CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 143: BLOOD FROM A STONE

UFC Fight Night: Burns vs Morales

SATURDAY, MAY 17 FROM THE INVISIBLE MERCIES OF THE UFC APEX
PRELIMS 1 PM PDT / 4 PM EDT | MAIN CARD 4 PM / 7 PM

Boy, that was a fun month without the Apex. Some of the cards may not have been amazing, but they were, at least, interesting. They presented attractions and posed questions. They, as road cards, had to justify their existence. And the good news is we're getting more of them--as of now, the entirety of June and July are booked solid without a single Apex event anywhere in them.

But this is how we pay for it. Out month is over, and we are in the Apex, and then we have a week off, and then we are back in the Apex. For the next three weeks, the Apex is the UFC's life. Return to your dread mother and her dark, poorly-seated womb.

you can smell the apex just lookin’ at it

MAIN EVENT: FORCING THE CHURN
WELTERWEIGHT: Gilbert Burns (22-8, #8) vs Michael Morales (17-0, #12)

If our long vacation from the Apex has had a story arc, it's the UFC's attempt to get new blood into the Welterweight division. Ian Machado Garry vs Carlos Prates, Belal Muhammad vs Jack Della Maddalena, and now, this. Hell, if you stretch the calendar a bit you can tag in March's Leon Edwards vs Sean Brady and Kamaru Usman vs Joaquin Buckley on June 14.

It's been overdue. Welterweight's ranks have been hesitant to move and it's largely thanks to the UFC letting them stagnate. For every Shavkat Rakhmonov or Jack Della Maddalena making their way up the ladder you had a score of old guard rematches, or Kamaru Usman being pulled from the division to fight Khamzat Chimaev at Middleweight for some reason, or Colby Covington getting another inexplicable title shot. Colby managed to get four title shots and three title eliminators across six years without ever fighting a rising contender.

But he did this past December, and it was Joaquin Buckley, and Colby got the absolute shit kicked out of him, and that's largely what the UFC wants. The older contenders have leverage, tenure and better contracts, and they're here to get eaten alive by their striking-heavy Contender Series children. The UFC's not about to jump off the Ian Machado Garry train, they're big fans, but if they could have gotten someone like Carlos Prates in there who fights thrice as often for one-third as much? Well, that's just a good deal.

And they've already used Gilbert Burns to get four rising stars over, so why not go back to the well and wring a fifth out of him before he's done.

I always hate writing 'done' about fighters. 'Done' is a wild term that feels constantly inaccurately used, even among fighters themselves. José Aldo just retired last week after citing how internally done he felt with fighting given how incapable of doing it properly he'd become, and that was after decisions against Mario Bautista and Aiemann Zahabi that could and, by the aggregate of media scores, should have gone Aldo's way. But for the whims of judges Aldo could have beaten two of the best Bantamweights on the planet, and on the flip of a coin he is instead done with the sport because he cannot hack it anymore.

Gilbert Burns has been competing at the highest level of the sport for most of the last ten years. He's been a top contender for the entirety of the 2020s. He's nearly shocked the world repeatedly in that time. And he's also on a three-fight losing streak and he might well be done.

If so, it's been a hell of a career, but it's a career defined by What Ifs. Burns has been a stalwart contender at Welterweight, but he spent five years of his prime killing himself to cut down to 155 pounds and it kept him locked out of the top fifteen. Upon hitting 170 he became an instant prospect, blitzed his way to a shot at then-champion Kamaru Usman and nearly knocked him out in the first round. When most of the UFC was avoiding Khamzat Chimaev, Gilbert asked for him and gave him the hardest fight of his life. Now-champ Jack Della Maddalena came just 87 seconds away from losing his streak and his title shot to Burns.

But Burns didn't make that weight change until he was already in his mid-thirties. He didn't beat Kamaru Usman. He didn't beat Khamzat Chimaev or Jack Della Maddalena. As with so much in his career he came just close enough to the top to touch it and immediately fell back down. Usman punched him out, Khamzat outlasted him, and Jack blasted him with a knee before the bell could ring. Before the knee, Belal Muhammad earned his shot at the belt by beating Burns; after it, Sean Brady penciled himself in as a contender by taking Burns apart across five rounds.

He's not at the top of the division anymore. His last ranked wins were Jorge Masvidal and Neil Magny. He's the testing bar for the next generation, and the UFC wants him to vet another prospect.

The UFC has been convinced Michael Morales is special since they first got ahold of him in 2021 as an undefeated Contender Series prospect, and for once, they were very clearly right. He was well-rounded in ways fighters barely in their twenties typically aren't: Solid wrestling, dangerous boxing, ready and willing to switch between the two on a dime. Unlike so many of the rookies who come through the contract mill, he was already a complete package.

But you can't be too careful. Morales hasn't actually had a fight yet in which he wasn't a favorite, often to prohibitive extents. It took four fights for him to finally meet someone with a winning UFC record, and the fifth, the one that got him ranked, was against multigenerational gatekeeper Neil Magny, the martial arts equivalent to the Two Doors, Two Guards question. Beating Neil Magny is an essential requirement for prospect status--hell, even Gilbert did it. If you cannot defeat him, you do not belong.

Gilbert Burns submitted Magny in 4:15. It only took twenty-four seconds longer for Michael Morales to knock him out.

There isn't much in the way of romance here. This is the coldest math MMA has to offer. One man was almost a world champion and now he's lost to every top contender he's faced; the other is thirteen years younger, on his way up and looking to prove he belongs. Michael Morales is, as is to be expected, a massive betting favorite. Is it deserved?

I really want to say no. Burns has somehow stayed underrated despite his brushes with greatness and I want to believe he still has the power and the grappling necessary to upset the apple cart, and Morales has been manhandled a little in the past. But he's proven very, very good at adjusting and shutting down gameplans as they emerge, and with all respect to the man, Burns has never been a great gameplan fighter in the first place.

Over five rounds, MICHAEL MORALES BY TKO feels almost inevitable.

CO-MAIN EVENT: TYPING 'BELLATO' MAKES ME SAD
LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHT: Rodolfo Bellato (12-2-1) vs Paul Craig (17-9-1)

Jesus christ, the delta between the context of the first two fights on this card.

If the last month has been one ongoing story about the changing guard at Welterweight, its B-plot has been a reminder that the Light Heavyweight division is a place of depression and dishonor. The best thing to happen at 205 pounds over the last two months came from Dominick Reyes punching out Nikita Krylov; other than that it's been bad fights and depressing endings all the way down. It's one thing when you're talking about unranked prelim fights like the particularly bad Navajo Stirling/Ivan Erslan and Modestas Bukauskas/Ion Cuțelaba matchups from last week, but every level of the ladder has been unfortunate. Zhang Mingyang pushed his way into the top fifteen by sacrificing Anthony Smith in the world's least necessary retirement bout. Carlos Ulberg made his way into top contendership by just barely scraping by Jan Błachowicz in a coinflip decision people have already forgotten happened.

And now we're digging out divisional prospects between the guy who couldn't beat Jimmy Crute and the guy who's going back to Light Heavyweight because Middleweight was too hard. That's the co-main event of this Ultimate Fighting Championship card.

But if 205 pounds does have a future it probably looks like Rodolfo Bellato, and I mean that from a business perspective. As a major-label fighter, Bellato barely exists. Both of his career losses involved getting knocked stupid by Vitor Petrino, the second time was on the Contender Series and it cost him a year of trying to get back to DWCS, which fed him the eighth-best Middleweight Bahrain could provide. The UFC cared so much for his prospects that they booked him against promotional punching bag Ihor Potieria in his debut, who also wound up being a Middleweight, and when Bellato won easily they tried to get him into the rankings by giving him Jimmy Crute, who was 1 for his last 4 except that 1 was almost five full years ago.

And it didn't work. Crute spent the first round nearly submitting and knocking out Bellato, but ultimately dropped the last two rounds and wound up with a Draw. Rodolfo Bellato, knockout artist, became the first man to fight Jimmy Crute in the last half-decade and not beat him.

But Paul Craig isn't doing much better. At one point Craig was one of the dark horses of the Light Heavyweight division: A fan favorite with a Quentin Tarantino nickname, a baffling style, and the completely inexplicable ability to win fights he was badly losing by hypnotizing people into entering his guard. Over and over, Craig would get the shit kicked out of him, and over and over, people would dive on him to finish him and get choked out or get their arms broken. Paul Craig is 9-9-1 in the UFC, and somehow, impossibly, that includes victories over three separate UFC champions. Magomed Ankalaev, the best Light Heavyweight in the world, is 21-1-1, and that one sole loss is to Paul Fucking Craig.

But that was 2018, and Paul Craig hasn't been Paul Fucking Craig for awhile. After two losses and another knockout he dropped down to 185 pounds in 2023, and for one brief moment in time he managed to maul André Muniz and it looked like things might actually work out. But then Brendan Allen destroyed him, and then Caio Borralho destroyed him, and then Bo Nickal, uh, jabbed him inconsequentially for three rounds, immolated his good will with the UFC and wound up getting demolished on a free TV card, but unfortunately Craig's only contribution to that comedy saga involved losing.

Craig's tough as hell and he's always easy to root for and he also doesn't seem to have really meaningfully improved as a fighter in years. He's terrifying on the ground, but he hasn't threatened anyone with his stand-up in years and he's 3 for 27 on takedown attempts over the last five years. I would love another fun day of Don't Jump In Paul Craig's Guard Theater, but RODOLFO BELLATO BY TKO is deeply, unpleasantly likely.

MAIN CARD: TUF'S LAST STAND
LIGHTWEIGHT: Sodiq Yusuff (13-4) vs Mairon Santos (15-1)

It's time for our annual check-in with Sodiq Yusuff, the contender that almost was. Once upon a time Sodiq stood as one of the Featherweight division's more solid prospects, a hard-punching all-arounder with an unflappable style and a long winning streak. Hell, he was shockingly close to unseating Arnold Allen long before Max Holloway had the chance. But ultimately, inactivity has weighed harder on Sodiq's chances than losses have. He's only made it into the cage three times in the last three years, and having dropped his last two--including the first stoppage loss of his UFC career against Diego Lopes last year--most of the crowd has forgotten just how good he could be.

But it's hard to see that changing enormously in a matchup with so little upside for him. Good lord, Mairon Santos, you have managed to fall upward quite admirably. Mairon came off The Ultimate Fighter 32 (jesus christ) as its Featherweight champion and looked like a genuinely promising prospect. Then he made his UFC debut proper against the 50/50 Francis Marshall and looked lost. Marshall wobbled him on the feet, dropped him in the first, and outgrappled him for most of the night. Every single reporter scored the fight in Marshall's favor; the vast majority of them had it as a 30-27 shut-out. It was, of course, a split decision for Santos. Critics of the decision included the press, the commentary team, and, uh, Mairon Santos, who eventually admitted the decision was bunk.

So you've got one fallen contender who fights once a year, and one TUF champion whose debut fight was a farce, and they're fighting a weight class up because the whole thing was thrown together on short notice anyway. Top marks, matchmakers. This is why you get paid the big bucks. SODIQ YUSUFF BY DECISION.

MIDDLEWEIGHT: Dustin Stoltzfus (16-6) vs Nursulton Ruziboev (35-9-2 (2))

Just as Dustin Stoltzfus once lost to Gerald Meerschaert, he has now become Gerald Meerschaert. Just as a mixed martial arts company needs a roster of future stars and contenders in waiting, they need a subset of tough but beatable scrappers they can keep around to lend a baseline of credibility to other fighters. Stoltzfus: This pearl is thine. In eight UFC fights you have yet to manage two back-to-back wins, you have made short work of some legitimately decent fighters including Marc-André Barriault in your last fight, and you tend to lose by getting horribly, violently finished.

Which is why you are a +300 underdog against Nursulton Ruziboev. The UFC is weirdly invested in Ruziboev--they brought him in and were trying to book him against guys like Caio Borralho almost immediately, and despite their general desire for order they were happy to let him hop between Middleweight and Welterweight at will to take fights and wins where he could. Khamzat 2.0 failed, unfortunately, as Joaquin Buckley proved half a foot of height disadvantage didn't mean shit and ground the man into dust. One of the best ways to tell who the UFC has a real interest in is gauging who they ultimately get someone in the cage with after a loss. If they don't care, they'll book a real, competitive fight. If they do? You get future contender Nursulton Ruziboev against debuting regional fighter Eric McConico, who gets dusted in five and a half minutes and is never spoken of again.

Dustin, I'm sorry, but they do not think of you that much more highly. I'm hoping you get something good out of this one, but NURSULTON RUZIBOEV BY TKO is the sensible pick.

FEATHERWEIGHT: Julian Erosa (31-11) vs Melquizael Costa (23-7)

I really, really hate the UFC's love of double-dipping on fighters. Both of these men have already had a fight in the last six weeks. In Erosa's case it's barely a month--he beat the stuffing out of Darren Elkins on the prelims of UFC 314 back in April. It's not as though he took a ton of damage, he won the fight very handily, but I like at least pretending fighters can recover, plan and train as though their sport wasn't entirely arbitrary in its booking. But Erosa's on a roll, and I'm sure he feels great and wants to keep that momentum going, and when the UFC needs to rescue an Apex card, you go for the money.

Melquizael Costa's fight was a touch further back--he beat Christian Rodriguez at the UFC's big Mexico City card at the end of March--but it was also much closer and much more competitive, with fifteen minutes of struggling and 77 recorded strikes landed on his person. That bugs me more. Subconcussive impacts exist, man! Give your brain a break after it gets rattled around by a professional manpuncher for three rounds. Especially because Costa's last fight, before that, was also less than a month beforehand. This is three fights in 84 days, or one cage match every 28 days, and that is deeply unhealthy. But Melq is a late replacement signing and he, too, only now has a good winning streak, and he, too, wants to keep it going.

And the UFC is more than happy to feed on them both. This is a heart pick for me. Realistically, Erosa's bigger, stronger, hits harder and has far better finishing instincts. But I like Costa, which is why it angers me he's fighting again. MELQUIZAEL COSTA BY DECISION after what I hope will be a real good wrestling performance.

PRELIMS: GUESS WHERE THE RANKED WOMEN'S FIGHT IS
LIGHTWEIGHT: Gabe Green (11-5) vs Matheus Camilo (9-2)

Even when the UFC signs someone I actually like, they get kinda weird about it. Matheus Camilo is a solid regional prospect some smarter-than-I folks have had eyes on for the last year. In the growing world of Contender Series all-offense all-the-time specialists, guys who've gone through the circuit and established themselves as actual talents worth signing are rare, and the UFC choosing to pay attention to them is even rarer. This wasn't a short-notice signing or a DWCS fill-in--it was actually, somehow, dumber. Back in October, an undefeated Tajikistani prospect named Dorobshokh Nabotov crashed the press conference for UFC 308 to ask for a UFC contract. Instead, they got him a try-out fight with Chan Sung Jung's promotion, Z Fight Night, and Camilo just happened to be the guy who beat him. So Camilo has his UFC contract because another guy tried to use the UFC for clout and failed. And now he's fighting Gabe Green, who was already barely active and has been sitting on the bench for two years since Bryan Battle clocked him in fifteen seconds back in 2023.

Sorry, Gabe. MATHEUS CAMILO BY TKO.

LIGHTWEIGHT: Jared Gordon (20-7) vs Thiago Moisés (19-8)

Every time we see Jared Gordon I write some form of 'Jared Gordon cannot catch a fucking break,' and every time it somehow gets worse. Four fights ago, Gordon beat Paddy Pimblett and got robbed by the judges. Three fights ago he got stuck with a No Contest after King Green knocked him loopy with a headbutt. Two fights ago he was supposed to face Jim Miller, and instead he had to settle for a victory over Mark Madsen. One fight ago he had a close scrape with Nasrat Haqparast that ended with 88% of media scores going his way, and the judges, of course, gave it to Haqparast. Gordon was supposed to get a softer comedown against Kauê Fernandes this past February, but Fernandes pulled out, so he drew an even easier target in late replacement Mashrabjon Ruziboev only for Ruziboev to get pulled from the card and fired from the UFC before ever fighting when he arrived visibly out of shape and nowhere close to his target weight. And now, at the end of all of that, he gets to fight Thiago Moisés, the man who went four rounds with Islam Makhachev, choked out Melquizael Costa, almost knocked out Benoît Saint Denis despite getting kicked in the dick twice and nearly kicked Trey Ogden's legs into pieces this past January.

It's a tough one. Gordon's got the faster hands and the stronger clinch game, but Thiago's more versatile on the feet and better at punishing the legs, and not only is he going to score points pretty quickly, he, unlike Gordon, is not completely fucking loathed by the judges. THIAGO MOISÉS BY DECISION.

FEATHERWEIGHT: Yadier DelValle (8-0) vs Connor Matthews (7-3)

Y'know, for as much as I may mock that Matheus Camilo situation, it's still a situation. It's the kind of silly story mixed martial arts has always managed to create. This fight represents the interchangeable-parts reality of modern MMA. Connor Matthews went from fighting 1-2 and 8-4 guys to the Contender Series, got into the UFC, and is now 0-2 in the company and seemingly on his way out. Yadier DelValle went from fighting 11-10 and 4-1 guys to the Contender Series, got into the UFC, and is now poised to feed on yesterday's model. On a sufficiently long timeframe, this is the future of the entire UFC: Endless legions of people padding out records, fighting each other for scraps and becoming the new quality standard for the Super Bowl Of Mixed Martial Arts as they get repeatedly knocked out and are forgotten within a year.

YADIER DELVALLE BY DECISION.

WOMEN'S BANTAMWEIGHT: Luana Santos (8-2) vs Tainara Lisboa (7-2)

The siren has sounded and it is calling all the Women's Bantamweights back to work. Luana Santos got herself off to a promising start with three straight UFC wins, but two of them were against the about-to-be-released Mariya Agapova and Stephanie Egger and the very first was Juliana "Killer" Miller, whose time in the company hasn't been all that great, meaning most memory of Santos comes from her getting thoroughly dismantled at the hands of Casey O'Neill last August. That's still a step up from Tainara Lisboa, however. The former kickboxer notched two UFC fights in six months, won both--also, fittingly, against women who were gone from the company afterwards--and then disappeared for a year and a half for major knee surgery.

I have a little more faith in LUANA SANTOS BY SUBMISSION particularly after that much time on the shelf rehabbing, but Tainara could also come back with powerful robot knees and destroy us all.

WOMEN'S STRAWWEIGHT: Elise Reed (8-4) vs Denise Gomes (10-3)

Do you ever get tired of the way they cram all the women's fights down into the prelims? There's always this theoretical promise that good, marketing-friendly performances will get you better bookings, but that's clearly bullshit, because Denise Gomes lost to Loma Lookboonmee on the prelims, and then she knocked out two women in a row on the prelims, and as payment for her hard work she was booked against Angela Hill on the prelims, and after two straight wins on the prelims, she is still here, on the prelims. This is not to discount Elise Reed, who is tough as hell and a great divisional journeywoman, as with anyone who can go four years and eight UFC fights without ever having a back to back win or loss.

But she is a massive underdog here and I think that is fair. DENISE GOMES BY TKO.

FLYWEIGHT: Hyunsung Park (9-0) vs Carlos Hernandez (10-4)

Speaking of folks who haven't been around for awhile, welcome back, Hyunsung Park. "Peace of Mind" was a winner on the first-ever Road to UFC tournament, and he got to celebrate his contract with a soft-target matchup against Shannon Ross back in December of 2023, whom he dutifully dispatched. And that's it! A knee injury and subsequent recovery saw Park miss the entirety of 2024, and his scheduled comeback against Nyamjargal Tumendemberel this past February got cancelled after Tumendemberel missed weight by 6 pounds and Park very understandably elected not to take the fight. Fittingly, Carlos Hernandez was the last man to see Tumendemberel, having defeated him in a real close, contentious split decision of a war this past November. This has unfortunately also underlined Hernandez as a measuring stick: Everyone he's lost to has gone on to prospect status, and everyone he's beaten is either out of the company or, in Nyamjargal's case, is dangerously close to it.

I think Park's on the good side of the equation. HYUNSUNG PARK BY TKO.

WOMEN'S STRAWWEIGHT: Tecia Pennington (14-7, #13) vs Luana Pinheiro (11-4, #14)

And finally, as is always the case, we have a ranked Women's fight and it is curtain-jerking the prelims of an Apex card that will ultimately be viewed only by the purest of hopeless degenerates and the undead cyborgs hooked up to Nielsen boxes so the advertising industry can pretend it still has a use other than making sure everyone hums their particular commercial jingle while we pan for krill as subsistence farmers after the apocalypse. The story between these two fighters could not be more different or, in at least one case, more infuriating. Luana Pinheiro is seemingly on her way out. She was only barely holding on in 2023 when she was scraping by Michelle Waterson-Gomez; in the two years since she's lost three in a row that included becoming the first woman to get finished by Angela Hill in half a decade. Tecia Pennington, by contrast, should arguably be a top contender right now. She fought Mackenzie Dern to a coinflip of a split decision in 2022, lost, left to have a baby with rightful Women's Bantamweight champion Raquel Pennington, came back in 2024, once again went to a close call with Tabatha Ricci, once again arguably should have won the decision, and once again, did not. But she did finally get the nod in her retiring of Carla Esparza last October, and she is looking to make up for lost time.

TECIA PENNINGTON BY DECISION. I don't think Pinheiro has the answers for Tecia's gameplan.