CARL'S FIGHT BREAKDOWNS, EPISODE 165: MOMENTS IN TIME
Carl looks at a genuinely good pay-per-view and analyzes why it still doesn't feel as good as it should.
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 15 FROM MADISON SQUARE GARDEN IN NEW YORK CITY
EARLY PRELIMS 3 PM PST / 6 PM EST | PRELIMS 5 PM / 8 PM | MAIN CARD 7 PM / 10 PM
It’s the penultimate pay-per-view, and it’s going to be a long one, so let’s get straight to it.
MAIN EVENT: THE CHANGING LANDSCAPE OF DESTINY, PART 1
WELTERWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP: Jack Della Maddalena (18-2, Champion) vs Islam Makhachev (27-1, #1 at Lightweight)
Whatever joy there is in the purity of combat, the necessities of regulation outstrip it. Beneficial abstractions--rounds, fouls, weight divisions, rankings, even the often-confounding world of judges all serve to create a better sport. Vale Tudo is fascinating in its brutality; Mixed Martial Arts is safer, more accessible, and, counterintuitively, more competitive. When fighters can focus on honing their craft against a field of equals rather than the possibility of fighting a 6’11” kickboxer at a 100-pound weight disadvantage, the fighter, audience and sport all benefit.
And yet, however true any of this is, there remains a certain yearning.
The introduction of rules creates the desire to see them broken. Competitors look at opponents a ten-pound fence away and think yeah, but I could win. The same way MMA exists as a simulation of a real fight, a theoretical killing, the simple act of a fighter crossing the boundaries of a weight class exists as a simulation of the old ways. In one small moment, in one small way, the abstractions are peeled back and we once again attempt to ask the question that defined an entire sport:
Who’s really better?
We asked that question together when Islam Makhachev defended his Lightweight title against Featherweight kingpin Alexander Volkanovski. It was one of the best fights the UFC had ever made, both on paper and in practice. The heir apparent to the untarnished throne of Khabib Nurmagomedov, the Lightweight wrecking ball on a winning streak that spanned almost eight years, the all but predestined champion against the greatest Featherweight of a generation, a man who hadn’t lost a fight in damn near a decade, arguably the best pound-for-pound fighter on the planet. The man who destroyed Charles Oliveira vs the man that beat Max Holloway three times.
It was a philosophically sensational fight and one of the precious few that lived up to all of its theoretical promise. Islam and Alex went tooth and nail for five straight rounds in one of those matches that reminds you why you put up with all of the horrible bullshit mixed martial arts constantly finds itself wallowing in. For twenty-five minutes, two of the best to ever do it gave each other everything they had. It was unanimously agreed to be the best fight of 2023, and widely agreed as one of the new best MMA fights of all time. In a sport that constantly reinforces the need for weight classes, even in failure, it was an incredible reminder of why those boundaries need to be challenged.
Close to three years have passed. Islam Makhachev has destroyed everyone the UFC has put in front of him in that time. He is, numerically, the greatest Lightweight Champion of all time. If he wins this fight, he not only becomes the first career Lightweight to take the Welterweight title since BJ Penn back in 2004, he will tie Anderson Silva’s record for the longest winning streak in UFC history at 16 bouts.
This is a fight for legendary status.
This should be a fight for legendary status.
This does not really feel like a fight for legendary status, and there are a whole bunch of reasons why.
Some of it centers on Islam himself. As we discussed here back in January, during Islam’s Lightweight title bout:
This is Islam Makhachev’s fourth title defense. He has the chance to etch his name into the history books as the most successful 155-pound champion in UFC history. And it is only now, his fourth time out, that he finally has the opportunity to defend his title against his division’s top contender.
Unlike a lot of champions Islam never ducked his top contenders, he simply kept getting denied his chances to fight them. Islam was supposed to have a rematch with #1 contender Charles Oliveira: Oliveira ripped open his eyebrow in training and an abrupt (and deeply depressing) rematch with Alexander Volkanovski happened instead. Islam was being considered for a tilt against top contender Justin Gaethje, but Gaethje took a UFC 300 bout with Max Holloway and got brutally knocked out, so instead Islam fought a soon-to-be-retired Dustin Poirier. That aforementioned last-January quote was supposed to be Islam’s defense against Arman Tsarukyan, and a back injury just before weigh-ins led to a farce whereby the #1-ranked Tsarukyan was replaced by the #10-ranked Renato Moicano.
This is the duality of sport. Islam Makhachev has the best Lightweight reign of all time, in that he broke the decades-old three-defense limit with a whopping four. It was also one of the most snakebitten reigns in history.
But let’s say, for a second, those replacements didn’t happen. In a perfect world where his scheduled fights went just as expected and he still won, the net result is an Islam title reign dominated by rematches--his runback with Oliveira, the man he took the belt from, and his second win over Arman, a man he already beat in 2019. Would it have been a better reign? Unquestionably. Would it have been enough to make this fight feel that much more special?
I dunno. And that might just be Jack Della Maddalena’s fault.
By any measure, Jack Della Maddalena is a success. I’ve written before--although I’m not going to track it down because I’ve already quoted myself twice and three times in one section just feels masturbatory--that Jack is the kind of fighter the UFC points to as justification for the entirety of the Contender Series, and it’s a solid argument. His boxing is exceptionally clean by the ever-more-brawly standards of our sport, his chin and gas tank are both world-class, and his rise through the ranks was as obvious as it was a joy to watch.
Because he crushed people. The visible confidence he had in his skills let him simply tear apart his opponents. Punching out Ramazan Emeev’s liver, dropping Danny Roberts repeatedly with solid combinations, cutting through Randy Brown’s reach advantage to floor him and choke him out--it was a terrific run. The entire world was ready for his shot at the top ten. The entire world was sure it’d be amazing.
The entire world was only sort of right. Jack still won, but every fight was a struggle. Late replacement Bassil Hafez almost wrestled away his winning streak before he could enjoy it. Kevin Holland, the eternal journeyman who’d been broken down by Stephen Thompson just a year earlier, took Maddalena to a split decision. A contendership test against Gilbert Burns turned into an absolute war, and Jack was just 77 seconds away from losing a decision.
But he didn’t. Just like he’d tuned up Hafez with his boxing, just like he’d outlanded Holland, Jack flipped the fight on Gilbert and knocked him out. He made it work. And when the UFC’s plans for their top contenders all aligned in his favor--Shavkat Rakhmonov injured, Ian Machado Garry pushed out of the picture, Sean Brady as far away from the title as possible--Jack got the call and fought the best fight of his life against Belal Muhammad, the world champion. He justified the UFC’s continual push, he beat the champ, he etched his name into the history books, and he inherited a division with a score of interesting contenders the world was deeply curious to see him fight.
Except his title win wasn’t even about him. It was about Islam, who had already announced his plans: If his friend Belal won, he was staying at 155 to fight the new Featherweight king, Ilia Topuria, and if Jack won, Islam was moving to 170 to challenge him.
And even now, this fight is only barely about Jack, because the world knows that now-Lightweight-champion Ilia is still chasing Islam, and if Islam wins, it sets up the Islam/Ilia triple-champ superfight.
And this is how an ostensibly good idea became a millstone around the sport’s neck.
Conor McGregor was the biggest moneymaker the UFC had ever seen. He also paralyzed its matchmaking. His massively popular quest to become the first-ever simultaneous double champion led to Featherweight and Lightweight falling into disrepair as he steadfastly refused to defend either title in favor of pursuing a big-ticket boxing match. Ultimately, he relinquished both belts without recording a single defense in either division. No big pay-per-view headliners, no new stars built from beating him, just years of inactivity and interim belts. Management was fine with the enormous piles of money, but the lack of championship headliners was a big pain in the ass.
So they made a new policy this year: If you challenge for a belt at another weight class, you give up your own. Ilia gave up his Featherweight title to challenge for the Lightweight belt, Islam gave up his Lightweight belt to challenge at Welterweight, and--we’ll get to this one next fight--Zhang Weili turned in her Women’s Strawweight gold to move up to Flyweight. On paper, it’s a solid plan: No more divisional holdup, no more interim titles, just constant momentum.
But there are tradeoffs. Some of them are paper champions. Mackenzie Dern holds the belt in a division where multiple top contenders have already beaten her; Alexander Volkanovski, god love him, is only the champion because Topuria got bored after destroying him. Just as bad, though, are champions becoming immediate afterthoughts. Ilia just won the Lightweight title, he may or may not be defending it against Justin Gaethje or Paddy Pimblett this January, and the world is already discussing the likelihood that he’s fighting Islam at 170 pounds next year.
Really, let that sink in. Jack Della Maddalena hasn’t lost a fight in nine years, he’s on his eighth straight UFC victory, he just beat Belal Muhammad to become a world champion, and the mass of the audience wasn’t just overlooking his title victory, they were overlooking his victory for sake of anticipating another champion vs champion match featuring a guy who competed at 145 pounds just one fight ago, and they’re entirely convinced the Featherweight has a better chance than Jack does.
When Islam Makhachev fought Alexander Volkanovski, it wasn’t just the culmination of two incredible martial arts stories, it was two men who had proven that they were the best. Volk had been champion for years and Islam had carved top contenders to pieces with ease. Jack just won the Welterweight title in a tough, competitive fight after only barely getting by in his last three matchups. How much of that meaning has been mortgaged for sake of ensuring this fight happens before the opportunity passes?
How much more would we sell to get an Ilia Topuria with (maybe) one title defense against an Islam Makhachev with none?
That, of course, is all predicated on Islam completing his destiny again and winning the Welterweight championship. He is the betting favorite, as one would expect. He’s fought better competition, he’s shown better-rounded skills, and unlike the majority of champion vs champion fights, he’s basically Jack’s size. There’s only an inch of height and two and a half inches of reach separating them. Jack’s scoffed at the idea that Islam’s going to ground him and vowed to simply stymie his wrestling the same way he did to Belal, but Belal’s orthodox takedowns are a very different beast than Islam’s clinch-trips.
There’s an equally good argument that Jack’s the best striker Islam’s ever faced. He doesn’t have the same impossible chin Khabib did, but he has a similar tendency to put himself in danger when going for his takedowns or simply trading hooks, and as good as Dustin Poirier is, Jack’s boxing is swifter and far more controlled. A few ripping combinations to the body, a few good uppercuts in close, and the complexion of the fight changes immediately. The size of the fighters may not change, but the margin for error only gets smaller as the weight classes go up, and if Adriano Martins could clock Islam, Jack Della Maddalena certainly can, too.
But I cannot help thinking about those clinch trips. If there’s a hole in Jack’s style, it’s dealing with people who physically impose themselves on him and deny him the range needed for his style to shine. A great deal of his success against Belal came from Belal’s inability to singlemindedly focus on wrestling the way he had in the past--and even then, Belal had his own success boxing with Jack and left him marked up by the end of the fight.
Against a fighter who can be as focused on a single goal as Islam has, I feel like the chances of a Jones/Gane situation are higher than a Penn/GSP. I’d love for this to be a classic. I’d love another five-round war. I’d love Jack turning the tables and reinforcing the reasons weight classes exist one more time. But in my heart, it’s ISLAM MAKHACHEV BY SUBMISSION.
CO-MAIN EVENT: THE CHANGING LANDSCAPE OF DESTINY, PART 2
WOMEN’S FLYWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP: Valentina Shevchenko (25-4-1, Champion) vs Zhang Weili (26-3, #1 at Women’s Strawweight)
It’s funny how everything we just discussed regarding the pitfalls of timing, opportunity and divisional strife are doubly important here. There are two stories to this fight. In one, the two most dominant forces in women’s mixed martial arts are finally meeting.
Valentina Shevchenko has been one of the best fighters in combat sports for a long, long time. She was a champion in Muay Thai and Kickboxing, she’s been a world champion for the vast majority of her time in the UFC, and before she was the best Women’s Flyweight in the world she was almost the best Women’s Bantamweight, having come an absolute coinflip of a split decision away from beating Amanda Nunes back in 2017. She’s got victories over champions and top contenders across three separate divisions already and she’s recently cemented her hold on the Flyweight division.
Zhang Weili has been a force of nature at Women’s Strawweight for six straight years. She was only 3-0 in the UFC when they threw her in as an underdog against then-champion Jéssica Andrade, a woman so physically terrifying she’d won the belt by simply deadlifting the previous champion and dropping her on her head. Zhang walked through her in under a minute. With the exception of a two-fight series with Rose Namajunas, she’s been an incredibly dominant champion. She retired the legendary Joanna Jędrzejczyk, she tore Carla Esparza apart, she turned away three separate top contenders including an undefeated Tatiana Suarez.
Zhang’s wanted this fight for a very long time.
And that’s kind of been a problem with her reign.
Zhang Weili is an incredibly dominant champion. She’s also been a conspicuously absent one. This fight actually represents the one and only time since regaining her belt that she’s fought twice in a single calendar year, and even now, those fights are nine months apart. She beat Carla in November 2022, she stomped Amanda Lemos in August of 2023, she had an exceedingly bizarre fight with Xiaonan Yan at UFC 300 in April 2024, and she beat a Tatiana Suarez who seemingly fell apart in realtime this past February. Her dominant title reign has consisted of just three defenses in as many years, and reportedly some part of that is because she has been waiting, repeatedly, for her chance to challenge Valentina Shevchenko.
As you may remember, that’s been kind of a problem lately.
Valentina did have an incredibly dominant, very impressive, very busy six straight title defenses in which she looked like a world-beater. Then she almost lost a split decision to Taila Santos in 2022. Then she threw a lazy spinning back kick and got jumped and choked out by Alexa Grasso in 2023. This turned into an almost two-year-long debacle involving an immediate rematch that ended in a draw after a referee scored a 10-8 so silly it should have started the current fight-fixing investigation early, an entire season of The Ultimate Fighter (jesus christ), two increasingly silly Noche UFC events, a full twelve months of inactivity and, at the end of it all, an absurdly anticlimactic trilogy fight that ended with Val grinding Alexa out in so definitive yet unimpressive a fashion that despite the series being tied at 1-1-1, not a single person on Earth bayed for a rematch.
It wasn’t until this past May that Val finally took on a #1 contender again in Manon Fiorot. It’s been forgotten now, but that was an exceptionally close fight that could also have gone Manon’s way.
That’s the second story of this fight. These women are dominant forces in mixed martial arts; they’re also incredibly frustrating ones. They’re both exceptional fighters, they’re both extremely well-rounded, they both mix their striking and wrestling attacks together to stymie their opponents and they’re both great at refusing to be forced onto their back foot. But Weili barely fights, and when she does, she still spends a round here and there getting ragdolled by Suarez’s wrestling or dropped by the grit of a Xiaonan Yan, and Valentina’s perceived dominance hasn’t been all that perceptible for the past few years, and even in victory, she’s tended to do just barely enough to win, whether it’s outwrestling Grasso while refusing to commit too heavily to her offense or narrowly edging out Manon while struggling with her clinch game.
It’s the exceptionally rare case where the iron might have been hotter in 2022, when Val had just had her first brush with Flyweight defeat against Taila and Zhang had just won back her Strawweight belt. For all their subsequent success, there’s a certain level of aura and momentum that just isn’t there for this fight.
Which is a shame, because goddamn, it’s a good one.
People have wanted this for years. Much like Islam and Jack, the size difference is fairly small--precisely the same, according to listed stats, at one inch in height and two and a half inches of reach--and there’s a solid argument to be made that Valentina’s trouble with women who can physically outwork her could cost her dearly against Zhang, who has made a habit of wading straight into danger to walk her opponents down with punches or bully them to the floor. Tatiana Suarez is a world champion wrestler and after one round of trouble Weili spent the rest of the fight comprehensively outgrappling her.
She’s a fighter you cannot afford to make mistakes against, and as someone who lost her title getting choked out for throwing a spinning kick at thin air, the danger is high for Valentina.
But Valentina’s probably the most well-rounded fighter Weili’s ever met, and Weili’s success has depended largely on women who couldn’t stop some other part of her game. Jéssica Andrade was a powerhouse, but her defense has always been porous. Yan’s grit couldn’t make up for her raw overaggression. Amanda Lemos gets taken down by almost everyone she fights. Tatiana Suarez didn’t have the striking or the gas tank to hang with Weili for five rounds. But Joanna gave her fits, and Rose Namajunas beat her--twice--because the biggest strength of Weili’s game isn’t any one of her skills, but the way she switches between them to impose her will and stifle her opponent’s offense.
And no one has ever really stifled Valentina. The world remembers Taila Santos doing it pretty effectively, but the world has forgotten the last two rounds of their fight included Val wobbling Taila several times and elbowing one of her orbital bones in half. Manon came close, but she, too, couldn’t keep Val’s output down enough to win. Both those women also share an important trait: They were bigger and much stronger.
That’s the theory of this fight. Either you think Zhang’s going to be able to impose her gameplan on Valentina the way she ultimately has on everyone she’s fought recently, or you think Valentina’s going to be able to outwork her the way she has almost everyone in her career.
Picking against Weili feels wrong after seeing her so thoroughly trash so many opponents, but I cannot help thinking the Strawweight division isn’t doing a great job of preparing her for this. I’d love to see her achieve the double-champ dream, but this time, I don’t think the gameplan is going her way. VALENTINA SHEVCHENKO BY DECISION.
MAIN CARD: A REMINDER THAT THE RANKINGS DON’T MATTER
WELTERWEIGHT: Sean Brady (18-1, #2) vs Michael Morales (18-0, #8)
Sometimes I feel as though we are telling the same story over and over. Remember the journey we went on together charting the UFC’s progressively sillier attempts to keep Belal Muhammad away from the Welterweight title because grappling doesn’t make money unless your name ends in a V? Now we have Sean Brady, a man whose only loss, ever, came against Belal. Three fights ago he walked through Kelvin Gastelum, two fights ago he dominated Gilbert Burns, and one fight ago he didn’t just beat Leon Edwards, he became the first man to ever stop him thanks to a fourth-round guillotine. He’s an absolute killer who now has world champions and top contenders at multiple weight classes under his belt, and the UFC couldn’t deny him the #2 spot in the division. Brady himself told a funny story about that, though:
“I even said that to Hunter, I was, like, talking about the rankings, and he said, ‘The rankings really don’t matter.’ He was like, ‘At the end of the day, the UFC is gonna put whoever they want in there for the belt.’”
Really absorb, for a moment, the mentality it takes to be the second-in-command of the UFC, the man who’s going to inherit Dana White’s role after he retires to run for governor of Las Vegas on a platform of burning members of the culinary union for fuel, and have so little love for the sport or care for your fighters that you can look your #2 contender in the eye and tell him the rankings are bullshit and management will do whatever it wants. Savor the taste of that kind of moneyed nihilism on your tongue. Imagine what it must be like to give that little of a fuck and be persistently rewarded for it. God bless America.
Michael Morales probably appreciates it, though. I’d have to imagine Michael Morales appreciates an awful lot about how the UFC has booked him. He’s an alumnus of the same Contender Series season that gave us Jailton Almeida, Jasmine Jasudavicius, Caio Borralho and Jack Della Maddalena himself, and Morales may have taken his career a touch more slowly, but every shot they’ve given him has been thoroughly managed by both the matchmakers and his fists. Somehow, in six UFC fights, it is only now as he challenges for the #2 spot in the division that Morales for the first time faces someone on an actual winning streak. Being a very good fighter on a very cheap contract is the true meta of the new age. And Morales is, indeed, very good. He’s a smart striker who’s adept at picking his spots and exploiting the shit out of them. Where other Welterweight prospects like Ian Machado Garry struggled with Neil Magny, Morales blasted him out in a round; where Jack Della Maddalena only narrowly survived Gilbert Burns, Morales walked through him in three and a half minutes.
And having a long enough memory to recall Belal beating the stuffing out of Brady on his feet makes it very easy to imagine Morales doing the same. Brady’s striking is better than it gets credit for, but he’s never shown signs of it being good enough to risk going to war with a killer like Michael. That said: Michael hasn’t had to deal with a grappler like Sean, either. Smashing Gilbert is impressive, but the Gilbert that got smashed was also about to turn 39 and riding the worst losing streak of his life.
I, as always, place my heart in the hands of the wrestlers. SEAN BRADY BY SUBMISSION.
WELTERWEIGHT: Leon Edwards (22-5 (1), #4) vs Carlos Prates (22-7, #9)
Speaking of telling the same stories over and over: Remember when Kamaru Usman went from being the undisputed best Welterweight in the world to suddenly, unexpectedly losing his title and getting wrestled to death in a follow-up fight that left the world wondering if he was done? Leon Edwards, the bone bones for thee. At the start of 2024 Leon was the world champion who ended the reign of the man the UFC keeps (extremely incorrectly) insisting is the greatest Welterweight of all time, recorded back-to-back title defenses, beat the UFC’s favorite marketing shithead in Colby Covington, and looked better than he ever had in his career. Less than two years later he’d lost his title to Belal Muhammad and lost his never-been-finished record to Sean Brady, and the tentative and ultimately unsuccessful nature of his performances has large swaths of the audience wondering if he should retire.
The UFC may not be quite as bent on it, but they are definitely ready to extract cash from his corpse, and they’ve brought in their hitman to finish the job. If Michael Morales is one of the most quietly well-booked Contender Series fighters in the UFC, Carlos Prates is one of the most frequent, and that’s thanks entirely to his tendency to fucking destroy people. We aren’t even at the two-year mark in his run with the company and this is already his seventh fight. Five of those matchups ended with his unfortunate opponents crumpled and twitching on the canvas within two rounds. The only exception was his run at Ian Machado Garry, who dominated him for three and a half rounds before holding on for dear life as Prates repeatedly almost took his head off before the bell. It showed Prates still had deficiencies, but it also showed he never, ever stops being absurdly dangerous.
And yet: It’s awfully hard not to look at this fight as a referendum on the status of Leon Edwards more than a test for Carlos Prates. In my head, this fight is a fairly easy one for Leon, but in my head, Leon Edwards is still the Leon Edwards of 2023. He’s fast, he’s smart, he’s defensively sound, and most importantly, he’s capable of mixing in the kind of underrated wrestling game that let him take down technically superior grapplers like Colby and Kamaru. Belal and Brady both dominated him, but they’re high-pressure wrestlers, and Carlos is a rangy striker. I am, still, going with LEON EDWARDS BY DECISION, but that’s a choice predicated on the belief that he’s still in there and he’s ready to fight. If his doubt extends past people who double-leg him to death, Prates will put him out in a round.
LIGHTWEIGHT: Beneil Dariush (23-6-1, #9) vs Benoît Saint Denis (15-3 (1), #13)
God, the shit they do to Beneil Dariush. Just a couple years ago Beneil was fighting in title eliminators and testing top prospects, and unfortunately, that ended with Charles Oliveira and Arman Tsarukyan both knocking him out. The UFC decided to use Beneil to get Renato Moicano, the #10-ranked Lightweight, over, and then everything went to shit when, as we discussed in tonight’s main event, Arman Tsarukyan’s back exploded. Despite Beneil having been previously scheduled for a fight with Makhachev that fell through, despite Beneil being the higher-ranked fighter, the UFC put Moicano in the main event and Beneil was simply taken off the card. But they promised they’d make it up to him with a high-profile fight! They promptly rebooked Dariush/Moicano five months later. And Dariush won! So what higher-profile, higher-ranked, contendership-enabling fighter does Beneil get for constantly putting up with the UFC’s bullshit?
Why, it’s Benoît Saint Denis, who is ranked even lower than Moicano was. Benoît was famously one of the UFC’s favorite fast-track prospects--a brawl-happy grappler who was just as comfortable throttling Ismael Bonfim as slinging leather with Matt Frevola--and then, instead of succeeding in their attempt to get a French contender at Lightweight, he got punched stupid by Dustin Poirier and mauled by Moicano. Management soured enough on him to attempt to feed him to everyone’s favorite anime-obsessed wheelkicker Mauricio Ruffy this past September, but as we now know, what was intended to be a month of ascendancy for the supercamp of the Fighting Nerds ended in shame, as Jean Silva, Caio Borralho and Ruffy all lost their fights. As it turns out, anime is not a solid base for defending takedowns. Benoît’s back on a winning streak, so the UFC is back to pushing him up the ladder, only now they’re doing it a little more gently.
And hell, it’s a potentially fascinating fight. There are mirror match aspects to this: Both men are underratedly hard hitters with extremely strong grappling games and they’re entirely capable of putting the other out. But Beneil likes to fight with a style that can sometimes border on laconic, and Benoît likes to exert high amounts of pressure, and that face-forward style is how Beneil’s gotten knocked out repeatedly through his career. I’m still going with BENEIL DARIUSH BY DECISION, but the first round and a half are gonna be tense.
PRELIMS: AND THEN, BO
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Bo Nickal (7-1) vs Rodolfo Vieira (11-3)
The Bo Nickal experiment cannot fail, it can only be failed. Bo is the UFC’s own little Aaron Pico, a wrestling superprospect whose career they began managing before he ever set foot in the cage, and after two years and four fights--all of them against people with losing UFC records, all of them heavily featured and advertised on pay-per-view--they had him in the cage fighting for top ten contendership with Reinier de Ridder. And Bo got creamed. RDR outgrappled him, outstruck him, and ultimately knocked him out in the second round by just kneeing his guts until they ceased to function. I’ve long said the best way to see who the UFC is invested in comes from seeing who they put them up against after they stumble. There are plenty of solid prospects and even a couple ranked opponents you could test Bo’s mettle against--Roman Dolidze, Marvin Vettori, you could even have a war of management’s favorite Middleweights by letting Nickal and Joe Pyfer have it out. Instead, he has Rodolfo Vieira. Rodolfo is one of the world’s most celebrated jiu-jitsu practitioners and is closing in on nine years as a mixed martial artist, the vast majority of which happened in the UFC: His best win in that entire time is either Cody Brundage or Armen Petrosyan. Remember watching big beardy Andre Petroski get comprehensively destroyed by Cam “Battle Giraffe” Rowston a couple months ago? Petroski beat Vieira in February and he did it largely by fending off all of his attempts at grappling, without which Vieira is virtually defenseless.
So he’s fighting one of the best wrestlers in the UFC, as you do. I have spent most of this year watching my picks percentage slowly trend downwards as I select wins based on my heart, my hopes, or, best of all, things I just think would be really, really funny. Bo should win this fight. It’s pretty unlikely Vieira is going to get him on the mat, it’s extremely unlikely Vieira is going to hurt him on the feet, this should be Bo taking it by simply kiting Vieira with jabs until he’s tired, which, historically, takes around six and a half minutes. Thus, I ask you: Do you think I would pick an extremely likely loser just because I think it would be beautiful and hilarious if the blue-chip prospect who cannot stop golfing with Donald Trump and cannot shut the fuck up about Charlie Kirk got guillotined by a 36 year-old journeyman who struggled to beat Tresean Gore?
You know me so well. RODOLFO VIEIRA BY SUBMISSION.
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Roman Kopylov (14-4, #15) vs Gregory Rodrigues (17-6, NR)
These men gathered before you have committed unforgivable sins. Roman Kopylov was supposed to be a promising new Middleweight striking prospect, all headkicks and liver punches and promises of roundhouses to come, and at the pivotal moment in his career he blinked, and now Paulo Costa, a man who hadn’t beaten a ranked opponent in six years, is still in the top fifteen. Gregory Rodrigues was supposed to be the implacable punching machine for a new generation, a brawler who turns on a dime between discomforting stoicism and wild flurries even when one of his arteries is hanging out of a hole in his face, and in the biggest fight of his life he got knocked out by Jared Cannonier, which left Jared in a position to lose to Michael “Venom” Page and leave us stuck with a top ten Middleweight that hates grappling yet only lands seven strikes per round. Both of these prisoners have wronged our society, and the American justice system is punitive, not rehabilitative. Blood must be paid.
Kopylov could counter Rodrigues to death with one good combination at any time, but between Costa, Fluffy and Duraev, I cannot help feeling there’s a persistent pressure problem with him. GREGORY RODRIGUES BY DECISION.
WOMEN’S FLYWEIGHT: Erin Blanchfield (13-2, #4) vs Tracy Cortez (12-2, #8)
So, hey, remember that whole ‘when the UFC says they’re going to make something up to you they’re lying through their teeth’ thing? Half a year ago Erin Blanchfield was supposed to have a main event against Maycee Barber--in the Apex, naturally--and it was infamously cancelled just as Erin was about to walk out to the cage after Maycee had medical issues at the last possible second. Erin noted what utter bullshit this is, particularly as it marked the second time Maycee cancelled a fight with her on short notice, and the UFC, as always, assured everyone she would get treated well. So now she’s fighting halfway down the rankings against a dangerous opponent in the middle of the prelims. Maycee is, of course, headlining next month’s prelims. This is the game, and you cannot beat it. Tracy Cortez is just the chosen arm of a large, shitty golem. It would be far, far too simplistic and far, far too obvious to point out that one fight ago Tracy Cortez was widely outstruck and outwrestled by Rose Namajunas and one fight ago Erin Blanchfield widely outstruck and outwrestled Rose Namajunas, and only a fool or a charlatan would consider that ample justification for picking a fight.
Anyway, ERIN BLANCHFIELD BY DECISION.
BANTAMWEIGHT: Malcolm Wellmaker (10-0) vs Cody Haddon (8-1)
They think they’ve got real money in Malcolm Wellmaker, and they might be right. If you count his Contender Series appearance Malcolm’s got three fights under the company’s various corporate banners, and every single one has ended in an absolute highlight-reel right hook knockout, and none of them have lasted past two and a half minutes. He’s doled out some of the best stoppages in a year that’s included shit like Mauricio Ruffy wheelkicking King Green into a pile of limbs or Liz Carmouche punching Jena Bishop so hard she did a full somersault, and if he can keep doing it, they’re going to keep giving him all the opportunities he can possibly get. This card was supposed to see Wellmaker taking a shot at the slightly more proven Serhiy Sidey, but a busted shoulder means we’ve got Cody Haddon instead. Haddon is fast and gritty and he’s got a hell of a chin, and we saw it in action when he walked through Dan Argueta slugging him in the face repeatedly last year and brawled his way to a successful decision.
In other words: He fought a guy who’s never knocked anyone out and is 1 for 6 in the UFC and still got punched in the face, really hard, dozens of times, and now the UFC has put him in the cage with a terrifying knockout puncher with much better boxing who’s also a much larger person. The math is not subtle. MALCOLM WELLMAKER BY KO.
EARLY PRELIMS: SLAVIC CHRISTMAS IN NOVEMBER
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Kyle Daukaus (16-4 (1)) vs Gerald Meerschaert (37-20)
Congratulations, Kyle Daukaus, you have a second lease on life. Daukaus the Younger had a UFC run back in the long-long ago age of 2020-2022, and it ended not just in a fairly unimpressive 2-4 (1), but in Daukaus being released after committing the ultimate sin of allowing Eryk Anders to win a fight by stoppage. After a grueling two years back on the feeder circuit as the Cage Fury Fighting Championships Middleweight Champion, a sentence that has at least three too many words in it, Daukaus got called back up to the big show as a last-minute replacement and a massive underdog against Michel Pereira, and because history ultimately bends towards comedy, Daukaus knocked him out in forty-three seconds. By contrast, Gerald Meerschaert, the favorite of my sons, is on a three-fight losing streak and just got punched insensible by Michał Oleksiejczuk. I know he is long in the tooth. I know he is almost as old as I am. I know he will only get punched in the face more. And I refuse to let him go. I will ford the river of time with Gerald Meerschaert on my shoulders, that he might feel only the sun on his face. I will learn to breathe water if it helps him choke men for money.
Coincidentally, I have never once looked to see if he has any social media accounts. Please don’t die, GM3. GERALD MEERSCHAERT BY SUBMISSION.
FEATHERWEIGHT: Pat Sabatini (20-5) vs Chepe Mariscal (18-6 (1))
I have an outright antipathy for Pat Sabatini, and the UFC did not help matters by letting him wrestle the shit out of Joanderson Brito, my forever champion, back in April. Do I enjoy wrestlers? Always. Do I enjoy watching grapplers crush the dreams of people who are visibly frustrated takedowns are allowed? Eternally. Can I abide beating Joanderson Brito? Never. Get thee to Hell, Pat. May Chepe visit the scourges of the seven seas upon your brow with a variety of blows. May you be judo thrown, judo chopped, and judo condemned to the endless suffering of the Professional Fighters League. How dare you make me ask myself uncomfortably introspective questions about the nature of my favoritism.
CHEPE MARISCAL BY DECISION so I can escape my own superego for one more week.
WOMEN’S STRAWWEIGHT: Angela Hill (18-15, #12) vs Fatima Kline (8-1, NR)
They’re trying to put you out to pasture, Angie. In fairness, they’ve been trying to do it for years, and you just keep kicking out at the last second. A solid-ass decade in the UFC, and try as they might, you have been just too good to get rid of. Thrown to the wolves, buried in the prelims, fed to well-marketed prospects with title aspirations, fuck ‘em all, you keep trucking. Fatima Kline is no different. They signed her on short notice and then she obliterated Victoria Dudakova and Melissa Martinez in back-to-back fights, and suddenly, they realize, they might have a Thing with her. And now, for the dozenth time, you have to turn away a hot prospect with a big betting edge over you. They think she’s going to kick you in the head. They think she’s going to elbow you into unconsciousness. They think this is the time you are finally, genuinely done, and that you are going to get finished for the first time in a decade.
You prove those fuckers wrong all over again. ANGELA HILL BY DECISION.
MIDDLEWEIGHT: Baisangur Susurkaev (10-0) vs Eric McConico (10-3-1)
I know “the booking is not subtle” is a phrase I abuse far too often, but every once in awhile, what else can you possibly say? Baisangur Susurkaev is a tall, terrifying striker they’re so invested in that they booked him into his first UFC fight as a preliminary pay-per-view headliner four days after he won his Contender Series contract, and he was a gigantic favorite, and he went blow for blow with Eric Nolan for a round, at one point was nearly knocked out, and came back to score a submission in the second round. Eric McConico has two UFC fights: One saw him getting knocked out by a Nursulton Ruziboev right hook, the other saw him just barely scrape a split decision past Cody Brundage, whom the UFC uses like the Brooklyn fucking Brawler.
So it’s not, in fact, subtle. There’s very little subtlety left in this company. BAISANGUR SUSURKAEV BY TKO.
LIGHTWEIGHT: Viacheslav Borshchev (8-6-1) vs Matheus Camilo (9-3)
I can’t quit you, Viacheslav. No matter how many times you let me down, I will never abandon the spirit of the holidays. Do you hear me? I believe in Slava Claus. I believe in the magic of Christmas and I will let it inhabit my soul every day of the year, whether in the jasmine blooms of Spring, the damp heat of the Summer, or the bowels of the Apex, which I can only assume are roughly sixty-eight degrees and swimming in the mixed scents of bleach, vinegar, and shame. Frank Cross told me we had to work to make sure no one went without their Christmas miracle when I was three years old and by god, that miracle can happen to you, too, and all you have to do is punch a man in the liver until coins pop out of him like a River City Ransom boss, the same way Jesus did to Krampus on Ash Wednesday, which is why we celebrate the end of November by eating so much it puts us in abdominal distress.
We didn’t forget. You don’t get to forget, either. Punch this man and save the season. VIACHESLAV BORSHCHEV BY TKO.