CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 53: OKAY, BEST OF SEVEN
CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 53: OKAY, BEST OF SEVEN
UFC 287: Pereira vs Adesanya 2
EARLY PRELIMS 3 PM PST/6 PM EST VIA ESPN+ | PRELIMS 5 PM PST/8 PM EST VIA ESPN+ | MAIN CARD 7 PM PST/10 PM EST VIA PAY-PER-VIEW
So, anything interesting happen in your week?
It feels deeply bizarre to return to business as normal just a couple days after news broke that the Ultimate Fighting Championship is merging with World Wrestling Entertainment in the true and final victory of rich combat sports jerks over responsibility or decency, but the wailing and gnashing of teeth about getting professional wrestling's peanut butter in mixed martial arts' chocolate feels like a case of fans forgetting the old ways.
Mixed martial arts came from professional wrestling. Professional wrestling came from martial arts. Martial arts came from wrestling. We are all of the same primordial ooze, none of us would exist without the other, and our industries will be inextricably linked until we all burn to ash in the super-embers of our exploding sun.
But boy, is it appropriate that we're starting this new era with the most professional wrestling-ass storyline the UFC has going right now.
MAIN EVENT: HAUNTED BY A FREIGHT TRAIN
MIDDLEWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP: Alex Pereira (7-1, Champion) vs Israel Adesanya (23-2, #1)
Imagine, for a moment, that you are Israel Adesanya. You're a multi-time kickboxing champion who's only lost by close decisions, and even then only twice, and you knock out almost everyone you face. You're dabbling in MMA, you're undefeated, and you're successful to the point that MMA fans who pride themselves on being obsessively in the know are already talking about your UFC future. You are, categorically, hot shit.
And then this one guy beats you. It's a decision, but it's a loss. It's your only loss in the middle of what would otherwise be nineteen straight victories. It irritates you. You're splitting your time more and more between kickboxing and mixed martial arts these days, so a little slipping is understandable. When you lose out on a Glory Kickboxing world championship, well, that's unfortunate, but again: It's a decision. They happen. You can't even be that mad: You're already in contact with the UFC, you know your time in kickboxing is coming to an end. But you want one more fight. You want revenge.
And then that guy beats you again. You had him hurt, you might even have gotten a standing TKO were it mixed martial arts, but it's kickboxing, so he survives a standing eight count, rallies, and knocks you out cold. You end your kickboxing career on your back. And it sticks in your brain, and you never forget.
But you do move on. You're a mixed martial artist now, and, shockingly quickly, one of the best. The UFC puts their full marketing weight behind you and you deliver sterling performances in every outing not involving strange Italian men who wear their clothing backwards. In less than a year, you're the #1 contender; in two, you're the undisputed champion of the world. By three you're about to challenge for a title at a second weight class, and by four you may not have succeeded, but you made a good accounting for yourself, and you've got the second-most title defenses in middleweight history. You've cleaned out most of the division. You are, indisputably, the best fighter it's seen since Anderson Silva--who you beat. You're the champion. You're the face of Puma shoes. The world is your oyster.
But there's this one guy.
Everyone who fights Adesanya is looking to defuse him. Robert Whittaker wanted to use his wrestling to stifle his counters and his movement, Jared Cannonier wanted to force him into the pocket and land up close, Marvin Vettori wanted to defeat him with psychic warfare and wearing his shorts backwards.
Alex Pereira is the exception. He doesn't need to defuse Israel Adesanya. He's not afraid of Israel Adesanya. Not only does he not want to utilize secondary fighting skills to defeat Israel Adesanya, he can't: He doesn't have any. Alex Pereira faced Israel Adesanya in the sport that represents the centerpiece of both of their skillsets and defeated him twice. Across three separate combat sports, he is the one and only person on the planet to ever stop him, and he did it by knocking him senseless. He's just as tall, he's got just as much range, and he hits even harder.
The UFC booked this fight both for you and against you. They fast-tracked Alex Pereira to the championship because they felt there was money in it--both the story of his role as the one guy to ever unequivocally beat you, as a matter of revenge for you, the athlete, and as a matter of carefully ducking the legion of wrestlers and grapplers and Robert Whittakers in the top ten in favor of an all-kickboxing affair. You spend the entire run-up to the fight talking about how glad you are that he's in your world, how you're going to show him how much you've evolved, how kickboxing referees and standing eight counts won't save him this time.
You're right. Aside from a close second round where he gets you discombobulated with a headkick, you're in control of the fight. You're taking him down, you're controlling him in the clinch, you're outlanding him, you're stinging him with right hands. You've made this place your home, and the ghosts of the past have no hold over you here. You're dancing on the train tracks all the way to a fifth round, firmly in the lead on every scorecard, with three minutes to freedom.
And then a left hand hits you. And another. And suddenly you're bent over against the fence staring at the floor, eating hooks, and a man in a black shirt is holding onto you and waving your world championship away.
And he's giving it to that one fucking guy.
And there's no smoking gun for your championship loss. You didn't throw an ill-advised Chris Weidman spinning wheel kick, or have a Lyoto Machida off night, or execute an incomprehensible Rose Namajunas strategy. You fought a good fight. You did what you planned to do. You were minutes away from putting Alex Pereira in your rear-view mirror for the rest of your life. Was it his footwork backing you into the fence repeatedly? Was it the body shots keeping you from watching out for the left hook? Was it just a lapse in concentration?
Or are ghosts real, and you're just haunted by a specter that won't ever let you go?
There are a thousand reasons you should win this fight. You almost won the first one. You were the more complete fighter, by far. You had him hurt on multiple occasions. You're still so much more of a star than he is that this entire narrative is written from your perspective, rather than the guy who beat you. It's Your Belt. It's Your Division. He doesn't even want it; he and his coach are already talking about challenging for the light-heavyweight championship you failed to win after he beats you again. He took your title and your division and your chin and now he wants to take your god damned legacy.
This should be the moment you exorcise your demons and remind the world why you're the best. Why hauntings and curses are fiction and nothing is real but our fists.
It should be.
But you just can't shake the feeling that maybe it's not. You can't shake the feeling that you haven't excelled in rematches, period. That people seem to figure you out just a little better each time.
You cannot shake that we've been telling ourselves ghost stories aren't real for millennia, and somehow, we just can't stop being afraid of the past.
ALEX PEREIRA BY TKO.
CO-MAIN EVENT: SNIPERS WAITING ON DANA WHITE'S SIGNAL TO TAKE OUT GILBERT'S KNEECAPS
WELTERWEIGHT: Gilbert Burns (21-5, #5) vs Jorge Masvidal (35-16, #11)
Boy, I really hate this fight.
It's not that the fight, itself, will be bad. It's probably going to be fun as hell. Masvidal's a good striker with underrated ground defense and Burns is an incredibly talented grappler who uses his confidence on the ground to let himself throw giant haymakers on the feet. This is virtually guaranteed to provide fireworks.
But you can't really talk about the fight without talking about the context of the fight. Jorge Masvidal is the #11 welterweight on the planet. He has exactly one victory over a currently active UFC fighter, and it was Michael Chiesa, and it was at a different weight class, and it was just three months shy of an entire decade ago. Jorge Masvidal has not won a UFC fight since 2019. and that was against the unranked Nate Diaz, and it earned him two consecutive title shots. The UFC was, in fact, trying to book Masvidal into a title eliminator against Leon Edwards last year, and likely would have succeeded were it not for his assault charges with Colby Covington outside of the cage.
And now Masvidal's in the periphery of the divisional rankings, and he's getting a shot at the top five. And you can bet your ass that if he beats Burns, who has been fighting the top ten of the division for the last four years, Masvidal is getting the next crack at the championship.
And you can bet a similar quantity of ass Burns is not getting the same treatment. He spent the last full year and a half calling out Colby Covington while fighting Khamzat fucking Chimaev, the scariest prospect in the sport, and instead he gets to defend his position against Jorge Masvidal while Colby is getting the next title shot based on his year-old victory against...Jorge Masvidal.
Welterweight is an absolutely incredible division and the shambles the UFC has made of its booking will never stop infuriating me.
The greater conversation around these booking choices always winds up orbiting the same idea: You go where the money is. Masvidal and Covington are draws, therefore it's justifiable to prioritize them. This has always felt deeply silly to me, because believing it necessitates believing being a draw is an inborn trait, and that Joe Rogan and Dana White are the David Attenboroughs of mixed martial arts, peering through the reeds at Paddy Pimblett and Sean O'Malley grazing majestically in the brush and cooing, "There it is, the secretive fan connection x-factor," as opposed to the company harnessing the power of a multi-billion dollar marketing empire to ensure you cannot follow the sport without hearing about a certain subset of people they would really like you to pay them $80 to see.
Draws are made. Some are made more easily than others, but each one was carefully cultivated and managed. The UFC chose to advertise Jorge Masvidal assaulting Leon Edwards backstage rather than punishing him. Nothing is accidental or incidental but the outcomes of the fights.
The UFC is most certainly hoping the outcome of this fight is Masvidal dropping Burns and giving them another season of Street Jesus hype packages. Are they going to get what they want?
Probably not--but boy, I'm not as sure as I'd like to be. Gilbert Burns punches like a truck crashing into a train, and he has no fear of walking into fire, because most of his opponents do not hit nearly as hard as he does and very few of them are willing to take him down to stop him. Khamzat Chimaev has outgrappled everyone he's faced in the UFC (that he didn't knock out in twenty seconds instead), and he spent all of one minute on the ground with Burns before nearly getting his arm broken and immediately deciding to stay standing for the rest of the fight, even though it meant getting repeatedly cracked in the mouth.
But Khamzat also hit him. A lot. And Khamzat Chimaev is not a particularly tricky striker. Jorge Masvidal is. Gilbert Burns is so used to marching opponents down with a casual disregard for their power that he lets himself get caught on a regular basis, and unlike Neil Magny or Stephen Thompson, Jorge's defensive grappling is solid enough that he was able to fend off Demian Maia for fifteen minutes. Jorge's woodchipper clinch attacks do not help matters.
I'm still giving it to GILBERT BURNS BY DECISION, because I think he's the better all-around fighter, and I have faith in his ability to keep Masvidal alternating between defending punches and takedowns for three rounds. But--even if it's most likely just nihilistic fear--I cannot shake a sinking feeling.
MAIN CARD: THE NEW KID, HE'S GOT MONEY / THE MONEY I DESERVE
BANTAMWEIGHT: Rob Font (19-6, #6) vs Adrian Yanez (16-3, #12)
Rob Font is in an unfortunate spot. He's been one of the ten best bantamweights in the world for half a decade, but he's also been firmly ensconced in the dreaded position of the gatekeeper: Good enough to jab circles around the lower half of the division, not good enough to get past the Raphael Assunçãos and Pedro Munhozi of the world. But after seven years in the UFC, it's only in the past twelve months that he's ever lost two back to back fights--and what's worse, lost them by simply getting outfought. José Aldo gave him a lesson in levels in 2021 and almost exactly one year ago Font put together a solid performance against Marlon Vera, outlanding him easily--and losing a wide decision anyway, because he couldn't stop getting nearly knocked out in every single round. Font's grip on the top ten has never looked more tenuous, and the wolves have come to the door.
Adrian Yanez looks like a hell of a wolf. His Contender Series knockout of DRAGON HOUSE CHAMPION Brady Huang got him to the big show, and he rifled off five wins in just a year and a half--four of which were hilariously violent knockouts. His best-aging win is a decision over Davey Grant (which is a split, but it really, really shouldn't have been), but by far his most satisfying win--and the one that got him over with the fans--was last year's first-round knockout of Tony Kelley, one of the few fighters to make a big enough ass of himself that even the UFC decided he wasn't worth it. It's a showcase of the best aspects of Adrian's fight game: Obscenely fast hands, quick combinations, and one of the slickest, most consistent left hooks to the body I've seen in mixed martial arts.
But this is a big jump in competition. Rob Font isn't just an extremely solid boxer, he's got fantastic recovery. Aldo and Chito are two of the division's hardest hitters, and Font got wobbled a half-dozen times between the two fights, but he stayed up and survived every scare. Those kinds of beatings don't come without a cost, though, and the more Font's chin gets chipped away, the more likely it becomes that an Adrian Yanez reaps the benefits of the cracks other men put in it for him.
I think we're going to see the passing of a torch. ADRIAN YANEZ BY TKO. Font outboxing Yanez and keeping him on the perimeter of a jab would by no means surprise me, but neither would Yanez putting him down.
WELTERWEIGHT: Kevin Holland (23-9 (1)) vs Santiago Ponzinibbio (29-6)
Welcome to the war of the almost-weres. Kevin Holland was one of the stars of the UFC's pandemic era, a constantly busy fighter taking five bouts a year and making his way from unknown prospect to top ten contender in an eyeblink thanks to massive reach, ferocious striking and a surprising offensive grappling game. But, as so often becomes the case, 'twas wrestling that slayed the beast. Derek Brunson and Marvin Vettori double-legged Holland out of the middleweight division, and his 2022 turn to welterweight got off to a strong start only to get brutally stopped in its tracks, once in a two-minute grappling clinic thanks to Khamzat Chimaev and once last December, as despite putting on a fight-of-the-year candidate with Stephen Thompson, he wound up on the receiving end of the worst beating, and first TKO loss, of his career.
Santiago Ponzinibbio was right on the cusp of a title shot back in 2018, only for a series of progressively more terrifying medical issues to threaten not just his career, but his life. It took two and a half years for him to fully recover and return to the sport, and most people have spent that return wondering if he did, in fact, fully recover. Li Jingliang ruined his comeback party by knocking him out, he beat Miguel Baeza but not before absorbing an entire round of punishment, he wound up on the wrong side of split decision losses to Geoff Neal and Michel Pereira, and even in his knockout victory over Alex Morono last December he was en route to a decision loss before making a third-round comeback. His jab is still sharp and his power is still there, but his chin, and the striking talent he's up against, aren't what they used to be.
This most likely will not be a better night for him, either. Ponzinibbio's best weapon is his jab, but it's real difficult to effectively jab someone with an 8" reach advantage, and after watching him struggle with the power of Alex Morono and Geoff Neal, his prospects against Kevin Holland seem slim. Holland's weakness is and has always been wrestling, and Ponzinibbio does have a surprising takedown game, and I hope for his sake he uses it judiciously. But I can't help seeing KEVIN HOLLAND BY TKO.
BANTAMWEIGHT: Raul Rosas Jr. (7-0) vs Christian Rodriguez (8-1)
It wouldn't be a modern card without a promotionally favored blood sacrifice. Raul Rosas Jr. is Dana White's pet project of 2022, a chain-wrestling power-grappler who won a fight on the Contender Series last September only to be told he'd have to wait a few months because, as a 17 year-old and thus not a legal adult, the UFC couldn't actually sign him. But by December, it was completely kosher. They threw one of their statistically worst fighters in Jay Perrin at him, and Rosas dutifully rolled him up into a pretzel and choked him out in three minutes.
This may shock you, but the UFC is trying to do it again. Christian "CeeRod" Rodriguez, who was apparently nicknamed by the same Scottish witch coven that cursed Kenny Florian, also won a Contender Series bout back in 2021, only for the UFC to pass on him on account of missing weight by three pounds, which mysteriously was completely fine when the suspiciously British Jake Hadley did it. Rodriguez got picked up as a last-minute injury replacement instead, and now the UFC's stuck with him. Coincidentally, Christian Rodriguez has been repeatedly taken down in all three of his fights under the UFC's corporate banner, even his submission victory over Joshua Weems last year.
How deeply odd that the UFC would pit their hyped wrestler-grappler against a guy who gets taken down a lot who they also didn't really want under contract in the first place. What a strange set of coincidences live at the core of our sport. RAUL ROSAS JR. BY SUBMISSION.
PRELIMS: WE COULD HAVE HAD IT ALL
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Kelvin Gastelum (17-8 (1), #15) vs Chris Curtis (30-9, #14)
Nothing makes me feel my age as a mixed martial arts fan the way Kelvin Gastelum does. When I think of Kelvin Gastelum I still think of the promising young prospect with fluid boxing and speedy wrestling who feels like a sure-thing world champion one day--and then I remember that his UFC debut was eleven god damned years ago. Kelvin Gastelum is 11-8 in the UFC and 10 of the people he beat are now retired from the sport altogether. Even his "he looked kind of good!" title shot against Israel Adesanya turns four years old this month. Kelvin Gastelum was one of the best prospects in the world at welterweight, and then dubstep came and went, and now he's 1 for his last 6 at middleweight and all the new rap music people like makes me feel bored and sleepy.
And Chris Curtis is here to pick the bones. His run of unexpected underdog victories by way of I Will Bludgeon You With My Fists came to an end after a lackluster loss to Jack Hermansson last summer, but after knocking Joaquin Buckley out this past December he's back on the winning path. But here, Curtis is in the particularly weird position of both having the most high-profile fight of his career and also, arguably, having the least to gain in victory. Beating Gastelum would mean Curtis showing his ability to beat someone who hung in there with Israel Adesanya and Robert Whittaker--but he's already ranked higher than Gastelum, he's already got better recent victories than Gastelum, and at this point in their respective careers, his value is primarily in name.
Which is a terrible thing to say about a guy who just went five rounds with Robert Whittaker two years ago! Kelvin Gastelum isn't bad! He just hasn't looked good in a very long time. His last truly impressive performance was all the way back in 2017. I'd love a Kelvin Gastelum return to form, but none of his power, range or skillset issues at middleweight have changed, and he's only gotten older, and he's only looked worse, and now he's fighting a huge power puncher who's never been taken down in the UFC. For a faltering fighter who's shaking off two years of ring rust, it's a big ask. CHRIS CURTIS BY DECISION.
WOMEN'S STRAWWEIGHT: Michelle Waterson-Gomez (18-10, #10) vs Luana Pinheiro (10-1, #15)
One of the cruelest parts of combat sports is how little space there is to fall off. Michelle Waterson-Gomez has been at the top ten of both atomweight and strawweight for an entire decade, but the price of that greatness is getting stuck amidst everyone else who's just as great as you are. After barely losing in her entire career, Michelle's 1 for her last 5, and all four of those losses were to #1 contenders, and the one victory was an incredibly narrow decision over Angela Hill, the Holy Saint of Getting Fucked Over By Judges. And now Waterson-Gomez is 37 and staring down a fifth loss in as many years, but this one would see her finally out of the top ten and quite possibly out of a career.
Because Luana Pinheiro hasn't exactly distinguished herself as a big strawweight standout. She's 2-0 in the UFC, but the first of those victories came thanks to a first-round disqualification and the second was a drag-out brawl with Sam Hughes, who is tough, gritty, and also 2-4 in the company. We've barely even seen Pinheiro fight in the UFC, neither performance was great, and thanks to injuries and poor timing, she's been on the shelf for the last year and a half. Her swarming punches and heavy leg kicks are still dangerous regardless of how long she's been gone, but she's never had to land them on someone as fast or skilled as Waterson-Gomez.
But she's still a betting favorite, because--y'know, it's hard to shake being 1 for your last 5. It's hard to shake being associated with getting repeatedly beaten up. MICHELLE WATERSON-GOMEZ BY DECISION still feels accurate to me--Pinheiro's cardio and aggression tend to falter and Michelle's real hard to put away--but the chance of sadness here is very, very high.
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Gerald Meerschaert (35-15) vs Joseph Pyfer (10-2)
Gerald Meerschaert refuses to go away. He's going on seven years in the UFC, and try as he might, he gets the crap beaten out of him in every other fight, but by god, he keeps choking people out over and over and over. In his last three victories, Meerschaert has been taken down, elbowed, stumbled or all-out dropped, but every time he's gotten up, and every time he's swung exhausted yet inexplicably effective punches, and every time, he has wound up getting a submission victory, because the true heart of martial arts is comedy.
And nothing is funnier than a guy unironically nicknamed "Bodybagz" in real life. Joseph Pyfer made it through the Contender Series last year--his second try, as the first time around in 2020 Dustin Stoltzfus broke his arm--and was given one of the biggest gimme fights in UFC history for his promotional debut, meeting the much smaller, much less successful, 0-3 repeated knockout victim Alen Amedovski, whom Pyfer dutifully punched out in one round. So the UFC is following it by giving him the closest thing the middleweight division will ever get to a Jim Miller.
I do not believe in Bodybagz. GERALD MEERSCHAERT BY SUBMISSION.
HEAVYWEIGHT: Karl Williams (8-1) vs Chase Sherman (16-11)
My disappointment is immeasurable and yet utterly perfect. Until one week ago this was a heavyweight clash between Chase Sherman, the closest thing I have to a true spiritual antagonist in life, and Chris Barnett, a 5'9" superheavyweight who does spinning wheel kicks. No one has inspired me to greater depths of artistic despair and passion than Chase Sherman, and I had thought for a full month about just how to truly exemplify my feelings on this madness-inducing matchup. There are Discord logs about my intention to force myself into a dissociative fugue state until I'd created a poetic epic in the style of Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea about the true depths of heavyweight and its power to crush dreams.
But the world is more artistic than I am. My writing is unnecessary. Industry is consuming the humanities, the Great Salt Lake is running dry, and our heavyweight dreams died before they could be born. Karl Williams is filling in for Chris Barnett. He doesn't do spinning wheel kicks. He shoots takedowns. There is no glory to be had in this battle. This is not a place of honor. The marlin was eaten long before we got back to port, and we don't even get to keep the skull. Chase Sherman's second UFC tenure will end not in an outstanding display of mixed martial comedy, but in the endless double-leg takedowns of a man who has no mind for mercy.
We could not ask for more. Nothing could be so precise to our cause. Heavyweight is a potter's field, an Omelas paved atop Yuki Nakai's suffering, and we are, one and all, damned by it. We are Chase Sherman, and we are no more. KARL WILLIAMS BY DECISION. The rest is silence.
EARLY PRELIMS: THE WRESTLING CLASSIC
WOMEN'S STRAWWEIGHT: Cynthia Calvillo (9-5-1, #15) vs Lupita Godinez (8-3, NR)
We haven't had a truly unequivocal pink slip fight in a bit, but boy, this is it. Cynthia Calvillo is an ultra-solid fighter who was a seemingly permanent contender at the strawweight division, but in 2020 she shifted up to 125 pounds and paid for it. After four straight losses she's back down to her home weight class, but if she takes another loss tonight that's five in a row, and that's a certain kiss of UFC death. "Loopy" Lupita Godinez was tearing her way up the strawweight charts with her inexhaustible chain-wrestling assaults until she was dashed on the jagged rocks of Angela Hill last year, who, channeling her deep Street Fighter fandom, pulled a Zangief and outwrestled her. Godinez is the kind of fighter who will chain takedowns into takedowns into other, different takedowns, but she's shown the ability to maintain the pace for fifteen minutes, which is deeply unusual.
And she'll have to do it here, too. Cynthia Calvillo is a very strong counter-wrestler, and it took grapplers like Pearl Gonzalez and wrestlers like Carla Esparza to drag her down. Godinez may or may not be able to double-leg her successfully. But I'm pretty sure she'll be able to drown her in wrestling attempts before Calvillo can get enough return fire off to make a difference. LUPITA GODINEZ BY DECISION.
CATCHWEIGHT, 160 LBS: Trey Ogden (16-5) vs Ignacio Bahamondes (13-4)
The last time we were about to have a Trey Ogden fight it was two weeks ago, and I wrote this:
Over this same period of time, Trey "Samurai Ghost" Ogden, who clawed his way up the regional scene, got picked out as a last minute replacement against Jordan Leavitt, where he wound up on the wrong end of a split decision, and the UFC rewarded him by trying to feed him to another Contender Series promotional favorite, Daniel Zellhuber. Ogden won--so now he's fighting another, different Contender Series baby they're trying to build up with wins on the early preliminaries of a forgettable fight card, and Daniel Zellhuber has a nice, comfortable striking matchup against the widely beloved Lando Vannata on the undercard of a Max Holloway main event next month.
It's not even remotely subtle, and I'm less angry these days about the fact that they do it than I am that they don't even try to cover it up.
Ogden's opponent that night, Manuel Torres, got scratched the day of the fight after falling ill. The UFC, in their infinite wisdom, matched Ogden up again with another fighter who'd just lost their dancing partner--yet ANOTHER Contender Series favorite, Ignacio Bahamondes, who is about 5" taller and noticeably rangier and who will, conveniently, not have to cut weight all the way to 155 pounds like Ogden did two weeks ago.
This shit? It sucks. I am so very tired. IGNACIO BAHAMONDES BY DECISION.
FEATHERWEIGHT: Steve Garcia (13-5) vs Shayilan Nuerdanbieke (39-10)
We're here to have a fight between two guys coming off wildly unexpected circumstances. When last we saw Steve "Mean Machine" Garcia, he was scoring a big upset by not just defeating but beating the absolute brakes off one-time promotional wunderkind Chase "The Dream" Hooper, dropping him with punches four times in ninety seconds before Herb Dean decided Hooper was too young for permanent brain damage. Shayilan Nuerdanbieke had the dubious honor of being an unwitting part in one of 2022's biggest MMA scandals, facing Darrick Minner in the fight where Minner's leg imploded after barely a minute, only for it to arise that Minner's injury may have been leaked by his own coach as part of the biggest gambling scandal mixed martial arts has seen in a quarter-century.
One of these is somewhat more relevant to this fight than the other. Garcia's a much bigger, meaner fighter than Shayilan, and the wrestle-boxing approach that keeps Shayilan vital is going to be much tougher to get working on Garcia. STEVE GARCIA BY TKO.
WOMEN'S STRAWWEIGHT: Sam Hughes (7-5) vs Jaqueline Amorim (6-0)
Our night is opening with another great evaluation of regional talent. Sam Hughes is 2-4 in the UFC, and her success has come from her ability to wrestle the crap out of her opponents. If she can double-leg you repeatedly, she'll have a good night. If she can't, she will get visibly frustrated while repeatedly eating jabs to the face. Jaqueline Amorim is, refreshingly, taking the traditional route to the UFC: Trading a prominent regional championship for a contract. After winning and defending the Women's Strawweight Championship out at the Legacy Fighting Alliance, she's bringing an undefeated record, replete with six straight finishes, to the big show. Of course, her best opponent was either 3-1-1 or 4-3, because regional competition at the lower weight classes for women is still, respectfully, not great.
But her wrestling exists, and her grappling chops and no-gi tournament performances are very real, and that gives me great pause about Sam's chances of outwrestling her for three rounds. JAQUELINE AMORIM BY DECISION.