SATURDAY, JULY 1 FROM THE APPROPRIATELY POINTLESS UFC APEX
PRELIMS 1 PM PST / 4 PM EST | MAIN CARD 4 PM PST / 7 PM EST
We're gonna deviate from the norm this week, and if you look at the card picture below, you'll probably understand why.
MAIN EVENT: NO, REALLY, NOPE
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Sean Strickland (26-5, #7) vs Abusupiyan Magomedov (25-4-1, NR)
This has probably been coming for a long time. It's fine. Let's do this. Or, more accurately, let's not fucking do this. We're not talking about this fight. Not for awhile, anyway. I want to talk about something else.
There's this growing conversation in the UFC's following about the quality of their cards and their matchmaking, so much so that even UFC matchmaker Mick Maynard has been chiming in about it to ridicule the notion that there's been any decline and harangue the MMA media for daring to complain. And it gets a lot of traction from the fanbase, half because fanboyism exists even for multi-billion dollar international conglomerates, half because capital has so thoroughly brought American culture to heel that the existence of critique, itself, has become a point of unacceptable contention.
When the internet was born the first thing it learned was how to connect people and the second thing it learned was how to get half of those people to think the other half sucked total shit. The advent of mass, unprecedented human connection brought with it brave new ways to tell those newfound connections that everything they liked was stupid and they were idiots for disagreeing. This, in turn, created two avenues of coping that despite being inherently exclusionary were somehow used in concert: An ironic detachment from the concept of caring about what anyone else thinks, and an outright antipathy for the concept of criticism itself.
It was necessary. It was powerful. And it was immediately co-opted by every celebrity, company and politician conceited enough to see it as the best possible defense the world could have ever offered. 'Your criticisms have no validity, you're just hating.' And hating, we have collectively agreed, is a worthless enterprise. Why contribute negativity? Enjoy a thing or move on. Which sounds fine, right? When you're a person on the internet speaking to another person on the internet who thinks you're a horrible human being because you think Skyrim is good or you still enjoy Ska, it's a perfectly sensible response.
When you're a multi-millionaire c-suite executive working for a billion-dollar company that just merged with another billion-dollar company as part of years of planned acquisitions by a century-old international conglomerate worth more than the GDP of 25% of the world's countries who has learned through a life of vice that being struck by lightning for slaying the concept of honesty and meaning is a myth and the universe does not believe in karma and will gladly see you off to your rest with all your riches sewn into the fine linens inside of your casket, calling criticism 'hating' becomes puerile.
But that's fine. It's fine if it's puerile. If it's puerile, you win, too, because the act of gish galloping--the act of just saying some obviously dumb bullshit and just getting away with it because fuck you, what are you going to do about it, we're the UFC--strengthens their position by further reinforcing that we exist in an era of near-monopoly where the company can do whatever it wants. If criticizing the cards doesn't matter, it means the cards don't matter. If the cards don't matter, the matchmaking doesn't matter, and you're free to put anyone you want to market anywhere you want them to be.
And let's be clear: It doesn't matter. It hasn't mattered for some time. Sean O'Malley leapfrogging the entire top fifteen and getting to sit out for a title shot against a champion being coerced into fighting twice in three months? Why not. Jorge Masvidal getting eighteen title shots? Sure! Marketing fights based on fighters outright assaulting people in real life and facing no consequences whatsoever because society accepts that their unrepentant behavior is a feature of martial training rather than a bug and the company they work for is just shitting itself with glee that anyone would do anything to stand out and get some attention? I mean, the boss is currently trying to get Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg to have a cage fight and those guys carry responsibility for numerous actual deaths around the globe, so what's a criminal brain injury here or there?
I'm a person on the internet--a person from the embarrassingly early days of the internet--and I, too, am not immune to its travails, and I, too, think some people suck total shit, and among them is Sean Strickland. Not for his fighting. His fighting's fine. For his insistence on acting like the world's least interesting 4chan post came to life and decided to get into cardio boxing. It's perennially just offensive enough to rile, with great insights like 'fat people are ugly' and 'eating sushi is gay' that are not remotely interesting enough to elevate him anywhere further than the ranks of middleweights who a) don't really self-market and b) don't happen to have viewpoints echoed by brass, fanbase, and Joe Rogan enthusiasts the world round.
Strickland, like so many, chose a path that embraces the worst parts of human nature in the name of making a buck. I have hope for his downfall. And this is still a dumb fucking fight that he doesn't deserve to be dealing with.
And the UFC agrees. That's the best part. Abus Magomedov has one UFC fight, it was against a guy who is now 1-4 in the UFC, and it lasted nineteen seconds. The UFC's response was to try to book him against perennial journeyman Gerald Meerschaert, and when that fight didn't work out it was Makhmud Muradov, one of the last guys Gerald Meerschaert beat, and when that didn't work out, fuck it. Why not have him fight for a spot in the top ten? Does anyone care? We sure don't.
After all, you're still here. I'm still here! I am spending valuable moments of my life trying to esoterically discuss why this incredibly silly main event that shouldn't be happening is indeed happening, starring one fighter who shouldn't be here because he hasn't earned it and one fighter who shouldn't be here because we ideally should not want to publicly endorse certain levels of banal cruelty, co-main evented by a fighter who tried to retire and failed because he still had contractual obligations, marking our passing the midway point of the year with its twenty-second factory-assembled event by having a fight to determine one of the ten best middleweights on the planet Earth between a guy who'll never touch a championship belt and a guy whose UFC fight time is one-fourth the length of a TikTok.
But remember: If you don't like it, that means you're hating. Maybe you should take a break. Maybe it's time to go do something else for awhile! You're not getting anything out of the negativity, so say something nice and be positive, and the world will be a better place.
No. No, and additionally, fuck off for trying to be the big tough sports company that prides itself on leading the market in hypermasculine fuck-your-feelings bullshit while simultaneously whining about people saying the cards are bad on Twitter. Fuck off for advertising right-wing propaganda shitholes like Rumble and celebrating how anti-woke you are while you're selling gay pride merchandise.
Fuck off for booking top-ten fights even you don't really want or believe in while acting like the increasingly small minority of journalists who oh-so-controversially say things like 'the cards, maybe, could be better' are assaulting the sport and insulting the fighters.
Hate isn't universally bad and love isn't universally virtuous. Hate and love can, and sometimes must, occupy the same space. Hate, directed at cruelty, at intolerance, and at the institutions that deserve it, is not only constructive but necessary. Do not ever let powerful people tell you that your ability to rationally hate them and their products is an affront to decency. Will criticizing a product change it? Of course not. The world's corporate fortresses have exceptionally high walls and your distaste cannot leap over them. But the act of remaining collectively critical of products is what separates an audience those companies feel a need to appeal to from a fandom those companies feel they can mobilize at will.
If you're trading that away for the joy of watching a Sean Strickland main event every sixty-five days, you're already doing their job for them.
Maybe Sean Strickland will win another decision. Maybe Abusupiyan Magomedov will drop him in a round. I don't know. I know this is where I always make a prediction, but this time, all I can really tell you with genuine assurance is I DON'T FUCKING CARE WHO WINS THIS BULLSHIT FIGHT.
CO-MAIN EVENT: GRAND OPENING, GRAND CLOSING
LIGHTWEIGHT: Damir Ismagulov (24-2, #12) vs Grant Dawson (19-1-1, #15)
But we do have other fights to talk about. This one is only marginally less weird, though.
Damir Ismagulov's career has been a fucking rollercoaster. He dominated the competition out in Russia, reigned as its champion, came to America and within three fights he sustained the worst injury of his career and missed two years of his prime and all of his momentum. And then he came back, won but nearly got knocked out, and blew the divisional weight limit by almost eight pounds in his next fight and was damn near fired for it. And then it was a close split decision against the equally underrated Guram Kutateladze. And then he dropped a decision to Arman Tsarukyan, his first loss in almost eight years.
And then, at 31 years old, at 24-2, and as one of the fifteen best lightweights on the planet, he announced through his Instagram that he was retiring on account of health concerns.
And then, all of three weeks later, he announced his unretirement because the UFC informed him he still had one fight left on his contract.
Truly: What do you do with all of that? The best-case scenario is everything is a lie on the negotiation table, Ismagulov wants to go home and probably get paid more than the UFC was giving him for easier competition, and he wasn't aware he couldn't get out of his contract; the worst-case scenario is one of the best fighters on the planet had a health scare bad enough that he felt a need to immediately retire and feels as though he has to compete to fulfill his contractual obligations anyway. Neither of those is great, and either way, it's pretty goddamn hard to get a bead on what to expect from Ismagulov now.
Which is unfortunate, because Grant Dawson is a bad, bad man, in ways so overwhelmingly conventional that it gives me whiplash to revert to talking about this sport like a regular-ass sport after the last twenty paragraphs. Dawson's a throwback--the hard-punching super-wrestler who spends damn near all of his fights whipping his opponents to the floor and simply outmuscling and outgrinding them until they give up a rear naked choke--and since winning one of the first Contender Series contracts all the way back in 2017 he's 7-0-1 in the UFC, and that draw could very easily have been a victory.
If there is a weird aspect to Dawson's career, that's the one. He's a Contender Series baby, he's only got one loss on his record, he's been killing people in the UFC--all but two of his seven wins were stoppages--and he's just #15, and he's only now getting a chance to move up the ladder. At a time when other promotional darlings were playing rankings hopscotch, Grant Dawson, who has not lost a fight since 2016, is divisionally less important than Matt Frevola and Jalin Turner. Is it the wrestling? Is it the unquenchable lust for single-leg takedowns?
The presumption here is, if he's on his way out anyway, Damir's spot should go to the guy they haven't found a better spot for. I get it, and I also get that Damir's entire career is a giant question mark right now. Generally-speaking, I live by the rule that if a fighter thinks they should retire, nine times out of ten, they should probably stay retired. I liked Damir a lot more than most people, but I cannot help thinking it's still a good rule. Also, he sure did get taken down a bunch by Kutateladze and Tsarukyan. GRANT DAWSON BY DECISION.
MAIN CARD: THE MULTIGENERATIONAL CONTENDER SERIES
WELTERWEIGHT: Max Griffin (19-9) vs Michael Morales (14-0)
Max "Pain" Griffin is trying very hard to extend a UFC career that has been consistently interesting but inconsistently successful for most of the last decade. Griffin was eliminated from the preliminary phase of The Ultimate Fighter 16 eleven goddamn years ago--the season that gave us champion Colton "Fighters are wusses, being in the army was hard" Smith, who promptly got finished three times in a row and fired--but regional success brought him back to the company in 2016, where he proceeded to, uh, lose, most of the time. Max Griffin established two identities for himself very, very quickly: In one, a genuinely terrifying fighter with absurdly painful leg kicks and bag-of-bricks punches, and in the other, a 50/50 fighter who just keeps losing split decisions and falling back down the ladder. I enjoy his fights and I enjoy his skills, but objectively, he fights at one of the toughest divisions in the world, he's 7-7 overall, and he's turning 38 this year. If he's got a run in him, he's running out of time to make it.
And the UFC is ready to trade him in for the new model. Michael Morales has all the makings of a fighter the UFC would love to strap a jetpack to: A young, fresh-faced Contender Series baby, a regional champion in Ecuador, a very skilled grappler who will sometimes ignore his own grappling advantages if it means getting to swing hamhocks. We've seen Morales twice, and each fight told a similar story: He's dangerous as hell in any position, but his sheer commitment to finding offensive opportunities makes him a constant danger to himself. Michael Morales is so dedicated to finding opportunities to do damage that he puts himself in bad positions in every fight--his hands stay low, his head stays upright, he hunts for bodyshots that get him taken down too easily, he gives up positions he should be able to hold onto because he's hunting too heavily for a ground strike or a submission. And, honestly, of fucking course he does. He's 24, he's undefeated, and he knocks out almost everyone he fights. What can you tell him that he doesn't already know and has very understandably chosen to disregard?
This is a surprisingly tough one for me. I'm a big Michael Morales fan, I think he's got a ton of potential, but he very nearly got smoked by Trevin Giles in his debut and he was struggling a bit with Adam Fugitt the last time we saw him. Max Griffin is powerful, orthodox, and has made a career out of hurting people in small openings. That said: He also almost got beat by Tim Means in his last appearance. MICHAEL MORALES BY DECISION still seems the most likely outcome to me, but his capacity for making unforced errors could get him hurt here.
WOMEN'S FLYWEIGHT: Ariane Lipski (15-8) vs Melissa Gatto (8-1-2)
Ariane Lipski has had a whole lot of trouble in her UFC career. The former dominant champion of Poland's Konfrontacja Sztuk Walki is 4-5 under the UFC's banner, and it's a shame, because on her good nights she's one of the flyweight division's best fighters to watch: An aggressive but measured striker with a ground game that goes from unnoticeable to terrifying very, very quickly if she happens to grab ahold of a knee or an elbow. It's her defense that tends to be problematic. She's good at avoiding takedowns, most of the time, but her commitment to her attacks has historically left her open to counters, be they quick takedowns or quick right hands. Her last fight with JJ Aldrich showed marked improvement, with a much more patient approach, an emphasis on longer jabs and combinations at range, and a total 0 for 12 shutout on Aldrich's attempts to get the fight to the floor.
And she'll need it again here, because grappling is Melissa Gatto's bread and butter. She can strike--she is, somehow, the only person to knock out Sijara Eubanks, owner of one of the more perplexing careers in women's MMA--but as someone who broke Victoria Leonardo's arm and submitted current featherweight contender Karol Rosa, there's no question about how she prefers her fights. Gatto wants to get you on the floor, and she wants to isolate a limb, and she wants to take it home with her and give it a visible but classy place of honor on her mantle next to her brown belt, her childhood Kung Fu trophies and the year off USADA gave her for taking PED masking agents that we don't really talk about anymore because getting into the nitty-gritty of drug use in MMA is like walking into the ocean except someone has to watch you pee after you're done.
MELISSA GATTO BY SUBMISSION. Lipski looked a lot better in the Aldrich fight, but Gatto's also a stiffer threat than Aldrich when it comes to the ground game.
LIGHTWEIGHT: Benoît Saint-Denis (10-1 (1)) vs Ismael Bonfim (19-3)
One of the oldest axioms of mixed martial arts is that a fighter is always going to be defined by the most memorable moment of their career, and all one can do is pray said moment is something you did to someone else, rather than something that got violently done to you. Benoît Saint-Denis is on a two-fight winning streak in the UFC, he scored two great stoppages in a row, and he is still trying to outrun the memory of that one time Elizeu Zaleski dos Santos beat him half to death in a fight so irresponsibly officiated it caused the first and only mid-card firing of a referee in company history. Which sucks, not just as yet another reminder that combat sports exists on the whims of often barely-qualified sadists, but because Saint-Denis is fun as hell. He's an ultra-aggressive grappler whose angry swinging of punches for once exists to supplement rather than supplant his true love of strangulation, and I cannot help but root for it.
But he was supposed to fight Vinc Pichel tonight, and thanks to an injury he's dealing with Ismael Bonfim instead, and boy, that's a tough fucking substitution. When Ismael made his post-Contender Series debut this past January against the extremely dangerous Terrance McKinney, I wrote this:
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.
I was as wrong as it is possible to be. Bonfim beat him in the first round, hurt him badly in the second and scored a knockout of the year-calibre flying knee seconds later. It was one of the best UFC debuts in years, and, by the rule of memorability, enough to etch Ismael in as a big, -300 favorite in this fight.
Which isn't undeserved, but I think it undersells Saint-Denis a bit. Bonfim looked great, but he also struggled with McKinney's wrestling, and not only is wrestling Benoît's big strength, we've seen him absorb enough punishment to slay a small army without going down. I still cannot help seeing ISMAEL BONFIM BY TKO, in part because I doubt another referee will give Saint-Denis that kind of allowance again, but he's not out of this fight the way oddsmakers seem to think.
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Nursulton Ruziboev (34-8-2 (1)) vs Brunno Ferreira (10-0)
We didn't quite make it out of the main card without one big giant question mark fight. Nursulton Ruziboev is popping in on short notice to replace Abdul Razak Alhassan, and it's a pretty fucking solid replacement--in theory. Ruziboev is a heralded prospect out of Uzbekistan with a number of middle-eastern regional titles to his name, but like so many fighters out of that scene, his record is hard to judge. A lot of the tape on him looks great: At 6'4" he's huge for the division, he's got a solid balance of wrestling and striking, his submissions are on point and he knocked a motherfucker out with a Rampage Jackson triangle choke powerbomb counter just a couple years ago. His last five fights also include guys who were 12-12 and 4-4, and some of that tape shows fighters who very clearly shouldn't have been fighting him.
Brunno Ferreira, our patron saint of alliteration, also got into the UFC thanks to the necessities of last-minute replacements, and he made an immediate splash by meeting the ludicrously durable Gregory Rodrigues and knocking him dead in one round. Ferreira, as of now, has finished every single one of his fights and is riding a pretty healthy five-fight knockout streak, and you could do an awful lot worse for bringing that resume into the international spotlight than taking on a guy so tough he won a UFC fight with his supratrochlear artery hanging out of his face and faceplanting him with one giant left hook. That jumps you up in the prospect hierarchy.
But it also means you get fights like this. Ferreira's objectively dangerous as hell, but up until a week ago he was preparing to fight a fellow hard-nosed brawler in a physical mirror match and now he has to fight a multifaceted grappler who's half a goddamn foot taller than him. Ferreira can still spark him out if he catches him--after seeing him kill Robocop I'm not convinced there are many men he couldn't do it to--but this is a complex challenge and I'm going with my gut. NURSULTON RUZIBOEV BY DECISION.
PRELIMS: WELCOME BACK, KEVIN
WELTERWEIGHT: Kevin Lee (19-7) vs Rinat Fakhretdinov (21-2)
Kevin Lee, this was not the return you wanted. "The Motown Phenom" was a surprisingly big deal during a hot period in the UFC's lightweight division--Conor had the belt, Khabib was on his way up, Tony Ferguson was a monster, the whole world was paying attention to the guys at 155, and Kevin's fantastic wrestling and violent ground-and-pound got him a winning streak at just the right time. But then he got his shot at the interim belt, and he lost, and then he got a couple main events, and he lost, and then he moved up to welterweight, and he lost, and the UFC didn't want to pay him more money. He was briefly the main attraction of Eagle FC, the extremely short-lived attempt by Khabib and some investors to turn a regional Dagestani promotion into a new international contender, but after one match--against, of all people, Diego Sanchez--things fell apart and Lee went back to free agency. And now he's home in the UFC, who missed him so much that they're putting him up against one of their best prospects, Rinat Fakhretdinov, a Russian champion who's not only also been wrestling and knocking motherfuckers out, but was, up until his UFC debut, doing it an entire weight class up at middleweight. He's a great wrestler, he's got real power in his hands, he's a lot bigger, and he hasn't lost a fight in almost ten goddamn years.
One of the main points of contention with Kevin Lee and the UFC was his being just a bit too big for lightweight but a touch too small for welterweight. Coincidentally, one of the other main points of contention was his advocating for leftist politics and insisting that an MMA union is inevitable. Which is, presumably, why they brought back a former headliner and put him on the prelims against an unknown, unranked guy who spent his life fighting at middleweight. Welcome back, Kevin. I hope this goes better for you than I fear it will. RINAT FAKHRETDINOV BY DECISION.
FEATHERWEIGHT: Joanderson Brito (14-3-1) vs Westin Wilson (16-7)
It's very rare that a fight gets announced and people other than me get mad about how bullshit it is on the internet. Joanderson Brito is a serious competitor; an exceptionally talented, exceptionally dangerous fighter in one of the most dangerous, talent-rich divisions on the planet. Andre Fili is one of the UFC's most-journeyed journeymen, an absurdly tough customer who, until last year, had only been really knocked out once, and it was by Yair Rodríguez, one of the best strikers in MMA history, and it took two and a half rounds and a flying switch kick to Fili's dome. Brito punched him into the fetal position in forty seconds. He's a real prospect in the prime of his career, and he was supposed to fight a similarly-positioned challenge in Khusein Askhabov tonight. But Askhabov got injured, and the only person the UFC could find to fill the void was Westin Wilson. I have immense respect for anyone who fights. It's tough as shit and deeply underappreciated. But we also have to be realistic about strength of schedule and preparation, and objectively, Westin Wilson has spent the last two years fighting in can-crushing federations against guys with 9-19 records. Brief internet sensation Teruto Ishihara, who got cut from the UFC after losing three in a row--at bantamweight--knocked Wilson cold in one round less than a year ago.
Wilson's big and he's got talent, and it's always possible he wins and I am the world's biggest fool. But I do not believe in a world that just. JOANDERSON BRITO BY TKO.
WOMEN'S FEATHERWEIGHT: Yana Santos (14-7 (1), #6 at Women's Bantamweight) vs Karol Rosa (16-5, #9 at Women's Bantamweight)
Y'know, an underrated feature of the greater argument about the UFC's card quality is when you have a fighter like Yana Santos somehow go from a main-card loss on a Conor McGregor pay-per-view, to a co-main event loss to Holly Holm on ESPN, to buried halfway down the prelims on the least-hyped UFC card of the year thus far. Was it wrong then or is it wrong now? Who knows. Santos was supposed to fight Macy Chiasson tonight, but Macy pulled out, leaving Karol Rosa to take her place. And, boy, it just underlines the sheer pointlessness of this thing. Karol Rosa is ranked at bantamweight because the UFC doesn't HAVE featherweight rankings. She was hoping to work her way to a shot at the UFC Women's Featherweight Championship, but now that Amanda Nunes has retired Dana's openly said the UFC's just going to kill the weight class. This is a scheduled fight for a weight class that isn't going to exist anymore.
KAROL ROSA BY DECISION. Yana just spent an entire fight getting grapplefucked by Holly Holm, Rosa's going to do it again and then we're all going to wonder what happens to any of them in a month when their belt gets tossed in the garbage.
LIGHTWEIGHT: Guram Kutateladze (12-3) vs Elves Brener (14-3)
Guram Kutateladze is having a bad fucking time. "The Georgian Viking" has been in the UFC for almost three years, and he's managed exactly two fights. In one, he beat Mateusz Gamrot, one of the ten best lightweights on the planet; in the other, he arguably beat Damir Ismaguov, only to lose an extremely close split decision. That's a hell of a resume! Unfortunately, you may have noticed it's also just two fights in three goddamn years. Kutateladze, seemingly unable to stay healthy, has pulled out of four fights in the last two years. He's one of the best lightweights in the world and he's so inactive that he doesn't even rate a Wikipedia page. And that's how you wind up fighting Elves Brener. Guram was supposed to fight Jamie Mullarkey last month, Guram got hurt and Mullarkey went on to get iced by Muhammad Naimov; Brener, who has decidedly not ensconced himself as one of the best in the world, was supposed to fight Jordan Leavitt tonight, Leavitt pulled out, and Kutateladze, now recovered, was rebooked here.
And now he's a -400 favorite against a guy who only has a win in the UFC thanks to a judging robbery. I have no doubts about the outcome of this fight, but I have plenty about it happening at all. Presuming he actually makes it to the cage, GURAM KUTATELADZE BY DECISION.
WOMEN'S FLYWEIGHT: Ivana Petrović (6-0) vs Luana Carolina (8-4)
It's newcomer prospect time again, baby. Ivana Petrović is one of the best women's flyweights in the eastern hemisphere, which, which, boy, that's just a hell of a set of delineations. She was the reigning champion of France's Ares FC right up until the UFC called her in under their always present belt-for-a-bus-ticket program, and having seen her exhibit some solid all-around skills and come back from some surprising hardship in her last fight against Ewelina Woźniak, who I'd bet we'll also see in the UFC in the next couple years, she's ready for a test on the big show. Luana Carolina, unfortunately, is now in the 'extracting value' part of her UFC tenure. The company clearly had some hopes for her after she made it through the Contender Series and beat up Priscila Cachoeira, but it's been a rollercoaster ever since, and honestly, getting knocked out by Molly McCann in London provided the payday the UFC really wanted out of her. She's been getting nothing but decisions, she's on a two-fight skid, she's being used to test newly-signed prospects--they're not enormously concerned with her future.
Which makes the contrarian part of me really want to see her upset the apple cart, here, but I don't think it's in the cards. Petrović is bigger and rangier, and Luana's at her best when she can pick at people from a distance, and, well. IVANA PETROVIĆ BY DECISION.
HEAVYWEIGHT: Alexandr Romanov (16-2, #14) vs Blagoy Ivanov (19-5 (1), #15)
Curtain-jerking heavyweights? Now you're playing my song. There's a decent chance this is a loser-leaves-town match: Romanov is staring down a three-fight skid if he loses and Ivanov, as much as I love him, is one for his last four and has been turning in nothing but interminable decisions with very little action, and that is a sin that cannot be allowed to persist in the big boy division. And this...will probably also be an interminable decision. Alexandr Romanov is a big, physically powerful wrestler, but when he can't muscle people to the ground, things start to go poorly. Ivanov is a big, physically powerful clinch grappler, and he's very good at stalemating people from close range.
Guess where this fight is mostly going to take place! Grab a snack and settle in for a long run-in with the fence. BLAGOY IVANOV BY DECISION, I guess, but my inkling is this will be one of those fights where so little ultimately happens that no one's happy with the result. Prove me wrong, big boys.