CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 176: BANGERS AND MEHS
UFC Fight Night: Evloev vs Murphy
SATURDAY, MARCH 21 FROM THE 02 ARENA IN LONDON
EARLY START TIME WARNING | PRELIMS 10 AM PDT / 1 PM EDT | MAIN CARD 1 PM / 4 PM | EARLY START TIME WARNING
Is it me or can you feel the UFC caring progressively less about their trips to London? It wasn’t that long ago we had Leon Edwards defending the title at the O2, and then we had Sean Brady, and now we’re here, with a Michael Aswell Jr. co-main event.
Maybe it’d be different if they had some kind of popular British champion on their roster. That sure would be great.
MAIN EVENT: WITH THE UTMOST HESITANCE
FEATHERWEIGHT: Movsar Evloev (19-0, #1) vs Lerone Murphy (17-0-1, #3)
I’m not sure I have ever felt such unpleasantly divisive things about a fight as I do for this.
We’re crossing multiple years now that I’ve been calling for one or both of these men to get a shot at the Featherweight title. For once, I am resisting the urge to do a bunch of masturbatory self-quoting half because it feels unnecessary and half because there are so goddamn many options that I wouldn’t know where to start. The UFC misbooking Movsar Evloev is the story of his career. Khamzat Chimaev earned his way to a nine-fight winning streak by taking the Middleweight title from Dricus du Plessis. Ilia Topuria was already a champion after seven wins, and he’s riding his ninth into the main event at the White House against Justin Gaethje. Carlos Ulberg just notched his ninth straight win and he’s fighting Jiří Procházka for the undisputed title next month.
Last Summer, the UFC tried to celebrate Movsar Evloev’s nine-fight winning streak by matching him up against the debuting, unranked Aaron Pico.
Evloev is maybe the purest wrestler in the company. He can strike, and he’s even landed a nifty flying knee here and there, but his grappling is his strength and he does not try to hide it. He hasn’t notched a single finish in those nine UFC wins, and that is the sin that kills his prospects. That is why his ninth straight win ultimately came against one-fight Featherweight Aljamain Sterling midway through the prelims under Vicente Luque and Anthony Smith. That is why Diego Lopes, whom Movsar defeated, has had two Featherweight title shots in the time since Movsar’s last fight.
That is why the UFC wanted him to fight and preferably lose to Aaron Pico.
And when Evloev decided against it, fortunately, they had another undefeated guy on an enormous winning streak they didn’t particularly care for.
For fans who were around for the post-Conor McGregor era of the UFC, the treatment of folks like Leon Edwards and Lerone Murphy has been wild to watch. The United Kingdom was the market for the company, and in the wake of all of that fuck-you McGregor money the executive staff fell all over itself trying to ordain their next big British/Irish star. But somehow, despite Leon Edwards tearing his way through his division and proving himself a top-class fighter more than worthy of a title shot, he had to bite and scrape and struggle for the marketing that was happily devoted to a less-successful Darren Till. At a certain point Paul “The Irish Dragon” Felder was getting marketed harder as a star for the UK market than most of their UK talent, and Felder was born in fucking Philly.
The money vacuum needed filling, but guys like Edwards, for whatever reason, weren’t deemed acceptable enough for filling it.
Lerone Murphy, the undefeated top contender from Manchester, was one step behind Evloev at eight straight wins when the UFC told him, seeing as Movsar couldn’t make it, it would be great for is career if he fought Aaron Pico.
He’d already proven himself as a top contender. Those first few UFC fights were a touch shaky, and Murphy still got away with one by not losing his undefeated streak against Gabriel Santos, but he won, and he won consistently, and he won consistently against consistently better competition. When he beat Josh Emmett he cemented himself as a contender, particularly in a division with top ranks as troubled as Featherweight’s. It’s easy to forget now, but at the time things were in serious flux. Max Holloway was leaving for 155 pounds with Ilia Topuria and Brian Ortega hot on his heels. Yair Rodríguez was missing in action again thanks to the UFC bait-and-switching the idea of a title shot for him. Arnold Allen was out of contention and Diego Lopes had his shot and blew it.
Half of the top five was either failing or leaving altogether. The title picture was wide open and the UFC was blessed with two incredibly talented, undefeated fighters who had already justified their claims on contention.
But what if they fought Aaron Pico. If my repeated harping on this point is getting grating, I want to assure you that it is not half as grating as the UFC looking at their two most promising Featherweight contenders and deciding that they should try to get both of them to fight Aaron Pico. Aaron Pico was a good-but-not-great fighter from Bellator who never even brushed a title shot in Bellator. Even the greatest days of his hype as a prospect were five years behind him when the UFC signed him in 2025 and decided that he deserved a title eliminator.
That’s right! Aaron Pico vs Lerone Murphy was billed as a title eliminator. Like so many fighters before him, Lerone excitedly discussed how the UFC had promised him a title shot with a victory over Pico, and that motivation helped propel him to his first stoppage in years, as he clocked Pico in one round with a picture-perfect spinning elbow.
And like so many fighters before him, Lerone is now celebrating his title eliminator victory by fighting in another fight that has been promoted as a title eliminator while the championship opportunity he’d been promised went to a guy the UFC liked more.
I want to simply love this match-up. Combat sports are at their best when top fighters compete, and this is, unquestionably, the two best Featherweights outside of the title putting their cards on the table. But both of these guys should have already had their moment in the sun. Alexander Volkanovski himself asked to fight either of them and the UFC itself turned the idea down. They want as little of them in the title picture as possible. No matter how much I love the idea of the two best Featherweights competing in a truly well-rounded mixed martial arts contest at the top of the division, it’s impossible to not have a sour taste in the back of my mouth when I think about how this is being done not to elevate one man, but to remove one, as they’ve been trying so very hard to do for years.
Given the choice, though, they’d much, much rather it be Evloev taking the fall. Murphy may not be the trash-talking killing machine of their UK-marketing dreams, but he does throw strikes and he does, occasionally, finish a fight. Movsar has absolutely no qualms about grappling nor has he given any indication of changing his ways. He’ll wrestle until TKO’s entire c-suite finally gives up and lobbies congress to pass the Mark Coleman Act that despite its misleading name actually makes shooting takedowns illegal.
They might need to do it before Saturday, though. Lerone gets taken down a lot. Emmett and Pico both gave him fits with their wrestling en route to losing, and Movsar just outwrestled one of the best grapplers in the sport. MOVSAR EVLOEV BY DECISION while London drowns in boos.
CO-MAIN EVENT: JUMPING THE GUN
FEATHERWEIGHT: Luke Riley (12-0) vs Michael Aswell Jr. (11-3)
As a tribute to our British hosts, here’s an approximation of my reaction when this co-main event got announced.
Not to spoil the surprise for anyone, but Michael “Venom” Page is one fight down from here. Roman Dolidze vs Christian Leroy Duncan, a ranked fight, is down near the start of the main card. Mario Pinto, an undefeated Heavyweight on a two-fight knockout streak who lives in London, is on the prelims!
Remember what I was saying about how the company picks and chooses which UK talents it wants to emphasize? Well, here’s Luke Riley. He got to skip the Contender Series process every single other person has to go through these days and proceed directly to the major marketing machine because he ticks all of the boxes the company actually wants in its British prospects: Young, undefeated, knocks people out, doesn’t shoot takedowns, is noticeably whiter than all of the British people they for some reason choose to slow-rolltrains with Paddy Pimblett. For this, he got to debut right into a preliminary headliner against no less than the 1-1, coming-off-a-loss Bogdan Grad, whom he proceeded to get outwrestled by for an entire round before Grad chose to open the second round trading wild hooks, for which a grateful Riley flattened him in thirty seconds.
But, whatever, man. Bogdan Grad’s tough and Riley justified his place in the big show by knocking him out. So what’re we doing now? Who do we trust to give Riley his next step up in competition?
Michael Aswell Jr. That’s funny. I know that name. Why do I know that name?
Oh, right.
He’s the guy that lost to Bogdan Grad on the Contender Series.
But he lost so impressively that he got the call up to the UFC as a short-notice replacement guy a year later, where he promptly lost again against Bolaji Oki, who has, himself, mostly lost, and then Michael managed to finally score a win this past October against no less than Lucas Almeida who, at 2-4 in the UFC, has, himself, been primarily losing fights.
This is the other side of why it’s so hard to enjoy the main event. For every Movsar or Murphy that’s struggling to get noticed or even booked off the prelims there’s a Luke Riley who’s getting the full on-ramp. The act of experiencing unvarnished joy over the best of the best fighting one another is tainted by the awareness that most of the time the UFC has already picked a favorite, and when that favorite loses a round because of the demon that is wrestling, the answer is not to challenge him and see if he can grow as a fighter, but rather to find a guy who’s demonstrably worse than the guy he already beat, particularly if said guy is credited with 706 strikes and 0 takedown attempts in three fights.
I’m sure this will be fun. I’m sure it will be a great showpiece for their new British star. I’m sure I will complain about all of this again four months from now when they get Riley into the top fifteen by having him fight Josh Emmett on a four-fight losing streak. LUKE RILEY BY TKO.
MAIN CARD: GARBLED ENGLISH
WELTERWEIGHT: Michael Page (24-3, #13) vs Sam Patterson (14-2-1, NR)
What a bizarre choice this is, and what a bizarre run Michael “Venom” Page’s has had in the UFC. They brought him in as a big, hyped signing in 2024, making him one of the few people to escape the Bellator/PFL void with any hype remaining on their name, and proceeded to throw him right into the Welterweight mix. No gimme fights, just Kevin Holland and Ian Machado Garry. Page went 1-1 and earned a spot in the top fifteen; the UFC replied by deciding he was a Middleweight now, which meant it was time to fight the unranked Shara Magomedov, who exists only in an alternate reality where athletic commissions fear to tread, and Jared Cannonier, a top-ten contender. So you’re two years into the MVP-in-the-UFC arc, he can be credibly ranked in two weight classes at once, and both divisions are now bustling with new blood and exciting movement. Is it time to have Page challenge the tops of the rankings? Do you use him to try to reinvigorate an Anthony Hernandez? Do you have a battle of the fancy kicks against the inexplicably inactive Stephen Thompson?
Nope! Sam Patterson. Sam Patterson, who had to get knocked out in his debut before he could admit cutting weight enough to compete as a 6’3” Lightweight was a terrible idea. Sam Patterson, who is on a four-fight winning streak against guys whose UFC records combine to a truly incredible 5-10. Sam Patterson, who going into his half-dozenth fight in the company has yet to distinguish himself beyond a couple mostly-British people who upon hearing his name might scratch their heads and reply “Is he the tall guy?” You went to all of the trouble to pick up MVP, one of the few names with a Name, and you made him a credible two-division contender, and then you just plain ran the fuck out of ideas and stopped having fun with him because he wasn’t knocking people out anymore even though anyone who’s watched more than a Youtube highlight reel could tell you the MVP story is less about spinkicks and flying knees than it is a 20:1 feint-to-strike ratio and a lifetime of frustration.
You bought a boat and expected it to fly and now you have buyer’s remorse and you’re trying to take it out on the sport, and that might well be the closest you, the UFC executive wing, ever come to actually understanding the MMA fan experience. MICHAEL PAGE BY TKO.
LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHT: Iwo Baraniewski (7-0) vs Austen Lane (13-7 (1))
I hope you didn’t think we were done complaining about the matchmaking this week, because that’s 80% of this card by volume. Iwo Baraniewski is a man who rode a record of victory over guys with 2-4 fights all the way to the UFC, and my friends, this is it. The future is here. We’ve arrived. They had a DWCS guy who’d fallen on hard times they wanted to get rid of named Ibo Aslan, they put him in the cage with Baraniewski, they had the kind of ninety-second punch-out that sprang fully-formed from the dreams of everyone who watched Toughman Contest boxing on their local sports affiliate at 1 in the morning back in the day, and now we have a new Light Heavyweight prospect who only barely beat a guy who mostly loses and no one will learn anything from any of these experiences.
The fact that Austen Lane is only a +300 underdog is a remarkable disrespect to ol’ Iwo. Lane is here to lose. Lane has been here to lose. This is not intended as a disrespect to the man, but is, instead, a sober look at his career and how they have chosen to use it. They had The Battle of the Guys Who Played Football back in 2018 and Lane came up second to Greg Hardy, but he nobly pressed on, returned to the contract mill and won his way into the UFC proper, at last, in 2023. Subsequently, he is 1-4 (1). He has been finished in every single loss. Mario Pinto knocked him completely dead two fights ago, and Pinto is on the prelims, but one fight later Lane was still on the main card so he could get crushed by Vitor Petrino as a newly-minted Light Heavyweight, and now, after two straight crushing losses, Lane is still on the main card against an undefeated guy who knocks everyone out.
They did this once before, and the big prospect’s name was Robelis Despaigne, and Lane ruined his life by suddenly turning into a one-night-only wrestler. I am begging him to do it again. Take this apple cart and chuck it in the fucking river. AUSTEN LANE BY DECISION.
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Roman Dolidze (15-4, #11) vs Christian Leroy Duncan (13-2, NR)
Getting boxed out of contendership sure does suck, and this is not Roman Dolidze’s first time dealing with it. Roman’s always had a rough go of things as a sort of Paul Craig 2.0--kind of slow and unbalanced to the point of sometimes looking clumsy, but so god damned tough and unexpectedly creative in how he uses his grappling that you can’t ever really underestimate him--but he’s been perpetually iced out of the top ranks. He went on a tear in the early 2020s, but ran into Marvin Vettori and Nassourdine Imavov and ended up stuck on the outside of the Adesanya/Pereira era. He rattled off three wins in a single year, including a revenge victory over Vettori, only to get dominated and choked out by Anthony Hernandez, which, itself, has aged pretty unfortunately given how Hernandez had absolutely nothing for Sean Strickland. Once again, Dolidze is on the outside looking in, and that means he’s stuck playing gatekeeper.
Christian Leroy Duncan has made a couple runs at the gate, at this point. He stormed into the UFC as an undefeated Cage Warriors champion with a fair amount of hype, got matched up with the borderline-ranked Armen Petrosyan a few months later, and promptly lost. Management fed him a couple rehabilitative fights before tossing him in with the recently-knocked-out Gregory Rodrigues in the hopes of building a prospect out of the challenge, and they succeeded, but unfortunately for CLD it was Rodrigues who got the rub. So once again, Duncan is on a winning streak, and once again, the competition hasn’t exactly been the best, but he’s tightened up his striking and he’s gotten better at getting out of the clinch and he once knocked out Eryk Anders so I have to give him at least a little credit.
But once upon a time Roman did an STF in a real fight, and that’s enough to earn my loyalty for life. ROMAN DOLIDZE BY DECISION.
FEATHERWEIGHT: Kurtis Campbell (8-0) vs Danny Silva (10-2)
A lot of smart people have put a lot of smart money on Kurtis Campbell as a future force in the Featherweight division, and I’ll admit: I’m not sure if I’m sold yet. He’s had some impressive performances and solid finishes out in England, but they’re the kind of performances that come from the wonderful world of not really having to worry about defense. He’s good at catching people with kicks to keep them from settling, he’s good at hurling people to the ground, but he has a tendency to fight with his head straight and his guard wide, as you do when you’ve never had the experience of someone pasting you through it. He almost got his head ripped off for it by a Daniel Matusic right a couple years back, but the habit’s still there. Someone, someday, is going to exploit it.
I don’t think that someone will be Danny Silva. He’s tough, he’s athletic, he’s well-rounded, and he’s only barely been able to scrape by in the company. Most of his success still ultimately comes down to his wrestling, and just one fight ago we saw what a better counter-wrestler can do to him in the form of newly-ranked Kevin Vallejos outgrappling him for three rounds. If he manages to go full-throttle at Campbell and force him to fight and wrestle off his back foot he’s got a good chance of beating him on pressure and denial, but he’ll have to do it for fifteen minutes against someone who is, historically, a more successful wrestler.
It’s an undefeated, debuting British grappler against an American fighter coming off a wrestling-centric loss in London. You can do the math. KURTIS CAMPBELL BY DECISION.
PRELIMS: THE CONTINUING HUMILIATION OF THE HEAVYWEIGHT DIVISION BY THE COWARD HUNTER CAMPBELL
LIGHTWEIGHT: Mason Jones (17-2 (1)) vs Axel Sola (11-0-1)
The Mason Jones career arc continues to be weird as hell. Those with long memories (or anyone who has read these before, what with my need to constantly restate everything) will remember Jones coming into the UFC with a fair amount of hype as an undefeated Cage Warriors champ back in 2021 only to get released a year and a half later after going a truly stellar 1-2 (1) and, most damningly to management, failing to beat Ľudovít Klein. He went right back to Britain, he rattled off a few more wins, and the UFC called him back into the fold last year for a mission only he could handle: Beating Jeremy Stephens, who has lost several dozen fights and is at least seventy-three years old. Having conquered the man, they pushed Mason up to Bolaji Oki, who was 2-1 and had only barely survived Timmy Cuamba and tonight’s co-main eventer Michael Aswell Jr. Having defeated both of them and finally earned the first UFC winning streak of his life, there’s only one logical way for Mason’s career to go: Brand new prospect duty. We met to discuss Axel Sola’s first appearance back in September, when he walked into Paris as a French champion and received a hero’s welcome for knocking out Ireland’s Rhys McKee. Now the scales must be balanced as he comes to London to fight a guy from Wales, and fortunately, there has never been any historical enmity between Britain and Wales.
This is a tough ask for Jones. He’s very good and very well-rounded, but he’s also giving up a fair bit of size to a guy who shares his wrestle-boxing skillset. I’m still gonna go with MASON JONES BY DECISION, but this could get tight.
FEATHERWEIGHT: Nathaniel Wood (22-6) vs Losene Keita (16-1)
I spend enough time complaining about the UFC that I have to admit when I am being unfair, and sometimes, I put them in positions where they just can’t win. When they build out the roster with DWCS recruits, I complain that they’re ignoring the real talent pool in the wider world of combat sports. When they recruit talented outsiders, I complain that they’re booking them poorly. Losene Keita was one of the UFC’s best on-paper pickups, the kind of almost-undefeated knockout artist nerds like me put in the upper echelons of those “best fighters outside the UFC” lists that get republished on link aggregation websites next to clickbait headlines and pictures of Paige VanZant, and his debut against Patrício Pitbull last September was going to simultaneously test him against an all-time great and the border of the UFC’s rankings. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen. Keita blew his weight cut and Pitbull turned down the fight. It’s March, Keita’s been in bad-boy jail for half a year, and Nathaniel Wood has rifled off three wins in a row over competition just impressive enough to get him noticed but not enough to give him an in with the rankings, so he gets to welcome Keita back for take two on his debut.
Presuming Keita makes it to the fight, he’s got a real good chance of planting Nate the same way John Dodson did. LOSENE KEITA BY TKO.
HEAVYWEIGHT: Mario Pinto (11-0) vs Felipe Franco (10-1)
That’s right: It took this long to get to the Mario Pinto fight I complained about all the way back in the co-main event. At a time when the Heavyweight division is so hurting so badly that the #7 guy is 1-1 in the company and the #15 spot was briefly occupied by Tai Tuivasa last week despite being on a six-fight losing streak, the UFC has Mario Pinto, who is undefeated, on a knockout streak, bilingual, charismatic and an adopted son of London, and he’s down here. Funny story about that battle for the #15 spot, actually. When you look at the UFC’s event page, Mario Pinto is listed like this:
Is Mario Pinto the #15-ranked Heavyweight in the UFC? No. Has Mario Pinto ever been the #15-ranked Heavyweight in the UFC? Nope! But you know who has? Mick Parkin, the man Pinto was originally going to face here. Parkin lost his last fight, and before that his best victory was against Mohammed Usman. That got him ranked! Until they no longer needed that ranking as a way to hype him up for this fight. They didn’t even clear whatever backend data blob listed which competitor was ranked when they switched up the fight, they just moved Pinto to Parkin’s side and threw Felipe Franco in the other after he got short-notice signed thanks to his stellar victory over the 1-2 Douglas Felipe Santos down in Brazil last month.
This is why I harp on the UFC’s whole ‘this is an opportunity, you need to chase it and establish yourself’ bullshit line. Vitor Petrino lost repeatedly and got rewarded with main-card fights. Tallison Teixeira was crushed by Derrick Lewis and got rewarded with a shot at the most vulnerable part of the top fifteen, still just barely won, and will, shortly, be fighting for a spot in the top five. The UFC has put three men in front of Mario Pinto and he has knocked all of them out while cutting entertaining promos in multiple languages, and for his efforts he is stuck midway through the prelims, and the UFC didn’t even bother to clear the ranking text field they copy-pasted his name into, let alone get a picture of the guy he’s fighting.
Who knows. Maybe next time they’ll care. MARIO PINTO BY TKO.
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Mantas Kondratavičius (8-1) vs Antonio Trócoli (12-6 (1))
Antonio, my friend, I’m afraid this is the end. It’s been a long, unfortunate road through the UFC for Trócoli. He was supposed to join the company six years ago after his Contender Series win, but a steroid suspension pushed him back, and then he got injured, and then he got rebooked, and suddenly it’s 2024 and instead of a gentle path into the UFC he’s getting atomized by Shara Magomedov in Riyadh. And then Tresean Gore strangled him in a minute and a half. And then Mansur Abdul-Malik strangled him even faster. Once upon a time, an 0-3 prospect would’ve gotten a soft target so he had a chance at rehabilitating his hopes: Now the cycle must be served, so he’s got Mantas Kondratavičius, a knockout artist who just punched his way through DWCS back in September.
I’m sorry, Antonio. I hope three years from now we’re talking about you as the 205-pound champion of KSW or something. MANTAS KONDRATAVIČIUS BY TKO.
HEAVYWEIGHT: Louie Sutherland (10-4) vs Brando Peričić (5-1)
Speaking of the woes of Heavyweight, we have Louie Sutherland, who lost his PFL contract after going 1-2 with them and was last seen making his UFC debut by getting heel hooked by Valter Walker in under a minute and a half, and Brando Peričić, who walked into the UFC in September on the back of his incredible knockout victories over two 0-0 fighters in a row and defeated no less than Elisha “The Snack Panther” Ellison, who wasn’t good enough to win the Muckleshoot Fight Night Heavyweight Title, but is a UFC fighter. The fight ended when Ellison decided his best strategy was pulling guard on Brando, who is half a foot taller and about 21 pounds heavier than him, and was promptly punched into unconsciousness. Is it unfair to complain about the Heavyweight division when I also shit on the prospects in it?
When Vadim Nemkov, Denis Goltsov, Linton Vassell and Francis Ngannou are all fighting for other companies but Elisha Ellison has a home in the UFC: No. No, it is not. LOUIE SUTHERLAND BY TKO.
LIGHTWEIGHT: Shem Rock (12-2-1) vs Abdul-Kareem Al-Selwady (15-4)
And then, there was Shem Rock. Shem managed to build a bit of internet clout by being a) funny in Instagram videos, b) good at fighting and c) another Paddy Pimblett training partner, and last November it finally got him into the UFC, where he faced the undefeated and utterly unmarketed Nurullo Aliev. At the time I said Shem was good but going from barely scraping by journeymen in Germany to fighting undefeated grapplers in the UFC was a really big ask, and not only did Aliev beat him, he responded to Shem’s pre-fight trash talk about his one-dimensional nature by choosing to casually outstrike him. The punchline, of course, is that Shem is about to fight again and Aliev hasn’t been booked since. The UFC appears to agree that Nurullo may have been too tough, because Abdul-Kareem Al-Selwady being here at all is something of a surprise. He won his way through DWCS in mid-2023, he had one fight in March 2024, he got knocked out by Loik Radzhabov, and that’s it. Two straight years of getting injured and having people pull out of his fights and being unable to make it to Abu Dhabi, and after all that time, his return leads him to Paddy Pimblett’s non-union stunt double.
And I don’t know, man. Shem didn’t do so hot in his first run at things, but I’d pick Aliev to beat Al-Selwady, too. Moreover, it’s been two goddamn years. Everything’s a question mark when you’ve been gone for so long. I’m gonna go with my gut and say ABDUL-KAREEM AL-SELWADY BY DECISION but honestly, who knows.
WOMEN’S STRAWWEIGHT: Shanelle Dyer (6-1) vs Ravena Oliveira (7-3-1)
This was supposed to be a hyped debut. Those with particularly acute memories may remember Shanelle Dyer getting some real internet attention back in the Summer of 2024 after absolutely crushing Mariam Torchinava with a headkick out in PFL Europe--and if you do remember anything that happened on a PFL Europe card, congratulations, because the PFL sure doesn’t, as despite giving the PFL some of the only internet virality it’s managed to achieve they put Dyer deep in the prelims on their following card and quietly released her a year later. Dyer took her hype as an undefeated knockout artist to the Contender Series, where she, uh, lost a unanimous decision but got signed anyway. Ravena Oliveira does not have a happier story. She spent her whole career fighting people with 0-0 records or, even better, Simone da Silva, who has somehow managed to lose 33 straight fights between boxing and MMA in the last six years, and somehow that streak has still seen her wind up in the ring with people like Amanda Serrano and Cris Cyborg, because nothing is real. Shockingly, this resume has led to Ravena losing both of her UFC fights and getting picked up as a sizable underdog to hopefully get Dyer a hometown win.
May this run go better for you. SHANELLE DYER BY TKO.
WOMEN’S BANTAMWEIGHT: Melissa Mullins (7-2) vs Luana Carolina (11-5)
I can’t exactly do my ‘ranked women stuck on the prelims’ bit this week, but Melissa Mullins was ranked just one fight ago, so we’re gonna make up for it by pointing out how hilarious it is to have a card with big names like Felipe Franco and Austen Lane scattered across its breadth while the women’s fights are apologetically tucked away together right at the start of the card when they know the fewest people will be watching. As always: Fuck you, Women’s Bantamweight. You get nothing. Both of these women are, in fairness, pretty stuck in the mud. Mullins is 2-2 and alternates between looking like a really solid ground specialist and looking lost and tired, which isn’t aided by having just a 50/50 success rate at making weight for the division; Luana is 6-4, which doesn’t sound too bad until you realize she used to be a Flyweight until she, too, missed weight twice and had so much trouble with the cut that she gave it up for the 135-pound division, where she has fought only once and lost so badly one of the scorecards was 30-25. There was a point deduction in there, but there was also a 10-8 round that was just her getting thrown in a trash can for five minutes.
Luana’s better than she gets credit for, but if we get The Good Mullins she’ll get pretzeled on the ground. MELISSA MULLINS BY DECISION.