CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 157: MAYBE WE'LL GET 'EM NEXT TIME
It's time for Noche UFC 3, but this time there's no building-sized background screen or AI-generated videos about Lara Croft.
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 13 FROM THE FROST BANK CENTER IN SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS
PRELIMS 12 PM PDT / 3 PM EDT | MAIN CARD 3 PM / 6 PM
I have devoted so much time to talking about the stolid, sterile nature of the UFC's production that it actively bothers me to express disappointment about the rare occasions in which they do anything different, but the Noche UFC cards have been a historical set of clusterfucks.
Their attempts at capturing regional markets are usually pretty half-assed, so it stood out that the UFC actually cared about the Noche UFC experiments. Hell, they turned one of them into a (really, really bad) history lesson about Mexican independence. The entire initiative only existed because after years of failing to cultivate stars, the UFC suddenly found itself with not one, but two Mexican champions in Brandon Moreno and Alexa Grasso. Noche UFC would catapult them into stardom!
Except Moreno lost his title two months before the event and the show was in Vegas and the main event wound up being Alexa Grasso going to a draw so no one went home happy. But we'll get them next time, and maybe we'll even be in Mexico!
Noche UFC 2 was also in Vegas--at the Sphere, no less, possibly the whitest entertainment venue outside of the Grand Ole Opry--and the main event didn't have a Hispanic fighter in it and the co-main saw Alexa losing her title back to Valentina Shevchenko. But there was a bilingual AI-generated Dana White hologram, and that's what Mexican Independence is really all about.
But don't worry: Noche UFC 3 is going to finally do it. Yair Rodríguez is going to fight a rematch with Alexander Volkanovski for the Featherweight title! It's gonna be a real pay-per-view! It's gonna finally be in Mexico, thanks to the brand new Arena Guadalajara!
And then everyone was mad Yair was getting a title shot. And then Volkanovski was injured.
And then the Arena Guadalajara wasn't actually built yet. It was supposed to be done in February; it is now opening on October 2. With a Maroon 5 concert.
So welcome to Noche UFC 3, everybody. We're not in Mexico, but we're in San Antonio, so we're closer than Vegas, and we still don't have a Mexican fighter in the main event, but we do have a Brazilian fighter who lives in Mexico. Come back next year when Noche 4 is in Abu Dhabi and Shara Magomedov is in the main event against Brendan Allen.
MAIN EVENT: COMMUNAL HERITAGE
FEATHERWEIGHT: Diego Lopes (26-7, #2) vs Jean Silva (16-2, #10)
There's this old adage about MMA secretly being a team sport.
The most successful fighters in the sport are, frequently, actually part of a larger cohort. Ken Shamrock, Guy Mezger and Maurice Smith brought the Lion's Den to prominence as the first mega-camp in mixed martial arts history. Pat Miletich built Miletich Fighting Systems on top of his own success, and Jens Pulver, Tim Sylvia, Robbie Lawler and Matt Hughes helped define the breakout era of MMA because of it. Jackson-Winkeljohn begat Carlos Condit, Rashad Evans, Georges St-Pierre and Jon Jones. A whole bunch of Pride's best fights came from the civil war between Brazilian Top Team and Chute Boxe.
This also cuts the other way. Fighters leaving successful camps are often perceived as ruining their careers. Rashad Evans left Jackson-Wink to start the Blackzilians and went from virtually undefeated to losing 75% of his fights. Quinton Jackson fell out with his coach, moved to Wolfslair to pretend to be British and never recovered. Once upon a time BJ Penn trained with Ralph Gracie, Nova União and RVCA, and then he started going to a camp named BJ Penn's MMA, lost nine of his last eleven fights, and now spends his time losing barfights while trying to convince people the CIA replaced his family because it was the only way to stop him from becoming governor of Hawaii.
It's a set of fair observations. It's an oversimplification of the million factors that go into a successful athletic career. It is unequivocally the reason both men are here.
Which is not to say Diego Lopes is not a fantastic fighter. He's proven himself to be one of the MVPs of the UFC, an action machine who will walk down his opponents and swing away with the confidence that comes only from a solid chin, faith in your power, and the joy of having not yet spent a significant amount of time in your thirties learning what it's like to get backaches from sitting on the couch the wrong way. He fought his way to the top of the division and proved that he belonged up with the contenders.
But his path there was extremely fortunate. He joined the UFC as a short-notice signing, he managed to miss most of the dangerous prospects on his way up the ladder, he infamously got into the contendership circle by fighting a Dan Ige who'd only taken the fight a few hours earlier and he earned his shot at the top by beating a Brian Ortega who didn't even want to be in the division anymore. Even his Featherweight Championship opportunity this past April was opportunistic: Ilia Topuria vacated his title to move up to 155 pounds and Lopes got the chance to face an Alexander Volkanovski who had spent the last two years getting repeatedly knocked unconscious.
He did fine! He put up a good fight and made things scary a couple times, but by the end of the night Volkanovski was clearly the better man and Lopes was clearly on the outside looking in. So why is he here, now, main eventing a Noche UFC card?
His fight team. Of which he is the foremost member.
Diego Lopes, as you may have subtly noticed, is Brazilian. Ten years ago he was offered a chance to teach jiu-jitsu in Puebla, Mexico, made the move and never looked back. He got on the UFC's radar during their search for Mexican talent because he was tearing it up in the Lux Fight League in Monterrey. And if you're looking for a ranked fighter from Mexico to main-event your Mexican Independence card, your choices are:
Yair Rodríguez, #3 Featherweight, who is trying to hold out for a title shot
Brandon Moreno, #2 Flyweight, who the UFC has inexplicably never booked on a Noche card
Irene Aldana, #6 Women's Bantamweight, who's 1-2 in the last three years
Alexa Grasso, #3 Women's Flyweight, whose failures are at this point the Noche UFC legacy
Loopy Godinez, #6 Women's Strawweight, who just fought a month ago
In other words: Congratulations, Diego Lopes, your team makes you the closest thing the UFC has to a conveniently bookable Mexican contender, minus whatever the fuck is going on with them and Brandon Moreno now.
Teamwork is also what got Jean Silva here, but after last week, that sentence has suddenly taken on a different tenor.
The Fighting Nerds have been heralded as one of the best, most successful camps in the game right now. There's a stable of absolute murderers running through their roster, but it's the success of their prominent contenders that's really driven it home. At the end of 2024, they looked posed to potentially take over multiple divisions. Between Caio Borralho at Middleweight, Carlos Prates at Welterweight, Mauricio Ruffy at Lightweight, Jean Silva at Featherweight and Karine Silva at Women's Flyweight, their front line was collectively 21-0 in the UFC and rapidly approaching contendership.
But Karine couldn't beat Viviane Araujo. Prates couldn't get past the mix-up game Ian Machado Garry brought to the table. Just last week Ruffy looked completely lost against Benoît Saint Denis, and Caio, the most successful of them all, didn't have an answer for Nassourdine Imavov. When one person on a team loses an important, contendership-justifying fight, it's unfortunate; when a team's entire cohort loses them, it's alarming. The Fighting Nerds have long prided themselves on their intense preparation and fantastic gameplanning. Are their failures just a product of rising levels of competition, or is there a negative trend in their approach?
Because boy, nothing about Jean Silva has looked negative. He's emerged as one of the scariest prospects in the entire Featherweight division. It was one thing when he was destroying Westin Wilson or Charles Jourdain, but the moment he popped up to 155 pounds on short notice, got into a gunfight with one of its best brawlers in Drew Dober and didn't just beat him but actually broke his face, the rest of the world started paying attention. The UFC dutifully matched him largely with strikers on his way up, but eventually, inevitably, a striker has to face a wrestler, and Jean's big test came against resident Hitler enthusiast Bryce Mitchell this past April.
Showboating in a fight is absurdly dangerous. Anderson Silva's empire rose and fell on his habit of clowning in the middle of a cagefight. When Jean Silva spent the entire first round of the Bryce Mitchell fight throwing wide spinning kicks and shaking his fists and talking to people sitting cageside while letting Bryce repeatedly kick him in the leg, I was furious about the low-pressure performance he was putting on and how easily he could be letting one of the biggest assholes in the sport win an important fight. It took about twenty seconds for Jean to knock Bryce on his ass in the second round, at which point it became clear he wasn't a cocky fighter overly focused on empty posturing, but a cat playing with an injured and weirdly bigoted bird. He dominated the grappling, he dominated the striking, and when a desperate, rattled Bryce started shooting progressively worse takedowns, Jean wrapped him up and choked him out in seconds.
If he'd failed, it would've been rightfully mocked as giving away a the biggest opportunity of his career by focusing on taunting rather than fighting. Since he succeeded, it was a career-defining performance that made him a championship prospect on the spot.
And now he's an almost -300 favorite over the man who almost knocked out Alexander Volkanovski.
It's wild how fast the world turned on Diego Lopes. Only two men have beaten him in his two years in the UFC, and they're Volk, the best Featherweight on the planet, and Movsar Evloev, the #1 contender. It could be short memory on the part of the audience, as tends to happen, or, for once, it could be the audience remembering all too well just how wonky his path to the top has been. Beating Brien Ortega doesn't mean as much as it did four years ago.
It could also just be fascination with the way Jean Silva murders everyone he touches. Torching Drew Dober is extremely difficult, and only two men have ever submitted Bryce Mitchell (in a non-TUF bout, at least) and the other was Ilia Topuria. Jean's path of destruction is remarkably hard to overlook.
Mostly--or at least, for me--it's the way Diego likes to catch punches with his face. He's always been able to rely on his toughness and athleticism to carry him through wars, but winning a striking war with Pat Sabatini is a world apart from winning a striking war with Jean Silva. It's hard to imagine this not ending with Lopes bleeding on the floor. JEAN SILVA BY TKO.
CO-MAIN EVENT: MISTAKEN OPPORTUNITIES
BANTAMWEIGHT: Rob Font (22-8, #9) VS David Martinez (12-1, NR)
I was prepared to be mad about this fight, and now I'm just tired. Rob, I love you, but we're gonna set you aside for a second.
Earlier, I wrote that Alexa Grasso's failures were the Noche UFC legacy, but if there's a runner-up, it's the attempt to astroturf Raul Rosas Jr. into the UFC's child-prodigy champion. In an era defined by the UFC's insistence that fighters need to market themselves because the company is powerless to promote anyone, they used the Noche events to turn a 4-0 teenager into a marketing fixture with a catchphrase, a Carl's Jr. advertising deal, and a top ten matchup based on his incredible victory over Vince Morales, an unranked man on a two-fight losing streak who hadn't won a UFC fight in four years.
This was supposed to be Raul's chance to springboard into the top ten by outwrestling an old veteran. They programmed around it. They had ads. Then Raul busted his rib in training and their whole plan went up in smoke. But in every failure is an opportunity, and hey, you've got an open co-main event slot, you've got a half-dozen ranked Bantamweights who don't have a fight and a number of prospects just outside the rankings who could easily sub in. Do you get Jonathan Martinez? Or Raoni Barcelos? Do you pull Marlon Vera?
Of course not, you fool. You rube. You credulous ass. You get David Martinez.
One fight ago, David Martinez was on the Contender Series fighting a 5-0 man with barely any real experience to win his contract. In his UFC debut, Martinez fought and knocked out Saimon Oliveira, who is now 0-3 in the company and, at the time, hadn't fought in more than two years. Two weeks ago, Martinez was scheduled into a preliminary bout with Carlos Vera, a TUF 31 (jesus christ) washout with a 1-1 UFC record, and when he fell through Martinez was rebooked with Quang Le, who's 1-2.
Now, David Martinez is fighting to be the #9 Bantamweight in the world.
I dunno, man. Aren't you tired of this? I am pretty tired of this. The degree to which the UFC is dispensing with the idea that the rankings matter for anything is exhausting. If we're already at the point where it's more important to affordably maintain a random co-main event on a Fight Night than not book a guy into a matchup that could have him one breath away from a title shot based on his amazing victory over a guy who lost to Tony Gravely a couple fights ago, what's the point of having them?
And if you're Rob Font, what do you think of the respect the UFC even has for you anymore? At the start of 2025 you were supposed to get a high-profile matchup in Dominick Cruz's retirement fight, and that instead turned into being forced to defend your spot against an unranked Jean Matsumoto. You were supposed to lose that fight, too, but you pulled the upset and beat the undefeated contender, and hell, that was you doing the UFC a solid by taking a risky replacement, so you're getting an opportunity next, right?
No, you're defending your spot against an unranked Raul Rosas Jr. And if he can't make it, it's an unranked David Martinez. This is your twentieth fight over eleven years with the company, you've been a ranked fighter longer than any of your recent opponents have even been in the UFC, and they will replace you with a cheaper, younger fighter even if they have to book every 1-0 guy they have to do it.
Look, Martinez could win this. He's young and strong and he hits real hard, and Font's never been knocked out, but his chin sure has been cracked a bunch, and eventually someone's going to hit the jackpot. But this shit sucks, categorically, and I would really like Font's experience to carry the day here. ROB FONT BY DECISION.
MAIN CARD: FLASH DANCE
LIGHTWEIGHT: Rafa García (17-4) vs Jared Gordon (21-7 (1))
It's always funny when the UFC doesn't get a result they want and responds by just sort of pretending it didn't happen. When Rafa García and his hard-nosed brawling met up with Grant Dawson last October, the company was hoping for a nice, marketing-friendly striker to rid them of a much-maligned wrestling threat and give them a new ranked striker to play with. Instead, Dawson pounded Rafa flat in a round and a half. In the eleven subsequent months, Dawson's been booked into one fight, and it was against Diego Ferreira, who, coincidentally, has also already been rebooked--onto this card, two fights down from here--and Rafa's about to get his second fight since the loss. The first was a Mexico City beating over Vinc Pichel, which did a decent bit to rehabilitate his image.
And the second is a borderline-ranked matchup with one of the unluckiest motherfuckers in the entire sport. Jared Gordon beat Paddy Pimblett, except the judges decided he didn't. He got Psycho Crushered by King Green so hard it caused an instant headbutt No Contest. Then he killed Mark Madsen in front of his family. Then he got boned out of a split decision against Nasrat Haqparast. He was supposed to fight Kauê Fernandes: Fernandes pulled out. He was supposed to fight Mashrabjon Ruziboev: He was so brutally unprepared he got cut before weigh-ins even started. After eleven months on the shelf he finally got a tough matchup with Thiago Moisés, and Gordon handed him the worst loss of his life, pounding him flat in less than a round. And in exchange for this win--for a fighter who, arguably, hasn't really lost a fight in almost three and a half years?
Congratulations: You are fighting Rafa García at an event where we want all the Mexican fighters to win. The symbolism is not subtle, nor is my ire. I really like Rafa but I am rooting for Jared's punches to be faster. JARED GORDON BY DECISION.
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Kelvin Gastelum (19-10 (1)) vs Dustin Stoltzfus (16-7)
Hi, Kelvin. I guess we're still doing this. Your last appearance, in fairness, was very, very funny. Almost getting knocked out by Joe Pyfer and giving the UFC exactly what it wanted would have been just too obvious and predictable. But almost getting knocked out by Joe Pyfer, then almost fighting him to a draw and making him kind of look like shit in the process such that even in getting a decision over you his stock didn't really go up at all? That's a veteran move. That's the move of a man who may not be getting anywhere near contendership anymore, but you're all trapped on this cruise ship with him, and by god, he's going to bang on the walls and blast Buckcherry and make sure you all have a miserable time.
Dustin Stoltzfus is present. After a disastrous first year in the UFC he's managed to spend his last three without suffering a single back-to-back loss; he has also failed to record a back-to-back win. His best work comes from his grappling except for the parts where he gets choked out and sometimes he hits pretty hard and gets neat knockouts except for the Most Of The Time when he's the one getting dropped facefirst on the floor. He's damned by the awareness that the coolest thing he did to a UFC fighter was busting our last-paragraph buddy Joe Pyfer's arm on the Contender Series, but since then it's just been a river of normalcy that runs through multiple tributaries that all involve getting kicked in the face by men named Abus.
I cannot believe I am picking Kelvin for a fight again in 2025. This is a terrible mistake, as is the entirety of the Earth. KELVIN GASTELUM BY DECISION.
LIGHTWEIGHT: Alexander Hernandez (17-8) vs Diego Ferreira (19-6)
C'mon, man. Alexander Hernandez just fought. He just fought. We last gathered to discuss Alexander Hernandez less than a month ago, when he met Chase Hooper on the prelims of UFC 319 on August 16 and punched the shit out of him. And I'm not saying 'oh, he absorbed damage and this is unconscionable' the way I often do, Hooper hit him in the head maybe six times and I'd be stunned if any of them so much as left a bruise. But going through a full camp and a full weight cut, rehydrating, having a fight, then going right back into the gym and cutting weight all over again in 28 days? That seems incredibly bad for your body.
Diego Ferreira was doing his best to have a late-career renaissance up until this year. The lighter weight classes are historically unkind to aging fighters, and at 40--41 in January--Diego's the second-oldest Lightweight in the company, saved from the top spot solely by the venerable Jim Miller. It didn't stop him from punching out Michael Johnson and Mateusz Rębecki in back-to-back fights, which was a great turnaround from the three winless years that preceded them, but those victories also didn't stop him from getting wrestled to death by Grant Dawson eight months ago. Ferreira was actually supposed to fight King Green last month too, but Green pulled out, meaning this isn't just a make-good fight, it's a short-notice make-good featuring someone who already fought this month.
Noche UFC, baby. ALEXANDER HERNANDEZ BY DECISION.
BANTAMWEIGHT: Quang Le (9-2) vs Santiago Luna (6-0)
I wonder what it's like to be scheduled to fight someone on a UFC card, and suddenly they need a fighter to compete for a top ten berth, and they decide 'no, we want David Martinez' and take your opponent away and put him in that co-main event for an absolutely incredible opportunity that could change his career, and they give you a guy with only six fights who's never been in the UFC before. You fought Xiao Long, you fought Chris Gutierrez, you tapped out no less than the 4-18 marvel Dan "Soko" Sokolowski, the 5'4" terror of Wisconsin, and this is where it has led you.
Santiago Luna. I dunno, man. There's nothing to say. He's fine, in the sense that he's the growing new normal of UFC prospects that have barely had a chance to exist. He's got six fights, only one of them was against someone with a winning record and it was his biggest struggle. He fights like every undefeated regional prospect you've seen under 170 pounds: Sharp, athletic, hard-hitting, and possessed of the kind of offense-oriented style that everyone does when they don't have enough experience yet to understand that sometimes they're going to lose. He turned 21 in August. He's only legally been able to rent a car for five weeks.
Santiago's got good follow-through on his bodylock takedowns? That's notable, I guess. I'm not sure he's ready for this but it'd be fun to be wrong. QUANG LE BY TKO.
PRELIMS: I CANNOT OVERSTATE HOW MUCH YOU SHOULD GO FUCK YOURSELVES
MIDDLEWEIGHT: José Medina (11-5) vs Duško Todorović (12-6)
Oh, yeah, baby. This is a prelim headliner, right here. José Medina got on the Contender Series by beating guys who were 11-23 and 4-2, lost said Contender Series fight, got signed anyway, lost his UFC debut and got knocked the fuck out by Ateba Gautier back in March, he's 0-2 in the UFC and 0-3 with the company, and he is here. Duško Todorović was an undefeated international prospect when he went through the contract mill competition show, he won his UFC debut just shy of five years ago, and in said five years he's 2-6, he just lost three fights in a row that included getting blasted out in three minutes and having his knee implode in mid-fight, his last fight was a loss to Zach Reese, who is four fights below this one, and he is here. These are two fighters on three-fight losing streaks who have not tasted victory in almost three goddamn years, and they are here, headlining these prelims. This is who we're highlighting. This is the marketing choice. You might have looked at the 'Medina' in the title and assumed this was because Medina, as a Mexican, gets the marketing push. You would be wrong. He's Bolivian. That is almost four thousand miles away.
Why am I so crusty about this fight being here? You'll find out two fights from now. DUŠKO TODOROVIĆ BY TKO.
LIGHTWEIGHT: Claudio Puelles (12-4) vs Joaquim Silva (13-5)
I'm not really sure what we're doing with either of these guys anymore. A few years ago, Claudio Puelles was a terrifying, Palharesian destroyer of knee ligaments and Joaquim Silva was a disconcertingly powerful 155-pound knockout artist. Now they both have one win apiece in the last three years, and somehow, for both men, that win came against Clay Guida. Clay Guida was seventy-five years old when he lost to Puelles in 2022, and by his 2023 loss to Silva, he was one hundred and thirty-seven. Claudio got his liver kicked out by Dan Hooker, disappeared for a year and a half, came back at the start of 2024, got outfought by Fares Ziam, returned to the land of wind and ghosts, and is back again; Joaquim Silva has similarly shown up once in the last two years and it was a mid-2024 loss to Drakkar Klose. These men are flicking mothballs off their board shorts on their way into the arena and we are all graciously befuddled by their presence.
Claudio's never been all that good with striking and Silva's grappling is actually very sound, he just never uses it because he's too busy punching people. JOAQUIM SILVA BY DECISION.
WOMEN'S STRAWWEIGHT: Tatiana Suarez (10-1, #2) vs Amanda Lemos (15-4-1, #4)
Fuck this. Fuck you. Come the fuck on.
I have put so many words into so many write-ups about the UFC's habit of sinking prominent women's fights down into the prelims where no one will see them that I've barely been able to get mad at it for awhile now. After a certain point you just get too goddamn tired. But this? This is like bamboo slivers under the fingernails. Tatiana Suarez has one loss, ever, and it was against the world champion. Amanda Lemos has one loss in the last two years, and it was against the #1 contender. This is a top four fight in a division with a vacant belt. Zhang Weili just left! There is a massive vacuum and you need every top contender you can possibly get, and this fight between two of the top women in the entire goddamn world could easily be a title eliminator, and it is here, midway down the prelims of a fucking Noche UFC.
Next month, Mackenzie Dern and Virna Jandiroba are fighting for the Strawweight title. Mackenzie, rather famously, is 2-2 in the last two years. The first loss? Getting knocked the fuck out by Jéssica Andrade, who was one fight removed from getting destroyed by Tatiana Suarez. The second? Amanda Lemos, who outstruck Dern almost 2:1 and nearly knocked her out. Mackenzie Dern is getting a title shot on pay-per-view. Tatiana Suarez and Amanda Lemos are fighting in the middle period of prelims headlined by José Medina vs Duško fucking Todorović. Alexander Hernandez is on the main card. Santiago Luna is on the main card. David Martinez is in the co-main event.
And Tatiana Suarez and Amanda Lemos, top female contenders battling to get into the on-deck circle for a shot at the championship of the world, are slightly more important than Luis Gurule, but not quite as important as Claudio Puelles.
It angers me to get angrier at this than I do at all the raging bigotry and fascist-worship the UFC does these days, and some part of it is, assuredly, that I have accepted the inevitability of it and am hunkered down for the long run, but it's also that at the most basic level, this is the UFC's one job. This is what it does. It is a promotion; it exists to promote. It's just gotten so into the weeds on promoting itself that it fails so constantly to promote its fighters, and never more than with the women, where opportunities are few and farbetween and somehow 3/4 of them go to Mackenzie Dern.
I am begging you to put a modicum of effort into the people who deserve it. TATIANA SUAREZ BY DECISION.
FLYWEIGHT: Jesus Aguilar (11-3) vs Luis Gurule (10-1)
Did that last fight bum you out? Don't worry, we've got a great fight featuring two more people who are coming off losses. On the plus side: Jesus Aguilar does, in truth, have a winning UFC record. Sure, it's 3-2, but that counts! On the minus, every single person he beat has completely struck out in the organization. Aguilar has a 100% success rate against opponents who've never won a fight in the UFC and a 100% failure rate against opponents who have. Fortunately for him, Luis Gurule is 0-1. Gurule came in through Dana White's Wheel of Pain at the end of 2024 and made his debut against Ode' Osbourne this past April, and as an undefeated prospect fighting a 12-8 man on a three-fight losing streak Gurule was a huge favorite, and Osbourne, as things tend to go, knocked him dead in seven minutes.
I'm hoping for a better outing this time. LUIS GURULE BY DECISION.
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Zach Reese (9-2) vs Sedriques Dumas (10-3)
Oh, good. You know what's definitely going to improve my outlook on the way these prelims have been put together? A fight featuring Sedriques Dumas, who was scratched from participating in June's UFC 317 pay-per-view because he'd been arrested in April for, uh, home invasion, robbery, battery and possession. To be clear: The problem was not the arrest, the UFC doesn't care about that. This isn't even the first time he's been arrested while under contract with the UFC! It's the sixth. No, the problem was he just couldn't get a judge to sign a release for him to remove his ankle monitor in time for the fights. That's not me making some sardonic joke about the current state of the UFC, that's where we're actually at now. For some reason the UFC has decided Sedriques Dumas cannot be allowed to fail. Zach Reese, as far as I know, has not been arrested for assaulting anyone, but his arc as a marketing prospect has a similar feeling. The UFC heralded him for his finish-at-all-costs attitude on the Contender Series, he won his contract, and he immediately got slammed to death in two minutes by journeyman Cody Brundage. They rehabbed Reese with two gentler fights against Julian Marquez and José Medina, tried to make this matchup eight months ago, failed when Dumas pulled out, and got Reese destroyed by Azamat Bekoev instead. But a decision over Duško Todorović later and by god, he's good as new.
If you're keeping track, that means Zach Reese, fourth from the bottom, has victories over both of the men in the prelim headliner on this card. It don't matter. None of this matters. ZACH REESE BY TKO.
FLYWEIGHT: Alessandro Costa (14-4) vs Alden Coria (10-3)
Flyweights, you are to my heart what California wine was for Orson Welles. Usuall I say 'this fighter only has a 50/50 record in the UFC' as a putdown, but I do not have a single cross word to saw about Alessandro Costa. He turned a short-notice fight against a top contender in Amir Albazi into a good performance (until he got knocked out, anyway), he dropped a hard-fought decision to Steve Erceg, he beat the dogshit out of Jimmy Flick and Kevin Borjas, and he looked both fun and threatening in all four fights. He's got a live one here, too. Costa was supposed to meet Noche regular Edgar Cháirez, but Edgar busted a wheel in training, so instead, we've got Alden Coria. He's made a pretty solid accounting of himself as both a hard-punching threat and a tenacious chain wrestler down on the regional scene, to the point that Alden should, technically, be the Flyweight champion down at the Fury Fighting Championship thanks to his punching out Paris Moran, but unfortunately Coria also likes marijuana and Texas still isn't cool with that, so he's stuck with a No Contest.
Didn't stop him from getting here, though. I'm interested in what Coria could potentially do in the UFC, but I think Costa's a really tough ask for a debut. If he can wrestle Costa and not let up he's got a good shot, but gunfighting is dangerous, especially with Coria's tendency to be a little slow to get his head out of danger when he slips out of the pocket. ALESSANDRO COSTA BY TKO, but I'm looking forward to the fight.
WOMEN'S BANTAMWEIGHT: Montserrat Rendon (6-1) vs Alice Pereira (5-0)
The first time I pulled up tape on Alice Pereira, I saw her, at 4-0 and 5'10", fighting Samara Santos, who was 12-8-1 and 5'3". Pereira, with her enormous advantage in height and reach, elected to throw two flying knees before she ever considered a jab. She did manage to figure out her range by the second round! But she also managed to get footworked all the way to the fence and smacked with haymakers despite being able to theoretically reach her opponent from the next state over. We've also seen Montserrat Rendon in the UFC twice already, and admittedly, her performances haven't inspired a great deal of faith either. There's a lot of stalking forward, swinging at the air--she went 28 on 156 strike attempts last time--and getting popped and taken down thanks to her general lack of movement. She's tall for the division and that's helped carry her through some tough spots, but unfortunately, Alice is taller.
That said, Alice has also never fought at anything approaching this level. If she can stick to her tools and not get frozen by the spotlight, ALICE PEREIRA BY DECISION. If she gets rattled, she's in trouble.
TUF 33 WELTERWEIGHT FINAL: Rodrigo Sezinando (8-1) vs Daniil Donchenko (11-2)
You may remember reading about this fight last month. This is the other TUF 33 (jesus christ) final, which was originally slated for the prelims of UFC 319 with its Flyweight brother, but Rodrigo Sezinando got hurt in training and they decided to shove it off to the Noche prelims instead, because nothing says Mexico like a Brazilian guy fighting a Ukrainian guy. I originally wrote the finals as one singular fight write-up, so I'm going to just cut the lines about the other final out, because that's what The Ultimate Fighter currently deserves.
I have done my best to be honest with you, and I will be honest here: I have not watched a second of any of the TUF fights involving these four men. Not a lick. I vowed that I would watch The Ultimate Fighter last year, and I did, and I have rarely been so aware of my own mortality or the dawning sense of horror at how I have chosen to spend it. The lack of care the UFC has for the shambling corpse of TUF leaks into every single aspect of its production, and the net result of my time with it was a close awareness of its four finalists, who one year later have a combined UFC record of 2-6 including a victory built on a decision so absurdly bad that even its winner eventually apologized for it, an incredibly anticlimactic trilogy bout between Valentina Shevchenko and Alexa Grasso, and the knowledge that, speaking as someone who writes leftist combat sports essays on the internet, I can still feel it when my time is being wasted.
So I am drawing my sanity line. Barring some other incredibly ill-advised internet vow, I will not be watching TUF again. Having analyzed these two fights based on the entire rest of their careers, let's put it more simply:
Rodrigo Sezinando is a solid puncher with a killer check hook who trains with Nova União, one of the best camps ever.
Daniil Donchenko is real well-rounded and real tough, but he's been stuck in the same Kazakh fight scene as Idiris and he's rarely gotten to fight guys who've accomplished anything.
This is the extent of the emotional energy I have to devote to this. This is where TUF and I have come.
Jesus Christ.
RODRIGO SEZINANDO BY DECISION.
Hilarious read. I haven't seen much MMA writing out there with so much sarcasm and snark. Bravo.