CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 31-2, SUPPLEMENTAL: 170, MOTHERFUCKER, 170

UFC Fight Night: Diaz vs Ferguson

This sport is the dumbest thing in the world.

Hello again, my friends. A funny thing happened on the way to the forum. The harbinger of doom was first sighted yesterday when, for the first time in promotional history, the pre-fight press conference was cancelled right as it began after a report of a massive disturbance backstage. Eventually, we discovered Khamzat Chimaev and Kevin Holland had resumed chirping at each other, Chimaev had kicked Holland in the chest and a brawl had erupted between their camps, which was defused only by the timely intervention of--and old-school fans will be the only ones who understand how funny this is--former fighter turned trainer Tiki Ghosn, who successfully separated the camps and made peace...except then Nate Diaz and his entourage walked by, saw what they perceived to be Tiki being friendly with Khamzat Chimaev, and as they thought of Tiki as a friend and Chimaev as an enemy, they took umbrage at this act of betrayal and began immediately chuckling water bottles at him. It was a massive fracas and it jeopardized the entire card, but fighters were separated, camps were soothed, cooler heads prevailed, and the show was saved.

And then Khamzat Chimaev missed weight by almost ten pounds.

According to Dana White he was suffering muscle cramps so bad doctors ordered him to stop cutting weight. But it's not bad enough that he can't have a five-round fight a day later, so, y'know, fuck it. In almost any other circumstance the UFC would put the full-court press on the other fighter to keep a main event together, but a) it was an entire weight class worth of weight and, much more importantly, b) it's Nate Diaz. If you put pressure on him, he'll just tell you to go fuck yourself and then he'll leave. An entire afternoon of scrambling and backroom dealings later, the card was saved by, less than twenty-four hours before it begins, shuffling opponents across every top-card fight.

It's incredibly unprofessional. It's beyond silly.

And the card is actually much, much better now.

Because this sport is fucking stupid.

Let's take a look at our three new topliners.

MAIN EVENT: THE BIG GOODBYE
WELTERWEIGHT: Anthony Armand "Tony" Ferguson Padilla (25-7, #11 at Lightweight) vs Nathan Donald Diaz, Esq. (20-13, #209 everywhere else)

The funniest thing is, not that long ago, this was a lightweight bout people were clamoring for. When Tony butchered Kevin Lee to become the UFC's Interim Lightweight Champion, he found himself presiding over a very messy division. Conor McGregor, the actual champion, was chasing a big boxing paycheck. Khabib Nurmagomedov, the top contender, was injured. Edson Barboza, the #3 contender, had been destroyed by Ferguson just a few fights ago, and Eddie Alvarez and Justin Gaethje, the #4 and #5, were booked against one another. And who was at #6 but Nate goddamn Diaz.

It would have been a genuinely interesting fight. While Tony and Nate have very different fighting styles, they hinged on the same strategy: Wearing opponents down with accumulated damage until they broke and either left themselves open for a submission or stopped fighting altogether. Where Tony liked to do it through constant motion, lots of mixed attacks and tearing people apart with elbows from inside the pocket, Nate liked to do it by standing in front of them and just punching them, frequently. Nate Diaz's best weapon in the clinch range is giving his opponents loud verbal updates with regards to their bitch/not bitch status. Two fighters at the top of both their divisions and their own athletic primes, both incredibly adept at hurting their opponents, both capable of taking unreal punishment without slowing down, both with the cardio to fight five rounds. The potential fireworks were off the charts.

But that was also five years ago.

In the time since, both fighters have had the crap repeatedly beaten out of them. Nate's fans cling to his nearly knocking out Leon Edwards and Jorge Masvidal only beating him by cut stoppage, but Leon had him bleeding and limping for 24 minutes and Masvidal dropped him three times. Tony, meanwhile, took a life-altering beating from Justin Gaethje and got faceplanted by Michael Chandler. Tony's almost 40 and Nate may be outright retiring from the sport after this fight. Neither guy is in their prime, neither looks as good as they did back when they were two of the best fighters on the planet. Does that condemn this fight to the depressing "who's the most deteriorated" territory that so often comes up in battles featuring aging MMA fighters?

Surprisingly: I don't think so. I think this is still just a really good fuckin' fight.

Nate vs Chimaev and Tony vs Li were hopeless depression states waiting to happen, but even if the two have degenerated, they have degenerated parallel to one another and are still fantastically matched because of it. Sure, their chins aren't what they used to be, but they're not fighting two of the hardest hitters at higher weight classes anymore. Their conditioning is still great and as the first round of Tony/Chandler and the last round of Diaz/Edwards showed, they're still more than capable of fighting to their strengths.

So it's five years too late, but we got a fight we always wanted. How's it gonna go?

It's an interesting fucking question. Unlike most of Nate's opponents at lightweight he doesn't have a range advantage, and Tony probably has a faster jab. Tony DEFINITELY has better kicks, but every time he plants to land one he's going to be open to the long right Nate's used to stun dozens of people, and Tony doesn't want to give Nate a chance to start opening up on him. Nate's face is about 75% scar tissue by volume, and if he lets Tony into the pocket without controlling his wrists he's got about two seconds to get out before all of his blood is on the outside of his body. I frankly don't think grappling is going to be a big part of the fight--Nate doesn't want to spend a lot of time in the clinch where his takedowns come from and Tony Ferguson hasn't attempted a takedown in a fight since 2016--but Nate's definitely got the grappling edge if it winds up there.

I think this fight stays standing. And I think, over five rounds, Nate Diaz gets a TKO. He's not going to back down from Tony's attacks but he's also not going to pull a Chandler and dive facefirst into power punches. This is two guys chipping away at one another and I'm not sure either's UFC tenure survives past it, quite frankly.

But it'll be great while it lasts.

CO-MAIN EVENT: THE FIGHT ISLAND SHOWDOWN
MIDDLEWEIGHT, SORT OF: Khamzat "You Boo? Fuck You" Chimaev (11-0, #3 at welterweight for like 72 more hours) vs The Severely Underpaid Kevin Holland (23-7 (1), undefeated against street criminals)

In some ways, this was inevitable. Kevin Holland and Khamzat Chimaev got famous in exactly the same way: Taking tons of fights in unusually rapid succession during the COVID era when we were all too desperate for combat sports to think about how terribly unhealthy it was to have people fighting every four weeks. While Fight Island was a horrible experiment that got tons of fighters sick and statistically-speaking almost certainly killed a handful of people, it worked out gangbusters for these two, who went from relative unknowns to two of the biggest stars in the UFC. Kevin Holland crushed Jacaré Souza and became a main-event talent, Khamzat Chimaev made Gerald Meerschaert look like a punk and then, uh, got COVID, nearly died and temporarily retired because there was too much blood in his lungs before returning and immediately becoming the top contender at welterweight.

And then he missed weight for a Nate Diaz fight, so he's a huge pariah and it'll be years before anyone forgives him or doesn't think he's a huge shithead! Which I cannot get over, because I fervently remember when Nate Diaz missed weight for the Rafael dos Anjos fight and proceeded to flip him off and tell him he was a pussy for caring because real men just fight, which was agreed to be a perfectly reasonable response by basically his entire fanbase.

But that's the power of Diaz Reality.

This is a much better fight than either of their previous fights. Holland/Rodriguez was an out-of-class-for-no-reason battle between two potential prospects who gained nothing from fighting one another and Chimaev/Diaz was less of a fight than a slaughter. Khamzat and Holland have been chirping at each other for years, they literally got into a fight backstage, they're both dudes who bounced between welterweight and middleweight and a fight thus makes sense for either, and they were both the crown princes of Fight Island*, making a showdown between them spiritually inevitable.

*I am aware the actual crown prince of Fight Island is Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, but a) he sucks and b) we'll never get to see him get triangle choked by anyone, so fuck 'im.

This, too, is an interesting fucking fight for a number of reasons. Here's the thing: Kevin Holland left the middleweight division because he was getting wrestled to death by the Derek Brunsons and Marvin Vettoris of the world, and Khamzat is bigger, stronger and a more credentialed wrestler than both of them. If he wants this fight on the ground, he can and will get it there. But Kevin Holland is very difficult to keep down. It took Brunson 12 takedown attempts to get through five rounds with him. It took Vettori 17. We've only seen Khamzat Chimaev make it to a third round once in his career, and he was visibly exhausted by the end of it.

Granted, that was a war with Gilbert Burns, but that, too, is a problem. Burns is 5'10" and has 71" of reach. He used to fight at lightweight. Kevin Holland is 6'3" and has 81" of reach. He is the first opponent Khamzat has ever faced in his entire life where he's giving up size. And Holland hits very, very fast, and very, very hard. A central part of Khamzat's wrestling attack, oddly, is his standup: He has a great deal of very deserved faith in his ability to knock people stupid, as he hits like a truck. Kevin Holland is not only a better striker than he is, he can ping him upside the head half a foot before Khamzat can reach him.

I think the most likely result of this fight is still Khamzat Chimaev by submission. Holland's been spending his camp preparing for a prolonged striking battle, and now he has to face one of the most dangerous wrestlers in the UFC, and that's a very bad adjustment to make on one fucking day's notice. If Khamzat can keep him down, he should be able to pound his way into back control and strangle him.

But Chimaev clearly had a terrible fucking weight cut, and Kevin Holland is never not in amazing shape. If Holland can get up, or keep from getting taken down altogether, Chimaev is in big, big trouble, and that trouble multiplies with every passing round.

THE NEW TOP OF THE MAIN CARD: POOR, POOR LI
WELTERWEIGHT, BUT NOT REALLY: Li "I've Got Spurs That" Jingliang (19-7, #14 at Welterweight, just wanted people to see his really nice new suit) vs Daniel "The Maniel" Rodriguez (16-2, 1-1 in the Quiet Cannon Boxing Circuit)

The one person who really, truly got the short end of the stick in all of this is Li Jingliang.

At the start of this week, the world was Li's. He had the biggest fight of his career against an opponent he had every advantage over, he was going to get a big win on an extremely visible and guaranteed-to-be-viral card, and he was very, very proud of the snappy new suit he'd bought that he was very excited to show off.

Look at how happy that man was. He had the world in his hands.

Li Jingliang is the man sacrificed by the fickle hands of fate to give us a really good top two fights. Instead of a gimme fight with a big size and power advantage over a compromised and aging-to-retirement lightweight, with all of the other opponents having found fancy new homes, Li now gets to fight Daniel Rodriguez, who is bigger, stronger, hungrier, and, most distressingly, is probably better than Li at all of the things he's known for.

Jingliang is a wrestleboxer. He has kicks, he uses them and has even gotten a knockout that started with a kick to the body, but his bread and butter is forcing people to care about takedowns so he can punch them in the face. Daniel Rodriguez, in his last fight, made Kevin Lee--one of the best wrestlers in the sport, who was only kept from NCAA victories by his desire to compete fulltime in mixed martial arts--struggle and whiff 60% of his takedown attempts en route to breaking his face. He's never been stopped in MMA, and his durability is so notable that Mike Perry, who for all of his faults has undeniable stopping power, hit him with a haymaker and he barely even moved.

And that's before you take into account that Daniel Rodriguez was on weight for a fight ten pounds heavier than Jingliang's.

It's a raw fucking deal. Jingliang's a bad, bad man for being willing to take the fight at all, and I hope the UFC gives him a serious under the table bonus for it, but it's very hard to imagine this going any way other than Daniel Rodriguez by decision after battering him for three rounds.