CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 39: FROM GLORY TO GOLGOTHA

UFC Fight Night: Lewis vs Spivac

PRELIMS 10 AM PST/1 PM EST | MAIN CARD 1 PM PST / 4 PM EST

Remember how awesome last week's event was? Remember how hard the UFC stacked it, just to remind you that they totally could if they wanted to? Well, tough luck, 'cause we're back to normal. 2824 fighters, only three of them ranked, with guys who fought less than a month ago and women's division contenders stuck on the prelims. This fight card is so deeply devoid of meaning that the poster, which is just a one-fight advertisement, struggled so hard for something to say that ultimately the only thing the company could think to put on the advertising wasn't a fun marketing catchphrase, or even fight records for Lewis and Spivac, but simply that the fight is at heavyweight and then, in case you were confused, the heavyweight division's weight range. 206-265 POUNDS, BABY. DID YOU GET CONFUSED ABOUT THE ACCEPTABLE POUNDAGE AT WHICH THIS FIGHT COULD BE CONTESTED? IF YOU WERE, GET EXCITED, BECAUSE THE UFC IS HERE TO ANSWER YOUR QUESTION.

MAIN EVENT: 'TWAS BEAUTY KILLED THE BLACK BEAST

HEAVYWEIGHT: Derrick Lewis (26-10 (1), #7) vs Sergei Spivac (15-3, #12)

Two weeks ago, in recognition of a fight that ultimately wound up not actually happening, I wrote this about the heavyweight division:

I rag on the heavyweight division on an almost weekly basis, and to be clear, there's a very good reason--it's bad--but aside from the world's obsession with large men doing large man things, the heavyweight division isn't bereft of value. The zero-sum game of fighting at heavyweight is in its own way an example of purity in mixed martial arts technique. When leaning into a punch or allowing someone to take your back can be an instantaneous fight-ender just because they're so fucking big and strong that a single mistake puts you in an intractable position, every single maneuver matters that much more. There's a reason the Cro-Cop high kick and the Ngannou rip-your-goddamn-head-off haymaker become part of the mythological core of the sport.

That's still inherently true. Heavyweight, and the lack of room for mistakes at heavyweight, lends itself to a certain sort of ultra-determinism. It's a big part of why heavyweight fighters even from past eras can still feel vital in ways the standouts of other divisions just don't. A 2001-era Dave Menne would be compacted into an easily portable size by essentially anyone on the UFC's middleweight roster altogether, but the Josh Barnett who won the heavyweight championship in 2002 could still make the top ten. Hell, the Josh Barnett of today who's 45 and hasn't fought in six years would have a fairly reasonable shot. Fedor Emelianenko is still disposing of Bellator heavyweights, Alistair Overeem and Andrei Arlovski are in their third decades of combat sports competition and Dan Severn was fighting and ragdolling regional heavyweights into his mid-fifties.

They still win fights--some of them, anyway--because as long as you still have power and some semblance of your athleticism left, all it takes at heavyweight is your opponent making a mistake. If Timothy Johnson charges in with his hands down it doesn't matter that Fedor is old enough to remember when Zimbabwe was Southern Rhodesia, he can still punch fast and hard enough to knock him out.

But there's a key here: You have to be able to do multiple things. 45 year-old Josh Barnett is still an incredibly dangerous catch wrestler. Alistair Overeem can still knee the armor off a tank in the clinch. An aging heavyweight's ability to punch people to death is in some part predicated on how realistic it is that their opponent is worried about them doing literally anything else.

Derrick "The Black Beast" Lewis is only 37. He's only lost three of his last eight fights, and two of those losses came against top contenders. One of his wins was an incredibly violent knockout victory of another, different top contender. By any metric, he's still a very, very successful heavyweight. And a lot of people are already writing his career's eulogy anyway, because boy, Derrick Lewis really only does the one thing, and the moment that one thing seems to stop working, it becomes incredibly difficult to imagine him sticking around.

And that, in itself, is a very strange feeling, because Derrick Lewis feels like he's been around forever. His ridiculous knockout power has been a staple of the UFC's heavyweight division since 2014, and between then and now, there's only been one calendar year in which Lewis didn't knock at least one person completely fucking stupid with his hamhock fists. When Derrick Lewis scored his first UFC knockout, Cain Velasquez was the UFC champion and Fabrício Werdum was just a handful of months away from knocking out Mark Hunt to become his top contender; nearly a decade later Mark Hunt is closing in on 50 and having boxing exhibitions with rugby players, no one knows if Fabrício Werdum is retired, Cain Velasquez had enough time to retire, have a professional wrestling career and get arrested for attempted homicide, and Derrick Lewis is still goddamn here, in the top ten, where he's been all this time.

But 2022 isn't just the second year he hasn't knocked anyone out, it's the first year he hasn't won a single fight. In February he got knocked out cold by Tai Tuivasa in two rounds; in July, he got faceplanted by Sergei Pavlovich in under a minute. There's no shame in this, both men are prolific knockout artists, but they represented a terrifying new reality in his career. Derrick Lewis has been knocked out multiple times, but those losses were either against perceived physical specimens like Matt Mitrione or, more commonly, much more technically capable strikers. Shawn Jordan's hook kicks, Mark Hunt and Junior dos Santos's boxing expertise, Ciryl Gane's masterful kickboxing technique: There were clear throughlines, both mechanically and narratively, for how they successfully outclassed Lewis and his brawling style.

Tai Tuivasa didn't outclass him, he stood in his face and went blow for blow with him until Lewis stopped moving. Sergei Pavlovich didn't defeat Derrick Lewis with technical prowess and his reach advantage, he charged right into him and punched him loopy.

That's where the fear sets in. If Derrick Lewis is losing because of the holes in his style, that's just the normal way of the sport. If Derrick Lewis is losing because other fighters can be a better Derrick Lewis than him, what is there left for Derrick Lewis to be?

This is, in all likelihood, why the UFC is trying to stave off this existential crisis for a few more months. After four straight fights against dangerous striking stylists, Lewis gets to fight Sergey Spivac, which the UFC has decided to spell with a Y and C instead of an I and K this month because Cyrillic transliteration is a fun game. Spivac's been in the UFC for three and a half years and this is his first main event, primarily because it's the first time he's had a real argument for any kind of burgeoning divisional relevancy. His first two years in the UFC were characterized by give and take, narrow decisions, and getting blown out of the water by the hype train that was Tom Aspinall.

Spivac didn't get much of a spotlight until the UFC tried to use him as a do-or-die stepping stone for Dana White's favorite domestic assault enthusiast Greg Hardy--and Spivac manhandled Hardy so thoroughly the UFC gave up on him completely, automatically making Spivac the greatest heavyweight to ever live. He followed this up with a similarly complete domination of the once-highly-touted Augusto Sakai, a kickboxing specialist who had fallen on hard times, doling out a ground-and-pound clinic that ultimately stopped in the second round when the referee decided a 50-2 striking differential was probably a good reason to call the fight off.

There's an obvious throughline here: Spivac is exceptionally dominant as long as he can get fights to the ground. When he's crushing people with his top control and his relentless ground and pound and threats of arm triangles, he's a killer. He tapped out Tai Tuivasa, he pounded out Jared Vanderaa, he even threatened grapple grandpa Aleksei Oleinik himself with chokes on the floor between elbowing his face open. The ground is his home. Every time he has not been able to successfully control his opponent in grappling positions, he's lost.

In other words: This fight isn't a referendum on if Derrick Lewis can still survive a brawl, it's a referendum on if Derrick Lewis can still stay on his feet.

The oddsmakers have Spivac as the favorite and Lewis as a +150-200 underdog. I get why--repeated knockouts lower anyone's stock--but, respectfully, I think they're crazy. We're only a year and a half out from Derrick Lewis facing one of the fastest, most powerful wrestlers in the division in Curtis Blaydes, stuffing his first three takedown attempts with his own defensive wrestling and stuffing his fourth and final takedown attempt by uppercuting his head into the god damned sun. Sergey isn't an iron-chinned brawler like Tuivasa or a hulking punching machine like Pavlovich, he's a pretty conventional grappler who's gotten repeatedly knocked out, and while I will always love him for ridding us of Greg Hardy, I don't think this is going to go well for him at all. Derrick Lewis by KO.

CO-MAIN EVENT: STAVING OFF THE EXECUTIONER
LIGHT-HEAVYWEIGHT: Kennedy Nzechukwu (10-3) vs Ion Cuțelaba (16-8-1 (1))

Boy, this co-main event. Ordinarily, you want a co-main event to be an interesting, relevant fight: People at the south end of the top ten who are making an argument for a serious look at contendership, or people who are building momentum and trying to capitalize on their growing relevance.

This is not that. This is the polar opposite of that. This is the first co-main event in recent memory that could also very easily be a housecleaning fight. This is a co-main event where both competitors are a combined 2-4 in their last three fights and one of those two wins was against an 0-4 guy who doesn't work here anymore.

This is also probably a fight to determine the 15th best fighter in the division.

Light-heavyweight: It's not great.

Kennedy Nzechukwu is, at the very least, the better-off half of that conversation, which is damning him with faint praise as he's only 4-3 in the UFC and his only win in his last three fights is the aforementioned pink slip recipient. Nzechukwu joined the UFC thanks to a Contender Series knockout against Dennis "The Beard" Bryant, over whom he had an entire foot of reach, which was a) somehow legal without getting everyone involved in the matchmaking thrown in the Hague and b) earned him the right to become the UFC's trashman. Kennedy Nzechukwu's four wins are almost entirely over people who were already on their way out of the company. His record against fighters who were still signed to the UFC a year after he fought them is 1-3, and if you think the matchmakers are trying to throw him a bone by booking him against yet another guy on his way out who's also giving up a ton of size and reach and also is a sometimes boring wrestler they think he can outpower, then frankly, I just can't believe you'd be so cynical and I'm very disappointed in you.

And it's unfortunate, because Kennedy isn't a bad fighter. He's a lot of fun to watch, he throws a ton of kicks, he's a goddamn 6'5" fighter who throws jumping switch kicks when he feels like it. The problem: He's a goddamn 6'5" fighter who's better at throwing jumping switch kicks than jabs. His use of strength and reach comes far more from spamming kicks and guillotine attempts than navigating boxing exchanges, and that carries recurring flaws: He's bad at blocking incoming punches, he's bad at dealing with pressure strikers, and he has a lot of trouble coping with strong wrestling games.

Which could, theoretically, be a problem. Ion Cuțelaba has not been having a great time as of late, but then, Ion Cuțelaba hasn't really had a great time in the UFC at any point. After six years with the organization, his longest winning streak stands at two, and it's a feat he achieved only once. His back-and-forth has, unfortunately, also been less than stellar as of late: Since 2020 he's 1-4-1. Which is crazy when you consider that in the two fights immediately prior to 2020 he beat the brakes off Khalil Rountree and came incredibly close to knocking out future champion Glover Teixeira. How, exactly, do you go so abruptly from the precipice of incredible success to the pits of utter despair?

You fight like a reckless berserker, mostly. Ion Cuțelaba wants to hurt you. He doesn't care if he's winging hooks at your head or dragging you to the floor to elbow you in the face or chaining spinning backfists together until one of them finally lands, he wants to be on offense at all times. When he's pushing forward and hurting people, he's one of the most dangerous fighters in the division. When literally anything else is happening he's getting outstruck at range, controlled on the ground and choked unconscious.

So it's two light-heavyweights with very little in the way of good defensive skills, one of whom is good at snaring chokes and throwing long kicks but bad at dealing with pressure and wrestling, one of whom is good at pressure and wrestling but bad at ranged striking and fending off grappling advantages. These are still two of the top twenty, twenty-five fighters in the world at this weight class.

God help us all. Kennedy Nzechukwu by submission. Cuțelaba's going to have an awful lot of trouble reaching and hurting Kennedy on the feet, so odds are this becomes a wrestling-centric assault, and Nzechukwu finds ways to hunt for guillotines and anaconda chokes as a counter-wrestling method that makes use of his forty-foot arms. I think this is the time he finds one.

MAIN CARD: LUNCHBOX HANDS

HEAVYWEIGHT: Chase Sherman (16-10) vs Waldo Cortes-Acosta (8-0)

As I close in on the end of my first year of service in the fight mines, I realize I have written about Chase Sherman more often than any other fighter. This is the sixth time I will write about Chase Sherman in eleven months. Two of those fights didn't even happen. At one point Chase Sherman wasn't even employed by the UFC anymore. And yet, in a year with multiple Israel Adesanya fights, in a year with promising prospects like Tom Aspinall and Marlon Vera in several main events, it is Chase goddamn Sherman who is my white whale--nay, my Vanilla Gorilla. I cannot escape him, no matter how deeply into the B-leagues I run, and he cannot escape me, no matter how many times he is manhandled by large men. We are destined to do this dance forever, his rock'em sock'em boxing propelling the two of us through space until all of reality suffuses and becomes a disc in which no points can be delineated from one another.

Where in the tapestry of time are we, now? Is this the great Parker Porter bout of 2021? Is it the Chase Sherman vs Alexandr Romanov that happened in this reality or the original cancelled one from Earth 26? Is this the 2025 Chase Sherman/Hamdy Abdelwahab world championship bout that came after The Great Collapse killed half the roster, sank the entire western seaboard and left the UFC under Bjorn Rebney's control? Oh, no, that's right--it's Chase Sherman vs Waldo "Salsa Boy" Cortes-Acosta, the fight I definitely didn't make up that definitely doesn't feature a fighter who just fought a full fifteen-minutes and took fifty-nine heavyweight strikes less than three weeks ago for $10,000 before taxes and is now somehow licensed to fight again already without anyone getting arrested for crimes against decency. That would be ridiculous.

It's Chase Sherman. What words are there left in my blood to tell you anything about the man, and what veins have I left to pour ink to page with for him? Through the wheat the boxer will appear to take him away, and I will mock him to all of you while in my heart of hearts cradling him and letting the blows fall upon my body. No, I will cry, not my son. But they will not listen, and when the time comes, I will deny him to the thanatologists and say I knew him not, but I will know that his was the face of The Heavyweight, and lo, I will see him in every heavyweight yet to be.

Waldo Cortes-Acosta by KO. Ab ovo, ab aeterno, ab intestato, ab intra.

WELTERWEIGHT: André Fialho (16-5 (1)) vs Muslim Salikhov (18-3)

And here, we come to strikers who have fallen on hard times. André Fialho was one of the UFC's more interesting stories, a late-replacement signing back in January who will now be contesting his fifth UFC fight in just 2022. Which is impressive! Unfortunately, the most memorable part of said run was his last appearance back in June when Jake Matthews punched eighteen phantoms of death out of him in one of the most beautiful, one-sided fights of the year. Like so many, this has proven to be Fialho's folly: He's a fantastic offensive fighter, with dangerous power in his hands and fluid combinations once he gets them going, but his offense IS his defense, and once breached, he's in trouble. Even successful outings have seen him getting hurt thanks to his own aggression.

"The King of Kung Fu" Muslim Salikhov has been a much more sedate striking influence. Salikhov, possibly the only non-Cung Le fighter to cite San Shou as his primary style, pays tribute to the old masters by throwing lots of unnecessary spinning kicks and winning extremely iffy decisions. Salikhov is one of those intensely frustrating fighters to watch: He's got power, he's got a varied skillset, he's got a solid chin, and when it comes to the crucial tests in his career they just don't seem to matter because his decisionmaking falls apart. He's lost multiple fights he could have won by committing too hard to hunting for grand-slam knockout shots rather than fighting conservatively. It doesn't matter that he can outstrike most of the planet from the outside when he chooses to slang and bang instead.

All of that being said: If he's going to play conkers with someone, Fialho's as good a candidate as any. Both of these men are offensively-oriented striking specialists and both like to throw with a reckless disregard for their own chins. Salikhov is more willing to shoot and he's got more tools in his belt, but Fialho's got the better pure boxing. Fialho can chase Salikhov down and find his chin, given a chance.

But he's just too goddamn hittable to last. Muslim Salikhov by TKO.

WELTERWEIGHT: Jack Della Maddalena (12-2) vs Danny Roberts (18-6)

It's squash match time, baby. Jack Della Maddalena is the living justification for the existence of the Contender Series. They will throw hundreds of fighters into the meat grinder if it means they find one Della Maddalena: A hard-nosed, sharp-eyed boxer who atomizes people for minimum wage with pure technique rather than overwhelming physical force. The UFC hasn't been taking it easy on him, either; they initially wanted him fighting veteran prospect-derailer Warlley Alves in his debut, and for his sophomore effort gave him Ramazan Emeev, an exceedingly tough and very successful fighter he turned into paste with boxing combinations in a single round.

Coincidentally, and most certainly in no way an influence on the UFC's matchmaking predilections, Danny "Hot Chocolate" Roberts also fought Ramazan Emeev just two fights ago. It was an incredibly close, incredibly difficult bout that saw him struggling on the floor and repeatedly wobbled on the feet, but he gave as good as he got and came away with a split decision. This, in general, is the Danny Roberts story. He's a very solid fighter with fast hands and a well-rounded skillset, but there's no thing he does particularly better than anyone else in the UFC, and that gets him ate up by the fighters with exceptional, standout skills, be it Michel Pereira's technique or Mike Perry's brute strength.

Which is, of course, half the point of this fight. The other half is comparative analysis. MMAth--the art of saying "x fighter beat y, so x fighter should beat z, who lost to y"--is deeply, thoroughly flawed as an analytical technique. Fighters are different, different styles gel in different ways, sometimes a butterfly flaps its wings in Zagreb and Brendan Schaub knocks out Mirko Cro Cop. But when two fighters fight the same fighter in similar ways, comparison becomes unavoidable. Ramazan Emeev gave Danny Roberts hell. He outstruck him 67-42, hurt him with his hands and held him on the ground for most of an entire round. He took Jack down, too: Jack pulled out of a choke attempt and was back on his feet in 25 seconds. It took 18 shots to leave Emeev crumpled on the ground holding his non-functional liver.

It's not subtle. Jack took two dangerous fights and passed both tests with flying colors, and now that the UFC knows he's a reliable marketing prospect, it's time to find some smoother matches for him until he can make them some real money. Roberts is an aggressive fighter with an occasionally troublesome chin coming off a bad loss, and Maddalena immolated the man who gave him one of his hardest fights. This should not defy convention. Jack Della Maddalena by TKO.

PRELIMS: DANA WHITE DOES NOT CARE IF YOU WATCH THESE
FLYWEIGHT: Charles Johnson (11-3) vs Zhalgas Zhumagulov (14-7)

Difficult times have come to flyweight. Charles "InnerG" Johnson was always intended to lose his debut. The UFC brought him in from the regionals as a stepping stone for Muhammad Mokaev, one of the most promising prospects in the sport, and he served his purposes by testing him, but not in a way that put him in any particular danger at any point. As a show of gratitude towards Johnson, the UFC has put him on cleanup duty. Zhalgas "Zhako" Zhumagulov was considered a big pickup for the UFC when they brought him aboard in 2020 as a rarely-defeated flyweight champion out of Russia who'd just knocked off three very tough competitors in current UFC stars Tyson Nam and Tagir Ulanbekov as well as former UFC title challenger Ali Bagautinov, but his time in the spotlight has more than derailed his hype train: He's 1-4 in his UFC run, with his sole win recorded against the 0-4 Jerome Rivera. A loss here would be not just 1-5 but three in a row for Zhumagulov, and in a division as poorly regarded by top brass as flyweight, that's a death sentence.

Which is tragic. As always in the flyweight division, both of these men are very, very good at what they do. Johnson's wrestling defense is a little iffy and Zhumagulov's offense is a little too reckless, but they held regional championships at one of the world's toughest weight classes for a reason. But Johnson tends to put just a little more work into his attacks, and Zhumagulov tends to fade just a little too much as fights wear on, and I cannot help feeling this is the end of the road for Zhako. Charles Johnson by decision.

WOMEN'S FLYWEIGHT: Jennifer Maia (19-9-1, #8) vs Maryna Moroz (11-3, #15)

Sometimes things look worse than they are. I harp on the "three losses in a row" standard of danger the UFC tends to employ, but Jennifer Maia is a case study in how easy that is to achieve when you're consistently at the top of your division. Maia's 2-4 over the last three years, but those losses came against Valentina Shevchenko, the women's flyweight champion and one of the best to ever do it, Katlyn Chookagian, the perennial #1 contender, and Manon Fiorot, the woman who finally unseated her. After nearly five years of UFC competition, this is the first time Jennifer Maia has been matched up against someone who isn't in the top ten of her division. Maryna Moroz is a study in question marks. She got bounced out of the lighter women's strawweight class, switched to the 125-pound division once it became available, and has gone an undefeated 3-0 since making the move. Unfortunately, those three fights took three and a half years. Since 2016, Maryna Moroz has been scheduled for 17 UFC fights: She's had 5. Sometimes she's injured, sometimes her opponent is injured, but through mutual accursed luck and the horrible life of a fighter, Moroz has only managed to make it to the cage for less than 1/3 of her prospective bouts.

And I deeply hope this is one of them, because it's a fascinating test for her. Jennifer Maia is easily the best opponent of Moroz's career: She's a challenge to take down and even tougher to keep there, she's a surprisingly stiff striker, and she's enough of a submission threat on her back that Valentina shied away from getting too offensive. Moroz is an incredibly tough, gritty fighter, but her only truly effective offense comes from the top position. If she can hold Maia down and control her, let alone threaten her, it'll finally be a clarifying statement about her prospects at the upper echelon of the division. But it's a tall, tall order, and I don't know that Moroz has it in her to gut out Maia's offense and defense for fifteen minutes. Jennifer Maia by decision.

BANTAMWEIGHT: Vince Morales (11-6) vs Miles Johns (12-2)

These are the small fighters Dana likes. Morales and Johns, despite having plenty of back-pocket skills at their disposal, have three times as many fights as they do attempted takedowns combined, because they both came from the Contender Series and they both learned the hard way that marketability means bludgeoning people or dying in the process. Like, you can look up their B-league and regional footage. They used to grapple. Miles Jones scored three takedowns during his Contender Series fight; he's only tried to use his wrestling once in his subsequent UFC tenure. Now the Bang is inside of them, and all they can do is Stand and deliver.

And bang they shall. It's going to be fun and frenetic. Johns is the cleaner striker to Morales' more brawling style, but he also likes to work in bursts of offense and tends to suffer when fighters control the pace of exchanges. He'll have to cope with the pressure of Morales continually coming at him, and when the moment comes where he realizes he needs to stop him in his tracks, by god, I hope he remembers he can shoot takedowns. Miles Johns by decision.

BANTAMWEIGHT: Ricky Turcios (11-3) vs Kevin Natividad (9-3)

It's cleanup time again. Ricky Turcios was the bemulleted bantamweight boss of The Ultimate Fighter 29: Jesus God Please Someone Come Help Us, We Have Been Locked In An Abandoned Tapout Shirt Factory For Eighteen Years And The Rats Come At Night. He fought his way through the tournament with a fighting style that could best be described as No, Fuck You, Dad: Constant forward momentum no matter what anyone does to him. Having successfully decisioned his way through the tournament, he entered the UFC proper and immediately got the crap beaten out of him by Aiemann Zahabi, who countered him with the forbidden technique known as "moving sideways," which MMA's best scientists are still trying to decode. The UFC would like him to succeed, so they're giving him a soft target. Kevin Natividad was not a priority pickup. They signed him as a last-minute replacement to keep Brian Kelleher on a COVID-era card, a fight he wound up not being able to take because the act of trying made him catch COVID, and the UFC has been very slowly honoring his contract since, to the tune of one fight per calendar year. He was brutally knocked out in both.

Ricky Turcios isn't really a "brutal knockouts" kind of fighter, but he is a constant, unceasing pressure kind of fighter, and Natividad's been shaken by that kind of pressure before. This should not be different. Ricky Turcios by TKO.

WOMEN'S STRAWWEIGHT: Vanessa Demopoulos (8-4) vs Maria Oliveira (13-5)

Here, we have a battle of people who really should've lost their last fights. Maria Oliveira's struggle with Gloria de Paula was close, at least. She was outstruck and about 60% of the media scored the fight against her, but her long kicks and constant flak-field punching served not just to keep her opponent at bay but to keep the judges more engaged with what she was doing than what her opponent was landing. Vanessa Demopoulos has much less of an excuse. She's a grappler first and foremost, which is why Jinh Yu Frey beat her so soundly that 90% of box scores had Frey running away with a seemingly easy decision, but as always, the judges are the only ones that matter. Demopoulos got the split decision nod for reasons unknown, and now she's on a two-fight win streak and looking to force her way to the top.

It's a tall order for her, unfortunately. Demopoulos isn't a great striker and Oliveira can basically filibuster her by spamming hundreds of strikes until she gives up trying to compete. Tabatha Ricci laid a very clear plan Demopoulos could follow to beat Oliveira--take her the fuck down--but Ricci is also a skilled judoka with a strong wrestling game, and Demopoulos, at 1 out of 15 successful attempts, has a takedown accuracy of 7% in her UFC tenure. If she can't get that number up and get Oliveira down, it's going to be a very long night. Maria Oliveira by decision.

BANTAMWEIGHT: Brady Hiestand (6-2) vs Fernie Garcia (10-2)

I mentioned Ricky Turcios ground his way through the TUF championship; Hiestand was the grindee. Theirs was a wild, sloppy up-and-down brawl that left a number of mixed martial arts journalists breathlessly comparing it to the now-legendary Forrest Griffin vs Stephan Bonnar fight because we all desperately want to be two decades younger and once again discovering the untold wonders of a crazy new sport that feels fresh and cool and has casual audiences buzzing with curiosity as opposed to trying desperately to convince our friends that spending seven hours of their weekend in anticipation of Jairzinho Rozenstruik vs Augusto Sakai is a fun and important thing to do with their time on this cruel rock. On one hand, Hiestand displayed some quick, snappy wrestling that had Turcios repeatedly falling on his ass; on the other, his control was so poor that he had to disengage because Turcios was repeatedly hurting him with hammerfists from his own back. Fernie Garcia, aside from giving us one of the worst pop albums of the mid-2000s, won his way into the UFC and Dana White's heart through a traditional big right hand knockout on the Contender Series, for which he was rewarded with a fight against the embattled Journey Newson, who completely outclassed him and ultimately wound up running circles around him throwing wheel kicks and right hooks while Garcia politely asked him to stop moving so he could punch him.

This is essentially a pick 'em, mostly because what we've seen of both fighters are their flaws. Hiestand tired out and faded in the Turcios fight, although that's pretty easy to do when you're fighting a living hurricane; Garcia was so stifled by Newson's movement and offense that he devolved into throwing single potshots, but Newson also kicks like a mule and Hiestand does not. My inkling is Brady Hiestand by decision given Garcia's seeming difficulty with consistent pressure, but it's a coinflip of a guess.

WOMEN'S FLYWEIGHT: Natália Silva (13-5-1) vs Tereza Bledá (6-0)

No, seriously. There are actually a lot of eyes on this fight as an interesting prospect showcase. Natália Silva's a Jungle Fight champion who took the entire we-care-about-the-pandemic era off from the sport, joined the UFC after two and a half years on the bench and immediately put on a genuinely impressive performance by dominating a very tough opponent in Jasmine Jasudavicius in every aspect of the fight: Stinging punches, vicious calf kicks, and some incredibly fun throw reversals that saw her ragdolling Jasmine with ease. That latter bit is what people are really curious to see in this fight. Tereza Bledá is nicknamed "Ronda," half because as a twenty year-old who's only been competing for 16 months Ronda Rousey is more or less the entire sport for her generation, half because she has, thus far, been an absolute terror on the ground. Much like her inspiration her striking seems serviceable at best, but no one has been able to keep her from simply ragdolling and destroying them on the ground.

I'm aware this is typically where I add the "but as a regional women's fighter she's untested" footnote, but oddly enough, Bledá actually has fought UFC-calibre competition. Against one-time Contender Series veteran Mabelly Lima, who took the 3-2 UFC competitor Luana Carolina to a decision, Bledá grounded her and broke her face open in a minute and a half; in a shootboxing-style exhibition against OKTAGON titlist, GCF champion and two-tenure UFC competitor Lucie Pudilová, Bledá repeatedly kicked her in the face between almost comically easy double-leg slams.

One of these women is going to emerge as a genuinely interesting prospect for the division and I'm betting on Tereza Bledá by TKO. The brute force takedowns are going to be much harder to reverse and I don't know that Silva can stop her.