CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 172: IN CONTENTION
UFC Fight Night: Strickland vs Hernandez
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 21 FROM THE TOYOTA CENTER IN HOUSTON, TEXAS
PRELIMS 2 PM PST / 5 PM EST | MAIN CARD 5 PM / 8 PM
You ever get the sense that the line between what constitutes a road-worthy card and what constitutes an Apex card is becoming increasingly blurry?
MAIN EVENT: THE OVERTON WINDOW
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Sean Strickland (29-7, #3) vs Anthony Hernandez (15-2 (1), #4)
The velocity decline can reach is disarming as hell.
We’ve been talking about Sean Strickland and his role as the UFC’s most successful bigot for years, to the point that when I last expressed my deep longing for the ancient days of anything mattering in the face of his constant bullshit, it was during his first and only attempt at defending his title back at the start of 2024:
Things used to matter! We used to think it was kind of racist that Chael Sonnen said Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira tried to feed a carrot to a bus because he thought it was a horse! Matt Mitrione had to release a public apology for his horrible transphobia and that was just a decade ago! And now the Middleweight champion says women belong in the kitchen and jokes that gay children come from weak men and hey, we're all shitposters here, so what's a little idiot bigotry in our sport? What, the female fighters got offended that there's absolutely no pushback on their male counterpart saying they shouldn't exist?
How silly of them.
That was two years ago, and it's incredible to think about just how much worse things have gotten in those two years. Two years ago we didn't have Holocaust deniers getting promoted as pay-per-view attractions. Two years ago we didn't have post-fight promos about the need to replace Democracy with a moneyed theocracy and the most-hyped Heavyweight prospect in the company didn't make his name talking about beating up trans people. Two years ago Kash Patel didn't have his own UFC walkout.
Hell, that quote was part of a complaint about Bloody Elbow, one of the few bright spots in combat sports journalism, writing things about Sean Strickland I didn't particularly agree with. Over those two years Bloody Elbow got sold to corporate publisher GRV Media, who deleted its entire archive of articles, sold its organs on the black market and built an indistinguishable-from-ChatGPT clickbait farm where its heart used to live.
And everything's gotten so much worse that even the shambling corpse facsimile of the website has articles about how the UFC kind of sucks now and should consider things like shutting down its Heavyweight division.
But we talk about the depressing decline of the sport all the damn time. Why don't we talk about what all's been going on with Sean Strickland instead?
You may notice that everyone's coverage--mine, the media's, even the UFC's--focuses on the Everything Else instead of the Fight. That is because the is-it-real-or-not non-argument the MMA communtiy always has about fighters being assholes to each other (while ignoring footage of them laughing and hugging in their off-time) is the much more interesting side of things. Sean Strickland's specialty is hypnotizing people into letting him gently cross them up for three to five rounds. He knocked Israel Adesanya down and hit him in the head eighty-five times, and Izzy barely had a mouse under his eye after the fight. The UFC tries very, very hard to get you to focus on Sean Strickland's personality because his fighting style is exactly the kind of technically sound but casually uninteresting boxing they otherwise try to discourage.
Oh, right. That’s why. Guess what: There’s still nothing else to talk about with Sean Strickland.
It’s been 25 months since that fight, and in those two-ish years Strickland has fought exactly twice. The first was an absurd match-up with Paulo Costa, a man with one victory (over retiree Luke Rockhold!) in the previous five years, that Strickland took to a decision with his usual arsenal of push-kicks and defensively sound if boo-inducing boxing, and after refusing to defend his position against anyone in the division with even a mote of relevance Strickland was instead granted his title rematch with Dricus du Plessis, who completely shut him down for five rounds.
That’s it. That’s the Sean Strickland story you’ve missed. His last fight was an entire year ago and it eliminated him from title contention entirely and since then all he’s done is make controversial tweets and piss off his teammates by bringing Kyle Rittenhouse to their gym and do whatever he can to prolong his time as one of the canker sores in the sport’s collective cheek so long as it doesn’t involve actually fighting anyone. He is slowly drifting into Colby Covingtonian status as his momentum dies and all he has left is increasingly tired controversy.
So he’s fighting Anthony Hernandez, the only Middleweight contender with any actual momentum, because God is dead and we turned their body into advertising for Draftkings.
We’ve been rooting for the Hernandez title run for years over here at the MMA essay mill, but boy, I feel every one of those years. “Fluffy” has seemed like a sure-fire contender since he was strangling dudes all the way back in 2022, but constant scheduling issues and nagging injuries have kept halting his momentum. His career-defining submission over world-class grappler Rodolfo Vieira was followed by 14 months of inactivity, his subsequent three-fight winning streak earned him almost a full year on the shelf, there was only one bout in the subsequent eight months, and after making up for it with a blistering three victories in ten months, Anthony’s body gave him the finger again and put him out for half a year.
There are no bad Anthony Hernandez fights. He’s a constantly aggressive wrestleboxer with an endless gas tank and dangerous submission holds and the kind of old-school ground-and-pound that just looks profoundly painful. He breaks people down by pace as much as damage. He tortured Michel Pereira, he outworked Brendan Allen and he’s the only person to ever finish Roman Dolidze.
And we’re picking him. We’re obviously picking him. There is no power on Earth that could make me pick Sean Strickland over Anthony Hernandez.
Will he win? Man, I’m nervous about it.
Hernandez is great, but he’s not the most technically sound fighter. Aggression, cardio and a solid chin let him walk his opponents down and tire them out, but he eats his fair share of shots getting it done. The success of Strickland’s offensive minimalism is a measure of just how defensively sound he is, and he’s proven to be remarkably difficult to effectively grapple against. Both men favor a striking style that involves forward movement, and both men have gotten dinged by fighters like Jun Yong Park and Dricus du Plessis who used forward pressure against them instead.
I’m glad I’m biased enough to say ANTHONY HERNANDEZ BY SUBMISSION regardless of my feelings, because this match feels like the answer to a lot of questions about both men. Either Sean’s going to prove he still has trouble handling people who can out-pressure him or Anthony’s going to prove he can’t out-cardio everybody. Or a right hook ends it in ninety seconds because prediction is bullshit and all you can do is hope for the less awful person to get into title contention. Fuck ‘im up, Fluffy.
CO-MAIN EVENT: SLIPPING
WELTERWEIGHT: Geoff Neal (16-7, #12) vs Uroš Medić (12-3, NR)
Really? This is what we’re going with for an on-the-road co-main event? You know we have a top ten Heavyweight matchup two fights down from here, right? Like, I get it, Geoff Neal is from Texas and That’s Where We Are This Week, but c’mon, this fight is so Apex-coded you can hear the plastic chairs scraping the floor as you read about it.
And I love Geoff Neal! I’ve written so many things about Geoff Neal being an underrated almost-contender over the years that I want to like this fight. But Neal’s days of near-contendership feel very far away at the moment. In the last six straight years he’s 3-5, which doesn’t look all that bad until you realize those five losses were all relevant, high-performing contenders and those three wins were a barely-there split decision over a Santiago Ponznibbio on the edge of the worst run of his career, a knockout over a Vicente Luque who was about to enter his late-stage collapse, and an injury TKO against Rafael dos Anjos, who was 40, winless for multiple years, and had been at Lightweight seven months beforehand.
It’s been a long run, and the UFC has had Neal on such a tour of contender-proving work that, aside from dos Anjos, his last three opponents were Shavkat Rakhmonov, Ian Machado Garry and Carlos Prates, and he lost to all three of them and got finished by two. The days of his contendership potential have never seemed farther away.
But those days did exist. I don’t really know what Uroš Medić is doing here.
He got a couple knockouts? I guess that’s it? Like, we talked about Geoff Neal’s record against the best of the best, but here, from oldest to newest, are the last five fights of Uroš Medić:
Got strangled in two rounds by Myktybek Orolbai, who was making a short-notice debut and spent the next two years at Lightweight before moving back to 170
Knocked out Tim Means, the longtime veteran who was 1 for 4 and is now 1 for 6 and possibly retired
Got punched silly by Punahele Soriano in thirty-one seconds
Dropped The Ultimate Fighter 29 runner-up (jesus christ) Gilbert Urbina in a minute, who is now 1-3 in the company
Sparked Muslim Salikhov in a minute, which is probably his best win except Muslim is also 41 and 9-5
It’s fine! That record is fine. There’s nothing wrong with it. That is a perfectly sensible record for someone who’s going to be fighting Jake Matthews on an undercard or in the Apex. But in a division with guys like Joel Álvarez and Yaroslav Amosov in it, Uroš Medić is the one getting a co-main event on a road show that could get him into the top fifteen?
You know that list we just went through? Punahele Soriano and Myktybek Orolbai are both fighting this month! Orolbai’s fighting Chris Curtis three weeks from now! Punahele Soriano is on this card! You will find him nine fights down from here, buried in the prelims, fighting Ramiz Brahimaj. He’s on a three-fight winning streak, and two fights ago he knocked Medić into the third row in less time than it takes to watch someone lie to you about a fun new way to make eggs on TikTok, and he’s curtain-jerking against a dangerous unranked prospect and Uroš Medić has a shot at a number by his name against a man who’s been on pay-per-view for the last three years.
Matchmaking is just so broken right now. Uroš is a big puncher and he could get Neal out of there just like Prates did, but he’s also too unconcerned with his defense for me to feel comfortable picking him against a guy this dangerous. GEOFF NEAL BY TKO.
MAIN CARD: DAY OF THE HAMSTER
FEATHERWEIGHT: Dan Ige (19-10, #14) vs Melquizael Costa (25-7, NR)
God bless you, doorman Dan. The sport will never respect you the way it should, just as it has forgotten Martin Kampmann, Tyson Griffin and Alexis Davis, but the real fans know MMA doesn’t function without you. You are the backbone of the sport. You are the you-must-be-this-tall-to-ride-the-rollycoaster bar that keeps the Seans Woodson and Andres Fili out of the main event scene. Your loss to Patrício Pitbull last July was the breath of fresh air that let the world know maybe, just maybe, Big Patty Pits wasn’t actually done in the sport. If a fighter can pass the Ige exam, there’s hope for their prospects as a contender; if they fall short, they are doomed to battle Jamall Emmers forever.
Melquizael Costa is finally prepared for that test. His first year in the UFC was the kind of unsuccessful, one-for-three run one expects from fighters the UFC brings in on last-minute replacement contrasts, but through a magical combination of rounding out his skillset and Not Fighting Steve Garcia he’s finally hit his stride. Five straight victories is awful hard to do at Featherweight, and the headkick knockout he landed on Morgan Charrière last December sealed his shot at a ranking. He’s proven his chokes are absurdly dangerous, he’s proven his chin and his cardio can hold up for three rounds, and now he’s proven he can decapitate a Frenchman with his tibia. He is ready.
MELQUIZAEL COSTA BY DECISION. The time has come for new blood. Melk’s still very loose and Ige’s ultra-sharp boxing could give him trouble, but he’s looked better every time we’ve seen him and I don’t think he’s done improving.
HEAVYWEIGHT: Serghei Spivac (17-6, #7) vs Ante Delija (26-7, #9)
You know, Heavyweight is supposed to be the crown jewel of combat sports. Everyone lusts after large men battering each other. People still won’t shut up about Fedor Emelianenko and the last time he beat a relevant Heavyweight was 2009 and even then he was fighting for a title belt made out of dinner plates. Jailton Almeida, a top ten, 8-3 fighter, just got cut by the UFC for being boring, and Tom Aspinall, the undisputed champion, is out indefinitely having eye surgery that the UFC keeps calling him a coward for, and the most likely next contender for the Heavyweight title is 205-pound champion Alex Pereira, and the out-of-the-UFC prospect everyone’s talking about most is wrestling champion and attempted rapist Gable Steveson, who is 2-0 in the sport and could still probably get a UFC title shot within a year.
And this is a top ten matchup, midway through a random television card, between two men who both lost to Waldo “Salsa Boy” Cortes-Acosta in their last matchups. Ante Delija is a PFL tournament champion, Sergei is a multiple-time main eventer, whoever wins is two fights away from competing for the biggest belt in the sport, and they are less notable than Uroš Medić and less advertised than Dan Ige. All of the calls to abolish or reform the Heavyweight division are missing the point: This is the reformation of the Heavyweight division. This is the great terraforming of the sport. At a time when talent is harder to find than ever the company is repeatedly cutting top-ten performers because the more interchangeable the fighters become, the less they have to pay people, and the less they have to care about matchmaking. The UFC tried to book Serghei against Shamil Gaziev twice, and when that failed they booked him against Waldo, and when he lost to Waldo they tried to book him against Gaziev, and when that failed they just gave Gaziev to Waldo too.
None of it means anything. There is no Heavyweight ladder. The division is the ad-hoc model they’d love to pursue for the rest of the sport because money makes you myopic. ANTE DELIJA BY TKO because I don’t think Serghei remembers he’s a wrestler anymore.
WELTERWEIGHT: Jacobe Smith (11-0) vs Josiah Harrell (11-0)
This is Jacobe Smith’s third UFC fight during his tenure with the company, and every time I have been called to write about him, I have passed. The first time he showed up I wrote about the samey nature of the stories the Contender Series contributed to the annals of mixed martial arts and how hazy and indistinct it made everything, and he wound up punching out Preston Parsons; the second, I was too busy focusing on Niko Price, the aging enigma of battle, and the UFC’s constant attempts to sacrifice him. (Which they did, as Jacobe choked him out in two rounds.) Is this the time Jacobe will finally get his just dues from me?
Nope! He’s been overshadowed almost completely in this fight by his late-replacement opponent. Josiah Harrell signed up with the UFC all the way back in mid-2023 as a fill-in fight for Jack Della Maddalena, only for his pre-fight medical exams to reveal Harrell suffered from Moyamoya disease, an extremely rare brain disease that makes you exceptionally prone to abrupt death by cerebral implosion. Harrell took a hiatus from the sport to get brain surgery so as to achieve his primary goal of Not Dying, and after a three-fight streak on the regionals that included choking out Melvin Guillard--yes, that Melvin Guillard from TUF 2 (jesus christ) twenty-one years ago (jesus christ)--he’s finally back where he started: Getting signed as a last-minute addition to a random UFC card to pump up a Contender Series prospect.
And, man, c’mon. Come on. Do you have the heart to pick against him? You should be ashamed. JOSIAH HARRELL BY DECISION.
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Zach Reese (10-2 (1)) vs Michel Pereira (31-14 (2))
In some ways, this fight feels like an inevitable clash of we-don’t-know-what-to-do-with-yous. Zach Reese was supposed to be a sure-fire thing: Tall, undefeated, 100% finishing rate, spoke openly about eschewing the very concept of defense in favor of chasing highlight-reel finishes, fought for cheap. Everything the UFC could possibly want. They even matched him up with their version of the Brooklyn Brawler, Cody Brundage, to give him a solid debut. And then Brundage picked him up and dropped him on his skull. Another couple soft targets, another couple wins, and then it was Azamat Bekoev smashing Reese in a round. A repeatedly-scheduled matchup with Sedriques Dumas ended in under a minute after Reese punted him in the balls, and once again, he got an 0-1 soft target to recover. They keep trying and trying and trying with this man, and he keeps struggling under the spotlight.
So once again he has been called upon to execute a man on a losing streak, but this time it’s the most notable opponent of his career. Michel Pereira was so, so close to being taken seriously as a title contender, and in hindsight, that’s very funny. He popped up to Middleweight because he couldn’t make 170 pounds anymore and the MMA world was immediately taken by the streak of violence he visited on his opponents as he rattled off three straight victories in one minute apiece. It was great! Except for the part where he was doing it to, like, Andre Petroski and Ihor Potieria. The second they put him up against Anthony Hernandez he melted, and then Abus Magomedov made him look positively glacial, and then Kyle Daukaus smoked him in forty-three seconds and suddenly Pereira’s on a three-fight losing streak for the first time in thirteen years and everyone’s wondering if he’s done.
There’s a lot of mileage on Pereira. He’s only a year older than Reese but he’s got almost four times the wear and Daukaus cracking him made it show. Reese is bigger, he’s longer, and he is unmistakably being set up for success here, and I am picking MICHEL PEREIRA BY TKO anyway after kicking out his liver and doing a backflip.
PRELIMS: THERE’S A KILLER ON THE ROAD
WELTERWEIGHT: Chidi Njokuani (25-11 (1)) vs Carlos Leal (22-7)
Here, we have the battle of the killing machines that weren’t. Chidi Njokuani was supposed to be a force of nature as a 6’3” Middleweight with 80 inches of reach and ridiculous knockout power and then he got repeatedly pounded out by people who could actually outgrapple and outgrit him because, much like his older brother from the World Extreme Cagefighting days, wrestling and cardio are still not his forte. He dropped down to 170 pounds to turn around his fortunes only to lose his streak after getting choked out by Jake Matthews last July. Carlos Leal hopped into the UFC as a last-minute replacement, got utterly screwed out of a decision against Rinat Fakhretdinov, and immediately captured everyone’s attention by destroying the exceedingly durable Alex Morono in one round. He then proceeded to lose all that hype after walking facefirst into a Muslim Salikhov right hand in under a minute. Now the Very Tall Welterweight must fight the Very Wide Welterweight and only one man can survive.
After watching Muslim drive a tanker truck through the holes in Leal’s aggressive style I feel deeply concerned about watching him fight his way through half a foot of reach disadvantage against a man who can hit even harder. But I like his pressure game and I’m going against my better judgment and choosing to maintain my faith in it. CARLOS LEAL BY TKO.
FLYWEIGHT: Ode’ Osbourne (13-9 (1)) vs Alibi Idiris (10-1)
Ode’, you are called upon once more to do your holy duty. Ode’ was a Contender Series prospect once upon a time as the kind of Flyweight prospect that would drop and submit people left and right, but right around the time Manel Kape crushed him with a flying knee the UFC switched tracks and traded Ode’s prospect status in for a new role as a support fighter for folks they wanted to potentially invest in. It doesn’t always work! Asu Almabayev and Lazy Boy Rodríguez may have passed the test, but Ode’ spoiled Luis Gurule’s post-DWCS debut last year by knocking him out, because you still cannot underestimate him. Alibi Idiris was supposed to be the TUF 33 (jesus christ) champion. He’d become one of Kazakhstan’s best Flyweights within the first year and a half of his career, he’d made it to the TUF house without ever losing and he was buzzsawing people with spinning kicks and ground-and-pound left and right. He walked into the tournament final as a -500 favorite and he walked out eight minutes later with the first loss of his career after getting completely rolled by Joseph Morales.
This is the test. Either he proves himself worth rebuilding or the UFC cuts bait. ALIBI IDIRIS BY DECISION.
FLYWEIGHT: Alden Coria (11-3 (1)) vs Luis Gurule (10-2)
Hey, speak of the devil. Luis Gurule was also an undefeated Fury FC main-eventer before the UFC gave him a shot at the Contender Series, and then Ode’ flattened him and Jesus Aguilar beat him and now he’s staring down a possible three-fight losing streak just ten months after he got started, and that’s real, real hard to come back from. We’ve only gotten to see Alden Coria once and it was as a short-notice fill-in, but he made an exceptional accounting for himself by taking on the always-tough Alessandro Costa and just taking him apart. He outboxed him, he outkicked him, he outwrestled him, and despite the situation he outlasted him, too, ultimately folding him in the third. He looked like an exceptionally complete, well-rounded threat, and that’s potentially a problem for Gurule, who is perpetually game but tends to be a little stylistically limited by his focus on winging punches and power takedowns.
So, sorry, Luis. ALDEN CORIA BY DECISION.
WOMEN’S BANTAMWEIGHT: Nora Cornolle (9-3, #12) vs Joselyne Edwards (16-6, #14)
You know my constant complaints about the UFC’s unwillingness to promote people and how it’s helped Women’s Bantamweight turn into a wasteland? This. This is that. This is that fucking thing. The corporate mandate of the moment is very clear: Go out there and knock people out and you will be rewarded. No decisions, no defense, just murder. In the only division in the UFC that’s actively hurting for contenders as badly as Heavyweight, Joselyne Edwards took the lesson from her three decision victories and her two consecutive losses and went out there and started fucking everyone up. She choked out Tamires Vidal, she punched out Chelsea Chandler and when last we saw her she was atomizing Priscila Cachoeira. Priscila’s nickname, “Zombie Girl,” is derived from her durability. Valentina Shevchenko hit Priscila two hundred and thirty times and still had to resort to a choke to stop her. Joselyne knocked her out in two and a half minutes. So Women’s Bantamweight has a woman on a winning streak that’s included two straight knockouts. How do they capitalize on it? They book her into a rematch with Nora Cornolle, who is 3-2 in the company, lateral to her in the rankings, and already beat her in a coinflip of a decision two years ago, midway through the prelims on a card that’s highlighting Zach Reese and Jacobe Smith.
What are you doing? What can you possibly be doing? There are only two people in the entire top ten of this division booked. Was Irene Aldana so unavailable? Does Jacqueline Cavalcanti have nothing to do this Winter? Do you need them to fill out May’s slate of prelims instead? JOSELYNE EDWARDS BY DECISION but by god, please stop turning me into a nihilist.
WELTERWEIGHT: Ramiz Brahimaj (13-5) vs Punahele Soriano (12-4)
Speaking of nihilism, let’s have that conversation we started up in the co-main event. Ramiz Brahimaj is on a three-fight winning streak, all three of those wins were violent finishes, and the last was a genuinely impressive pay-per-view prelim that saw him become the first and only man to ever submit star wrestler Austin Vanderford. Punahele Soriano is on a three-fight winning streak that saw him soundly out-fight the recently-featured Nikolay Veretennikov on that same card, and of course, tucked in the middle of said streak, he knocked Uroš Medić the fuck out in thirty-one seconds. They’re both tough, talented, multifaceted fighters who’ve been showing off their grappling skills, they’ve both built real momentum for the first time in the five-plus years they’ve spent in the UFC, and they’re both itching for a chance to show they belong in the Welterweight mix, which is why even though, once again, one of them knocked half of the co-main event out in thirty-one seconds, they are both down here ass-deep in the prelims preparing to steal each others’ hype.
I miss matchmaking the way we’re all going to miss potable water in ten years. PUNAHELE SORIANO BY DECISION.
WELTERWEIGHT: Jean-Paul Lebosnoyani (9-2) vs Phil Rowe (11-6)
Phil Rowe, they are trying to figure out what to do with you. Much like Zach Reese you were a tempting prospect as a big, giant man for the Welterweight division, and much like Zach Reese you keep running into trouble every time they try to promote you. In 2021 it was Gabe Green, in 2023 it was Neil Magny, and after recapturing some much-needed hype with your flatlining of Ange Loosa last year you promptly got completely dominated by Seokhyeon Ko. Like, 124:11 striking differential dominated. By a man you have almost half a foot on. This is the point where the UFC no longer knows about your future, and Jean-Paul Lebosnoyani is the attempt to cash in. I am deeply, deeply curious about how JPL is about to look in the UFC. He’s been a solid hand in the LFA for a couple years, now, and he’s looked absolutely phenomenal in a lot of his wins--fast, smart, knows what head movement is, able to effectively mix some solid wrestling into slinging headkicks--but it’s a lot easier to look good against the Adam Wamsleys of the world. He looked great destroying Jack Congdon in all of a minute on the Contender Series, but Congdon’s another of those guys who record-padded like hell (he beat Jay Ellis! Jay Ellis is back!) and Lebosnoyani’s struggled on occasion with the better fighters on his list.
And I still just want to believe in Phil Rowe, man. He has the tools! He could be a thing! If I keep typing I can maybe talk myself out of JEAN-PAUL LEBOSNOYANI BY DECISION aw, dammit.
FEATHERWEIGHT: Jordan Leavitt (12-3) vs Yadier del Valle (10-0)
I know I’m setting myself up for disappointment here, but I’m excited for this one. We just don’t get grappler vs grappler matchups anymore, man. There aren’t enough buffalo left in the wild and we are losing out on our chances to observe them. Jordan Leavitt was really cool five years ago when he was slamming senior citizens in the octagon and twerking periodically, and then Paddy Pimblett choked him out and everyone got tired very quickly. Yadier del Valle has put two consecutive grappling clinics on in the UFC, first choking out Connor Matthews and then Isaac Dulgarian, and all of that has been completely overshadowed by the Dulgarian fight revealing a massive insider-information betting scandal the FBI is reportedly investigating. Is this Yadier’s fault? No, his is merely the hand that chokes the cradle.
All I want is for this to be cool. Please be cool, fight. YADIER DEL VALLE BY SUBMISSION.
WOMEN’S FLYWEIGHT: Juliana Miller (4-3) vs Carli Judice (5-2)
JULIANA MILLER BY SUBMISSION. JULIANA MILLER BY TKO. JULIANA MILLER BY DECISION. Time will fold in on itself in a Dragon Break and all three finishes will happen at once. I have been waiting for the Juliana “Killer” Miller comeback story and by god, we’re here. This is it. This is where a 4-3 woman becomes the greatest fighter on the planet. Is Carli Judice a cleaner striker? Definitely. Is she better-conditioned? Almost undoubtedly. Is she going to win this fight? It seems absurdly likely. But is she going to win this fight? Never. You cannot stop the forces of destiny and they have anointed Juliana Miller as the one true holder of the chalice. The entire legacy of The Ultimate Fighter was sacrificed to create one final spirit bomb of combat prowess and it lives in the heart of the Killer and now she can do Anderson Silva headkicks and Nick Diaz gogoplatas. I have seen it. I created it in my mind, and it’s real. It’s real.
Let no one stand in the way of fate. Let no one unwind the loom.