his legs. Jan damn near kicked his calves apart and Pereira's leg kicks are much, much worse, and those, too, are more than capable of distracting him enough to miss the inevitable knockout shot.
The corporate fear could turn out to be completely unfounded. Pereira could trash Ankalaev and we could go right back to his hype train while acting like it was stupid to ever think anything different could have happened.
But I have faith in sport. MAGOMED ANKALAEV BY SUBMISSION.
CO-MAIN EVENT: WHEN NEEDS MUST
LIGHTWEIGHT: Justin Gaethje (25-5, #3) vs Rafael Fiziev (12-3, #11)
This is a rematch I really would have wanted at any time but now.
Justin Gaethje vs Rafael Fiziev happened on March 18, 2023, almost exactly two years ago. It was a very different time for both men. Gaethje was a beloved brawling machine with one of the sport's greatest highlight reels held back from the top of the heap after losing two title matches in just three fights; Fiziev was a kickboxing phenomenon on a six-fight winning streak who'd just become the first man to knock out the living legend Rafael dos Anjos since Eddie Alvarez in 2016.
And it was a really, really good fight. It promised the testing of a potential contender against an all-time great and it delivered in spades, with both men giving each other a smart, tactical, back-and-forth swing of a bout that was--say it with me--marred by perplexing judging. While the fight was very, very close, most of the media gave it to Gaethje thanks to the second and third rounds, and Gaethje did, in fact, win a decision, but it was a majority decision based on judge Clemens Warner giving Gaethje the first round, which he clearly lost, and judge Paul Sutherland giving Gaethje a 10-8 in the third round, which was an insane person's score.
But much like Alexa Grasso vs Valentina Shevchenko 2, most people agreed with the spirit of the decision and the world moved on. And now it's been an incredibly long time and both fighters have deeply matured and it's time to run it back and see how they've grown and this is definitely not a last-minute injury replacement move to desperately save this card.
Justin Gaethje has had two fights since that Fiziev match. He knocked Dustin Poirier out, was poised for a certain shot at Islam Makhachev, and chose to take a short-notice UFC 300 bout with Max Holloway instead, which ended in one of the most memorable knockouts in UFC history. Unfortunately, Gaethje was the one getting knocked out, and even more unfortunately, Holloway followed it up by returning to Featherweight and getting crushed by Ilia Topuria, who is now also poised to move to 155 pounds and leapfrog both men to title contendership. This was supposed to be another test and a huge, fun brawl against the #6-ranked Dan Hooker, but Hooker got hurt and the UFC just couldn't get any Lightweight contenders to agree to the matchup.
Well, not any. In fact, after Justin publicly called out half of the top ten for ducking the short-notice matchup, it turned out the UFC had lied to him about who was offered the fight and certain folks--such as, say, Mateusz Gamrot, the #8-ranked wrestler who nearly beat Hooker in his last fight--didn't get the chance at all. Somehow, Rafael Fiziev did.
Which is a shame, because Rafael Fiziev has only had one fight since their first meeting, and funnily enough it was also against Mateusz Gamrot, and it ended with a competitive round and a half followed by Fiziev tearing his ACL apart throwing a kick. What had been a fun demonstration of both men adjusting to the other's offensive strengths and some fantastic takedown defense on Fiziev's part turned into an injury and a year on the shelf.
Ultimately, that's the real disappointment here. I can't help thinking of Alexander Volkanovski vs Islam Makhachev, who had one of the best fights in mixed martial arts history and left the entire world aching for an eventual rematch between two pound-for-pound greats after both had built themselves and evolved, and instead of getting the opportunity to see that sort of instant classic, the UFC put the fight on with a week of notice because they had to save a pay-per-view main event, a visibly unprepared Volkanovski got dropped with ease, and the world was robbed of a thing everyone wanted.
There is a world in which this rematch comes with ample time to prepare, both men at their best, and divisional contendership up for grabs. Instead, Gaethje has been idle for a year after the worst loss of his career, Rafael hasn't fought in a year and a half and hasn't won a fight in almost three, and now he has to come back from that deficit on short notice because the UFC would rather run the rematch prematurely than risk giving someone they don't like a pole position in the division.
It's not that it's going to be a bad fight. It's almost certainly going to be a great fight. But it won't be the fight it could, and should, have been. Given the way their first fight went and Fiziev's layoff I'm sticking with JUSTIN GAETHJE BY DECISION, but we're in chaos territory here and Fiziev hits very, very hard.
MAIN CARD: KING ME
LIGHTWEIGHT: Jalin Turner (14-8, #13) vs Ignacio Bahamondes (16-5, NR)
But for a couple changed minds, Jalin Turner's 2024 could have been so much different. Turner rolled into 2023 with a five-fight finishing streak, which is a hell of an accomplishment at Lightweight, and as a 6'3" wrecking machine the world looked very much forward to his finally getting tested in the top ten. And, boy, he came close. He spent the year going tooth-and-nail with top contenders, but while he made it to competitive split decisions with both, he couldn't stop Mateusz Gamrot's wrestling or Dan Hooker's volume. He proved he still belongs in the top fifteen by crushing King Green, but he followed it up by getting mauled on the floor by Renato Moicano--despite almost knocking him out, too--which means it's time for Turner to get a merciful stylistic matchup against another striker.
But it's also time to see if his ranking can go to someone newer. Ignacio Bahamondes has been one of the UFC's personal projects for years, now, as a tall Chilean knockout artist with a fun style, a desired audience, and an incredibly affordable Contender Series contract, but their attempts at getting him up the rankings have been stymied. In 2021 it was the veteran John Makdessi fighting him to a split; in 2023 it was the immensely tricky ĽudovÃt Klein shutting him out. By the by, Bahamondes has won two fights since losing to Klein and Klein has won three, but Bahamondes is fighting for a ranking by his name and Klein, uh, does not have a fight scheduled. It's funny how marketing works. Bahamondes has been countering people with long kicks and check hooks and doing a damn good job of it, so this fight is by no means unworthy, it's just an irritating reminder that favor means everything.
I'm going out on a limb here, but I don't think this will go well for Bahamondes. He's just as big as Turner, which takes out a lot of Turner's physically imposing advantages, but a lot of his own style is built around using that same height and reach to counter smaller opponents as they try to get in his range. Turner's got the higher-powered strikes and more willingness to use them aggressively, and I have more faith in his ability to get his fists on target than I do in Bahamondes catching him or controlling the pace. JALIN TURNER BY TKO.
WOMEN'S STRAWWEIGHT: Amanda Lemos (14-4-1, #5) vs Iasmin Lucindo (17-5, #7)
With Zhang Weili reportedly about to abdicate her title and move up to Flyweight there's a real good chance we're about to see a gold rush at Strawweight, and this fight's a near-lock to be second to the throne. Amanda Lemos has been one of the division's best for years, but she's been categorically eliminated from contention. She got her crack at the belt! It was one of the most one-sided title fights of all time. She got another shot at #1 contendership last year! It ended with Virna Jandiroba almost snapping her arm in half. Amanda's punching power and stamina make her a lock for the top ten, but her wrestling defense has betrayed her repeatedly, and unless she can shore it up she's never going to wear the crown.
Which is what Iasmin Lucindo is counting on. She may have lost the Yazmin vs Iasmin battle in her 2022 debut, but she clearly won the War of the Jasmini, because in 2025 Yazmin Jauregui is struggling to win fights at the periphery of the division while Iasmin Lucindo is on a four-fight winning streak and a single victory away from title contention. The difference? Wrestling. Iasmin has outwrestled every one of her last four opponents, and her aggressive pursuit of the grappling has kept everyone too uncomfortable to get into a rhythm that would allow them to stop her. Of course, that aggression is also why Iasmin almost lost a point for repeatedly jamming her chin into Marina Rodriguez's eyesocket, but as the last several events and Eddie Guerrero tried to tell us, if you're not cheating, you're not trying.
This is a tough ask, though. Amanda may have a wrestling problem, but it's a problem that's been capitalized on by the best grapplers in the division. Mackenzie Dern had trouble getting her down. Virna Jandiroba had trouble getting her down. I am, of course, making the mistake of underestimating Iasmin for the second or third time, but I just see Lemos making her life difficult. AMANDA LEMOS BY DECISION.
LIGHTWEIGHT: King Green (32-16-1 (1)) vs Mauricio Ruffy (11-1)
I have written about my King Green fandom for years. I have admired his defensive practices since the days of his first name still legally existing. But I believe every passionate belief needs to have one question at its heart: What would change my mind? What argument, what event, what new evidence could shake my long-held pillar of faith? The answer, in this case, is diving straight into Paddy Pimblett's armpit. There was exactly one way Green could possibly lose to Paddy, and not only did he find it, he launched himself at it headfirst like it was Jared Gordon's fucking face. King Green broke our covenant and, like so many congressmen, he failed to do his job and stop the thousand-year reign of darkness we are now at the cusp of enduring.
This makes Mauricio Ruffy my weapon of vengeance, and that's exactly what the UFC wants him to be. Ruffy's an enormous favorite here--at time of writing, it's -550 to -600 depending on your market, and god, I pine for the day that betting markets recede and this is no longer a reliable method of measuring matchmaking expectations--which makes sense, given Green's repeated knockout losses and Ruffy's tendency to destroy people. He wrecked Raimond Magomedaliev, he wrecked Jamie Mullarkey, and he...uh...actually, that James Llontop fight was a mixed bag. He still clearly beat him, and Llontop's absurd toughness was evident in the shots he survived, but by the third round Ruffy was sucking wind and Llontop was actually able to run away with the end of the bout.
Fortunately, I don't think this fight will see a third round. Green is still in love with his defensive prowess, but he's not as fast as he used to be and he gets clipped a lot more these days, and one good shot is all it's going to take. MAURICIO RUFFY BY KO.
PRELIMS: SEE WHAT STICKS
HEAVYWEIGHT: Curtis Blaydes (18-5 (1), #5) vs Rizvan Kuniev (13-2-1 (1), NR)
My feelings about this fight are deeply conflicted. On one hand: Curtis Blaydes is a top contender who's just one year separated from knocking out the #6 guy in the world and having him fight an unranked guy making his UFC debut is some complete bullshit. Particularly as it's Rizvan Kuniev, who is best known either for being the champion of Khabib Nurmagomedov's short-lived Eagle FC, having a 2021 Contender Series win that so impressed the UFC that they looked at a big Heavyweight who knocked out a man and said 'eh, no thanks' and sent him back to Dagestan, or getting kicked out of the Professional Fighters League after failing a drug test for four separate steroids at once. Throwing him a top five fight right off the bat at the potential expense of a Curtis Blaydes fucking sucks. On the other hand: I kinda get it. Heavyweight is a desolate wasteland. The lineage is gone, the real champion is fake, the fake champion is real, his athletic prime is being actively wasted but he's also already fought and beat most of the rankings, the top contender is only there thanks to a robbery, and everyone between #4 and #10 have already lost to each other in varying combinations. Francis Ngannou is making millions of dollars fighting boxers and Tallison Teixeira is a ranked fighter on a Contender Series contract.
It sucks that divisional placement is meaningless, but what at Heavyweight could possibly mean anything at this moment in time? There is no future, only now. Embrace chaos. CURTIS BLAYDES BY TKO.
FLYWEIGHT: Joshua Van (12-2) vs Rei Tsuruya (10-0)
This is, I'm pretty sure, the first fight in UFC history where both competitors were born after the year 2000, and that makes me feel a strange mixture of pride and horror that the sport lived this long. Neither man signed up for this, and it's going to be great. Joshua Van, who has been suffering along as one of Flyweight's better prospects when not getting knocked loopy by Charles Johnson, was supposed to be fighting the embattled Bruno Silva, but Silva had to pull out. Rei Tsuruya, 2024 Road to UFC winner and successful UFC debutant, was supposed to fight Stewart Nicoll, an 0-1 UFC fighter, in Australia last month, but Nicoll couldn't make it. Instead, we've got this. I'm reminded of the feeling I had watching Charles Oliveira vs Max Holloway back in 2015 or Arman Tsarukyan vs Mateusz Gamrot in 2022--the sense that we were seeing a matchup between two guys who could easily wind up wearing gold, they just weren't quite there yet. Van's patience, range management and combinations are all extremely solid, and Tsuruya's grappling has been imposing as hell, as goes for anyone who can hit a suplex in real life.
But Tsuruya also showed a lot of trouble with the last round of his last fight when he couldn't get Carlos Hernandez out of there. I still believe in him and I'm still picking REI TSURUYA BY DECISION, but if he doesn't submit Van in the first two rounds--and I don't think he will--he may have to struggle to survive the third.
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Brunno Ferreira (12-2) vs Armen Petrosyan (8-4)
It's a battle of troubled prospects and only one man can be rebuilt. The UFC loved them some Brunno Ferreira--big, angry knockout men are basically the company's only import now--but they dashed their shiny new ship on the rocks of late replacements and got him ate up by Nursulton Ruziboev in just his second fight. They spent most of 2024 trying to rehabilitate him in the hopes of getting him close to the rankings again, but two wins later, Abus Magomedov choked him out and took it all away again. Armen Petrosyan is in a considerably less favored position. He, too, is a well-honed striker who wins a lot of fights, but he commits the cardinal sin of winning them by decision, and that is just fucking unacceptable. So they fed him to Caio Borralho in his own second fight, and then they fed him to Rodolfo Vieira after two more wins, and then they gave him a striking matchup with Shara Magomedov last October that ended with Magomedov spinning him to death in front of a bunch of rich men in Dubai who could not have possibly given less of a fuck about him in any capacity other than the likelihood that he would lose.
They're hoping he'll lose this one, too. I'm less convinced. Brunno's best successes come against reckless strikers he can eat alive, and Armen is cautious to a fault. ARMEN PETROSYAN BY DECISION even if it probably won't be fun.
WELTERWEIGHT: Alex Morono (24-11 (1)) vs Carlos Leal (21-6)
I can't even pretend to be objectively evaluating this match. I'm in this for justice. Alex Morono's long been one of the divisional dark horses I've appreciated more than most, but if we're being honest, he hasn't looked great in awhile. His implacability and forward pressure carried him to a bunch of solid victories in his career, and in 2022 they almost got him adjacent to the rankings, but then Santiago Poniznibbio flattened him in the third round and it's been mostly downhill from there. Morono's been looking listless and unable to shift into second gear the way he used to, and that's led him from one of Welterweight's most consistent fighters to dropping four of his last six fights. Carlos Leal, by contrast, has only been in the UFC for one fight and it was a goddamn travesty. Leal walked into the UFC on short notice as one of the few men willing to face Rinat Fakhretdinov at all, let alone with barely a week to prepare, and he put on a great fucking performance. He stuffed 17 of 19 takedowns, he outstruck Rinat in two out of three rounds, and 100% of the media scored the fight in his favor--most by a 30-27 shutout. But it was, once again, in Dubai, so all three judges gave the fight to Rinat. It was voted the single worst decision of 2024 and I'm still mad about it.
So I'm sorry, Alex. I need you to lose here. The scales must be balanced. CARLOS LEAL BY TKO.
EARLY PRELIMS: THIS IS WHERE THE ULTIMATE FIGHTER LIVES NOW
FEATHERWEIGHT: Mairon Santos (14-1) vs Francis Marshall (8-2)
It's very strange to have actually seen The Ultimate Fighter 32 (jesus christ) and thus have not only context for one of its competitors for the first time in almost a decade, but some level of emotional attachment to them. It's an incredibly tired format, but if you force yourself to stick with it anyway, it does still work. I watched Mairon Santos fight his way through the TUF house, I watched him defy my expectations by knocking out Kaan Ofli with relative ease, and he managed to entrench himself as one of my favorite kinds of fighters: The Guy Who's Just Pretty Good At Everything. This is at least slightly better than Francis Marshall has done in my hindbrain, as after almost two and a half years of watching him work his way to a 50/50 record in the UFC, I still had to google him to remember his fights. He's fine! He's solid. But nothing he's done has quite managed to stand out, and aside from knocking out Marcelo Rojo back in 2022 he hasn't managed to wow me in any of his other fights. His wrestling is okay, his chin is okay, his ability to eke out close decisions is okay.
And I think Mairon's a bit better than Okay. MAIRON SANTOS BY TKO.
BANTAMWEIGHT: Chris Gutierrez (21-5-2) vs John Castañeda (21-7)
This is your last-minute bout of the week, and it's an attempt to make good on a pair of fighters who got boned. Chris Gutierrez, he of the dishonorable execution of Frankie Edgar, was supposed to fight Jean Matsumoto on this card as a sort of gatekeeper test for Jean's ranked prospects. But Jean got yoinked as a short-notice fill-in against Rob Font last month, leaving Gutierrez afloat. John Castañeda was supposed to fight Douglas Silva de Andrade last week, but something went so wrong in Andrade's weight cut that, while he did make it to the scales successfully, the doctors refused to let him proceed. So these two waylaid fighters get a second chance against one another, and we should all be so lucky in our lives.
But I just think Chris has the better argument. CHRIS GUTIERREZ BY DECISION.
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Djorden Santos (10-1) vs Ozzy Diaz (9-3)
I don't care. I just don't care. Djorden Santos, at 6-1, knocked out a man who was 6-13, and I don't care. Ozzy Diaz got into the UFC because he beat the now 7-6 Bevon Lewis, and I don't care. The three best wins on Djorden Santos's record came against men who've barely beaten anyone who themselves had winning records, and I don't care. Ozzy Diaz had his UFC debut last November and got brutally knocked out in two and a half minutes, and now he's fighting again just barely over three months later, and by god, I used to care intensely about the violation of the idea that no-contact periods are healthy and necessary as a part of concussion protocol but the sport stopped giving a shit and so did the entire audience, and every time I try to get mad about it again, more and more, I realize I, too, am starting to not care, and the awareness of how I am beginning to capitulate to the lowered standards of modern mixed martial arts is terrifying.
I watched Djorden struggle with a 5'7" man winging hooks at him from four feet away. I have faith in nothing. OZZY DIAZ BY TKO.