CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 190: WHATEVER IT TAKES

UFC 329: McGregor vs Holloway 2

SATURDAY, JULY 11 FROM THE T-MOBILE ARENA IN LAS VEGAS
EARLY PRELIMS 2 PM PDT / 5 PM EDT | PRELIMS 4 PM / 7 PM | MAIN CARD 6 PM / 9 PM

I’m not sure things have ever been more meaningless than they are this week. This is the first card the UFC has promoted under the auspices of its new Meta-powered AI bullshit rankings, and you can tell how seriously they’re taking them right off the bat, because the official card list doesn’t reflect those rankings at all. The AI says Paddy Pimblett is barely hanging onto the top ten? Fuck that, he’s #6. Mario Bautista’s #5 now? That’s too goddamn high, he’s #7.

I know that sounds silly, but really, genuinely, engage with the reality that we now exist in an era of the sport where the UFC openly advertises rankings it no longer even reflects. MMA has never been less real and there is no more appropriate way to welcome Conor McfuckingGregor back to our terrible sport.

joking, of course

MAIN EVENT: WHATEVER IT TAKES
WELTERWEIGHT: Conor McGregor (22-6, NR) vs Max Holloway (27-9, #4 at Lightweight)

The last time we talked about a Conor McGregor comeback was just over two years ago, when the UFC pulled a bait-and-switch by lying about Conor’s return only to abruptly switch the fight to an Alex Pereira/Jiří Procházka rematch when they could no longer cover up that Conor was nowhere near fighting shape. I cursed us into this timeline.

Normally, when a main event gets cancelled, I'll devote a little bit of space to complaining about it before moving on to analyzing the new fight we have in its place. Normally this is because we have an entirely new fight to discuss and, inevitably, I will get my chance to complain about the previously-scheduled fighter when they come back.

But I don't think I'll get that chance, because I don't think Conor McGregor is ever coming back.

Oh, how I wish I had been right.

The assumption that Conor McGregor would stay in his torpor was rooted in the idea that we still occupied a consensus reality where things matter, which was, in June of 2024, still a thing you could hold at least a little hope for. It is two years later. That hope is dead. Every barrier to Conor McGregor’s return has been shattered.

Legitimate drug testing? That’s gone. The UFC infamously severed their ties with the US Anti-Doping Agency in large part because Conor was very visibly on every goddamn steroid known to man during his time away from the sport, and they were insisting, as a drug testing agency, that he be tested for drugs before his return. The UFC does, of course, swear by the legitimacy of their new, in-house testing program, and just like their USADA days, they have a website where you can see how many times everyone’s been tested. Why, Conor’s been tested 14 times in 2026! That’s more than anyone! Sure, there are about 1/5 as many test failures as there were under USADA, and sure, the only people who seem to get caught are conveniently the ones whose loss would be maximally convenient--they’ve published five test failures this year and the biggest hit was Iasmin Lucindo--but I’m sure it’s legit and everything’s fine.

Weight classes? Never been less of an issue. The Featherweight champ was the Lightweight champ and the Lightweight champ is the Welterweight champ and the former Welterweight champion who’s never won a Middleweight fight in his life is about to fight in a 185-pound title eliminator and the former 185-pound champ who became the 205-pound champ just got a 265-pound title fight at the fuckin’ White House. This fight, here, is between Max Holloway, a Featherweight great who is 2-2 at Lightweight in the UFC, and Conor McGregor, who is 1-3 at Lightweight in the UFC, and it’s being contested at Welterweight, and it’s already widely agreed that the winner will probably get a shot at the Lightweight title anyway.

Social expectations of conduct? Last time around we were talking about Conor suckerpunching people and whipping a dolly into the window on a UFC bus, and now he’s been found civilly liable for rape by two separate juries. Once upon a time, that would’ve mattered. Now? Hell, Conor’s not even the only legally-noted attempted rapist on this card. The UFC got tired of lowering the bar over and over, so now the bar is gone. Did you try to incite anti-immigrant pogroms a couple weeks ago? Have multiple juries of your peers looked at you and decided you sexually assaulted someone? Congratulations! This era of the sport was meant specifically for you.

In the aftermath of the White House card there were a few folks that noted the joy of enjoying the sport for the sport, rather than getting bogged down in its philosophical and political muck. I got it. I didn’t agree, but I understood. You could still do that, even with the White House.

But you can’t really do that here, because the muck is the only fucking thing to talk about. I’ve seen people try to discuss the reality of this as a rematch, in the way rematches are used to gauge how two fighters have grown since their first meeting, but Conor’s victory over Max Holloway was in 2013. Forget the fighters: The entire Featherweight division was less than three fucking years old.

There is nothing you can say about Conor McGregor The Mixed Martial Artist In Twenty Twenty Six that isn’t just pulling guesses directly from your own ass. It’s been half a decade since his last fight. It’s been six and a half years since his last win. It’s been ten years since his last Lightweight victory. Barack O-fucking-bama was still in the White House the last time Conor McGregor beat a ranked fighter in their own weight class. Anyone who starts to say a goddamn thing to you about the accuracy of Conor’s counterpunches or his speed or his precision is lying to you, and themselves, and picturing the Conor McGregor from the year fucking Finding Dory came out.

Conor’s contributions to the current age of mixed martial arts are getting knocked out by Dustin Poirier, shattering his own leg in an instant rematch against Poirier and following it by laying on the floor and screaming about how he really won the fight because he knows Dustin’s wife wants to fuck him, leading Michael Chandler on for years only to constantly cancel on him and make him look like an idiot for thinking Conor ever gave a shit about fighting him, and coasting on the triune powers of inertia, unbridled bigotry, and being a complete asshole in an era built by, and for, complete assholes.

And Max? Max is just here, man. Max should’ve been a Lightweight contender after knocking out Justin Gaethje and Dustin Poirier, but the UFC bet big on Paddy Pimblett and wanted to cash in on him, and when that failed, well, hell, Ilia Topuria’s the champ so obviously Max can’t fight him given the way Topuria smashed him at 145 pounds, so far better to make Gaethje your top contender even though Holloway and Charles Oliveira both crushed him. Which worked out gangbusters for the UFC! They got everything they wanted. Justin Gaethje won the title at the White House, Max is sidetracked for Conor, everyone’s chasing the money match again, and #1 contender Arman Tsarukyan isn’t even in the goddamn conversation.

Instead of anything that mattered, Max fought Charles Oliveira for the Bad Mother Fucker Championship, and then when Oliveira took Max down and dominated him for five straight rounds, the audience got mad about it, because daring to use a grappling-based gameplan was an affront to the legitimacy of the Bad Mother Fucker Championship, a title that was used by the UFC to sell Dwayne Johnson’s PROJECT ROCK shoes.

Mateusz Gamrot is fighting down in the rankings. One match down from here, Benoît Saint Denis is being used to try to rehabilitate Paddy Pimblett. Arman is unbooked. Oliveira is unbooked.

And Max Holloway is fighting adjudicated rapist Conor McGregor at Georges St-Pierre’s weight class five years after his last fight because this is how we make our money.

There is no sport here. There is no analysis. Maybe the cocaine and the steroids have joined forces in Conor’s body and now he has superpowers. Maybe he’s so hopped up on the power of getting away with sex abuse that he has the crushing force of a Rumble Johnson. Maybe Max kicks him in the calf once and Conor stops the fight so he can get on his phone and tweet about how immigrants made his leg hurt. Everyone involved in this should feel bad and I hope to god this is MAX HOLLOWAY BY AN INCREDIBLY FUNNY AND GRATIFYING KNOCKOUT so we can just move the fuck on from this once and for-fucking-all because my soul cannot take the Conor McGregor Title Tour we will be stuck with if he somehow wins.

CO-MAIN EVENT: WHATEVER IT TAKES
LIGHTWEIGHT: Benoît Saint Denis (17-3 (1), #5) vs Paddy Pimblett (23-4, #6)

I just don’t care, and that’s devastating, because this is the smartest, best-matched fight they could’ve made for these two men.

They’re both fine. They’re fine! Benoît’s a solid throwback of a savage wrestleboxer who doesn’t care half as much about his health as he really should if he wants to still be able to read by the time he’s 40, Paddy’s a big, aggressive grappling machine who is incredibly difficult to knock out, all of these things are true, none of them matter. We have trod repeatedly on the posies of praise when it comes to both prospects. Their talents have never been the issue, the matchmaking has.

But the UFC keeps trying with BSD. Hot on the heels of his knockout victory over Matt Frevola back in 2023 they decided to strap the jetpack to his aggressively French back and throw him in there with Dustin Poirier in a title eliminator, and he got stomped out in two rounds. They tried to rehabilitate him with a main event in France against Renato Moicano, and Moicano, who has self-described his fighting talents as “I fucking suck,” beat Benoît even worse than Poirier had. He went from having a ton of momentum to looking like a complete afterthought.

So they gave him Kyle Prepolec, a Canadian regional who’d already flunked out of the UFC once. Fine: Tune-up fight, I get it. And they followed that up with Mauricio Ruffy, a legitimate threat and now-top-ten competitor, and BSD handed him his only UFC loss, and it was great! Sending in Beneil Dariush afterward was kind of a lateral move, but at the time, it seemed justifiable--Beneil had just beaten Moicano, so by the transitive property, it was a good match!--and then Beneil showed up overweight and preemptively exhausted and looking like the clock had run out on his career. And then, to emphasize the point, the UFC booked Benoît against Dan Hooker, who still had a visibly damaged face from the hellacious beating Arman Tsarukyan had laid on him two months prior.

So BSD’s back in the top five, and all it took was one and a half real wins in a four-fight span. Paddy? You can’t even give him that.

Paddy Pimblett’s journey to the top was managed the way an ornithologist manages a robin’s egg. Paddy Pimblett’s UFC career has been so gently booked that even Paddy Pimblett himself repeatedly mocked it. Paddy Pimblett beat three guys with 50/50 or worse records, extremely clearly lost a fight to Jared Gordon only to inexplicably win a decision anyway, got matched up with Tony Ferguson at the ass end of the longest losing streak in UFC history, graduated from that to King Green, who was on a winning streak of 1 and it was over Jim fucking Miller, and finally faced Michael Chandler, who, himself, was 1 for his last 5 (now 7!) and that one win was, of course, also Tony Ferguson.

They gave him a title shot for that. Paddy Pimblett beat Michael Chandler, who hadn’t won a fight in three years, and they put him in there with Justin Gaethje for the interim Lightweight championship of the world. Of this world.

People will tell you Paddy vs Gaethje was close, and it was, in the sense that if I am hit by a truck and do not die, I can say that I almost defeated it. Justin beat seven shades of hell out of Paddy, whose best assets in the fight were a) his chin, b) his willingness to repeatedly knee Justin in the dick, and c) Justin’s refusal to stop ducking into the same strike over and over. Paddy hit him! A bunch! It did not matter. Justin practically killed him in the second round but somehow not a single judge scored a 10-8, and somewhere, Jared Gordon’s blood boiled in his bed.

So the UFC astroturfed Paddy to a title shot and it failed. It happens! No shame in it, except for, y’know, how ashamed all of the matchmakers should be for doing it in the first place. What do you do with him now? Do you make him fight down in the rankings? Do you test him against the Rafael Fizievs or Grant Dawsons of the world?

Of course not! You get that fucker back in the top five as fast as fucking possible, and you do it on the Conor McGregor comeback card so we can keep rubbing that fandom off on him like it’s a fucking disease.

I dunno, man. Like I said, it’s a smart matchup. Either BSD beats Paddy and the UFC hypes it as his big signature win or Paddy beats someone who isn’t old and broken down and this is cited as proof that he’s ready for another title shot so we can continue to ignore Arman Tsarukyan forever. On a skill by skill basis it’s practically a mirror match. Both men eschew defense in favor of their own toughness, both men would really like to take you down because their top game is where their most effective offense comes from, both men would really, really prefer it if you not put them on their backs because that’s just unfair.

And I very clearly want Benoît to win, which makes me second-guess all of the reasons I think he could. Paddy’s really, really fucking tough, and Benoît is good at a number of things, but persistent offense and self-pacing have never been one of them. I can easily see him blowing his gas tank trying to get Paddy out of there early and getting Pimbletted in the back half of the fight. Hell, I can see Paddy using his clinch game to drag BSD down and simply deny him the chance to be the aggressor.

But the heart wants what it wants. BENOÎT SAINT DENIS BY TKO.

MAIN CARD: WHATEVER IT TAKES
BANTAMWEIGHT: Cory Sandhagen (18-6, #4) vs Mario Bautista (17-3, #7)

Oh, Cory. Your day will never come. In eight and a half years with the UFC, Cory Sandhagen has only ever lost fights against world champions or title contenders--and he arguably beat T.J. Dillashaw!--but as much as I will always root for him, when you lose all of the big ones, it becomes progressively harder to get mad that you aren’t getting more of them. Cory was supposed to win a title eliminator with ol’ Dilly, and he probably should have, but he didn’t. Cory got his interim title shot against Petr Yan, and he tried, but he couldn’t get it done. Two summers ago they sacrificed Cory to Umar Nurmagomedov, and after Cory shredded Deveison Figueiredo last year they finally gave him a shot at the title and Merab Dvalishvili, and unfortunately, Merab did what Merab does and drowned him. Does Cory deserve the shot at Sean O’Malley he’s been calling for? Absolutely. Is there any universe in which they give it to him instead of Song Yadong and Aiemann Zahabi, whom they’re more confident Sean can beat? Absolutely not.

No, what Cory gets is prospect rejection rematch duty. Mario Bautista is one of the best Bantamweights in the world, and if they could keep him carefully separate from the title picture, they’d be much, much happier. They gave him a shot! They tried to dispose of him by having Mario welcome Patchy Mix to the UFC last year, and then it turned out Patchy had dissolved into a horrifying skeletal approximation of his former self, so they pivoted the other way and gave Mario a shot at Umar with top contendership implications. But Mario failed the Umar test, and just like that, it was back to trying to get Mario killed, this time at the hands of Vinicius Oliveira. Unfortunately for the Lok Dog, the fight reinforced that there are, in fact, levels to this shit, as Mario turned him into a pretzel and choked him out with relative ease. He is, still, one of the best in the world. But he’s a grappler who usually goes to decisions, and by god, that’s just not acceptable.

This match is incredibly fucking cool. They already fought back in 2019, Cory armbarred Mario in one round, and since then Mario’s gotten a lot better at fighting to his strengths and Cory has gotten a lot better at not getting booked into the fights he deserves. Cory and Mario are both the caliber of fighter that could be king, were it not for the tip-top of the mountain just out of their reach, and there’s a very good chance whoever loses this fight is condemned to never sniff a title shot again. I love Mario’s grappling, I love his creativity; I am still going with CORY SANDHAGEN BY DECISION because I think he’s got a few more tools in his bag.

FLYWEIGHT: Brandon Royval (17-9, #4) vs Lone’er Kavanagh (10-1, #6)

It’s open season on Brandons again. All Brandons must proceed to the back of the boat and depart for their Brandon-shaped life rafts. After winning the Battle of the Brandons and wresting the title of The Brandonest from Brandon (the lesser) Moreno, and following it by derailing the then-undefeated Tatsuro Taira, Brandon Royval was supposed to get a title eliminator with Manel Kape last year. But Royval got injured, and then Kape got injured, and the UFC had Royval fight Joshua Van on barely any notice, and the rest is history. After his loss, Royval finally got that matchup with Manel, and unfortunately for him it ended with Manel punching him stupid in one round. Now Brandon is well and truly out of the title picture, and that means it falls to him to give prospects the jump they need.

Lone’er Kavanagh was supposed to fight Bruno Silva in a barely-ranked bout this past March. Instead, after the aforementioned Moreno’s main event with Asu Almabayev fell through, the UFC decided to send Kavanagh in. Was he coming off a knockout loss to Charles Johnson, who is only barely clinging to the edge of the top fifteen? Yes. Did he deserve a shot at the top five? Nope! Did it matter? Not even slightly. It was competitive but clear, Kavanagh outstruck Moreno and took his spot in the title picture, and now that the UFC has managed to get their Irish-English-Chinese marketing idol into the conversation by feeding him a Brandon, their ravenous appetite must be sated. All Brandons must fall.

More than any particular analysis about Kavanagh’s striking style vs Royval’s clubbing aggression, I just want something nice to happen for Brandon the Greater. The sport was not kind to him and I would like him to get one back. BRANDON ROYVAL BY TKO.

LIGHTWEIGHT: King Green (35-17-1 (1)) vs Terrance McKinney (18-8)

At this point I’m convinced the UFC got what they wanted by jobbing King Green out to Paddy and Mauricio Ruffy and now he’s part of the same non-canonical class of fighter Shara Magomedov and Michel Pereira exhibited the other week. In his last three fights, in order, King Green has fought and defeated:

• Lance Gibson Jr., a Bellator veteran who’d been fighting 22-52 guys named Charon Spain for Muckleshoot Fight Night before his abrupt callup to the UFC

• Daniel Zellhuber, a former UFC marketing darling now losing fights to circa 2025 Michael Johnson

• Jeremy fucking Stephens, who is, inexplicably, still fucking here

This is why sentences like “this fighter is on a three-fight winning streak!” are becoming less and less meaningful. If your winning streak incorporates The Muckleshoot King and a man whose last UFC win was damn near a decade ago, did it really happen?

We’re not going to find out here, because Terrance McKinney exists only for two and a half minutes at a time. For those one hundred and fifty seconds, he is a stone-cold killer with insane power and the willingness to sling headkicks and flying knees and punches that come all the way from his ass, and if he can strangle you on the way, by god, he will. After that? He disappears into dust and dreams. In thirteen UFC appearances, McKinney has never won a fight that lasted beyond two and a half minutes. Everyone who drags him into the deep waters of half the length of Next’s “Too Close,” 1998’s hottest dance song about being embarrassed you have a boner, will, statistically, defeat him.

King, once upon a time, you were a defensive mastermind who could run circles around damn near any Lightweight in the world. Lately, you have been bouncing off the cage and getting punched in the head. I am requesting that you fight like the guy who dodges punches tonight. KING GREEN BY TKO.

PRELIMS: WHATEVER IT TAKES
LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHT: Nikita Krylov (31-11, #12) vs Robert Whittaker (26-9, NR)

I did this. This is my fault. I’m so sorry, everyone. I have spent years talking about how giving up your harsh, unpleasant weight cut and moving up to a higher class is the sport’s best basis for success, but I never thought to stop and disclaim “Not you, Robert Whittaker,” and now we are all doomed to a harvest of depression. You already did this, Rob! You were a Welterweight and it sucked shit and you hated it and then you became a Middleweight and it went good up until you started dying a lot! Some of it is the division getting better, sure, but some of it is you decided to focus your fighting style around darting, lancing attacks and then you turned 30 and you slowed down at the same time people figured out that they can just hit you! You were already not a big Middleweight, you are about to be tied as the second-shortest Light Heavyweight in the company and I am so, so very afraid you are about to get lit the fuck up by Nikita Krylov as he punches you from half a foot away.

And yet: You beat the stuffing out of Paulo Costa and now he’s the #4 Light Heavyweight on the planet and he did it by beating the only man in the division who’s smaller than you. So fuck it, I guess, you do what you gotta do. Please don’t make me as sad as I think you’re about to. ROBERT WHITTAKER BY DECISION.

HEAVYWEIGHT: Gable Steveson (3-0) vs Elisha Ellison (5-2)

When you book a fight with a -3000 favorite someone should come to your office and throw you in jail. Speaking of which: Hi, Gable. I knew we were going to get here sooner or later, but christ, I was really hoping for later. For those who don’t know, Gable Steveson is a) an Olympic gold medalist, b) one of the best amateur wrestlers of all time, c) an (alleged) attempted rapist who got away with it in part thanks to his professed inability to perform and in part to a now-closed loophole whereby women in Minnesota couldn’t be considered unable to consent to sex if they’d willingly gotten drunk, and d) a failed professional wrestler who flunked out of the WWE’s developmental program after a combination of his lack of charisma and reputation as a sex criminal led to the audiences completely rejecting him. Fortunately for us, mixed martial arts has no standards.

I wish Gable Steveson were not here. I am sad it has come to this. He is probably still the best Heavyweight prospect on the planet. I wish both things could be mutually exclusive but I am afraid we are going to be stuck with him for some time. Elisha, you have the opportunity to do the funniest shit in the entire world. GABLE STEVENSON BY TKO.

BANTAMWEIGHT: Cody Garbrandt (15-7) vs Adrian Yañez (17-6-1)

I kinda thought we were done with this. Both of these guys, honestly. Adrian, you got a lot of good will for knocking Tony Kelley the fuck out of not just the UFC but mixed martial arts altogether, but for one, we immediately replaced him with much worse people, and for two, it’s been pretty downhill since then. You are 1 for your last 5, and the guy you beat was Vinicius Salvador, a Flyweight so unsuccessful he got kicked up to Bantamweight for screwing up his weight cut AND losing, and in the middle of that you’re going to draws with Ricky Simón, and it’s just a bad scene, man. But Cody? Cody, my guy, what are we doing here? You were supposed to leave! You were talking about your contract being done, like, two goddamn years ago, and now it’s 2026 and you are coming off a fight with Xiao Long where you were the beneficiary of a two-point deduction and people still think you winning the decision was a fucking robbery!

Like, it’s okay. You can stop. It’s a big world out there. Go learn about leatherworking. ADRIAN YAÑEZ BY TKO.

FEATHERWEIGHT: Kai Kamaka III (18-7-1) vs Luke Riley (13-0)

In another of those somehow-this-is-an-even-matching-of-careers moments, Kai Kamaka III, who got cut from the UFC on a 1-2-1 run back in 2021 after only managing to beat--hey, Tony Kelley! How wonderful it is to get a chance to remind you that Tony Kelley sucked shit twice in one writeup--was invited back to the company on less than a week’s notice this past April. Not because of an injury, or a need for a replacement, but simply because the UFC looked at Renato Moicano vs Chris Duncan and said “maybe if we add one more fight to the prelims no one will notice that we tried to convince them Renato Moicano vs Chris Duncan was a legitimate main event.” Luke Riley, meanwhile, is an undefeated contender from Cage Warriors who’s already 2-0 in the UFC after knocking out Bogdan Grad, which leaves him perfectly positioned to fight the guy who was losing decisions to Diego Brandão less than a year ago but made it to the UFC even though they turned Brandão down for the crime of being 39.

LUKE RILEY BY DECISION.

EARLY PRELIMS: WHATEVER IT TAKES
WOMEN’S FLYWEIGHT: Tracy Cortez (12-3, #8) vs Wang Cong (9-1, #12)

Welcome to the war of women the UFC wishes were more successful. They fuckin’ love them some Tracy Cortez. Is it her grappling? Is it her lack of finishes? Is it her incredibly distressing habit of not taking off her fake eyelashes before she gets in the cage? Either way, Rose Namajunas and Erin Blanchfield, both potential contenders, had fights with Maycee Barber fall through and saw Maycee replaced with Tracy, and they both beat her, and she is still here, getting fights on numbered events. Wang Cong was supposed to be the UFC’s 125-pound Zhang Weili, the new female face of their Chinese invasion, and then they put her in a big splashy fight in Macau and she got run through by Gabi Fernandes and everything’s been kind of blurry since then. She beat Bruna Brasil, who has a losing record, and she beat Ariane da Silva, who has a losing record and got released immediately afterward, but then she beat Eduarda Moura, who has a winning record! By one fight. Also Cong missed weight. Manon Fiorot hasn’t fought since October, Valentina Shevchenko hasn’t fought since November, Erin Blanchfield is fighting down in the rankings and there are, as of now, exactly two matches booked for absolutely anyone in the entire top fifteen at Women’s Flyweight.

But Cong and Cortez are one of them, so nothing else matters. TRACY CORTEZ BY DECISION.

MIDDLEWEIGHT: Damian Pinas (9-1) vs César Almeida (7-2)

This fight exists because people need to watch a motherfucker get punched in the head. Motherfuckers getting punched in the head is the only reason César Almeida has a job. They signed him as a 4-0 fighter because he used to do kickboxing and they were still so high on Alex Pereira’s success that signing a guy with four fights who was already in his late thirties seemed like a wise use of time and money, because hey: It worked once. Two years after his UFC debut, Alex Pereira was a two-division champion! Two years after his UFC debut, César Almeida is 3-2 and hasn’t beaten anyone with a winning record. Damian Pinas just got here. They signed him off the Contender Series because he knocks out goddamn near everyone he fights, and they booked his UFC debut against a guy who got knocked out on the Contender Series back in 2024, and, shock of shocks, Pinas knocked him out. He is large, he is scary, he was fighting 4-5 guys just a couple fights ago, and he will continue to terrify anyone until it turns out he doesn’t know what to do if someone moves laterally.

Until then, DAMIAN PINAS BY TKO.

BANTAMWEIGHT: Farid Basharat (15-0, #15) vs John Garza (6-1, NR)

This went from my favorite fight on this entire card to the fight I’m angriest at for reasons unrelated to sex criminals. Farid Basharat is one of the Bantamweight division’s best prospects: An undefeated all-arounder who’s defensively sound and smart enough in his approach to make it to the rankings despite only having one finish in the company. He was supposed to meet red-hot prospect Ethyn Ewing, in what would have been a genuinely fascinating contest between one of the division’s best defensive strategists and one of its best offensive boxers. But Ewing dropped out, and rather than just rebook the fight later, or find someone for Basharat who’s already in the company, they’re bringing in 23 year-old John Garza, a rookie with barely two years in the sport who’s been fighting guys down in Fury FC who don’t even stand out at the regional level. He hits hard, he hits fast, and he hits like someone who’s barely had to worry about people testing his defense.

So he’s fighting for a berth in the top fifteen. God bless. FARID BASHARAT BY DECISION.

MIDDLEWEIGHT: Ryan Gandra (9-1) vs Zach Reese (10-3 (1))

The pattern feeds on itself to survive. Zach Reese was hired because he openly advertised his desire to ignore things like ‘defense’ and ‘strategy’ in favor of simply being a wild-eyed savage who goes for finishes all of the time. Two and a half years later he’s coming off a loss because he can’t beat Michel Pereira and he has yet to record a win over anyone with a successful UFC record. Ryan Gandra just got here four months ago, and he was fighting nobodies one bout before his shot at the Contender Series, and they hired him because he, too, knocks out all of the warm bodies tossed in front of him, and to make sure he succeeded, they started him off against José Medina, who was on a five-fight losing streak that included--shock of shocks--Zach Reese.

Now the models must fight to determine which interchangeable punch-rookie matters the most. None of this means anything. Neither of these guys seems particularly good. ZACH REESE BY SUBMISSION.

FLYWEIGHT: Cody Durden (18-10-1) vs Alessandro Costa (16-5)

This is Cody Durden’s third fight in four months. That’s very silly. That’s a silly thing to do. But it got Cody his first win in two goddamn years and that win was over Jafel Filho, the fighter I have arguably the unhealthiest relationship with, so honestly, who’s to say if it’s actually bad or if I’m just bitter? It worked out gangbusters last time, and all it took was a last-minute replacement fight against an underprepared grappler with bad stand-up fighting at an unfamiliar weight class. Surely, that will translate extremely well to a return to Flyweight against a strong wrestleboxer with real knockout power!

ALEESANDRO COSTA BY TKO.