The Doctor's Stoppage MMA Blog

 Last week was the first time I ever did a post in this format and I liked it quite a bit. It was a good way to discuss the future for some of the winners from the card without having to dedicate an entire post to someone. I don't know that the regular fight night cards are deep enough for these, but these bigger ones and definitely the PPVs should have enough interesting fighters to make these a somewhat regular occurrence. We'll start from the opening of the card and work our way to later in the night. That means Matheus Nicolau is the first one up. This is another fight where he was able to do just enough, but he keeps on winning. This has him set up for a pretty big fight next time. I said yesterday that I thought he could be an option for Askar Askarov because of the timelines matching, but that is probably a best case scenario for him. More likely options are Brandon Royval and Alex Perez. Perez hasn't fought in awhile and has to be looking to return as soon as possib

 I still really don't know how Kai Kara-France vs Askar Askarov wasn't the co-main event. I think that was the fight that everyone was looking forward to the most and it showed in the crowd's response. Obviously they were loud for the home town fighter in Matt Brown, but in terms of fights without a direct connection to the crowd, that got the loudest pop of the night. I'm glad this was the case because this was a huge fight and it really delivered. Regardless of when it happens, I believe this was the number one contender fight for me and I'll be really disappointed if Kai ends up having to fight again before his title shot. As for Askarov, I don't think his stock drops all that much. We still know that he's a very good fighter and he's not going anywhere. He's still firmly in the title conversation and I don't expect he'll need more than a couple of wins to earn a title shot. When it comes to Kai Kara-France's performance, he was largel

 There's something comforting about being able to write this today and I don't really know why. I guess I am at a stressful point in the semester and I'm just relaxed and looking forward to being able to talk about fighting instead of the respiratory system. Anyways, Saturday's main event was surprising in one way, but I don't think the ultimate result really shocked anyone. Curtis Blaydes was a pretty heavy favorite for a reason, but we all expected him to wrestle his way to a win. He instead opted to stand and strike with Daukaus, which is what Daukaus wanted, but Blaydes found a powerful right hand that landed near Daukaus's eye that dropped him in the opening exchanges of the second round. Blaydes jumped on Daukaus as he was on his knees and landed a few ground and pound shots to cause Herb Dean to step in and stop the fight. It was a big win for Blaydes as he has now gotten himself right back into the title mix at heavyweight after he lost to Derrick Lewis

 Well, another week of picks and another week of starting this at 2:30 am, so there's that. We had a solid week last week and I'm hoping for at least that again, but I already have a bad feeling about this card. This card has a lot of weird fights that I think can go either way or just don't feel particularly great about any of them. There's a few fights that I know no matter which way I go, I'll get it wrong. There's a few fights that are the Paul Craig fight from last week. Even though picking this card is going to be a challenge, it should be pretty fun to watch, so from that aspect, I really am looking forward to it. This is a bit of a longer one, so let's start. Just to be clear,  my picks will be in the bolded font , and  the real results will be listed next to it in italics  after the fight is official. Luis Saldana defeats Bruno Souza                                             Result: Saldana by decision (1-0)          This one is probably going to

 We've made it to another Friday, which means it is time to preview another main event. We have our second Fight Night with a crowd in a row, this time in Columbus, Ohio. This weeks main event may be a bit of a strange matchup given the circumstances and a fight that no one really asked for, but, I'm ultimately ok with it. After all, this is a replacement main event after Jan Blachowicz was forced to pull out of a fight with Aleksandar Rakic due to injury. It is a bit surprising to see Daukaus fighting inside the top 5 again after coming off a loss, but he's a quality fighter, so I'm not upset about it. I don't know if it is what is best for the overall development of his career, but that is a different conversation. In either case, lets start breaking this fight down. Chris Daukaus will be in the blue corner for this one, so he's up first. Daukaus represents one of the few fresh faces that have broken into the heavyweight top 10 in the last year or so. We'v

 It's another week and we have another Fight Night card in front of a live crowd. It seems unlikely that it will live up to what London brought, but even a fraction of that energy and excitement will be one of the better cards of the year. This card was originally supposed to have Jan Blachowicz in the main event against Aleksandar Rakic in what was a clear number one contender bout for the light heavyweight title, but Blachowicz was forced to pull out after suffering an injury. Instead of finding a replacement, the UFC opted to pull Rakic altogether and we assume that fight is being rebooked at some point. It was replaced with Curtis Blaydes vs Chris Daukaus and that is a fine main event in my eyes. It really is a similar situation to Aspinall vs Volkov in some ways. The third fight of the night is a pretty big one and that is Askar Askarov vs Kai Kara-France. Why this isn't the co-main event, I'll never know, but I guess Alexa Grasso vs Joanne Wood is more important. I ge

 Going to try something a little bit different today. There were so many fights between solid, well known fighters from the London card that are going to be looking at some interesting fights their next time out. They weren't quit a big enough deal to carry a full post on their own or there just isn't enough to say about the fight as a whole, but I do have some thoughts. I figured I could compile all of them into one larger post and discuss what is potentially on tap for them whenever they return.  We'll just start from the top and move our way down. Muhammad Mokaev was exciting in his debut, but unfortunately we really didn't get to see him for all that long. He's been calling out Tim Elliot in the days since the fight and I think that may be a little fast. I always prefer a more methodical route to the top with incremental steps, so keep that in mind. I thought Cody Durden was an appropriate opponent for a debut and, given the state of the flyweight division, I th

 The co-main event for UFC London was a big one for both participants. Arnold Allen came into the fight looking for his mainstream breakthrough and was able to find it by getting a huge finish in round 1. He showed a lot of really good things in his performance and I'll outline those in a moment. Dan Hooker was making his return to featherweight for the first time in a few years after having an up and down experience at lightweight over his last 6 or so fights. Some were concerned that Hooker would be depleting himself too much by cutting the extra weight, but I think as it played out, we saw that wasn't the case. Hooker made weight without issue and didn't look horrible on the scale. His chin actually held up despite being finished in the first round as he took a ton of punishment without ever going down. I think this was just more of a case of Dan Hooker fighting another extremely high level fighter and it has become clear that he just needs a step back. I'll get more

 On what was a fantastic night of fights, Tom Aspinall announcing his arrival to the true elites of the heavyweight division was probably the biggest development. We had some questions about Aspinall that we thought the matchup with Volkov would be able to answer, but we really didn't get to see most of those answers. Aspinall is every bit as good as we thought he was though and he's set up for a title eliminator fight now. We'll get into who that may be later. As for Volkov, he sort of proved that he is who we think he is, at least on this website. He's a very talented heavyweight who is a problem for most fighters in the world. He just has a problem when it comes to getting over the hump against the truly elite of the division. We knew Aspinall had the talent to be considered amongst the elite, but we were left with some intangible questions. Some we got answered, others we didn't.  When it came to Tom Aspinall's performance, a lot of it was what we expected,