Well, this was originally supposed to be a preview for Rafael Dos Anjos vs Rafael Fiziev, but this fight has had a hell of a week. We first learned that Fiziev was pulling out of the fight on Monday live on the MMA Hour while Ariel Helwani was interviewing Rafael Dos Anjos. We learned that Fiziev tested positive for COVID and was having some pretty rough symptoms, so I hope he's already feeling better. That started a fire storm of trying to find a replacement fighter so that Dos Anjos could maintain his spot on the card. It seemed pretty convenient that this week when the lightweight division needed someone to step up, everyone who's ever fought at 155 lbs was seemingly throwing their name into the hat, but last week when we needed someone to jump in to fight Islam Makhachev, no one could be bothered. I'm going to make a post in the coming weeks about the whole situation surrounding this, so I'll save that for then. We find out on Tuesday that Renato Moicano will be the one stepping up and getting the opportunity. Given some of the names that were floated, Moicano could be viewed as a bit disappointing, but overall, I think this is still a really good fight. Moicano is an extremely dangerous fighter who has the momentum on his side.
Speaking of which, let's just get right into it. Moicano is a fighter who made his UFC debut in 2014. That may catch some of you by surprise, but I think that has a lot to do with Moicano's activity levels. Moicano has only fought 3 times in a year once, which was the first year of his professional career in 2010. Since then, he has been limited to a maximum of 2 fights in a year, which has sort of stunted his development to some extent. There's a lot of reasons a fighter may not fight as many times as they would like, but regardless of the reason, it is hard to get on any sort of run when the appearances are so sporadic. While Moicano does have limited appearances overall, that hasn't stopped him from facing extremely high level competition. He went on a run from 2017 to 2019 where he fought Jeremy Stephens, Brian Ortega, Calvin Kattar, Cub Swanson, Jose Aldo, and The Korean Zombie all in consecutive fights. For someone who has had an up and down UFC career, that is about as tough of a stretch as you can get. After losing to Aldo and Zombie consecutively, Moicano made the move up to lightweight from featherweight and has had more success. He is 3-1 at lightweight with wins over Damir Hadzovic, Jai Herbert, and Alexander Hernandez and the lone loss to Rafael Fiziev. Moicano has sort of undergone a stylistic transition as he's aged. His development has taken a very similar route to the career arc for Charles Oliveira to make a comparison that you may be more familiar with. Moicano's strength is without a doubt his grappling and BJJ skills. He is not someone to play with on the ground as he will hunt submissions and if given and opening, will find one and finish the fight. He has an incredible ability to get to his opponent's back and when he does, the rear naked choke isn't far behind. He has 9 career submissions, all by RNC. A big factor for Moicano is that he is actually a pretty good wrestler, which isn't always the case for BJJ based fighters. The jiu-jitsu guys love to be on the ground, but it seems like a lot of times they struggle with the takedown part of grappling and Moicano doesn't have that issue. He hits his takedowns at over a 50% rate, which is a notable benchmark, at least for me. While all that is great, the evolution of Moicano's striking is what has made him even more dangerous over the last few fights. He's always been a good athlete who is long, lean, and explosive, so all it took was some solid technique before he was able to start doing damage on the feet. We saw in the Hernandez fight a few weeks ago that his striking was looking pretty crisp and he was able to damage Hernandez on the feet before getting the choke. Moicano throws his strikes with pretty good volume and his cardio is able to hold up fairly well. If there's anything that has held Moicano back, it is more so his inconsistent activity than anything. However, on a fight to fight basis, it is really Moicano's striking defense and chin that have failed him. I wouldn't say Moicano takes a lot of damage in terms of strikes per minute (3.58), but striking defense really isn't an asset for him either. The problem with that number isn't that it's just too many shots, but rather that it is too much for someone who may be predisposed to being finished. Moicano has 4 career losses, all by finish and 3 by knockout. Now, those knockouts have come against Fiziev, Aldo, and The Korean Zombie, so I wouldn't exactly call him chinny, but the ability to be finished is there. On top of that, he's taking this fight on only a few days notice. It was announced that he was taking this fight on Tuesday and he was in Brazil at the time. This means he will have had to fly to Vegas and cut to 160 lbs in only a few days. This is already a guy who isn't used to being very active, so we'll see how his cardio holds up. On top of the potential cardio issue for those reasons, this fight is still 5 rounds because the original fight was originally intended to be a main event and they're just maintaining the 5 round structure. That was a lot to say about the blue corner fighter, but Moicano is a complicated fighter. He's as dangerous as they come and RDA cannot take him lightly just because he's unranked.
Rafael Dos Anjos may be the least talked about former champion who is still currently under contract with the UFC. Honestly, I get the feeling that anyone who started watching the sport after he had already dropped the belt may not even know he was the champion earlier in his career. For those who don't know, RDA won the title after defeating Anthony Pettis at UFC 185. He had one successful defense against Donald Cerrone before losing the title to Eddie Alvarez. After losing to Tony Ferguson in his next fight, Dos Anjos would try to move up to welterweight with mixed results. He would win his first three fights at 170 lbs including defeating Neil Magny and Robbie Lawler, but then would drop 4 of his next 5. That lone win came against Kevin Lee, which the losses came to Kamaru Usman, Colby Covington, Leon Edwards, and Michael Chiesa. He would then eventually return to lightweight against Paul Felder, who stepped in on short notice after Islam Makhachev pulled out of the cursed matchup between him and Dos Anjos. Rafael Dos Anjos has a style that is hard to define. He's so well rounded that he has no need to force anything on his opponents. He can win a fight wherever his opponent is at their weakest. This leads to him having a fair amount of success against specialists because he can force them to fight wherever they are weaker. His struggles come against other fighters who are similar to himself because while he is very well rounded, he doesn't really have a true strength either. If I had to define him as one or the other, I would say he is a better grappler, but depending on which fight you watch, it may not be obvious. That isn't to say that Dos Anjos is just some middle of the road fighter who can do enough in all facets, but he just doesn't really have it in him, especially at his current age, to just dominate a fighter from bell to bell. While it is easy to interpret that as a weakness, RDA really uses it to his advantage. He is at his best when he is making the bout a true mixed martial arts contest. He can go from striking to grappling to ground and pound to submission attempts and never once look out of his element. Being able to mix things up and do a little bit of everything allows him to make adjustments on the fly as well. He is never locked into a single game plan and can really keep his opponent off balance because they don't know what is coming next. If he can catch his opponent guessing, he is more than talented enough to notice it and capitalize on it. A weakness for Dos Anjos is that he just doesn't have the ability to take bulldoze his way through a fight. Especially in the cases where his opponent is also well rounded, RDA doesn't have the really high end skills in a single area to separate himself in a noticeable way. This leads to Dos Anjos ending up with a lot of fights going to decisions, which if you know anything about MMA judging, that is a risky proposition. The double edged sword of RDA is that he is a jack of all trades, but master of none. He is more than capable of handling himself wherever the fight is taking place, but he's not usually advanced enough to really dominate his opponent, especially with the caliber of fighters he's been matched up with for much of his career.
This fight presents a very interesting matchup of skills, which has a lot to do with why the odds are so close despite this fight being put together only a couple of days ago. I think the biggest key to this fight will be what kind of shape Moicano is in coming into this fight. He just fought and cut weight a few weeks ago, so he's not in the same shape as he would've been, but how close he is to that level will probably determine this fight. Dos Anjos will have the cardio advantage in all likelihood, but how significant will it be? If he can push the pace early, I think he will be able to take the later rounds. I know all of the best things I said in this post are about Moicano, but I still expect RDA to win. He hasn't been finished since he fought Eddie Alvarez in 2016. If Renato Moicano can step in and find a choke on like 5 days notice then I would be extremely impressed. I think the main keys for RDA will be to survive the early onslaught that Moicano will try to bring and then push the pace through the middle rounds. He will do what he does well and mix up the striking and grappling to keep Moicano on his toes. To me, the key for Moicano is to try and get the finish early. It is possible that he comes out and has the cardio to go 5 rounds on less than a weeks notice, in which case he's in a much better spot than I am estimating, but that would really surprise me. Moicano will have a slight reach advantage, so if he can use that and land strikes from range, that would be huge. If he's not going to finish RDA in the early going, then he has to find a way to win rounds while conserving as much energy as possible. With that reach advantage, he can try to steal a round and just land jabs and kicks from the outside and try to win it on points. He's going to have to keep Dos Anjos off of him though, which can be easier said than done. He will have to gain that respect early on and then be able to keep the fight at a slower pace in order to make it a more even playing field. I still don't really have a great feel for how this one plays out, but having RDA as the favorite makes sense just because he knew he was fighting on this date, despite the original date being 2 weeks earlier.
What do you guys think? Who do you expect to win this fight? Will Renato Moicano be able to capitalize on a short notice opportunity? Or Will Rafael Dos Anjos be able to take another step forward towards another title shot? Leave any and all thoughts below. Thanks for reading and have a good one.
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