CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 164: SHORT PHRASES
UFC Fight Night: Bonfim vs Brown
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 8 FROM THE PLAIN PLANES OF THE APEX
PRELIMS 1 PM PST / 4 PM EST | MAIN CARD 4 PM / 7 PM
Did you have a great time in the Apex last week, what with the eyepokes and the rules being made up and the possibility that we saw a partially fixed fight in Dulgarian vs del Valle and we would probably be getting the James Krause betting scandal all over again were it not for the current head of the FBI being both a friend of the company and too busy firing people to cover up the scandal of using taxpayer funds to go see his girlfriend sing at Real American Freestyle, the Hulk Hogan/Eric Bischoff-founded pro-wrestling-if-it-was-amateur-wrestling promotion where people like Holly Holm, Bo Nickal and Real Woods do takedowns on a giant rectangle?
Also, do you ever write sentences that make your mouth taste like copper?
Anyway, we’re gonna do it again. There are at least a couple fights I’m looking forward to this time.
MAIN EVENT: NEW DEPTHS
WELTERWEIGHT: Gabriel Bonfim (18-1, #14) vs Randy Brown (20-6, NR)
I would like this fight an awful lot if it wasn’t a main event, and to some extent, I am a hypocrite for feeling that way.
One of my most constant complaints with the UFC is how little effort they put into building up their contenders. People skipping around the rankings willy-nilly based on whatever marketing’s whims are on a given week have done a great deal of harm to the approachability of the sport, so building divisions with natural, adjacent matchmaking is a thing I want to appreciate. Hell, so is putting spotlights on talent that hasn’t quite broken out yet. I have spilled so many words about good fighters being buried on the prelims; elevating your good prospects should be an unequivocal positive.
And both of these men are good prospects. Gabriel Bonfim’s a half-dozen fights into his UFC run, he’s only lost once both under its spotlight and in his entire life, and he’s coming off his biggest-ever win after beating Stephen Thompson. Randy Brown’s been here for twenty goddamn bouts already, damn near his entire professional career happened in the big leagues, and he’s been in this perpetual limbo of drifting painfully close to a breakout without ever quite getting it. Both men are potential contenders in need of one good push.
So why can’t I find it within myself to simply enjoy that push finally arriving?
Some of it is, of course, the Apex. Do Apex main events even count? Did Lerone Murphy get enough notoriety from beating Josh Emmett in the Apex to get to a contendership bout, or did the UFC chuck him in there with an unranked, debuting Aaron Pico on pay-per-view in the hopes of being rid of him? Roman Dolidze went from main eventing the Apex successfully to main eventing the Apex unsuccessfully. Tatsuro Taira just had his fourth straight Apex fight and at this point he can probably claim fucking squatters’ rights. Is it putting attention on a fighter if that attention is centered on the events your own promotion treats as third-rate programming?
Here’s the giveaway: This wasn’t initially a main event. This was supposed to be third from the top on the main card of the UFC’s Charles Oliveira vs Mateusz Gamrot card in Rio last month. It didn’t even get co-main status--that was Deiveson Figueiredo vs Montel Jackson. The UFC moved it here because they didn’t have a better fight to put in its slot. That’s the exchange rate the matchmakers have made clear: If you are important enough to be on the main card for a normal show, you qualify for main event status in the Apex.
And hell, that’s the complimentary half of the equation. The less complimentary half is at this point I think the UFC just kind of wants to stop thinking about one of these dudes, because this despite their success, this is kind of an unfortunate time for both of them.
I said Gabriel Bonfim was coming off that big Stephen Thompson win, and that is, technically, true. It is equally true to say that was a pretty unfortunate performance most of the MMA world considers a robbery. Bonfim’s been styling on everyone he fights--with the obvious exception of perpetual spoiler Nicolas Dalby, who knocked him out--but styling on Ange Loosa and Trevin Giles only gets your foot in the door. Bonfim was a huge favorite to beat the aging Thompson, and the UFC, who’ve not-too-subtly wanted Thompson out of the picture for awhile, were planning on another stellar performance over a better-known quantity so their Contender Series marvel could finally enter the public consciousness.
Again, he did win. But he struggled mightily with Thompson’s striking, actually lost the significant striking battle, whiffed on nine of his fourteen takedown attempts, and ultimately spent the majority of the fight grinding Thompson into the fence for a split decision 85% of the media scored against him. It got him in the rankings, but it’s hard to ignore that the UFC responded to his big, number-gathering win by booking him against a dangerous, unranked fighter that offers virtually no upside for him.
Because that’s really where Randy Brown is right now. I said Brown was twenty fights deep into his UFC career, and that’s a hell of a number, and it’s also a bit of a backhanded compliment, because after twenty fights he is still stuck on the outside looking in. Every time he’s built himself up, every time he’s amassed a winning streak, every time it’s looked like this will finally be the moment Rudeboy Randy rides into the rankings, he’s gotten knocked back down. Belal Muhammad, Niko Price, Vicente Luque, Jack Della Maddalena--it’s a hell of a list of people to lose to, but it’s still losing.
He’s not currently all that divorced from losing, either. Brown’s on a one-fight winning streak, thanks to his latest set of victories being interrupted by a split decision loss to Bryan Battle. It was close, but unlike the aforementioned Thompson fight, it wasn’t a robbery. Battle just won. Unfortunately, he also missed weight by five pounds and people understandably held it against him. Even more unfortunately, he missed weight by five pounds again in his next fight--at Middleweight--and got cut from the UFC. So now Randy is only one fight removed from a loss to a guy who got fired for being overweight. Brown did get a stellar knockout this past April, ironically enough over Nicolas Dalby, the man who cost Gabriel Bonfim his undefeated streak, but it got Brown back here in the Apex, so it only went so far.
Two prospects, both talented, both full of promise, both of whom the UFC appears to be kind of sick of pushing. Welcome back to the warehouse, boys. Bonfim is the better-rounded fighter, and he’s going to need to be, because his best chances here are almost certainly on the ground. Brown’s got a ton of reach on him, he punches an awful lot harder, and he’s pretty good at getting leverage in the clinch, which is where Bonfim likes to stall his opponents out. He also got repeatedly taken down by that well-known wrestler, Elizeu “Capoeira” Zaleski dos Santos. If Bonfim gets to his legs, he’s almost certainly taking him for a ride.
But I’m gonna root for reach. RANDY BROWN BY TKO.
CO-MAIN EVENT: DEFINITIONAL CHANGE
FLYWEIGHT: Matt Schnell (17-9 (1)) vs Joseph Morales (13-2)
I wanna take you back to this April.
Matt Schnell is not so much underwater as he is actively drowning. Five and a half years ago Schnell was a ranked contender on a great winning streak fighting the future Flyweight champion of the world; over said five and a half years he’s 2 for 8 and five of those losses involved getting violently finished. Steve Erceg owes his persistent top-of-the-card booking to the UFC’s appreciation of his knocking Schnell out because Flyweight knockout artists are considered too rare to lose. The real backhanded reality for Schnell isn’t just that he’s losing, though--it’s that the last three people he lost to have all collectively lost all of their last twelve fights unless their opponent was named Matt Schnell.
That night, Schnell fought Jimmy Flick. Flick was in similarly dire straits, with just one win in four fights over almost five entire years, including a retirement, a divorce, and a divorce-induced mid-life-crisis that led him to return to fighting. Schnell won a competitive decision; Flick got cut from the company.
And now, with a grand total of three wins in his last eight fights, Matt Schnell is in the co-main event. You just can’t beat the rub you get from knocking Jimmy Flick off the roster, I guess.
Alternatively: This fight is for Joseph Morales. “Bopo” was the underdog finalist on The Ultimate Fighter 33 (jesus christ) this past August when all of the thirty-seven people who still watch TUF expected undefeated Kazakh fighter Alibi Idiris to punch his way to the trophycommemorative glass plate someone picked up at Michaels that afternoon. Instead, Morales, the man who’d already been drummed out of the UFC on a 1-2 record back in 2018, dominated Idiris, dropped him and choked him out in two rounds. It may have been the best performance of his entire career.
The question is: Can he break the curse. TUF winners haven’t been doing so hot, man. If you go down the list of the last ten straight years of TUF champions, it gets dire:
Mairon Santos is the rare exception who won his first post-TUF fight, but it was a highway robbery
Ryan Loder got fucked all the way up after his TUF win and is fighting to avoid his first losing streak
Brad Katona lost his first fight, went 1-3, and got cut from the UFC for the second time in his life
Kurt Holobaugh did exactly the same and he has yet to be booked again or cut
Mohammed Usman has a winning UFC record! But it’s 4-2 and he hasn’t looked good since TUF and he gets injured an awful lot
Juliana Miller has only managed three fights in three and a half years and she lost two of them
Ricky Turcios has only managed four fights in four years and he lost three of them
Bryan Battle, as we discussed above, got cut from the UFC for huge weight misses at multiple divisions
Juan Espino had two fights in two and a half years after TUF, then retired from the sport
Macy Chiasson is one of the most successful TUF winners, in the sense that she’s 7-5 and has also missed weight at multiple divisions, one of which no longer exists in the UFC
Michael Trizano got cut after going 3-3 and missing weight and is now a bareknuckle boxer
Brad Katona w--jesus christ we’re all the way back at Brad Katona’s first TUF win, good lord
Nicco Montaño became the permanent answer to the “who is the worst UFC champion of all time” trivia question by winning TUF 26 and thus becoming the inaugural Women’s Flyweight Champion, never defending the title, being stripped a year later, losing one UFC fight at Bantamweight, getting five straight fights cancelled or rescheduled, then blowing weight by almost an entire division for her 2021 comeback and getting released
Jesse Taylor, who’d been removed from TUF 7’s finals after losing his shit in Vegas (remember when things mattered?), came back nine years later, won TUF 25, failed a drug test after his win and got suspended and fired without ever being booked again
Tim Elliott’s here! He rules! He’s 10-11 in the UFC and he hasn’t recorded back to back wins in half a decade, but hey, it’s something
Tatiana Suarez is also here! She was great! But her body kept repeatedly exploding so she’s been idle for five of the last ten years and when she finally got a title shot she looked awful and still kind of does if we’re being honest
Her seasonal compatriot, Andrew Sanchez, got cut on a 4-5 record and was last seen having his head repeatedly exploded in the PFL
Ryan Hall rolled his body into a ball repeatedly, got violently destroyed by Ilia Topuria, and hasn’t been seen in four years
That’s it. That is an entire decade of TUF alumni. The show that once gave us a bunch of UFC champions and hall-of-famers and legendary fights and Saved MMA Itself in the UFC’s canon of the sport has only managed to retain nine of those last eighteen winners, and two of those nine have been here for barely a year, and at least two more are probably getting cut before another year is up. Only two of those eighteen are ranked, and as much as I have enjoyed Macy Chiasson in my time, she’s ranked at Women’s Bantamweight, a division she regularly fails to make weight for even though it only barely exists.
The gilded age of MMA-based reality television is dead and buried. It passed on an awfully long time ago, and we’re now at the point where the UFC’s huge new Paramount+ broadcasting deal includes Zuffa Boxing, a company that as of yet has promoted a grand total of zero events on its own, but does not include The Ultimate Fighter. This was the flagship product, once upon a time, and now we are here, putting the latest TUF winner up against a man whose last winning streak happened the year “Old Town Road” took over the world.
I cannot help rooting for it. Schnell has also looked pretty fuckin’ bad lately and there’s a good chance Morales can take him on pace alone, if the way he went after Alibi was any sign. JOSEPH MORALES BY SUBMISSION.
MAIN CARD: SOME STUFF
WELTERWEIGHT: Muslim Salikhov (22-5) vs Uroš Medić (11-3)
We talk about the UFC’s whole self-professed sink-or-swim meritocracy mentality being a crock, and Muslim Salikhov has one of the best arguments. He’s not a young man--he turned 41 this June--but thirteen fights into his UFC career, he’s on the best run of his life. After starting 2024 getting knocked flat by Randy Brown he staged a comeback, narrowly beat Santiago Ponzinibbio, and then scored two of the best knockouts of the year in two consecutive years. At the end of 2024 he went to Macau and knocked out Song Kenan with a gorgeous spinning wheel kick, and this past July he went off to Abu Dhabi as a big underdog against Carlos Leal, a killer who’d never been stopped on strikes, and iced him in under a minute with an agonizingly perfect walk-off right. So now he’s got three wins in a row and two consecutive bonus-winning knockouts. How’s the UFC going to move him up the ladder?
Why, by sticking him in the Apex against Uroš Medić, of course. Uroš Medić! Winner of one consecutive fights. Uroš is a fighter who steadfastly refuses to let his bouts go the distance, and consequently, he either knocks people out or gets utterly, horrifyingly destroyed, and like most violence-at-all-costs competitors, the two interweave so constantly that he’s never able to pick up any momentum. He won his debut fight but got choked out by Jalin Turner immediately afterward, a two-fight knockout streak ended with Myktybek Orolbai tapping him again, and as tempting as it would be to write the usual “lo, the striker, laid low by wrestling” epitaph, we cannot, as one fight ago Punahele Soriano punched him into Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion ragdoll physics mode in thirty-one seconds. Medić managed to knock out Gilbert Urbina this past August, but Urbina has one win to three stoppage losses over the last four years, so that’s not exactly a big-ticket victory.
And yet, Salikhov is the underdog. Is it the age? Is it Salikhov’s loss to Brown hanging more prominently in memory? I do not know, but either way, I disagree. MUSLIM SALIKHOV BY TKO.
LIGHTWEIGHT: Ismael Bonfim (20-5) vs Chris Padilla (16-6)
The Bonfim brothers were The Bonfim Brothers right up until the point that they weren’t. Both men stumbled early in their UFC tenures, but where Gabriel managed to put things back together enough to at least technically win a bunch, Ismael hasn’t been quite so fortunate. After Benoît Saint Denis ruined his contendership hopes by choking him out, Ismael signed a fight with Vinc Pichel, missed weight by almost five pounds, got offended when Pichel refused to fight on anyway, returned to the fight half a year later and won a dominant decision as a way to announce that he’d straightened things out and was back on the path to being a star. And then Nazim Sadykhov kicked his face into pieces in a round, and now he’s back in the ether.
Good news, though: The ether contains tacos. Chris “Taco” Padilla is on a three-fight winning streak in the UFC and I would bet anything that if you have any memories of him, they are not of any of those fights, but rather, the novelty of a fighter being named Taco. He choked out James Llontop! It was a short-notice fight on the Apex prelims and Llontop was gone a few months later. He choked out Rongzhu! The UFC promptly booked Rongzhu better than Padilla because he’s worth more money. He notched a split decision over Jai Herbert in England! It was an incredibly uneventful bout where no one left happy. The Taco needs a signature win if he wants to get anywhere, and even stranded in the Apex, Bonfim is his best chance at catching up.
The odds are extremely low that he pulls it off. Padilla’s been able to outmuscle and outgrapple his opponents, but it certainly looks like Ismael is the better wrestler as well as the cleaner striker. It would be very unlikely and incredibly funny if Padilla somehow pulled this off. So, of course, CHRIS PADILLA BY SUBMISSION.
BANTAMWEIGHT: Ricky Simón (22-6) vs Raoni Barcelos (20-5)
Oh, Ricky. Ricky, Ricky. I have rooted for you so much. I picked you and your veteran wiles again and again, and you let me down, again and again, and when I finally gave up and let reason into my heart and accepted that Javid Basharat was probably going to end your time in the UFC, you had to upset the table and knock him out. Beating Cameron Smotherman this past June should have been the icing on the cake that is my renewed love for your once-bemulleted brawling. But I can’t do it this time. I cannot follow you here. I’m sorry, my friend. There is another.
Raoni motherfuckin’ Barcelos. I can’t quit you. Unfortunately, the UFC absolutely can. Raoni opened 2025 by dominating Payton Talbott, the UFC’s second attempt at a Sean O’Malley. Both men have had one fight since then: Raoni beat a former world champion in Cody Garbrandt, and Payton beat Felipe Lima, who had two UFC fights. Now Raoni is here, on the Apex, fighting an exceptionally tough contender who offers no chance of promotion, and Payton is booked on the main card of the last pay-per-view of the year fighting Henry Cejudo for the #10 spot in the division. Did you know Mackenzie Dern did a podcast this week where she openly admitted the UFC paid her under the table while astroturfing her entire pre-UFC MMA career so they could groom her for stardom?
It’s funny how uneven things are allowed to be sometimes. RAONI BARCELOS BY DECISION.
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Christian Leroy Duncan (12-2) vs Marco Tulio (14-1)
I have to embrace Christian Leroy Duncan. However much I may have denied his hype, however often I have refused to buy into the much-ballyhooed CLD future based on his ability to beat people like Denis Tiuliulin and Claudio Ribeiro who blazed brave new trails in developing perpetual motion machines fueled solely by the power of constantly getting punched in the face, this past August, he slew one of the great beasts of the deep; one of the eldritch horrors that lurks just under the aquatic murk of our sport. Chris Weidman couldn’t do it. The Iron Turtle couldn’t do it. Lyoto Machida couldn’t do it. My perfect child Gerald Meerschaert couldn’t do it. But Christian Leroy Duncan? He became the first man to knock out Eryk Anders. He gave us a beautiful gift, and now, we are honorbound to love him.
Sure, Marco Tulio has only lost once in eight years of professional combat. Sure, he’s a knockout machine who beat no less than Tresean Gore himself this past April. Sure, he looks like someone shot Jafel Filho with an embiggening ray and let him loose on the streets to talk to people about Jesus and/or nihilism depending on if you subscribe to the actual, real Jafel vs the fake version of him I have invented to make these essays fun to write. Does Tulio do good punches? Absolutely. Did he also get beaned repeatedly by Gore and win thanks in some part to kicking him in the dick twice? You know it, just as you know the rules are made up and completely unenforced.
CLD has earned my vote. I endorse this candidacy. CHRISTIAN LEROY DUNCAN BY DECISION.
PRELIMS: CONTINUAL DEGRADATION
FEATHERWEIGHT: Jamall Emmers (21-8) vs Hyder Amil (11-1)
This fight’s fate is already written in the stars. Jamall Emmers tried to win a DWCS contract in 2018 only to be knocked out by headkick weirdo Julian Erosa, and the world thinks he was pulled into the company thanks to a double-short-notice signing in 2020, but that’s just the cover story. In truth, Jamall found a genie next to a multitude of buried bodies in the Las Vegas desert, and in exchange for his freedom he granted Jamall’s wish to be a UFC fighter forever, but at the cost of never truly becoming well-known. It’s more than half a decade later and Emmers is still here, and pursuant to their monkey’s paw of a deal, he has never won or lost two fights in a row. Even when he obviously wins a fight, as in his bout with Jack Jenkins in 2023, he will lose the decision, because the illegality of his continuity is coded into the DNA of the cosmos. Hyder Amil is not simply a prospect being given a fighter he is meant to vanquish, he is an agent of interdimensional order, here to save all of us from being erased in a blink by a violation of magic law.
Thank you, Hyder Amil. Thank you for your service. HYDER AMIL BY TKO.
WOMEN’S BANTAMWEIGHT: Mayra Bueno Silva (10-5-1 (1), #10) vs Jacqueline Cavalcanti (9-1, #11)
You were the chosen one, Mayra. You were chosen to carry us into a brave new era. Two years ago Mayra choked Holly Holm out in six minutes flat and it made her look like the future of Women’s Bantamweight. She slew the dragon, man. She ran up the hill. When the win got overturned over a prescription for Ritalin, of all things, the UFC didn’t even bat an eye and put her straight into a title fight instead, which was richly deserved. It has, unfortunately, been completely downhill from there. She lost her championship bout with Raquel Pennington; she got her eyebrow removed by Macy Chiasson; she tried to take refuge by dropping to Flyweight only to be utterly dominated by Jasmine Jasudavicius. Three fights ago she was co-main eventing a pay-per-view for a world championship and now she’s in the fight warehouse against Jacqueline Cavalcanti. To put the point on exactly what a fall that is, Cavalcanti is on a four-fight winning streak in the UFC, but those four wins include:
Nora Cornolle, who has missed weight in 2/3 of her UFC victories
Josiane Nunes, who was most successful as a 5’2” Featherweight and has lost every fight since the division’s closure
Julia Avila, who has one win in the last five years
Zarah Fairn, who went 0-4 in the company
This is not a question as to if Mayra can win, it’s an attempt to see if she has anything left. Cavalcanti is a defensively sound fighter who hasn’t made an impression on the audience after four cracks at bat, and the UFC wants her to either light a fire under Mayra again or distinguish herself by disposing of a title contender.
I am already too deep into rooting for Mayra to abandon my sunk cost fallacy now. MAYRA BUENO SILVA BY SUBMISSION.
HEAVYWEIGHT: Josh Hokit (6-0) vs Max Gimenis (6-1)
I’ll be honest: My first draft for this entire fight was just “Nah” and a picture of Londo Mollari looking nonplussed. But the more I thought about this, and the more I thought about the unbelievably dark times Heavyweight is currently going through, the more I began to see this as a perfect tribute to the present. Josh Hokit is an indistinguishable wrestling prospect who got less attention for his fighting than he did for cutting the increasingly boring yet obligatory bigot promo about wanting to beat up trans people after his DWCS win. Max Gimenis is a Brazilian grappler who’s spent his entire MMA career on the record-padding circuit and consequently made it to his eighth professional bout having never fought anyone with a winning record. This is it. The future of Heavyweight is Shithead Gimmick #451 and Guy Whose Last Fight Was Against A 41 Year-Old Who Was 7-9-1.
At least, even if bigotry will probably win the day as it is currently the bumper crop of our nation, it’s an easy philosophical choice. MAX GIMENIS BY SUBMISSION.
WOMEN’S STRAWWEIGHT: Tecia Pennington (15-7, #13) vs Denise Gomes (11-3, #15)
I’m really glad we have two ranked Women’s Fights on the prelims, as always, while making space in the spotlight for Matt Schnell and Uroš Medić. Tecia Pennington is on a two-fight win streak that includes retiring Carla Esparza, and we’re only four fights removed from her having an ultra-close split decision against newly-crowned champion Mackenzie Dern that Tecia easily could have won. Denise Gomes is a forward-marching wrecking ball who’s 5 for her last 6, and two of those included walking straight through two extremely tough fighters in Yazmin Jauregui and Elise Reed and simply flooring them with her boxing. Tecia has never been stopped, Denise has never been submitted, they’re both really good at what they do, and whoever wins this fight has a great argument for a breakout bout in the top ten thanks to some real, genuine momentum and a lengthy winning streak.
So I’m sure glad they’re all the way down here, fighting underneath Josh Hokit. TECIA PENNINGTON BY DECISION.
BANTAMWEIGHT: Miles Johns (15-4 (1)) vs Daniel Marcos (17-1 (1))
Miles Johns is one of the toughest, most well-rounded fighters in the sport, but he really needs to fire his agent. At the end of 2024 Johns hadn’t lost in his last four fights, was right at the border of the rankings, and was set up for a breakout fight with former superstar Cody Garbrandt. But Cody had to reschedule, and rather than waiting for a rebooking, Johns took a fight the following month against Felipe Lima--at Featherweight. Unsurprisingly, he lost. Rather than a rebound fight, Johns took a booking against Jean Matsumoto, a highly-rated prospect who’d just lost his undefeated streak in a very close scrape with Rob Font, and once again, Johns lost. This weekend, he was supposed to fight Muin Gafurov, the LFA champion that just knocked off Rinya Nakamura, but Gafurov busted himself up in training, so his replacement is Daniel Marcos, who was also undefeated until just one fight ago when Montel Jackson outpaced him, which is a very, very funny sentence after Montel’s non-performance against Deiveson Figueiredo last month.
So Johns went from marching into 2025 as the owner of a great winning streak and the head of a former world champion to limping out of 2025 on a losing streak he’s trying to get turned around by fighting some of the toughest prospects in the division. I beg of you: Get new management. DANIEL MARCOS BY DECISION.
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Jackson McVey (6-1) vs Zach Reese (9-2)
Jackson McVey hasn’t had a ton of luck retaining his dance partners. Four months ago he was scheduled to make his UFC debut against Sedriques Dumas, but Dumas couldn’t get his ankle monitor off in time (no, really), so he got Christopher Ewert, who was pulled from his Contender Series appearance to fight in the big show instead, but it turned out Ewert had accepted the fight knowing he’d only have a week to cut thirty pounds, and when he came nowhere close, the fight was scrapped. McVey wound up getting crushed by Brunno Ferreira a month later instead. Up until this Tuesday, McVey was going to face Robert Valentin, the TUF 32 (jesus christ) finalist who keeps really badly losing fights, which seemed like a much, much better deal. And then Valentin pulled out, so McVey got scheduled against Donte Johnson instead, the 5’8” former Heavyweight who also beat up Sedriques Dumas last weekend. But the Nevada State Athletic Commission balked at clearing him to fight again so soon, so once again, Jackson has multiple replacements, and this time he’s got Zach Reese, the man who went to a No Contest with Sedriques Dumas after punting him in the dick a minute into their fight in September. I must ask: How in the hell does the entire lower end of this division center around Sedriques fucking Dumas. What happened. How did we get here. How do we go home.
The Apex is a place of horror and dismay. ZACH REESE BY TKO.