CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 44: FILLING A BOTTOMLESS GLASS

UFC 283: Teixeira vs Hill

JANUARY 21, 2023 FROM THE JEUNESSE ARENA IN RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL
PRELIMS 3:00 PM PST/6:00 PM EST VIA ESPN+ | MAIN CARD 7 PM PST/10 PM EST VIA PAY PER VIEW

Once upon a time, this card was main-evented by the epic ending to the unprecedented Figueiredo/Moreno quadrilogy, maybe the best series in flyweight history and an incredible achievement in the history of mixed martial arts itself. It was going to be the first flyweight main event the UFC has promoted in more than two years. But then Dana White realized he could supplant them with LARGE MEN, so now, two of the greatest flyweights ever settling one of the best rivalries in the sport's history is the co-main event, and the guy who got murdered by a fighter named "Bearjew" a year and a half ago is in the main event. No matter how much fun the card looks like it's going to be, MMA never stops being incredibly frustrating to follow. Welcome to UFC 283.

MAIN EVENT: AND ALL THAT COULD HAVE BEEN

LIGHT-HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP: Glover Teixeira (33-8, #2) vs Jamahal Hill (11-1 (1), #7)

One of my favorite endless rambling habits is grossly oversimplifying the quality of divisions. Heavyweight: Always bad. Lightweight: Always good! Flyweight: Always underappreciated. Women's Featherweight: Always fake.

The light-heavyweight division is mercurial. At times it is the UFC's premiere weight class, home to some of the best fighters and biggest fights in the sport, leading the charge of mixed martial arts into the mainstream on the shoulders of men like Chuck Liddell and Forrest Griffin, ripe with incredibly competitive matchups between evenly-talented wrecking machines. Sometimes it's one of the most laughable things in the sport; a nonsensical fiefdom with uneven bouts, inexplicable title contention, most of the rankings on losing streaks, the top fighters missing in action and legendary champions getting humiliated by middleweights.

But that's what sets light-heavyweight apart. Every other division ebbs and flows. Good years, bad years. Good champions, bad champions. Light-heavyweight does not care for temporality. Light-heavyweight lives under the shadow of a Faustian curse that makes it impossible to ever count on. Light-heavyweight, in the space of less than a year, can go from good to great to terrible.

At the beginning of 2022, even for an aging curmudgeon like me, light-heavyweight was reaching an interesting place. Glover Teixeira had defied the odds and upset Jan Błachowicz to become the second-oldest UFC champion in history, and that left the division with a number of dangling possibilties. Jan himself was still a viable #1 contender, having only the one loss in the last several years. Striking wildman Jiří Procházka had taken the UFC by storm and emerged as an exciting, unpredictable challenger. Aleksandar Rakić was a compelling, technically masterful and virtually undefeated #3, with the equally promising Magomed Ankalaev right on his heels. Even the lower end of the ranks held promise: Dominick Reyes had looked decent in his fight with Jiří, Paul Craig had four impressive wins in a row, fresh talent like Jamahal Hill was just entering the spotlight--even fan favorite and multiple-time title threat Alexander Gustafsson was coming out of retirement to test the field.

There's a world where all of those things worked out and light-heavyweight is on the cusp of entering a golden age of competition.

This is not that world.

Alexander Gustafsson was knocked out in barely a minute. Jamahal Hill dragged ass in a main event with Thiago Santos and was going 50/50 with him before barely managing to drop the soon-to-be-released ex-middleweight. Paul Craig's winning streak ended unceremoniously under a Molly McCann fight. Dominick Reyes came back looking as though he'd forgotten everything about fighting and was flatlined in ninety seconds. Aleksandar Rakić's leg exploded in the cage, putting him on the shelf indefinitely.

But in the midst of all of that terrible misfortune, a miracle happened. Glover Teixeira and Jiří Procházka had one of the best fights in UFC history, a back-and-forth battle that saw them batter each other brutally for nearly five full rounds before Jiří, the striker, choked out Glover, the grappler, taking his title and handing him the first submission loss of his career. It wasn't just an incredible fight or an incredible moment, it was a much-needed shot in the arm for the UFC's favorite division. There was a new champion, there was a hotly-anticipated rematch, and there were dozens of new fights to book.

And then in November Jiří Procházka relinquished the title thanks to a shoulder injury.

And then the UFC refused to let Glover and Jan have a rematch.

And then the UFC's attempt to fill the vacancy, a bout between top contenders Jan Błachowicz and Magomed Ankalaev, ended in a draw and produced no champion.

At the beginning of 2022, the light-heavyweight division was a silly but exciting place with lots of interesting possibilities. At the beginning of 2023 there's no champion, almost everyone in the top five is either injured or already failed to fight for the title and almost everyone in the bottom five is coming off of a loss.

There are literally only two people who can fight for the vacant world championship.

And they're a 43 year-old man who's been planning to retire for the last two years and a guy whose career-defining victory came against a fighter who would be cut from the UFC a month later.

Let me be clear: I fucking love Glover Teixeira. He's one of my favorite fighters. He's an incredibly tough, ridiculously scrappy sledgehammer of a human being who is simultaneously terrifying and comical. His wide, winging punches and old-man single-leg takedowns that appear to travel in slow motion have been memes in the mixed martial arts community for an entire decade, at this point, but they've persisted because they work. He outwrestles superior wrestlers, he outgrapples more athletic grapplers, and we're only six months removed from seeing him repeatedly come inches from knocking out the most feared striker in the division.

And it all comes down to his dogged determination to control the pace of a fight. Much is made of his crushing top game and his punching power, but the trait that serves him best is an unshakable persistence. Glover Teixeira wants to move forward. Every piece of success he has, be it dragging people to the ground to break their face or swinging hooks in the pocket, comes from trusting his guard and his chin to get him to his desired range. He's so god damned good at it that after twenty-one years of being fundamentally the same fighter, despite hundreds of hours of tape to study, only the very best of the best have been able to stop him.

That's the question at the center of this fight. We know how good Glover Teixeira can be. Exactly how good is Jamahal Hill?

Because his career has made it somewhat hard to tell. Hill won his way to the UFC through the Contender Series three years ago, and two fights in his career came to a screeching halt and he got the first blemish of his career thanks to a No-Contest for partaking in that most nefarious and underhanded of performance-enhancing drugs, marijuana. He was back to his legally winning ways half a year later, but his 2021 started with the first actual loss of his career when he became the grand prize winner on Paul Craig's Would You Kindly Get In My Guard Variety Show and had his arm brutally snapped, earning him months of rehab and a trip back down the ladder.

And he's recovered from that--kind of, sort of. He's on a three-fight knockout streak, but those knockouts were over #13 Jimmy Crute coming off almost a year's rehab for a leg injury, #10 Johnny Walker during the worst, 1 for his last 5 slump of his career, and #6 Thiago Santos, inexplicably ranked in the top ten despite also being 1 for his last 5 with his one win ALSO being against Johnny Walker, and a month later, Santos would be cut from the UFC entirely. The best indication of exactly how much the UFC believed in Jamahal Hill's title prospects is the fact that, before Jan vs Ankalaev blew up in their faces, Hill was scheduled to fight Anthony Smith for the #6 spot.

Anthony Smith, who is ranked above Hill and perfectly healthy, found out he was no longer fighting while on-air as a UFC anchorman, because being a company man is for suckers.

The theory of this bout is not subtle. Jamahal Hill is a big, booming striker with 79" arms and one-shot knockout power who came from Dana White's pet project of a contract farm. Glover Teixeira is 43, likes takedowns, and is barely a month removed from UFC management attempting to strongarm him because they don't think he's marketable. Thanks to bad luck and the UFC's own promotional inadequacy there's a gaping hole in the light-heavyweight rankings and an exceedingly rare chance to catapult a chosen favorite right onto the throne. Glover's been knocked silly by bigger, stronger, rangier strikers before, and the UFC is banking on the very clear likelihood that Hill could do it to him again.

But we're one fight removed from watching Jamahal Hill struggle with the pressure game of Thiago Santos. Thiago Santos, lifelong kickboxer, took Jamahal Hill down six times. Thiago Santos had fourteen successful takedowns in twenty-four UFC fights: Just shy of half of them were scored against Jamahal Hill four and a half months ago. Glover is a better pressure fighter, a better wrestler, and a much better grappler, and he is, if anything, even more headstrong and forward-focused than Santos ever was.

There are two avenues to victory for Hill here. In one, he lamps Glover on his way in and none of this matters. In the other, he follows the Jiří Procházka gameplan, survives until Glover is winded, and feasts on his corpse. But he's got to keep Glover from getting on top of him and punching his teeth out first, and by god, I believe in the old man too much to not want to see it happen. Glover Teixeira by submission.

CO-MAIN EVENT: IT'S BEEN A LONG ROAD, GETTIN' FROM THERE TO HERE

FLYWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP UNIFICATION: Deiveson Figueiredo (21-2-1, Champion) vs Brandon Moreno (20-6-2, Interim Champion)

It is a testament to the UFC's exceedingly iffy matchmaking that we're here having this final fight in a quadrilogy between these two, and it is a testament to the incredible talents of both fighters that the notoriously prickly MMA fanbase (hi!), faced with the prospect of seeing this fight for the fourth time in 25 months, is primarily responding with a "y'know what? Sure. That's fine."

And the biggest part of that--promotional malfeasance aside--is the ever-evolving story of the two fighters and the way they keep growing and adjusting to one another. Figueiredo vs Moreno III was one of the first bouts I covered, all the way back in episode fucking 2, and at the time I was very conceptually upset and bored by it, and this was my conclusion:

Is the UFC right to make this faux-rubber match? Is Deiveson Figueiredo going to get his belt back?

No. Really? -180? Moreno dominated Figueiredo so recently that I made soup when it happened and the soup is still warm. What the fuck? Moreno by decision. It would be one thing if the second fight had been enormously close, but Figueiredo's effective offensive output in the second fight was basically one good takedown and some elbows from his back, and the first fight, whose closeness is cited as the reason for this trilogy, was marked by Figgy noticeably fatiguing in the later rounds when Moreno was doing LESS well against him.

I'm sure my frustration at this stupid matchup that exists solely because of promotional bullshit and the UFC's failure to promote anyone else at flyweight in time is coloring my opinion, Figueiredo is very good and could capitalize on anything and turn it around, but I think Moreno will come in just as prepared as he was before, and while I think Figueiredo will also make adjustments and be considerably harder to finish this time, I think Moreno showed that he still has his number and will make it a solid decision.

Boy, what a thoroughly incorrect take that wound up being. I do still feel prickly about the instant trilogy match when the record of said trilogy was 0-1-1 and one of its participants was beaten and finished just one fight prior, but the fight justified its existence by displaying Figueiredo's ability to learn and adjust as well as Moreno had. Where Brandon Moreno turned their first rematch on its head by timing Figueiredo's blitzing charges and catching them with power jabs and clinch takedowns, Figueiredo took the second rematch by focusing on controlling the distance and using heavy leg kicks to force Moreno to come forward, where Figueiredo could snipe him with his back hand.

And that's why, unlike the last time I wrote about these two, I can't really be mad. Yes, this series is still a bit of an indictment on the UFC's persistent lack of giving a fuck about the flyweight division, and yes, Alexandre Pantoja really should have had a title fight by now, but for one, they did try to capitalize on the rise of City Kickboxing's big-punching little man Kai Kara-France and it's not their fault Brandon Moreno exploded his abdomen with a liver kick, and for two, this series has taken the two men who were already the best flyweight fighters in the world and visibly, demonstrably made them better, smarter, more dangerous competitors, and being able to watch that process unfold on a fight-by-fight basis has been fascinating.

But as much as we all like to keep feeling fascination, this story needs to end. The division has held on with bated breath for two years, the series is 1-1-1, and one way or another, it will end today*. Who's going to win?

Truthfully, I have no fucking idea, and that's why the rematches have stayed vital.

Figueiredo would almost certainly have won their first fight if he hadn't kicked Moreno in the junk. Moreno dominated and thrashed him immediately thereafter. Figueiredo responded by winning an extremely close decision. If you told me Moreno was going to come into this fight expertly navigating distance and chopping FIgueiredo down with kicks, I'd believe you. If you told me this fight was going to be a repeat of the last match and Figueiredo would once again edge Moreno out with power strikes, I would believe you. If you told me Brandon Moreno has been simulating the fight thousands of times over in his LEGO room and has figured out the precise way to do a Psycho Crusher in real life and will send Deiveson Figueiredo to King Kai's planet, I would still find that difficult to fully rule out.

It's been three fights. We've already seen dozens of permutations of these two men finding ways to gain the advantage on each other. Anyone who purports to have the answer as to who will do better is lying, be it to you or themselves. At the end of the day this just comes down to who, after three fights, you believe in more.

And I believe in Brandon Moreno. Deiveson Figueiredo's proven he's the harder striker and the bigger standup threat, but Moreno's adjustments have impressed me more and I think he'll cut through his gameplan one last time. If I were going to do it, I would be trying to exploit the ground game all over again. But I think these two know each other too well for a stoppage, at this point. Brandon Moreno by decision, and then may everyone take an extremely well-deserved bow and a vacation and never fight one another again.

*If this fight ends in a draw or a no contest I will a) scream, b) run through the streets in a rage, and c) cover the slap fighting event.

MAIN CARD: GET IN MY GUARD

WELTERWEIGHT: Gilbert Burns (20-5, #5) vs Neil Magny (27-9, #12)

There are cyclical conversations that come up for each generation of mixed martial arts; GOAT, best champ, biggest upset, etc. One of my favorites has always been "Who's the best fighter to never win a world championship?" It's easy to forget about everyone under the belt--especially in the modern age when multiple interim titles pop up every single year--but some of the best fighters in the sport just never quite mantle the mountain. Joseph Benavidez, Kenny Florian, Yoel Romero, Matt Lindland, Cat Zingano: Mixed martial arts is writ large with incredibly talented fighters who couldn't get past the absolute best of their generation.

Gilbert Burns and Neil Magny are on a trajectory to become two of this generation's answers to the question. And they'd really, really like to change that.

Gilbert Burns is one of the best case studies in how easily weight cutting can be detrimental. When he joined the UFC back in 2014 it was as a lightweight, and he was by no means unsuccessful, running up an 8-3 record at the weight class, but those three losses were the kind of one-sided drubbings that forcibly ensconce a fighter as well out of contendership, and when Dan Hooker knocked him out in half a round, it was clear something had to change. And a year later he was dropping people like fucking rocks at welterweight.

Turns out: When you're one of the world's best grapplers, you have no fear of the ground and you no longer have to cut weight, you can hit people really, really hard. At 155 pounds Gilbert was getting bullied by 5'6" people; at 170 pounds he dropped Kamaru Usman and Khamzat Chimaev. The differences between the two versions of the man are stark--but for how much closer he's gotten to the top, he still hasn't been able to crack it. After a round and a half of hell Usman controlled and ultimately finished him, and after a back-and-forth war, Khamzat outbrawled him. Burns is unquestionably one of the division's elite, but he's also staring down the back side of his thirties and finding himself frozen out of the championship picture.

Neil Magny is in considerably more distressing straits. If Burns is fighting to break out of being an almost-champion, Magny is fighting to break out of being a gatekeeper. At one point in his career Magny was 12-3 in the UFC with victories over former champions like Johny Hendricks and future top contenders like Kelvin Gastelum, and everyone was sure with just a few small adjustments he was assured a future championship. And then Rafael dos Anjos moved up from lightweight and trounced him, and Santiago Ponzinibbio knocked him out, and Michael Chiesa pretzeled him for five rounds.

Very few fighters have displayed ceilings as clear and pronounced as Magny's. He's capable of making great fighters look terrible, but he's just as capable of falling victim to the pressure himself. Never was this more clear than his outing last June against up-and-coming phenom Shavkat Rakhmonov, who seemingly effortlessly outstruck him, outwrestled him, and choked him out in just two rounds, marking the end of yet another Neil Magny comeback bid. Which begs the question: How many times can a fighter get knocked back down the ladder before the bottom of the ladder becomes their home?

On paper, this is an eminently winnable fight for Neil Magny. He's half a foot taller, he's got a ridiculous 9" reach advantage, his cardio advantage is endless and he should be able to stick, move, and use his leverage to clinch and escape when Burns closes in. In practice, this is a terrible fight for Neil Magny. Gilbert Burns is an aggressive striker with rip-your-head-off power punches and absolutely no problem with Neil Magny's wrestling. Khamzat Chimaev, maybe the most aggressively talented grappler in the division, spent thirty seconds in Burns' guard before getting out and refusing to engage him in grappling again for fear of having his arms broken.

Gilbert Burns by submission. Sorry, Neil.

WOMEN'S FLYWEIGHT: Lauren Murphy (16-5, #4) vs Jéssica Andrade (23-9, #6)

Lauren Murphy is, in a lot of ways, one of my ideal fighters. There are people with better technique and more rounded skillsets, but that does not matter. Lauren Murphy does not want to engage you in a brilliant, tactical battle. She wants to march forward and 1-2 you in the god damned face, and if you get too comfortable with that, she'll drop down for a single-leg so she can 1-2 you in the god damned face on the god damned floor. That's it. For almost thirteen years, that has been the Lauren Murphy gameplan. And it works. Since dropping to Women's Flyweight Murphy is 7-2, and those losses were against pre-crisis wrestler extraordinaire Sijara Eubanks and eternal champion Valentina Shevchenko, the only person to ever actually stop her. The last time we saw Lauren Murphy the UFC had made beautiful plans surrounding catapulting Miesha Tate to title contention by having her beat Murphy, but lo, the 1-2s came and left nothing but destruction in their wake.

But she's getting Jéssica fucking Andrade. If Lauren Murphy wants to walk 1-2s into you until the bell rings, Jéssica Andrade wants to lift your entire body into the sky and hurtle it into an active volcano. Karolina Kowalkiewicz had never been knocked out before; Jéssica Andrade turned her lights out in two minutes. Katlyn Chookagian, most of a foot taller, had barely even been bothered by the striking of her opponents; Jéssica Andrade punched a hole in her chest and took her out in one round. Rose Namajunas was a never-knocked-out world champion at the top of her game; Jéssica Andrade took her record and her title away by powerbombing her in real life. Since leaving Women's Bantamweight behind--a deeply silly weight class for a 5'1" fighter in the first place--Andrade has only been defeated by world champions. The truly frustrating part of being an Andrade fan isn't her fighting, it's her unwillingness to stick to a weight class. Two fights ago she dropped Cynthia Calvillo at Flyweight, last April she easily destroyed current top Strawweight contender Amanda Lemos, and instead of following up on that seemingly vulnerable title picture, she's back at Flyweight again.

Will she win? Sure, probably! Jéssica Andrade by TKO after she rips Murphy's spine out like Sub-Zero. But after how hard she was trounced by Valentina Shevchenko less than two years ago I would really, really like to see Andrade re-dedicate herself to the 115-pound class. There's gold waiting for her.

LIGHT-HEAVYWEIGHT: Paul Craig (16-5-1, #9) vs Johnny Walker (19-7, #12

This fight rounds out an all-action main card. But it's not because this fight is going to be good: It's because of the likelihood that it will be really, really funny.

I've noted before that I struggle with certain aspects of critiquing fighters. Paul Craig makes it very easy on me, because statistically, his fights operate on a very simple binary: Is his opponent smart enough not to jump into his guard. Craig is 8-5-1 in the UFC, and with exactly two exceptions, every one of those eight victories happened because by hook or by crook Paul Craig wound up on his back, and his opponent was silly enough to try punching him. And no one is safe from this. Paul Craig has defeated half of each of the last two championship fights at light-heavyweight, Magomed Ankalaev and Jamahal Hill, simply because they decided to get on top of him on the ground whereupon he fucked up their whole lives with his submission offense. He lost his last fight against Volkan Oezdemir because Volkan was disciplined enough to simply get up and walk away every time he heard the siren song of the ground game.

Johnny Walker is many things. He's an incredibly powerful striker who moves much faster than a 6'6" man should be able to. He's one of the most compelling derailed hype trains in the UFC, having run up three straight knockouts in less than three total minutes before getting punched out by career wrestler Corey Anderson. Near the end of 2019, people were theorycrafting ways Walker might well be the man to dethrone Jon Jones; at the outset of 2023 he's 2 for his last 6 and those 2 were the absolute fringe of the top fifteen. He can knock out anyone in the sport on any given day, be it with sweeping punches or hook kicks or flying knees, but he's also been gunshy ever since the Anderson fight, and it's cost him repeatedly.

He's unquestionably a better, stronger, more dangerous striker than Paul Craig. He could knock him out easily. But that's not the question. The question is: Is Johnny Walker smart enough to not follow Paul Craig to the ground and get his shit broke?

To which I say: He dislocated his shoulder during a post-fight celebration because he did The Worm too hard.

Paul Craig by submission.

PRELIMS: PRIDE NEVER DIE

LIGHT-HEAVYWEIGHT: Maurício Rua (27-13-1) vs Ihor Potieria (18-3)

Ihor Potieria by TKO. He's a big, scary blitzer and I don't think Rua will be able to take it. With that out of the way, let's talk about what really matters, because we're going long today.

Maurício "Shogun" Rua is a legend of the goddamn sport. This is his retirement match, just over twenty years after his professional debut, and if you're a UFC fan who wasn't around for Japan's Pride Fighting Championships era you never got to see what made him really, truly special--and that's saying something, because he won the UFC championship. Back in the early 2000s there were two canonical megacamps in mixed martial arts: America's Miletich Fighting Systems, which was in the middle of turning out future hall of famers like Jens Pulver, Matt Hughes, Robbie Lawler and Tim Sylvia, and Brazil's Chute Boxe, which was fielding international superstars like Wanderlei Silva, Anderson Silva, Luiz Azeredo and Murilo "Ninja" Rua. Wanderlei may have been the top dog of the academy, but Ninja was a fan favorite unto himself, between the flying knees, aggressive hooks and insistence on fighting people who should've been multiple weight classes above him. He was beloved, but he only ever achieved mixed success.

And he told all of his fans that if they liked him, they needed to wait until they got a chance to see his kid brother.

Maurício--nicknamed Shogun supposedly because of his preferred brand of gi--made his Pride debut in 2003 and was a star almost instantaneously. Where Ninja struggled with his competition, Shogun ate them alive. It wasn't simply that he virtually always won, but that he won in a fashion so devastating his opponents seemed hopelessly outmatched. Quinton "Rampage" Jackson was one of Pride's scariest middleweights, a wrecking ball of a human being who'd destroyed everyone not named Wanderlei Silva and had even won Pride's single cross-promotion with the UFC by knocking out their top star Chuck Liddell: Shogun crushed him in five minutes, throwing jumping switch kicks and soccer kicks the whole way through. By the time the UFC acquired a dying Pride in 2007 Shogun was 12-1 in the company and its 2005 Middleweight Grand Prix champion, his sole loss having come from dislocating his own arm defending a takedown, and as the consensus #1 light-heavyweight outside the UFC, the world was on pins and needles waiting to see the long-awaited showdown between Shogun and the UFC's once-again champion and star, Chuck Liddell.

They'd have to wait two more years. In May Chuck Liddell was unseated by old rival Quinton Jackson, and in September, Shogun made his UFC debut as a massive favorite against the struggling Ultimate Fighter 1 winner Forrest Griffin--and in one of the biggest upsets in mixed martial arts history, Griffin outfought, outlasted and outgrappled the best light-heavyweight in the world, choking him out with just fifteen seconds left in the bout.

Shogun looked deeply diminished in the UFC. Theories abounded as to why: The hard schedule he'd had in Japan, the possibility that the UFC actually had the higher level of competition all along, the incredibly tough training style of Chute Boxe and how it prematurely aged fighters, and while Shogun has never failed a drug test in two decades of the sport, the UFC's industry standard drug testing as opposed to Pride openly encouraging fighters to take steroids didn't help. But Shogun knew he needed a change, and after the Griffin fight he made the difficult decision to leave Chute Boxe behind and open his own camp.

Within two fights, Shogun had avenged his injury loss to Mark Coleman, destroyed an unfortunately aging and washed Chuck Liddell, and punched his ticket to a UFC championship match against Lyoto Machida--and after losing one of the more controversial decisions of the year, in a Dana White-ordered instant rematch, Shogun looked like the Shogun of the Pride days, knocking out the legendarily undefeated and nigh-unto untouchable Machida in just one round. After three years of waiting, the Pride fans had been rewarded for keeping the faith: The best light-heavyweight in Pride was finally, unquestionably, the best light-heavyweight in the world.

And then, one fight later, Jon Jones effortlessly destroyed him and Shogun's days in the sun were over.

He kept fighting--we're talking about his retirement match now, obviously--but he was never truly relevant again. He could still be a scintillating fighter to watch, and at one point had a pair of fight-of-the-year candidates against Dan Henderson, and that was the pigeonhole he found himself in, having good, impressive fights with fellow fading legends and occasionally disposing of the unranked Gian Villantes of the world, but getting dominated and finished by anyone currently relevant. In the twelve years between his loss to Jones and this retirement fight, Shogun owns exactly one win over ranked competition, and it's a poor hometown decision over Corey Anderson.

Like so many before him and so many that will inevitably come after, Shogun should have stopped a long time ago. But before the aging career, before he was getting choked out by Chael Sonnen and appearing in internet memes where he was knocked out by flying skateboards, Shogun was a legend, and that record still very easily stands as one of the best in the sport's history. Before Jon Jones, Shogun was 19-4 with victories over nine world champions, and he did it before his thirtieth birthday.

His career, even now, is an incredible achievement, and his retirement closes the book on one of the most incredible runs in the sport, and if he pops up in the Bareknuckle Fighting Championship in six months I will wail and gnash my teeth and begrudgingly watch it anyway.

Because he's fucking Shogun, and always will be.

One last time: Pride never die.

MIDDLEWEIGHT: Gregory Rodrigues (13-4) vs Brunno Ferreira (9-0)

Poor Robocop. Gregory "Robocop" Rodrigues has built a reputation as a must-see fighter that far outstrips his mere year and a half in the UFC, but when you are so dedicated to the art of mercilessly walking opponents down and battering them insensible that you do it even when you're so busted up that your supratrochlear artery is sticking out of the gaping hole between your eyes, people take notice. This was supposed to be Rodrigues' shot at the bigtime, as he was slated to fight his first opponent with any name value in Brad Tavares, but Tavares pulled out just ten days before fight night. It is very, very hard to find fighters willing to take on as scary an opponent as Gregory Rodrigues on short notice, and it's damned near impossible to find anyone remotely close to a ranking.

And that's when you import. The irritatingly alliterative Brunno Ferreira is the undefeated middleweight champion of Brazil's BIG SHOT MMA, and he won his UFC contract this past September with a violent first-round knockout, but his bread and butter, believe it or not, is wrestling. Ferreira is the rarest of breeds: A Brazilian Wrestleboxer. He'll brawl, he'll punch, he'll brawl and punch and punch, but he leads with his head and gets stung often for it, and he knows it, because what he really wants to do is scoop people up with single-legs, dump them on their backs, and punch them until candy comes out. And it's worked very well for him so far!

It will not work very well for him here. Rodrigues is not only a much bigger, stronger man, he's a talented judoka who has yet to give up a single takedown in the UFC. Ferreira's going to start getting hit in the head very quickly, and he's going to shoot, and when he can't get the takedown he's going to get very tired very fast. Gregory Rodrigues by TKO.

LIGHTWEIGHT: Thiago Moisés (16-6) vs Melquizael Costa (19-5)

It's typically easy to overlook last-minute replacements, but this has secret banger potential. Guram Kutateladze was supposed to meet Thiago Moisés for a fringe-top-15 contest, but had to pull out thanks to a staph infection, and on a week and a half's notice, Melquizael Costa stepped up from the minor leagues. Which is impressive, because Thiago Moisés is serious business. He's struggled repeatedly with breaking into the rankings, but his combination of quick kicks and aggressive jiu-jitsu have kept him right on the cusp of getting a number by his name for more than four straight years.

But Melquizael "Melk" Costa is no push-over. He's also an inspiring story about the power of both martial arts and nerd shit: Having faced ostracization since childhood thanks to his vitiligo, it wasn't until he picked up UFC Undisputed 3 for his Playstation 3 and learned about UFC bantamweight star Scott Jorgensen, who himself had vitiligo, that Melk's future clicked into place. Two years later Melk had his first professional fight, and nine years later he was Predador FC's featherweight champion, a Legacy Fighting Alliance main-eventer, and a bright dot on the radar of the UFC's talent scouts.

Melk may be a relative unknown to the mainstream, but this is by no means a safe fight for Moisés. Costa's fast and tricky, he's got a very quick scrambling game and he manages to fit overhands and head kicks into very tight, unexpected spaces. Moisés should have a grappling advantage if he can get Melk on the floor, but that's by no means an easy task. In fact: Screw it, I've talked myself into the upset. Melquizael Costa by decision.

WELTERWEIGHT: Gabriel Bonfim (13-0) vs Mounir Lazzez (11-2)

It's striker vs grappler time, baby. Gabriel Bonfim is yet another in the endless line of shiny new Contender Series toys, an undefeated grappler out of Brazil whose record was of the distressing 'regional competition that's nigh-impossible to regard' variety up until he joined the Legacy Fighting Alliance a year and a half ago and was, within two fights, its welterweight champion. He's part of the breed of fighter that uses a total lack of fear of grappling as an excuse to wing wild punches, but as his ten submissions to three knockouts shows, they're a lot less effective than his chokes. And he knows it, because he pursues said chokes as hard as he can, and in one fight dragged a man to the ground by his neck to submit him.

But he likes to get himself hit in the head a lot, and that's a real problem against Mounir "The Sniper" Lazzez. Lazzez is even more of a specialist than Bonfim, but in the opposite discipline: He's a championship kickboxer, all nine stoppage victories of his career have come through his strikes, and in his 2-1 UFC career he's outstruck Abdul Razak Alhassan and Ange Loosa, which is no small feat. Lazzez's combinations are quick and fluid, but maybe his best trait as a striker is his ability to snap headkicks into an opponent's face seemingly out of nowhere. That said, we've seen his style cost him: Warlley Alves looked at his striking advantages and technical know-how, replied "okay, but" and proceeded to just spam liver kicks into his side until he broke and fell over, which, y'know, is an approach.

This fight is a pretty binary question of Can Gabriel Bonfim Get Him Down. Bonfim's got furious punches but they're not particularly clean or powerful, he just throws enough of them that some get through, and once opponents are hurt or at least flustered he virtually always finishes them on the ground. If he can get inside on Lazzez and drag him to the floor, he has a great chance. But his overaggression has gotten him hit on the way in by vastly inferior strikers, and this step up in competition is a big, big ask, and I'm choosing to be cynical. Mounir Lazzez by TKO.

EARLY PRELIMS: PRINCESS NOTHING

HEAVYWEIGHT: Shamil Abdurakhimov (20-7, #15) vs Jailton Almeida (17-2, NR)

The time has come to test a new heavyweight prospect. Shamil Abdurakhimov has been hanging around the UFC for almost eight years, at this point, and up until mid-2019 he was a promising top ten heavyweight, a solidly mixed brawler and wrestler with power in his hands and feet, smart enough to wrestle Derrick Lewis, tough enough to last four rounds before getting blasted into unconsciousness. But the dawn of a new decade brought ruin. Shamil was suddenly plagued with career issues--injuries, visa problems, the outbreak of COVID--and that, his age and the rising tide of the division's top ten sunk him. Shamil's managed only three fights in almost four years, he was knocked out in all three of them, and he's suddenly in his forties and watching his prime disappear in the rear view mirror.

And nothing excites a promotion like the chance to cannibalize an aging standard. Jailton Almeida is one of the UFC's favorite Contender Series pickups: An aggressive, 6'3" grappler who's competed in three weight divisions, from 185 to 220 pounds, and gleefully jumps between heavyweight and light-heavyweight submitting people wherever the UFC pays him to go. They've been TRYING to get him prominent fights--he was supposed to fight highly-touted wrestler Maxim Grishin on two separate occasions and this is actually the third attempt at booking tonight's Abdurakhimov match-up--but he's settled for quickly disposing of thoroughly overmatched replacements, making this arguably the first true test of his UFC tenure, a bout against a strong, experienced heavyweight who hasn't been submitted in eleven years.

Having said all of that: He's a +625 underdog. Shamil Abdurakhimov's on a three-fight losing streak, and while there's no shame in getting pounded out by Curtis Blaydes or knocked out by Sergei Pavlovich, there's a little shame in losing a 10-8 round to Chris Daukaus. Jailton Almeida by submission. This should be the coming-out party the UFC's been hoping for.

BANTAMWEIGHT: Luan Lacerda (12-1) vs Cody Stamann (20-5-1)

You know, I've become so thoroughly haunted by the Contender Series that it makes me legitimately happy when a new fighter comes up who is neither a Contender Series baby nor a last-minute substitution, just a good, old-fashioned talent scouting. Luan Lacerda is a BJJ black belt out of Brazil's immortal supercamp Nova União, and he has some of the smartest, nastiest leglock sweeps I've seen in mixed martial arts. The man will give up bottom position, snag an ankle and have teleported behind his opponent and into a choke seconds later. This is potential bad news for Cody "The Spartan" Stamann, a man I wholly and freely admit a bias against on grounds that he saw 300 as a teenager and now he has a Molon Labe tattoo and a drastic misunderstanding of a society of pederast slavers who practiced ritual infanticide.

Primarily, though, he's a wrestleboxer with a strong dependence on takedowns to implement his gameplans, and Said Nurmagomedov just demonstrated the potential dangers of doing this. Luan Lacerda by submission.

LIGHTWEIGHT: Ismael Bonfim (18-3) vs Terrance McKinney (13-4)

Brothers fighting on cards together rarely ends well. Ismael got his UFC contract on the same Contender Series episode as his above-mentioned brother Gabriel, but where Gabriel is a grappling specialist, Ismael is an all-around fighter who likes prolonged striking engagements. Unusually for mixed martial arts, he also heavily favors the shoulder roll for his boxing defense rather than the high guard or the general MMA defense known as 'running away.' But the UFC has given him a big fucking ask for his debut: Terrance McKinney is a wrecking ball of a fighter, a tall, rangy lightweight with massive power in his hands and solid backup wrestling. McKinney would already be in the top fifteen conversation were it not for a wild if lamentable brawl that saw McKinney nearly knock out the legendarily tough Drew Dober twice before getting tired, getting wild, and getting caught.

I'm very interested in Ismael's future in the UFC. He's a talented fighter and anyone ambitious enough to dip into tight, risky countering techniques in MMA is a fighter to watch. It's almost certainly going to catch him against a jump in competition this big and this abrupt. Terrance McKinney by TKO.

WELTERWEIGHT: Warlley Alves (14-5) vs Nicolas Dalby (20-4-1 (2))

This is the battle of the Men who Could Have Been. Warlley Alves is one of the great near-misses of the sport: Champion of The Ultimate Fighter Brazil 3, choker of Colby Covington before making Colby Covington look stupid was cool, the calibre of fighter who went the distance with Kamaru Usman, kicked Mounir Lazzez in half and punched Sultan Aliev straight out of the sport. But with all of those accomplishments, he hasn't been able to string back to back victories together since 2018. He has every necessary skill to be a contender, but like so many before him, he often falters under pressure. Nicolas Dalby is in the middle of his second swing at mattering. He joined the UFC in 2015, immediately upset Elizeu Zaleski dos Santos and went to a draw with the thoroughly hyped Darren Till, then faded away after two unranked losses. Three years of toil in the UK fight scene brought him back to the fold, but the Dalby of his late thirties is simultaneously a more dangerous and less consistent fighter, working behind more kicks than his old brawling style but also consistently giving up grappling positions in his haste to attack.

But that doesn't make this any less of a coinflip. Both of these men are violent brawlers, both men have entire back catalogues of techniques they tend to ignore completely in favor of throwing caution to the wind and attacking, and both men are very difficult to finish. I'm ultimately falling on the side of Warlley Alves by decision but this is one of those fights where anything could, and possibly will, happen.

WOMEN'S FEATHERWEIGHT: Josiane Nunes (9-1, #15 at Women's Bantamweight) vs Zarah Fairn dos Santos (6-4, Featherweight Doesn’t Have Rankings)

Hey, guess what, folks, it's time for another episode of Women's Rankings Are Insane. In one corner we have Josiane Nunes, who has exactly two bouts in the UFC: A 2021 bout at bantamweight against "Bad News Barbie" Bea Malecki and a 2022 featherweight tilt against Ramona Pascual. Malecki was 2-0 in the UFC, has not fought since, and had to start a gofundme because her pay was so low that she couldn't afford to keep training. On the back of this win, Nunes is ranked as the 15th best women's bantamweight in the world, despite having not competed at the weight class in years. Zarah Fairn is 0-2 in the UFC, with both fights having taken place at featherweight and both having ended in fairly effortless first-round stoppage losses. This makes her the #4 women's featherweight in the UFC, because there are exactly four women's featherweights in the UFC.

Earlier in this writeup I said 5'1" was a silly height to fight at Women's Bantamweight. Josiane Nunes, at 5'2", fights one weight class higher than that and has actually competed even further up at 155 pounds. She is undefeated at both and her only career loss came to Taila Santos, who competes at 125 pounds. Zarah Fairn is the only fighter in this contest who has consistently stuck to the 145-pound featherweight class, and she has been rewarded with visible failure and, after this fight where Josiane Nunes is almost certainly going to tear her arms off and hit her with them, will probably be cut.

The winner of this fight between a 1-0 featherweight and an 0-2 featherweight will determine the #2 featherweight, because the winner will be better than half the division.

Mixed martial arts is cruel. Women's weight classes are basically suggestions and I hate it. Josiane Nunes by TKO.

BANTAMWEIGHT: Saimon Oliveira (18-4) vs Daniel Marcos (13-0)

Remember a few fights ago when I pitched a little nerd fit about people whose understanding of ancient Greek culture comes from the mind of Frank Miller during the days just before he began actively freebasing uncut racism? Daniel Marcos was the last bantamweight champion of a Peruvian mixed martial arts organization named 300 SPARTA. He was so heartbroken when it ceased operation that he didn't take a fight for three years, and only re-emerged on the Contender Series again this past September. Saimon Oliveira was a standout of much less coolly-named companies like Fight Club Slam, Sicario, Mack The Knife MMA (why yes, that WAS centrally involved in the Kinahan Cartel, why do you ask) and Pancrase, whatever the fuck that is.

I'm looking forward to this not in the sense that it will necessarily be a good fight, but in the sense that it will be the right kind of really, hilariously sloppy. Both fighters like to drive recklessly forward behind wild-eyed striking, with Marcos favoring looping punches and Oliveira liking flying knees and kicks, but Oliveira's grappling is considerably tighter once the ground gets involved. And I still haven't forgiven 300 SPARTA for being a much funnier version of my joke. Saimon Oliveira by decision.